The ideacity02 conference finished friday night, and for volunteers like me the cleanup finished yesterday saturday morning , so we are now completey done and the theatre is back to pre-conference condition. After going through this week, I feel this year's conference somehow didnt seem as excitable or fun as the conference 2 years ago, then known as TEDCity 2000. Maybe because in 2000 there were more diverse and interesting speakers. Then again, I wonder if its just that I was so exhausted that I wasn't able to enjoy it as much- in 2000 i attended more like a full conferencee, but this year as a volunteer i was only able to see maybe 2/5 of the total number of speakers while having to do a lot of standing, moving, running around, out-of-the-theatre duties and waking up really early everyday, in return for getting into this conference. Still, it was worth it.... Here are a few memorables:

- best quote that I will remember out of this conference, by Adrian Anantawan, 18 yr old violinist:
"... I've been labled [with words] like , 'handicapped', or 'disabled', and that seems to imply that I have an inability to do anything. I think that true disability is only when you have no will to try ..."
Adrian was born without a right hand - he uses a prosthetic device and played just as well as you'd expect someone would if they had both hands. And although I don't remember exactly what the bio read, i remember that he's currently in a prestigious music school in philadelphia, has recieved a lot of musical awards and is a spokesperson for waramps canada.

- chatting with fellow volunteers - one person was a U of T 4th year architecture student who had also taught in South Korea. Another volunteer was an ACE-canada staff whom I had met before but didtn quite get to know until this conference.

- Marc Garneau: probably the best, most ideal speaker experience within the limited amount of speakers I got to hear. It was educational and at the same time very funny and also dealt with some broader issues from a different perspective. Most memorable was how he related his experience as the 1st canadian in space.

- BioWare : 2 guys from alberta founded this video game company and currently, bioware is working with lucasarts to make the star wars RPG game "knights of the old republic", coming next year... Their talk unfortunately wasnt focused on this star wars game =( it was more broad about gaming, content creation, internet and the future. I had a chance to speak with one of the co-founders- Ray at the chumcity party on the last night, he was very approachable / willing to talk/answer a few of my questions about how he started the company, even though at the time he had less than a few minutes before going to an interview with a TV reporter. He and Greg, the other founder were both in the field of medicine as doctors , but who were also game enthusiasts, one day decided to make educational software, which then lead to being more bold and going into developing games

- there was a friendly apple canada marketing guy who enjoys travelling abroad (when vacation time allows) in order to learn and explore (what i'd like to do) rather than to bake in the sun like the other vacationers, and showed me photos from his recent diving/hiking/cave exploring adventure in belize,central america.

- met an investor of some sort, who graduated with a computer science degree back when computers were still punch-card fed, then studied philosophy and theology while working on software for the military, then when the gulf war came on he decided to quit and become a teacher, and then decided to become an investor! what a wonderful example of career switching!

But I'd say the best experience in this whole week was the back massage on friday morning, provided by the nice ladies from AVEDA. In between the 2 and a half hour speaker sessions there would be 1 hour conversation breaks where everyone can come out to the lobby and basically chat,network, go to the washrooms, check email on the new imacs, etc before the next session begins. AVEDA, besides having sample products like their flex seeds and "pure flower and plant essences" lotion in the conferencee bag, also set up a massage booth where one lady gave back massages and the other gave hand massages.

It was a wonderful experience. Part of the enjoyability was that this was the first time I'd gotten a professional back massage, but I think the main reason I enjoyed it so much, even though it was only a 5 minute massage, was that at that point I was so tired and from all the standing and moving around and all the other volunteer duties I really needed a nice relaxing back massage.

I sat down on the special massage chair with my face down in the towel and the masseuse (the lady giving me the massage) started spreading some nice smelling flower or plant "essence" - some sort of lotion on my neck, which she explained was to help me to relax. Then she started rubbing my neck, shoulders, squeezing the upper arm/biceps (probably to increase shoulder blood flow ? or to make it more interesting? ) and then warned me before doing some vulcan death pinches on a couple shoulder and lower neck pressure points.. and I didnt know how much time had passed when she was already down on my lower back and working the up and down the length of my backbone, then pressing firmly in a horizontal movement on both sides of the backbone... and then it was done. My back felt better than ever , no tension or aches anymore and overall, I felt much better and more awake and so I kept thanking her for the great massage. Then other volunteers /conferencees followed to get their massages.

Overall, I'd say it was an exhaustive but worthwhile week spent with so many different people, made extremely worthwhile with the great back massage, and I hope AVEDA still sets up a massage booth next year!



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posted earlier 6/19/02:
1st of the 3 day ideacity conference!

Yesterday was spent in the morning putting up TIG posters (for a july experiencing entrepreneurship workshop) across campus, and the afternoon/evening spent with pre-conference readiness - passing out our volunteer lanyard/ID's, t-shirts (we don't have enough for 3 days, waiting for more to come..) and helping with early registration

Today we (the volunteers) had to arrive at 7 in the morning, helping with registration, directing people , door guarding, etc.. I helped on the bag cart runs, taking the cart up the elevator through a maze of doors and ramps into the green room, where all our supplies were locked and where melissa , an 11 or 12 yr old was practicing her bagpipe- she was scheduled to perform this morning. I then helped at the bag desk, ate breakfast, more bag desk work and currently Im a "floater" upstairs and its conversation break time, so im typing this on these apple-sponsored new imacs throughout the entire building - the sunflower inspired flatpanel on an arm with a half-sphere base...cool stuff

First day of volunteering for the ideaCity conference today. Most of the morning was spent in the basement of the Bader theatre, which looked like a nuclear fallout bunker with its all-concrete walls, pipes, heavy metal doors and flourescent lights. We made 2 parallel assembly lines against the walls and I got to pack stuffed beavers and water bottles into the conference bag... all the way through 1pm, luckily i wasnt hungry yet. Someone joked/revealed that they didnt announce lunch breaks because we might take off and not come back before the packing was done, and it was near done anyway. Eventually we were asked if we wanted to have pizza ordered which we agreed to, and picked up the pace. Then I was called upstairs because they needed 1 more guy and i was the only male at the time packing bags.

At first I thought it was a joke when I saw these crates in the loading bay that were labeled "sniper".. "armless army guy". Then, I helped open the crates..

"...gentlemen, make sure your hands are clean.."
"..alright, can you lift him by the groin .."
"and you two guys take his arms....."
"...I wouldnt grab his gun... "
"...careful, watch his head..."

If you've every played with plastic toy soldiers, imagine there are these plastic toy soldiers, but life size.. actually slightly over-life sized , some of them were 6 foot tall, and about 5 - 6 guys (thats us) huffing and heaving and lifting each of the 4 huge plastic toy soldiers onstage and placed them on top of huge white display blocks, some blocks were themselves 6 foot or so high, so we had to heave them up there with ladders (no hoists). Only they werent didn't like the toy soldiers I had ever played with aside from the size difference, but also because they were posed differently , and to the best of my knowledge none of my toy soldiers were amputees, or split in two at the waist.

Judd, our coordinator explained a bit about how these sculptures were made by himself but designed by douglas coupland. After the soldiers we moved onto the other crates which contained a tide bottle, a penzoil, a shampoo and a spray bottle, all of course humongously out of their normal scale , so we hauled those on stage as well and positioned them around the soldiers according to judd's instruction. And there was furniture and a table, which we could sit on in the midst of this... wacky-ness? Social commentary ? art? . Can't wait to hear coupland's explanation.

There was pizza lunch (at 2:30, 3 pm?), some cleanup-moving and that was it for the day.

Went over to the TIG office to pick up posters for an upcoming TIG workshop in july - experiencing entrepreneurship, but at the key moment when designmeister jarra finished the poster there were complications with the printing which dragged on into a meeting, up until 6 when people starting coming in for the TIG coop appreciation event. Had to go, managed to say hi to susheela , 1 of 2 pioneer? coop students before heading home. Hope the coop appreciation event went well.