The best part of TEDxPortland was not a talk

I went to TEDxPortland last weekend. The best part of it did not involve anyone talking. It was a time-lapse video of Portland and it was shown to the public for the first time. I got emotional watching it. I am sure many people in the room felt the same. We all jumped up from our seats afterwards to cheer on the best piece of art in the world of new media. You’ve gotta see it to believe it!

 

 

My first BarCamp

I went to BarCamp Portland last weekend. It’s my first BarCamp. Even though I read about the definition and checked out some videos about BarCamp beforehand, it was still hard to expect what it would be like. BarCamp was started by the tech community and in the non-tech setting, I guess they call it the Open Space Technology.

Part of my day job involves event planning. I mentioned the idea of BarCamp / unconference at work. The response is “it’s interesting” but the higher power that be would not go for it. I helped organize numerous highly ordered conferences with set schedule of sessions and I am starting to get tired of this old format. After I read about a real life experience in a non-tech setting, I am completely sold on the BarCamp idea. Still, I didn’t know how it works. This is the main reason why I went to BarCamp Portland.

I missed Ignite Portland 5

I found out about Ignite Portland recently and marked my calendar to go to its 5th appearance last week. But I didn’t feel well after a hard day of snowshoeing so I decided to stay home. Thanks to online videos, I can relive the event without waiting in the cold outside to get in and fighting the temptation of pizza and beer (I am allergic to wheat). I’ve watched several presentations. My favorite so far is Bram Pitoyo‘s The Secret History of Fonts You May Not Know Before (video). Bram gave away a T-shirt in the middle of his presentation. That’s way cool!

My reaction to the Inauguration

My work has arranged a meeting room for viewing the inauguration on TV today. It was nice. I think about half of my colleagues were there this morning. Many websites were offering live streaming, too but we were warned by IT to watch the big event on TV, rather than taking up bandwidth, I guess.