Captain's blog: 2002/07

Posted Thursday, July 25, 2002 at 7/25/2002 11:38:37 PM

The experiencing entrepreneurship workshop went great yesterday! Usually when I got to an entrepreneurial speaker event of this size there might be 1 or 2 speakers but we managed to have 6 panelists !! amazing. And they didnt all just talk about the same "how I started..." there were diverse topics, diverse backgrounds. I missed the cre-8-tv one, but the rest was interesting food for thought - the artist who created her art studio biz, teaching and also providing space for local emerging young artists, margaret if you are reading this you should note the name Mirella Tersigni and see if you can contact this entrepreneurial artist, find out what young artists have come thru..
There was Geoffrey with great perspective on what private, government, and voluntary groups could do for your small company.. voluntary groups like TIG! I got some ideas from that... and Evan brought up his youth biz project, and there was greg, the funniest guy (started and owns more than 1 biz, sort of what Id like to do...). he was giving away free copies of his book, which I didnt read yet but at the back I notice had mike and jen's endorsement, altho theres a typo and instead of jen from takingitglobal it says jen from IT global...
ah well.

There were also lots of things tucked into the tight 3 hour schedule like 5 min converstation breaks, biz plan writing activities where the panelists actually commented back, and Jen gave a bit of networking advice which I will use next time "so.. how did you find out about this conference/event/trade show etc..." I usually find something relevant to start a conversation only when Im actually on scene, but this line would make a good backup for those times when my brain gets stuck and I cant figure out how to start a conversation at networking events ...Thanks!

Posted Wednesday, July 24, 2002 at 7/24/2002 04:45:49 PM

Wow, my first experience of jet lag! got back earlier yesterday, I feel better now. The past few days went by very quickly, ... so now that its over, heres what happened:


Sunday, July 21 - last day of conference
--------------------------------------------
Morning:
after typing the last log/update in the OASIS, I went over to see and support my pal Jing (also an aspiring entrepreneur, his philantropical plans are more developed than mine ) and his co-presenters as they presented their GLIMMERSION software, which was their successful contest entry in the internet 2 category of thinkquest 2002.

The internet 2 category, as I understand from what Jing said, was basically that students had to create/show an educational technology that would make use of Internet 2 (an experimental, next generation high bandwidth internet network currently only available between a handful of states, much like ARPANET before it became the internet). Jing and his classmates from jefferson tech school in virginia, developed a "swiss army knife" online teaching tool, so that a teacher could do everything from visualizing complex 3d environments such as satelite-based terrain imagery, down to simple things like a powerpoint-esque presentation. Students would connect to the system, chat, collaborate online, etc. Altho, we never got to see the actual prototype, only a powerpoint and a documentary website to show it. Overall, well presented, the seats were more than half full.

Then I resumed browsing through the numerous exhibits. I came to the Math and Science pavillion (a group of exhibits) and remember the exhibit on WISE. It was an idea that students would learn by being empowed w/ technology to do research/analysis that related to the real world , so the example the UC berkeley scientist gave was a project w/ a high school where students studied, then had field trips to local marine/aquariums to do research recording to palm pilots, which was later uploaded to the WISE system where data was neatly organized, findings were discussed and students learned about importance of biodiversity, preservation, etc from their very own research- answering questions like "given this...which fish species shouldnt we eat...". I thought it was neat example of what education in the future should be: students doing fun, project based work that had real-world relevance to issues in their community, their environment or the greater world.


Afternoon:
That was pretty much the morning. At noon, the conference exhibits were taken down and packed, and everyone took part in the next activity which was the symposium discussion workshops. Basically we split into groups and came up with ideas on what we, as conference attendees/presenters/exhibitors of this "exploring the future of learning" conferemce, would expect from the future of education. These ideas would be passed on to the presenter Esther Dyson who would then present our ideas..to us, possibly to Congress, to businesses, to other educators? etc.. much in the same way Jaron Lanier picked our brains for ideas the previous night.

We had lunch and then headed outside, sat like philosophical students of some sort on the grass, amongst the cherry trees (a gift from japan) of this romantic, scenic campus. Ideas ranged from "more field trips" which i suggested, to individual paced education, to ideas on how students could mentor teachers on technology. There was general approval when we suggested that education should be more real-world based, possibly involve more issues students could relate to and care about , and therefore students would automatically be motivated and learning would be more natural and fun.

At about 3, we headed back indoors for the "closing Plenary" which were series of speaker panels in the big auditorium. Videos of thinkquest conference, exceprts from students. At first it was somewhat itneresting for example Jaron asked representatives to speak and elaborate on our responses to his questions the previous night. Esther Dyson spoke, I remember she said something like she was george bush and someone else I cant remember right now, all rolled into one.. "Congress will listen to me" she said. wow.

But then the presentations got very boring, and at a point when the president of thinkquest Dr. Terry Rogers was finished thanking a list of people, it wasnt actually the end; instead there were 2 further speaker panels. People started leaving, and I started thumb wrestling, tick tack toe'ing and this box game on a napkin with Jenny (an exhibitor, met the previous day) who was sitting next to me, along with Shawn (a thinkquest finalist, from singapore)

I was so bored I swung my glasses around on one of its arms and the continuous repetitive motion made one of the lense screws come loose so that both screw and lens fell to the floor. Found the lens quickly but the tiny screw was near impossible to find when the auditorium lights were not going to be any brighter. If it weren't for Shawn's diligent searching, Jenny's keychain light and my being on all fours , we wouldnt have found it.

Evening:
The auditorium stuff finally ended somehow around 6. After we got back to our dorms we took intensive group pictures, pictures of each other in various trios, quartets, etc, while we waited for the bus to take us downtown to the evening event.

The students from Virginia had their frisbee stuck high up in a tree, and getting off the sidewalk where we were to the base of the tree would not work because the base of the tree is on a steep downhill, so the closest we could get was still on the sidewalk. Everyone pitched in, tried doing different things like hitting the frisbee out with rocks, short branches. Eventually what worked was something like a model of the thinkquest process: students worldwide collaborating, figuring things out, solving problems together with technology....sort of. Someone found the longest branch, which would be used as a pole (tool/technology) to dislodge the frisbee. Tobias from germany was the tallest, so he held the pole. He still had to lean to reach the frisbee, which meant he could fall off the sidewalk down the hill, so I, robert from Canada, hooked firmly one of his arms, while I think a girl from Hawaii held my arm in turn, being well rooted on the sidewalk. Jing from Virginia went a bit down the hill with arms raised, to catch Tobias in case he fell. And everyone else from all over the world surrounded us to cheer us on. In this way, we succeeded in getting the frisbee! it was Kodak moment, a perfect poster picture scene of worldwide student collaboration and teamwork... too bad nobody took a picture.

The magic schoolbuses eventually came, so we were able to get down to the event which was a night at the Experiencing Music Project (EMP), which was sort of a music museum. It was this wavy,undulating metallic structure right beside the seattle space needle. We had our candlelight buffet dinner in the "sky church", which was almost like an immense auditorium with lights, moving mushroom soft cloth sculpture things in the ceiling and a big screen, where Terry Rogers began talking about how thinkquest all started back with an initial concept in the 80s to 1996, and past finalists came up to speak about their memories of thinkquest.. Washington DC, Los Angeles, Geneva... it was an overall celebration/commemoration of the thinkquest internet challenge.

The museum was great fun (and as I understand, one of the more expensive attractions in seattle). There was a ride which sort of explained FUNK to us so that we all left feeling ... funky =) , there was the sound lab, entirely hands out exhibits, I played with actual instruments/equipment such as an actual mixer, there was a place where we dressed up as band players on a fake stage with instruments and we pretended to play "wild thing", while a camera took a picture of us which was later printed as a poster and 2 people bought a copy. We had to leave at 11 for the bus/it was closing so we actually only had spent 2 hours only in the museum.. unfortunately not enought to see everything, which I wished we had the time to do.

We got back to the dorms almost near midnight.Since this was the last evening we'd see each other before going home, people stayed up much later. I hung around the lounge area, trading emails, chatting, examining chinese brush calligraphy and argentenian flags (souvenirs people brought), then headed down to the dorm room of the girls from hawaii, where I was soon chatting again, trading contact info, taking pictures of people (there were at least 5 guys in the room), having my picture taken ..

In one instance the 3 of us (all guys) dressed up in the hula skirts, the flower necklaces and wore the coconut bras and waved our hands in traditional hawaiian dance form, I even had a flower on my ear.. cant wait to get a copy of the photos . The hula skirts then gave me an idea, which was to put them on my head so that I could look like Jaron Lanier with his great dreadlocks.. other guys followed so soon we had pictures of us doing our own Jaron Lanier impersonations. There were other things going on like jumping out of closets, pillow throwing, pranks, so that from time to time people walking by might come in, also take pictures, or just figure out what the noise was, etc.. it was a funny last evening. I went to sleep at maybe 2:30 in the morning, other people stayed up till 4.


Monday, July 22 - packup and leave day
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Morning:
Breakfast, chatting, tried to buy food to pack for the airplane trip but the meal card was already expired, so that annoyed me and everyone else who also tried to buy stuff after breakfast that morning.. goodbyes to roomate and others, more email swapping, packing up, most people already left last night or early morning, the remainder just hung around their rooms waiting for their scheduled group shuttle to the airport.

Afternoon:
My departure flight would take off late midnight so I didnt need to get to the airport until 9, which left me a full afternoon and bit of the evening of free time. So I had all this time that I could use to explore downtown seattle, and fortunately I didnt have to figure out too much because Jenny, on the previous day said she was available to take me around downtown seattle since this was her city, so I checked in my bag at the dorm and headed downtown at about noon. Chatted with Paul and Sarah, who were also thinkquest finalists who had some time to spare before their flight , so we took the metro together downtown before splitting up, they were visiting a different part of the city.

Arrived an hour late at the international district , but still managed to find Jenny. She took me to UWAJIMAYA building where I had some lunch, and that was pretty much all of chinatown that I saw. If that area was representative of chinatown then I am impressed, broad streets, clean sidewalks and greenery, chinatown decor, all very beatiful urban planning. Then her boyfriend came and gave us a ride around the area, had a nice visit to the Pike Place Market near the shore and saw the funny fish-throwing ( "you wanted a salmon.. okay 1 salmon, coming right up!" [ the fish guy throws it across the counter to the cashier guy, and they toss fish like they were passing basketballs] ) . He had to leave early so he dropped us off downtown, where we walked , visited arcade much like the playdium in toronto but only 2 storeys high, where jenny challenged me to my very first attempt at Dance Dance Revolution (i know some hardcore DDR fans who told me about it but I never tried it before..). Lacking my bodily-kinesthetic intelligence in comparison to the much more athletic jenny, I was easily out-scored... but it was a great workout and great fun =)

Had some lemonade at the Westlake Center which was a medium-sized mall. There was an outdoor waterfall sculpture that you could walk through, which I did and got a little wet, luckily the pigeon poop contamination that jenny told me about wasnt too concentrated so I ddint smell any pigeon poop after I dried =)

Walked further south, back through Pike Place Market and to the actual shorefront dock board walk, where there were just as many shops, restaurants, etc. Visited a Ye Olde Curiosity Shop with funny, wierd things, mummified things, antique things. It was about 4pm and unfortunately Jenny had to leave, so after goodbyes I continued walking westward to explore the rest of the docks. I figured I could walk along the docks and theen head inland to seattle centre to make it to the pacific science center and enjoy the rest of the evening there, so I walked through the beatiful shorefront docks, seeing other building like the Bay Pavillion, walking past the aquarium, discovery centre, but when I did reach the Pacific Science Centre it was 5pm, the admission was $9 and there was only 1 hour left before it closes so it wasnt worth it. I walked around the space needle, visited the souvenir shop and found beatuiful seattle photography books, wandared near the EMP building where I was the previous night, walked around the seattle fountain which wasnt really shooting water to its full power according to the artisitc rendering I saw beside it. Wandared around the area a short bit more, key arena, carnival, then walked back to get to Westlake Centre by following the monorail. At Westlake I had dinner on the balcony overlooking the waterfall sculpture.

The bus tunnel was closed so I got onto the regular bus stops, got back to campus at about 9, picked up my already packed bag, looked back at mccarty dorm one last time and took the metro to Sea-Tac airport. Got there at 10:30pm, at a few bagels which I brought from canada, and finally got on the 1:10 AM or so flight.

Didnt get much sleep on the flight from Sea-Tac to Minneapolis and from Minneapolis it was already daylight so no sleeping there, got back to Toronto in the morning 10 am yesterday, and started falling asleep after lunch while trying to unpack things, email, download photos, now I think im fully recovered...

overall it was a great and richly packed, eventful, well organized conference, met lots of interesting fun people, enjoyed the campus and overall seattle very much ( apparently the U Washington campus was designed by park builders, who also built the Metro bus system ... which explains the consistent beauty of the place...). Definitely hope to come to the next thinkquest event and hope it will also be at the same place or better..and I feel I should write some thank-you notes to the coordinators and follow up on getting my other photos now..

(group photo thanks to jason)

Posted Sunday, July 21, 2002 at 7/21/2002 12:37:51 PM

notes from the EFL conference, seattle, washington.
Most of yesterday was spent visiting the emerging technologies series of booths. First thing I went to was the UW project where it was human controlled sony AIBO robot dogs vs. computer AI controlled dogs, in a mini field game of soccer. Armed with the like 12 button joystick, and with my other human comrade volunteer from the audience, we were two humans controlling the blue AIBOs against the two red AIBOs, and we won! (only after I blocked the other AIBO and my human comrad scored the goal). After I left apparently they made it 3 humans vs. 2 computers b/c the computers kept winning. The AIBO robot could tilt their head, fire button made them kick the ball with their head, they could rotate left/right, strafe left/right, do a forward/backward, and there was also a combination of buttons/movement that made the aibo collapse flat like some bear rug. I used all the moves =p It was so fun !

Then, the rest of the pavillion started getting somewhat boring , but not too boring- there was a lot of augmented-reality projects, such as this 2 stereotele-presence booths, one was by the university of penn. where the prof had her daughter there, against a black background in real life but on the screen, he was composited so that he appeared in an office space with a teapot in front. there was a mouse for use in 3d space-basically a big joystick with a ball that you could lift up to make the cursor move up in 3d space.. that was fun moving the teapot behind his hand, so there was the depth perception.
Other recurrent themes in augmented reality was the use of the goggles so that when looking at an image, the computer would automatically load a 3d model according to what image was there, and cover up the image- so for example there was a very abstract image of the earth, when you put on the goggles the goggles displayed a 3d model of the earth on top of the paper. There was a student working w/ Indianna U who then started up his own company working on augmented reality projects, first a marine coast guard/naval vessel navigation system which I tried out, then a project for the museum and lately the military has shown interest. Applications include wildlife research, for example where you walk, you could take samples and then data could be displayed predicting what happen after a certain time period- eg at this location will the pond dry up, will there be tree growth... entertainment applications for example use your backyard as a game area, wear the helmets and play games with characters/environments superimposed on your backyard.. lots of possibilities.

There was the a cultural exchange sort-of project at missouri, called "globalization initiative" where a group of students from taiwan visited jennings high school and did activities.. great for educators looking for similar projects.

There was the planet neptune booth, basically a system currently set up for marine biology where there are sensors, cameras, fleets of robots underwater surveying the i think Juan de Fuca tectonic plate(west coast near washington, oregon), wired together by undersea fibre optic hight bandwidth networks, and all this data would later go towards any marine biology research, but also displayed publicly in aquariums, natural museums, in the form of actual video footage or re-creations in the form of a virtual environment.. NASA JPL was a supporte because one of the planets in our solar system was suspected to have an ocean and ocean floor similar to ours where light doesnt reach but yet there are life forms, so by the technology developed here for earth ocean observation, we could potentially use it to explore that planet.

There were various gadgets and gizmos, like texas instruments had a booth showing their scientific calculators which supported probe peripherals, so you could measure acceleration due to gravity, or the oxygen content in a container, all directly on your calculator and then upload it. There was U of michigan which made a software for palm and compaq handheld PDAs that allowed you to do concept mapping! If I had a palm pilot that wud probably be the first software I wud download, for note taking in lecture. You could use it alone, or you could collaborate like a netmeeting whiteboard to map ideas - on your palm!.

There was a few hours of free time after the conference finished for the day at 5, I went chatting beside the beautiful fountain and later at the basement of the HUB building... different people from both thinkquest as well as a person from another booth.. really got to know people.

There was then the evening event where Jaron Lanier, father of VR talked about a bit of work with minority report how the technology in there was already outdated - tom cruise is using a VR glove but we currently already have the technology to capture hand motions without any gloves. He was a funny guy, big hair! dreadlocks and pleasant attitude towards everything. He mentioned that there was never any portrayal in the media where computers were used to create things, as we the students typically in fact use them to make things (our websites, artwork, etc...).. which lead to him asking us questions of what we would like changed in the media, and we answered by writing our notes down on the huge sticky notes..

Back at the dorm lounge, after a bit of saturday night live, and a bit of storytelling entertainment from the florida guys about what silly things theyve done, most people went to sleep around 2 am..

So now im in the OASIS again, a couple students from in virginia presented their thinkquest exploring the future of learning project which was a prototype all-purpose teaching tool, which included the ability to do multi-user 3d environments.. but it was still a prototype so we only saw screenshots of their program which they built from scratch.

Posted Saturday, July 20, 2002 at 7/20/2002 12:31:10 PM

its been great so far. after the ice breaker a couple guys took the cookie tray and we hung out in a lounge playing cards until past midnight..
Yesterday we went on a boat tour after a whole morning of presentations, and ate on the astoria cruise boat. It was tour of the seattle area harbour, lots of people took pictures. We went past the nice million dollar floating homes, the yacht clubs, almost ran over a few boats..saw much of the extended washington university shorefront campus property, saw the hillside cottages and the home of bill gates, really nice shorefront houses. After the wonderful boat tour there was bit of free time, went back to the dorm , showing each other our websites in the downstairs free internet cafe.
Then at 7 there was the disco. Ice cream, organized games, dancing.. at first only 1 or 2 ppl danced but then the organizers took initiative to drag us into the fray with cheesy activities just to get us to move into the centre.. so eventually there was a sustainable clump of people dancing in the centre. Very disappointing was that there was a male to female ratio of 10 to 1 so for the most of the evenigh the typical formation was 2-3 star performer girls in the centre orbited by a ring of guys.. interesting things we did last night ....so when we went back to the dorm at 11,

Posted Thursday, July 18, 2002 at 7/18/2002 10:56:05 PM

arrived in seattle ! (for the 5 day conference ) Here are just my impressions..
Northwest airlines was a pleasant ride, satisfactory lunch , of course with lots of orange juice. First time I saw circular crop formations flying across northern US ; the fellow (who happened to be a boston U prof who was going to give a lecture to intel about next generation chips ) next to me explained it was for circular watering. And all the cloud formations I passed just kept reminding me of vanilla ice cream.. yeah this is the first time I have a concious memory of flying in an airplane =)

Detroit airport was as squeaky clean futuristic lookin as Pearson. The underground airport transport at Seattle - Tacoma Intl airport, reminded me of the underground transport in half-life, except that in half-life the transport system didnt repeat english instructions in japanese and then in mandarin =p.

Seattle has an amazing hybrid gas/electric bus system .. $1.25 took me from the airport all the way downtown and up to the U of Washington campus. I'll probably spend a day after the conference on monday just going around downtown seattle, since my departure flight doesnt come in until after midnight... I'll have to figure out what I could do downtown. After checing in to the dorm/meeting my roomate, did a quick tour of campus and a quick visit to the henry art gallery.. thats just campus tho.. If anyone has any ideas about downtown seattle for a monday afternoon just feel free to suggest =)

and now i think there is an evening ice-breaker session I have to go to now...

Posted at 7/18/2002 12:18:47 AM

going to seattle tomorrow, finally figured out the bus routes after much much research and printed everything I needed to get to the UW campus. Seattle has a GREAT transportation system!

My shoulder sun burns have more or less healed - from picking farm strawberries the whole afternoon on saturday..but mostly from the staff day on monday (much fun with the pool/ BBQ, badminton, super-soaker fights drenching my manager )

So I have a 10 am flight to catch so I better get sleepin

Posted Sunday, July 07, 2002 at 7/7/2002 11:28:19 PM

Just finished two books- F.A. Hayek's 50th anniversary edition of The Road To Serfdom, and the unabridged audiocassette version of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
They were on different subjects but both were enjoyable with plenty to think about or make use of one day. Here are a few thoughts which I found stood out/very memorable:

from The Road To Serfdom:
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p17
..first fully developed during the Renaissance and has since grown and spread into what we know as Western civilization- are the respect for the inidvidual man qua man, that is, the recognition of his own views and tastes as supreme in his own sphere, however narrowly that may be circumscribed, and the belief that it is desirable that men should develop their own individual gifts and bents...

p18
"The gradual tansformation of a rigidly organized hiearchic system into one where men could at least attempt to shape their own life, where man gained the opportunity of knowing and choosing between different forms of life, is closely associated with the growth of commerce. From the commercial cities of northern Italy the new view of life spread with commerce to the west and north..."

p235
[referring to his opinion of the Anglo-Saxon 'people' ] "The virtues these people possessed - in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch- were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one's neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy dose of suspicion of power and authority."

On this last point, I kept re-reading it because I was trying to figure out what he meant, what examples he was thinking of when he claims anglo-saxons have these virtues, then I realized I dont know what the historic anglo-saxon culture was like in old england before norman conquest, so I can't really confirm or refute the author's claim.. but by then I couldnt forget this paragraph, especially since the virtues listed really related to differences I found when comparing my knowledge of for example Canadian, American culture vs chinese culture.


from the autobio of Benjamin Franklin:
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parenting idea: Franklin's father would always invite a knowledgeable, talkable friend for dinner and purposely discuss things in front of the children. The idea was that it would be entertainment and more importantly educational/stimulating for the minds of the children while they ate. It had a side effect: an indifference to food - with this habitual focus on discussion during mealtime, Franklin grew up never really taking notice of what food was served/never complaining/never remembering what was served after he ate it =)

about reasoning: When Franklin was 17, he ran away from Boston to Pennsylvania. At that point he was vegetarian, but on that runaway journey he slowly allowed himself to eat codfish. He found that the codfish often had smaller fish in their stomachs, and reasoned that "if you codfish could eat the smaller fish then you codfish have no right to refuse me from eating you in turn, so .... I may eat you now.." then, realizing his funny logic here, said to himself something like "its amazing to be a creature of reason (referring to himself) because you could find reason/justification for almost anything you please"
Its so very true.

the most memorable, Franklin's junta :
Setting up shop and his life in Pennsylvania, Franklin organized a 'junta' , which basically meant that he and his junta members, mostly his friends, would meet weekly to discuss a topic, whether it was philosophical, business-related or a problem in the life of any member, so that through free discussion , members each contributed what they knew on the topic so that the effect was that after each meeting everyone learned something more, or were helped/supported in whatever problem they might have. There were basic rules and principles to this discussion, such as the agreement to not be confrontational, not strive to "win" an argument but to strive instead on the goal of the search for the answer. A question or topic would be proposed a week in advance so that everyone could research/think on it so that when it came time to meet, the discussion would be more rich and meaningful. This group grew from a few close friends of Franklin's to about 12 members, after that Franklin proposed that the members should form their own seperate juntas instead of expanding this one, which resulted in 5 successful seperate juntas.

When listening to the description of Franklin's junta group I couldnt help remembering the resemblance to the "mastermind group" for success idea by another writer, Napoleon Hill, which also involved organizing people together from diverse backgrounds for mutual benefit , via weekly meetings. I can tell it definitely helped Franklin who at the time was just starting in his 20's with his printer/publishing career, lead to many business contracts and at the same time continously expanded his knowledge, allowing him to make contributions for example in the history of science with electricity.

Sooner or later Im going to form a junta too...