I shared anecdotes about rock and roll photographer Bev Davies, the Group of 7 bohemian painter Frederick Varley, and the elusive Grateful Dead shows in 1966 + name check for Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company.

The show also broadcasts a livestream which includes all the in between banter and offside comments and anecdotes from the Twitter stream.

In the segment with host Fiona Forbes, and guest host Tiffany Gurden, about the new East Van office, our unwitting role in the Egyptian revolution, what makes us special and a few notes about the tools.

The show also broadcasts a livestream which includes all the in between banter and offside comments and anecdotes from the Twitter stream.

In this spiel, i discuss a “people’s history” of media creation and my tactics and thoughts about how to foster creativity by viewing the past and participating in the creation of the future.

Art & Technology are Old Pals with Dave Olson – 3.12.11 from Social Media Club on Vimeo.

You can catch a longer version of the similar deal at “Art and Tech are Old Pals at Wordcamp Vancouver” and you might also enjoy “Greeks to Geeks at Wordcamp Whistler.”

On April 4, 2013, HootSuite hosted Vancouver’s media folk at our headquarters in Mount Pleasant. Among them, Grace Ke from Global BC stopped by for some live hits and a tour of our state-of-the-art offices. As you can see in this video, we caught up and discussed how HootSuite builds community through our HootUps and how the company played an important role in the Egyptian Revolution, among other things. Here are Grace Ke’s live hits from Hoot tour.

We riffed about many different topics including: HootSuite’s App Directory; Social Media on an international scale; my experiences at SXSW; and, uses for Google+.

Check out this week’s episode: Dotto Tech 102 – HootSuite and Ebooks.

Crowdsource from your Community the Tom Sawyer Way – Community Nuggets Vol.1 from HootSuite on Vimeo.

Here’s a particularly impressive excerpt:

Dave Olson, vice president of community at HootSuite, ended his presentation about building an impassioned and actively supportive community around a brand or destination by asking the question, “How do you measure happiness?” On the surface, it seems a flip remark for a serious business to consider, but most businesses know that a happy customer is a returning customer. Just as most meeting planners know that a happy conference community keeps attendees coming back.

For the full post, checkout Rob Hodge’s article Navigating New Territories in Connect magazine.

Upon my arrival, I found myself quoted in the Wall Street Journal, and felt pretty cool. 

Here’s an excerpt and one of my top tips year-after-year for SX goers:

One way you may be able to tell apart investors and other bigwigs from the masses at South By Southwest is by zeroing on people’s feet, suggests Dave Olson, vice president of community for HootSuite, a social-media-management platform. While almost everyone wears hoodies, jeans and other casual attire, high fliers tend be the only ones sporting “rare vintage Puma sneakers” or other fancy footwear, he says.

For more tips checkout WSJ Reporter, Sarah E. Needleman’s full article, “Don’t Judge an Investor by His Track Suit.”

Checkout the 4 ways to Build a World Community Around Your Brand. 

Here are the 4 tips in a nutshell: 

• Be humble; get local. Launch international markets by taking a grassroots approach.

The key to successful international (and cost-efficient) expansion is reinventing your brand and product for each unique culture and market you enter. This is done through engaging with the local community and really getting to know it. It boils down to flexibility and focusing on the details.

 

• Tell stories. A powerful brand is more than just a useful product.
  

“I like it when people tell us stories about how HootSuite has impacted their livelihood and their success….what the tool actually did for them. That’s what’s exciting to me.” – Dave Olson, VP Community

 

• Cherish all relationships. Be authentic. Listen, listen, listen…then act.

Building a successful brand isn’t just about ROI; it’s also about building authentic relationships with people. The key to this is to really listen. Even if it’s one enthusiastic fan in Iceland or Siberia standing outside the crowd (This really happens!) who reaches out to us via a tweet or Facebook update, we need to pay attention and engage or respond accordingly. Everybody counts.

 

• Enjoy the ride. Drink the Kool Aid. Eat the company dog food.
  

People get excited about social media because all of a sudden they can get more customers for their shop. Or raise money for the causes they care about most. Or make more friends, learn about other cultures…the list goes on. Our tool can facilitate dreams, and dreams aren’t just about destinations—the journeys along the way are just as important. People want to volunteer for our company because they believe in this, and we’re ecstatic to have them along for the ride.

Photo by Kris Krug

I was recently asked to share a personal profile piece withe BC Jobs’ Hide Ozawa, who is coincidentally also the goalkeeper for the SFU Clan Men’s Soccer Team, about my role at HootSuite, a leader in British Columbia’s tech space. For the record, while I attempt to gingerly avoid political posturing, I am a proud BC resident and thought my story was worth sharing. Read Meet Dave Olson for my full profile.

Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt that I found particularly interesting:

Prior to joining HootSuite as one of the company’s first ten employees in 2010, Dave’s curious personality led him into dozens of industries in various countries all over the world. “During my twenties I bounced around continents and held around 100 (very) odd jobs. I was a grape picker in Germany and mushroom farmer in Japan. It was during a stint as a private beach host on the island of Guam when I discovered this thing called the Internet,” he says.

BC Jobs Plan also recently featured profiles on two of my good friends and their success stories in the province. Meet Kris Krug and Meet Rebecca Bolwitt here.

Back in December of 2010, I was also highlighted as This Week’s Featured Vancouverite: Dave Thorvald Olson on Vancouver Tourism’s Inside Vancouver blog (See how proud I am of my province and city?) For a full recap of the feature, checkout the post Featured Vancouverite Sharing Ideas with Travellers.

I also had the thrill of heading up the road to Pecha Kucha Whistler in April of 2012. Check out this just-released version of my talk and slideshow where I show 20 slides for 20 seconds each and share my views on art, being a creator, and sharing with an audience:

Here’s the intro excerpt for my presentation:

Writer Dave Olson speaks about his personal experiences, explaining his view on art, and how to be a successful creator. He shares his opinions on how to develop and maintain a personal vision, and examines the space where vision and audience intersect.

If my prezo brought you any inspiration at all feel free to give it an applause or share it with your social networks.

A special thanks to Aki Kaltenbach for making it all happen. Read Aki’s blogpost - Six things I’ve learned from Pechakucha night  - to find out more about what Pecha Kucha events are all about.

And to see who else who spoke at the Whistler event, read the Whistler Is Awesome blogpost.

Read on for some fun highlights of my visit:

Slides

Here is the slide deck I used during my talk made up of both personal and professional anecdotes including my experiences hitchhiking around Europe, Japan and elsewhere:

Bonus: Check out more DaveO presentations

Photo Gallery 

With an audience of social media enthusiasts, no doubt the tweets and photos flowed on, catch a few below or more at Clemens Schuster’s Flickr Stream (who travelled all the way from Austria for the event):

Photo courtesy of @itsSheilaMarie

Photo courtesy of @mrsgrits

Photo courtesy of SoMeT12

Photo courtesy of @PYMLive

Snapshots

I also took a few snaps while out on a walk around town plus a visit to the Hoppy Monk bar on the Mexican border, out for a few tasty meals, and glances at various pawn shops and parks.

See, my tiny old hard shell suitcase with stickers all over it. I don’t travel without it!

Here’s my suitcase and Owly.

Photo courtesy of @vlpmeriposa

Check out Toque and Canoe’s feature, In the Suitcase with Dave Olson, for my packing secrets.

Visit my flickr set, El Paso Mission, for more photos.

Tweets

A couple of highlights I enjoyed most were handing out some mad HootSwag and asking the social media savvy audience to tweet my mom (@manorbrooks) during my presentation.

More tweets & highlights at  HootClub’s #SoMeT12 Storify page

Audio Dispatch

After the conference, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Catherine Heeg (@catherineheeg) of Customized Management Solutions to talk about the #SoMeT12 conference and HootSuite’s new and exciting features (we caught up at the airport of all places, and were briefly interrupted by the PA system as you’ll hear in the interview). Read the interview recap at Catherine’s Customized Management Solutions Blog.

Catch my interview with Catherine Heeg here

Who has been an inspiration for you as a community manager?
For me, there were three key sources for learning about community building and wrangling:

1. Travelling along with The Grateful Dead taught me the audience is part of the band, so to speak. They encouraged sharing, trading, recording, and loads of instant entrepreneurship with a crazy, spontaneous market outside selling everything from veggie burritos to libations.

2. Cub Scouts taught me the importance of skill learning, working with small teams towards a common goal, and celebrating micro-leveling-up by earning badges. My Mom ran the pack and she also taught me about running small businesses and helped start my first media projects at 7 years old.

3. Hitchhiking in foreign countries taught me to be trusting of strangers, open to new opportunities, and to enjoy the differences between cultures. Plus I learned how to hustle to earn money by selling chestnuts, picking grapes, and being a lazy roadie for rock bands, among dozens of other (very) odd jobs.

Originally appeared in the HootSource blog.

Remember to check out:

Tracks on Tracks Choogle On podcasts

Tracks on Tracks artifact roundup

Me in Toque and Canoe – Suzanne Ahearne took photo

Read the whole article: In the Suitcase with Dave Olson – HootSuite’s hippie artist shares his packing dogma

Here are snippets:

Q. Tell us, Dave, about your favourite suitcase.

A. I have a tiny old hard shell suitcase with stickers all over it. It was actually made by prison labour on Alcatraz. It’s kind of fallen apart and I have to put a leather belt around it to hold it together. But it fits as a carry-on. And it’s a beauty.

Q. Are you a guy who likes to bring home souvenirs?

A. I keep little ephemeral paper objects. Ticket stubs. Crappy postcards. I’ll take an empty scrap book and make it real time on the trip. Then you return home and BAM, the whole trip is documented and you can share it with your friends. I was on a train in the rain in Spain (ha ha) and had my scrap book with me and I ended up partying with all of these great folks. Great way to bridge those cultural gaps. I also like to bring back coins. Little things. I like tiny things.

Q. What stands out as your most memorable souvenir from travels abroad?

A. The first time I went to Europe as a 20-something-year-old – with $200 and no return ticket – I took a watercolour notebook and watercolour pencils. I made (a dozen or so) little paintings on that trip. To me, they’re more valuable than anything I could have hauled back. I don’t generally buy things and ship them back. But I do have a weakness for funny hats.

Bonus: The video interview in which a colleague Marianne read the questions and i answered on camera to hand off: Snippets of daveos thoughts on traveling gears – Google Drive

Oh and it went to print in Calgary anyhow:

You can download the podcast here or listen onboard:

Blurb: 

The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management.

We chatted about international growth, apps in the directory, community building and new apps – my part starts at approx 19:20. #enjoy and thanks Steve, let’s do it again.

You can download the podcast here or listen onboard:

Blurb:

HootSuite is a Vancouver, Canadian and international success story, Dave Olson, VP of Community at HootSuite joins us to chat about the service, how it fits into the online world, and how people can and should engage.

Here’s an audio interview from May 27 2010 in the early days of the now-juggernaut HootSuite in which i share stories about growing HootSuite on a grassroots level and how these tools and tactics relate to “trad” marketing. The original is by Jim Storer titled: Conversations with Community Managers – Dave Olson (Hootsuite) - take listen and enjoy! Pasted here in whole for archival purposes with affection to Community Roundtable.

The Community Roundtable has partnered with Voce Communications to produce a new podcast series, “Conversations with Community Managers.” In this series, TheCR’s Jim Storer joins forces with Voce’s Doug Haslam to speak with people from a variety of industries about their efforts with community and social media management.

Episode #9 features Dave Olson, Marketing Director for HootSuite, which helps people and companies track, monitor and manage their Twitter communities.

Download: Community Roundtable audio with Dave Olson

Listen: 

Podcast highlights include:

• How the traditional title of “Marketing Director” translates to online marketing, customer service and social engagement
• Turning metrics into meaning by realizing the personalities behind the community members
• Tips on community: making members feel like they belong and are contributing, and that they are being heard and acknowledged
• Stories about communities in the 1970s, enabled by “ditto machines” and other pre social media technology (the roots of Dave’s current personal projects are found at http://www.uncleweed.com/)
• An example of a company (SubPop records) that started their community building in the pre-social media era (pre-Internet, even), and evolved it into the age of Twitter
• Adding value, context and storytelling vs simply “attracting a crowd”

You can download the podcast here or listen onboard:

Videos are below, and the posts on the HootSuite blog can be found here and here.

This week Global TV came by to get a feel for what we do here at HootSuite. A short clip of their interview with me can be found here and a ful article here: Global BC | BC company Hootsuite signs its 5 millionth user and here’s a quote for reference:

Local social media management site Hootsuite has existed for three years.

On Thursday, it signed up its 5 millionth user, having gained over four million users in less than two years. It has now expanded to the U.K., and is available in over 200 countries in 20+ languages.

Dave Olson was employee No.7 at Hootsuite back in the day when the company was still just a promising start-up.

He is now the vice president of community at the rapidly expanding company.

Hootsuite was designed with a non-technical mindset. And while their early competitors were “built by geeks for geeks,” Olson says Hootsuite targets marketers and brand managers who need to manage multiple social media channels, but don’t need to be tech geniuses to figure it out.

“Anyone can jump in, whether from a non-profit group, or you just want to set up Twitter and Facebook for your softball team, we have a tool that everyone can use.”

Also exciting was Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson’s announcement that he has launched a Sina Weibo account. The fine folks at his office will be helping him post in Chinese characters on the social network, and they’ll be using HootSuite’s Sina Weibo integration to do so.

The articles below talk about the warm welcome Mayor Gregor has gotten on Sina Weibo thus far, as also include some comments from me etc.

The Vancouver Sun

Vancouver 24 hrs

This week I’m joined by Dave Olson, VP of Community for Hootsuite. You can expect conversation about Hootsuite’s origins, Dave’s evolving role at Hootsuite, social media best practices, Hootsuite’s international expansion and owl obsessions.

You can download the podcast here or listen onboard:

Head on over to GrowVC to listen to the podcast and/or listen onboard:

Recently Jason Lloyd came by the HootSuite office to interview me for CiTR’s Tweets and Tunes, a show that examines the relationship between independent musicians and social media. Being an avid observer of the music scene, we had lots of topics to mull over including my time at HootSuite, the Tracks on Tracks project, and the impact that social media is having on independent music.

Social media is creating an opportunity for musicians to connect with their audience like never before, allowing everyone to be part of a conversation. The changing dynamics between artist and fan are explored, along with lots of advice and tips for musicians and their socia media endeavours.

The show ends with a discussion of the Vancouver music scene, including, bands, venues, and how things have changed and evolved over the years here.

Check out Tweets and Tunes – Interview with Dave Olson.

Tracks On Tracks, a remarkable journey with 11 musical acts on 1 train that crossed 5 provinces in June 2012. For those who weren’t able to go, there is a special treat waiting for you in the form of a podcast series that documents the journey. Musings on train life, interviews with Canadian artists, some amazing live music, and a fondness for beards colour this audio spectacular.

Plus, there’s a Storify roundup of photos, tweets, notes, vids, audio snippets and more: Tracks on Tracks Roundup

Here are all the podcast episodes:

Renegades Roll East ~ Chooglin’ on Tracks #1

Bottomless Lakes of Adaline ~ Chooglin’ on Tracks #2

Athabasca with Oboes ~ Chooglin’ on Tracks #3

Shredding on Melville ~ Chooglin’ on Tracks #4

Portage and Winnipeg ~ Chooglin’ on Tracks #5

Descending upon Hornepayne ~ Chooglin’ on Tracks #6

You can subscribe to the Choogle On! podcast series via RSS feed or on iTunes. You can also click through to download or listen to individual episodes.

Social Marketing Kung Fu

Titled Social Marketing Kung Fu – the series went through four for belt levels.

White Belt: Marketing Tactics - January 26/2011

Startups need a great story and they need to understand their audience, so they can effectively reach, connect and learn from them.

Dave Olson is a master storyteller, Community Marketing Director for Hootsuite, and has been helping startups tell their stories on the Internet since 1996.  On January 26, Dave will kick off a series of social marketing talks at Bootup Garage to help startup founders learn the art of effectively creating, telling and spreading their story.

Check out this summary Bootup put together on the event – including notes. A few notes I’ve put together can be found on my Tumblr.

Yellow Belt: Listening Everywhere – March 30/2011

Dave Olson’s first SMKF talk at Bootup was jam packed with a bunch of practical nuggets to help founders get started including the importance of listening in building your social marketing strategy.

On March 30th, get ready to earn your social marketing yellow belt! Dave O is coming back to Bootup to explain just what it means to “listen everywhere” and show us how we can use social media dashboards to connect with customers, build communities, and keep our ears on the competition.

Session notes on Tumblr.

Purple Belt: Release Day - April 27/2011

On April 27, Dave O will be back at Bootup to follow up on his Yellow Belt, “Listening Everywhere” workshop and share the steps to a successful Launch including:

• outreach to media
• positioning and messaging
• amplifying coverage and
• building on the success for your product launch.

Bootup also put together this summary. Find more notes on my Tumblr.

Green Belt: Building a Posse – June 29/2011

This session tackled the subject of Building a Posse.

Customers are part of your culture. By inviting them to participate in your campaigns and community, you can speed progress, gain candid market insight, and have some fun. In this seminar, Dave will share tips about wrangling your passionate users to help with specific tasks for mutual benefit. Tips and tactics will include: understanding motivations, providing rewards, and organizing disappearing task teams while avoiding “cat herding” and conflicts.

Find my notes from the talk on my Tumblr.

A Little on the Bootup Garage

From the Bootup website:

The Bootup Garage is a new space dedicated to startup founders and technology hackers. Our goal is to create a space for startup founders to come together and work in an open and supportive environment, encouraging collaboration and networking that will improve and accelerate the development of new technology companies in British Columbia.

This isn’t just a workspace – it’s a club dedicated to helping founders accelerate their work.  In addition to providing a space to talk and hack, we’re rounding up all of the mentors and investors we’ve worked with over the past two years, and convinced them to each hold regular office hours in the Garage, during which you can tap into their experience and networks to improve your project and accelerate your work.  Check out the schedule of mentor office hours, and if you’re a Garage Member, you can schedule a chat with any of them.

Reactions

Mike Edwards, SMKF Attendee, on the White Belt session:

Dave O’s talk was great. I have already implemented some of the strategies with my companies. Dave O is a wealth of information – entertaining with great practical application…..I can feel a book coming…

Janis Behan, Bootup Community Advocate, on the Purple Belt session:

Dave is always a joy to listen to – I’ve seen him speak at a few different conferences – so I was eager to hear what he had to say in session number three: Social Marketing Kung Fu, Purple Belt – Release Day. His talks are always full of interesting tidbits and useful information, and this one was definitely no different.

Photo by VIATec

Snaps

Photo by VIATec

Photo by VIATec

Photo by VIATec

Photo by VIATec

Video

Links

Storify

Experience Tectoria

Time’s Colonist - Local techies welcome influential ‘outsiders’

Generation Social:

Generation Social is a film about how our inherent social nature drives cultural change and some of the people who drive that change. From culture to social networks to education to business, everything is in flux. By profiling those at the forefront of this movement, we will explore these very different fields, giving the viewer a perspective of the broadly diverse community that makes up the social internet.

In Generation Social,  Dave Olson was followed as he traveled with HootSuite’s CEO Ryan Holmes to SXSW in Austin, Texas. As the Community VP at a social media startup that has played important roles in revolutions, emergencies, the ongoings of business and individuals, Dave shared insights into those experiences as well as how to harness the impact community and the power social media.

Part of the Absolutely Vancouver series, This film follows and builds on the relationship between Dave and filmaker @andrewlavigne whose previous collaboration, With Glowing Hearts, documented Dave and Kris Krug’s social media efforts for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, the first social Olympics.

Generation Social debuted on Augst 17, 2012. Keep watching this space to be notified when the full video is put up on the CBC website.

Video

Generation Social Promo Video

Generation Social Promo Video from their Kickstarter page

With Glowing Hearts Video Clip

Snaps (forthcoming):

Dave Olson with the HootBus

John Chow in Generation Social

The HootBus on its way to SXSW

HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes and Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore

People:

Producers: Lindsay Bailey and Kemp Edmonds

Twitters

Generation Social

Dave Olson

Ryan Holmes

John Chow

Blurb: NXNE Disasters and Revolutions

From rallying citizens in Egypt and advocating for civil rights in Saudi Arabia and Libya, to natural disaster management in Japan and the USA, social media tools and tactics are used for critical endeavours beyond business marketing and personal expression.

Slides

Remarks

From Canada.com: HootSuite’s house of 100 owls

As a social media platform, Hootsuite has a front row-seat to the news of the world. When a natural disaster or social revolution takes place, users flood the service…other times, political unrest has presented Hootsuite with a sort of business Sophie’s Choice…“We need to be able to play both sides,” Olson says. “We have Occupy Wall Street using us on one side and major banks and organizations using us on the other.

As shared by Dave Olson at  SXSW, March 10th 2012.

Video

Posterboard>Slides

Remarks

From Technical Bent: SXSW Quick Hits: Day 1 and 2

My favorite panel of the fest thus far…It was the presentation style that was brilliant. Dressed in character. Tying every aspect back to that Mark Twain reference. Great physical visuals that you could pass around. It was a showcase example of a solo talk.

From Darrell Jursa: Thoughts from SXSW: Crowdsourcing Lessons from Tom Sawyer

In Dave’s trademark fashion, he walked us through each story, using audiencemotivation and end benefit as pillars to ground us in the “why” audiences participated, and continue to participate in these efforts. He was able to talk about what we usually call “process” as a storyteller, imparting wisdom based on actual experience.

From Adam Leiter: Tom Sawyer Goes Social – HootSuite’s Crowdsourcing Insights

I keep comingback to the talk that Dave Olson from Hootsuite gave…we’ve followed a number of the rules that Dave Olson touted in his session: Thank people, make it fun for them, give them an incentive (not monetary), make it easyfor them to participate.

Snaps

Via @Kim_S

Via meuhlig

Via kathlenehestir

Via @Helennow

Via @yads

Via bombaycowgirl

BAY OF FLASHING DARTERS 

Sailboats carving patterns

darters into waves which

don’t seem to mind

Leaning over sideways

to control both power and time

Flocking into clusters

brushing past the buoys

like galaxies swirling

spun by translucent kite-strings

Leaving tracers to catch a gaze

the stone mason

experiment invites

me and strangers to rest awhile

only at lowtide when the waves release

a rusted boxspring fence and

gives way to me, the barnacles

and the bay of flashing darters.

##

DAVE THORVALD OLSON

Dave Thorvald Olson is VP of Community at HootSuite where he crafts programs and initiatives to spark the company’s rapid international growth.

Poet, podcaster, public-policy pundit and chronic documentarian from his earliest days, world-rambling Dave has spent his time writing, painting and listening to old vinyl albums on the back porch. Published in magazines and journals, he is most proud of his handmade literary chapbooks, static montage art, and audio hi-jinks.

Also appeared on HootSource blog.

Bands, documentarians, photographers, social media makers onboard a VIA Rail from Vancouver to NxNE Fest in Toronto: what hijinks could possibly occur?

Nine bands, a documentary film crew, ace photographers, curious broadcasters and rengade storymakers leave Vancouver on Friday, June 8 aboard VIA’s Canadian special serive en route to to NxNE Music and Interactive festival in Toronto and carve out a wee bit of culture, fellowship, and adventure along the tracks.

Trains, sure they sound romantic to roll across the vast spaces sipping bevvies and perusing poetry… but just as easy train trips can turn into something cramped and rollicking in all the wrong ways. Just watch Dr. Zhivago or travel Eurail on a shoestring for evidence. Ideally, train trips should be a bit weird, evocative and creative, which is where this story begins.

As shared by Dave Olson at Pecha Kucha Nght Vancouver, All-Star edition, Leap Day 2012.

Video

PechaKucha Night All-Stars | Dave Olson on Vimeo on Vimeo

via PechaKucha Night All-Stars | Dave Olson on Vimeo.

Slides

See Flickr Photoset and SlideShow and/or slidedeck:

Remarks

From Middle Child Reviews: Pecha Kucha Night Vol. 20 All-Stars

Dave Olson was a great closing speaker and echoed many of the points Steven had made in the beginning about Vancouver and how our culture has been and is being shaped. I didn’t really understand what his “job” was, but storyteller is definitely one of them. From his website it looks like he does speaking, writing, and other projects. He lives in Lynn Valley, North Van, which makes it pretty easy to make fun of the other stuff that goes on in the city. You can actually go online to see his presentation slides.

From Vancouver Observer: Could Pecha Kucha’s corporate sponsor please stand up?

And there was much more. I was dying to hear Dave Olson’s talk. I’d heard him at an earlier Pecha Kucha and never forgotten his passion for the creative process, how he inspired people to think out of the box and give themselves over to art, literature, life.  I was also very curious about Danielle LaPorte.   But I had to go home to make good on a promise to put my son to bed.

To which i replied:

Indeed, ’tis more important to share time with the lil gaffer! Was nice to see you and wish you coulda heard about my old-skool Vancouver heroes.

This time around, I shared Vancouver cultural anecdotes, forgotten nuggets, and the joy of exploration, then shared how I take my observations and turn into craft and art. Also threw in a few things I’d enjoy improving about our beloved city. 6:40 goes by quick!

I think the talk would work great as an hour+ storytime event along with discussion. Would be pleased to share if someone were to put on an event at a theatre. Any ideas out there?

The Province’s Two Bar Stools also missed my schtick in: Finding purpose at PechaKucha Vancouver

Danielle LaPorte, who was just as inspiring as I had predicted, sending urgent waves of purpose into the crowd with her messages; and Dave Olson and Andrew Morrison, who unfortunately I had to miss due to the unanticipated late finish.

As I left the iconic theatre I had a sense of fulfillment rising inside me. A sense that perhaps Vancouver is changing. A sense that greatness lives here. People in our community are making differences, they are creating, and they are sharing. Events like PechaKucha are essential in that they breed possibility and oneness.

Snaps

Via plipska

by @wongers

by pknvan