Dangers, opportunities, and non-crises
Well, here we are on a -very- rainy stretch of weather in Vancouver, in June. I shall break my blogger-silence by recounting the last little while... because I know some of you don't follow my myriad posts on Facebook which lately, I've been favouring because they seem to take much less time to do.
Last week, I was chairing the Contexts of Play session at the CGSA (Canadian Games Studies Association) conference and presenting a mobilization of McLuhan at the CCA (Canadian Communication Association) conference at UBC as part of the annual FedCan Congress.
Every year, the Congress brings to its host city of the year a large hit of intellectual talent from across Canada and around the world as a side effect and pleasant coincidence. For example, many key people from research organizations and government were able to meet us at CPROST last week for a morning workshop to talk about our projects, namely on the effectiveness of formal research networks. Colleague Darryl Cressman was able to give a standout presentation on some work he has done on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a methodology that may help shed some light on our research topic.
As some of you may know, being the host city of a conference in which one is a participant is particularly draining because the whole point of travelling -away- to a certain place is to be more or less devoted to the event convening all those involved. When you're the local, you're in town, still available to your everyday obligations, and still fully participating. Vancouver has had a lot of those for me lately, cuz like, it's 'teh happeningest'. I was utterly beat, but going on adrenaline. On Thursday I came home and slept, not bothering with dinner. It was that kinda week. That was alright though, because on Friday it was another day and I presented my paper at UBC in the morning, and headed downtown to SFU Vancouver for the afternoon where the ACT Lab (and visitors) had a great roundtable with Darin Barney, the Canada Research Chair in Technology and Citizenship. He is a native of Vancouver and alumnus of SFU as well. A great end to my experience of Congress in Vancouver this year, and next year I look forward to all us social sciences and humanities peepz being in Ottawa for the next annual meeting.
Saturday, I caught up on errands (and you thought I had hired help, right?:) and watched Life of Brian with the spouse in a brain dead sleepy state. Sunday was my sister-in-law's potluck picnic pre-baby celebration, and now it's Monday.... and trust me the month is only beginning to get interesting with more projects and talks and that big panda in the room regarding the completion of something that starts with "pro" and ends with "posal".
Oh, and getting back to the title of this entry... we often hear in innovation talks that the Chinese character for Crisis is composed of the characters for "Danger" and "Opportunity." Not true, as you can read here. A longstanding myth in the management literature, apparently.
Last week, I was chairing the Contexts of Play session at the CGSA (Canadian Games Studies Association) conference and presenting a mobilization of McLuhan at the CCA (Canadian Communication Association) conference at UBC as part of the annual FedCan Congress.
Every year, the Congress brings to its host city of the year a large hit of intellectual talent from across Canada and around the world as a side effect and pleasant coincidence. For example, many key people from research organizations and government were able to meet us at CPROST last week for a morning workshop to talk about our projects, namely on the effectiveness of formal research networks. Colleague Darryl Cressman was able to give a standout presentation on some work he has done on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a methodology that may help shed some light on our research topic.
As some of you may know, being the host city of a conference in which one is a participant is particularly draining because the whole point of travelling -away- to a certain place is to be more or less devoted to the event convening all those involved. When you're the local, you're in town, still available to your everyday obligations, and still fully participating. Vancouver has had a lot of those for me lately, cuz like, it's 'teh happeningest'. I was utterly beat, but going on adrenaline. On Thursday I came home and slept, not bothering with dinner. It was that kinda week. That was alright though, because on Friday it was another day and I presented my paper at UBC in the morning, and headed downtown to SFU Vancouver for the afternoon where the ACT Lab (and visitors) had a great roundtable with Darin Barney, the Canada Research Chair in Technology and Citizenship. He is a native of Vancouver and alumnus of SFU as well. A great end to my experience of Congress in Vancouver this year, and next year I look forward to all us social sciences and humanities peepz being in Ottawa for the next annual meeting.
Saturday, I caught up on errands (and you thought I had hired help, right?:) and watched Life of Brian with the spouse in a brain dead sleepy state. Sunday was my sister-in-law's potluck picnic pre-baby celebration, and now it's Monday.... and trust me the month is only beginning to get interesting with more projects and talks and that big panda in the room regarding the completion of something that starts with "pro" and ends with "posal".
Oh, and getting back to the title of this entry... we often hear in innovation talks that the Chinese character for Crisis is composed of the characters for "Danger" and "Opportunity." Not true, as you can read here. A longstanding myth in the management literature, apparently.
Labels: conferences, crisis, danger, opportunity, pandas, sleep, stuff, Vancouver
posted by Florence Chee, PhD at 5:26 PM
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