Passion Worth Blogging: Where Good Ideas Come From

For a large part of my life coffee shops have been the hangout place of choice for my friends and I. Perhaps, we thought our $4 Starbucks and Blenz blueberry muffins made us sophisticated and adult-like, qualities that our parents refused to acknowledge that we had any. An answer closer to the truth is the atmosphere: the paintings and photographs on the walls of people and places we have never met or visited; the music of jazz, R&B and guitars; the comfy sofas much like the Big Comfy Couch; and the hipsters with their plaid shirts and slip-on shoes. These cozy places was where a single cup of coffee could accompany four hours of conversation that ranged from TV shows to why our French teacher was such a drag to life goals to ways of passing notes in class. Serious stuff, in short.

But why was a coffee shop the place we liked to talk and share our lives? In Steven Johnson‘s TED talk, he explores how innovation is created and comes up with what he calls the liquid network. When people from different backgrounds with different ideas and expertise come together in an environment that allows them to communicate, this encourages innovation because you bounce your ideas off each other, add what each other knows and potentially create something that is the more than the sum of its parts. It is often through discussion that a small idea that you had can become something much more, like discussing what you would like to do today can become an entire Europe trip after graduation, which is what happened to me a few months ago.

Innovation or Desperation?

Apparently this isn’t true anymore.

Introducing, Sense-Roid, the hug machine:

Created in Japan, the same country who brought you eerie human-like robots and dakimakura or body pillows, this machine mimics the hug through a lot of sensors and more technical aspects that I can’t begin to explain. The original hug machine was used to help calm people with autistic disorders and other people who are hyper-sensitive, but even this logical explanation for its creation is lost on me. 

Counterfeiting something as human as a hug says a lot about what our society has been reduced to in order to get the intimacy and reassurance that they can’t attain otherwise. It’s depressing to realize that something that is given out on daily basis without a moment’s thought is now supplied by a machine and not a friend or family. I was going to Social Media Day, two girls had Free Hugs signs on Granville Street and asked me: “Do you want a hug?” I got two hugs and I didn’t need a sensor-equiped vest.

(Picture: Angry Little Girl)

The Perfect Saturday

At my UBC REC interview, my interviewer asked me, “What is your idea of a perfect Saturday?” This question caught me off-guard because it was unlike any of the interview questions I had prepared for. But lucky for me, my daydreams during the long commute helped me come up with one. And now I’m assistant director – marketing for UBC REC! I guess I did something right.

But I started to think about this question a bit more thoughtfully because it’s similar to the question, “What would you do if you had one last day to live?” It’s not that I like to think about my death, as fun as that is, but thinking about this question gives me perspective on what I like to do the most, what is important to me, and sheds some light on what kind of person I am.

Here is my refined answer:

• Wake up with 9 hours of sleep
• Breakfast (smoked salmon, dim sum, fruit, hot milk tea) on a patio under a cloudless sky with my friends and family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) (F&F). Maybe do some light reading.
• Playing tennis followed by an afternoon run around the Seawall (I have the highest endurance on this day, by the way)
• Lunch with my F&F  of any of the following types of cuisine + dessert: Japanese, Chinese, Greek, Persian, Italian, French
• Reading a book under the sun
• Skydive and paraglide/hang glide
• Going around Venice (didn’t say I was only in Vancouver) and taking pictures with my friends
• Playing some Jenga-Scrabble or Twister-Mahjong (fusion games my friends and I came up with)
• Barbecue + keg on the beach playing volleyball and throwing a Frisbee (not at the same time) to summer tunes with my F&F
• Play and watch fireworks
• Sleep under the stars

Perhaps not time-wise realistic, unless I have a Time Turner, to a realistic question, but hey, it’s my Saturday and it’s a perfect one at that.

Looking at my to-do list, some things aren’t surprising

Social Media Day 2011

This past June 30th was Social Media Day, an initiative started by Mashable to bring people from the online world to the offline world. Many cities around the world organized their own independent meetups and I went to the one held in Vancouver. It was my first social media meetup/tweetup of any kind and it was pretty amazing seeing the people I interact on Twitter in the flesh. Before, I used to think that unless I knew them as friends, the people I tweet to will only exist in the Twitterverse and I won’t meet them in person. Well, now I know that’s not the case! I got to talk to other Tweeters and get to know them beyond the 140 characters. A lot of them are super-involved, are AIESECers, from SFU (only 3 UBC students that day), passionate about social media and, true to form, checked-in as soon as they arrived. All in all, it was a great night to see the online and offline mesh into the same social circle.

A few years back when Facebook was starting to get big, critics said that social media was making people less social because they spent all their time online and didn’t interact with people in real life. But last Thursday proved to me that this point isn’t true at all. Social media is taking the social aspect and putting it in another medium, and bringing the online to the offline and vice versa is possible. It just takes a bit of effort to be step out of the comfort of your smart phone and start the real life conversation with “I follow you on Twitter!”

I really look forward to going to another social media-esque event and it would be great to see you there too. If you’re going to stalk them (and me) on Twitter anyways, why not get the real experience?

(Picture: Mashable)