Last event's structure adopted a slightly different format which allowed members not only to interact with the speakers and ask questions, but to physically play with Arduinos and to create our own light painting artwork! Yeah, that's right, now's the time to pity yourself if you've missed it!
Really grateful to meet Emily Turner from 100and40 which taught me a really valuable lesson - there are no such things as social media experts! What?? Yeah, they are just as bogus as Santa or the Easter Bunny! (Exception being that we like Santa and the Easter Bunny's all right I guess). I think it is incredibly reassuring to hear that you do not have to be an expert in something when we live in a world where everybody needs to brand themselves, where most people are sceptical in social situations unless they know at the start what their mission is and what they'll get out of it. It's such an immense pressure to label yourself as an expert these days, that just hearing Emily's words lifted a massive weight off my shoulders.
Learning about Arduinos was a lot more fun than expected! I am not qualified to get into the techy part and explain it to you, but they let us program the LEDs which meant that all present were thinking about how we could transpose our new gained skills into creating magical light shows for our Christmas tree...We actually got to create our own personalised message on camera.
This is when I realised I don't know how to spell my own name backwards... (Disappointing. Really disappointing.)
I won't even try to describe how much fun this was, you can check all the cool paintings on the #canthack website. <--- must see for all interested in programming and maybe even DIY one of a kind Christmas lights making?
Amazing evening, had so much fun and a big thank you to Deeson, Simon, #canthack and Emily - for making all this possible, but personally I must mention a massive THANK YOU to Emily, who gave me the courage to put this out for the world to see:
My name is Ioana and I am absolutely positively no expert in anything. I like loads of stuff and enjoy a whole bunch of other stuff, I can go as far as saying that I am good at doing some of the things I do, but I am positively 100 % NO EXPERT at doing anything!!!...not even at eating chocolate unfortunately...and you know what?
That's fine with me.
Great write-up. Glad you enjoyed our #canthack Arduino/LED session!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words. It's interesting to get feedback about how the term "expert" puts people under pressure!
ReplyDelete[...] interesting feedback about my declaration that there is no such thing as a social media expert from The Ioana Show. It produced a mini shockwave that someone so interested in digital communication can pronounce [...]
ReplyDeleteI really like your blog Emily! I've recently implemented our social media where I work and it was a big project for me - the first big practical project I've done to be honest. I knew all the theory from Uni, so I had a green light on that, but my colleagues seem to refer to me as the social media expert (more as a joke than anything else). This put a lot of pressure on me and made me think that I had to get it right, prove myself and not allow any mistakes. I am happy and relieved now that 2 weeks after the official launch all's going well and we have people interacting. I love working with social media but people need to understand that all this means is dipping your toe into conversation, see how people react and play your hand from that point on. And that's exactly what you've confirmed to me after having 12 years digital media experience (so I must be on the right track here hehe)- and this is why I owe you a drink!
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