There Are Four Lights

I was interviewed by Kate Heartfield last week for an article in the Ottawa Citizen. The article, Open to Ideas, can be read online here as well.

I spoke with one of those creative people last week. Unless you’re a fan of manga, chances are you’ve never heard of Sara Mayhew, who just got back from a worldwide conference of ideas in California.

Mayhew is no big-city jetsetter. She’s a 24-year-old comic-book artist who lives in Kirkland Lake, in northern Ontario. She divides her time between freelance illustration and creating manga — a style of comics that originated in Japan.

She and Bill Gates have a few things in common. They both spoke at the 2009 TED Conference, and they’re both unrepentant geeks. Geeks change the world.

Yes, I think that was just a comparison between me and Bill Gates. But no pressure…

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…actually, it was just sitting in the mailbox this morning—-but it should’ve arrived this way! Yep, my very own copy of Death from the Skies signed by the totally awesome Bad Astronomer, Dr. Phil Plait. And yes, he’s lucky enough to be getting a manga goody bag of…goodness. I’m assuming it will arrive via magic ninjas or team of sailor scouts…

Do you want your very own manga goodies by mangaka Sara E. Mayhew? Great! You can get your copy of Secrets of Sorcerers Vol. 1 over at Amazon! Unfortunately, if you want a print copy of Legend of the Ztarr, for now you’ll have to call up Viz and tell them they should publish it…

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Obviously, I didn’t have the time or energy to blog about my TED experience while I was actually there. TED is a brain-melting experience that leaves you feeling amazed and overwhelmed at the end of each day. I’m going to have to refresh my memory when the DVD set arrives of all the great talks that were given within just a few days. As a fellowship member, I did a short talk on a mini TED stage to an audience of fellow Fellows. I took advantage of the chance to give a talk to talk about one of the things I love to talk about most—-Legend of the Ztarr, my new manga series!

As a Canadian in the middle of winter, just being in California was nice (though, apparently 12c is “cold”, lol). I was really thrilled to meet all kinds of amazing people; Of course, all of the fellowship members were extraordinary and simply the greatest group of people I’ve been fortunate enough to become friends with. Everyone is doing something amazing to change the world for the better from all corners of the planet.

Though my family was interested in hearing about whether I got to meet Al Gore or Robin Williams, instead, I was excited about getting to meet Dan Dennett, philosopher and one of the ‘Four Horsemen’ of atheism, Brian Cox, physicist at CERN working on the LHC, and Carolyn Porco, head of imaging for the Cassini mission to Saturn (links point to Flickr photos of them and myself). I’m extremely shy, so I probably freaked them all out a bit by being so quiet!

My Twitter followers count has quadrupled since the first day at TED and my inbox has exploded with emails. There are several invites in the works for various talks/workshops that organizations are interested in having me attend. Hopefully, this TED momentum will aid in my current goal of getting Legend of the Ztarr picked up by a publisher. If there’s one feeling that a TED conference leaves you with, it’s that nothing is out of reach, and any idea is possible. TED is truly an inspiring gathering of the worlds leading thinkers and doers, that leaves a lasting impression on the rest of your life.

If you’ve come across this little blog of mine, I invite you to read Legend of the Ztarr and spread the word about it. You can find my collection of TED photos on my Flickr account, follow me on twitter here, and look me up on Facebook/Myspace as well.

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So this little blog of mine will serve as a place to write about my trip to Long Beach and my adventures at TED 2009 this week. As I believe I mentioned before, I was selected as one of the Fellowship members invited to attend TED this year. Lucky~!

I left North Bay for California on Sunday, but missed my connection in Toronto because of too much snow on the runway in North Bay which delayed my flight. Sunday afternoon was spent in the airport waiting for my flight to LAX at 5:30pm. So I didn’t end up at my hotel in Long Beach until around 9pm.

But the first day in Long Beach, here at the Hilton, was lovely! My Fellow roomate and I spent the afternoon by the pool. It’s so nice here, I don’t think I’ll be wanting to go back to the -40c weather up in northern Ontario. We registered and got our TED badges around 4pm and then got ready for the TED Fellows welcome party by the pool.

The welcome party was beautiful and everyone is so friendly and interesting. And wow, the amazing swag they had for all of us at the end–it was like being on Oprah, lol! “YOU get a car and YOU get a car!”, ok, no cars…but we all got gift bags with this neat little HD video cameras, and Nokia smart phones! Hadn’t I just been complaining that day that my phone was horribly annoying to send txts with? THANK YOU!

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