Man was I lucky to get invited to this CUSP conference. I said ‘yes’ to this just before I started saying ‘no’ to every thing . I am getting lots of invitations to give talks these days, but this one just sounded too cool to pass up.. and besides a friend asked me to do it.. I’m so glad I said Yes.

This worked out pretty well. I worked nearly full days both yesterday and today in my hotel.. then headed over to the conference in the afternoons.. I missed some stuff.. but still had a great experience…

The CUSP conference is hard to describe.. it claims to be about ‘the design of everything’. Most of the 300 folks here were Designers of one form or another..  The presenters were… man.. I can’t even categorize them.. we had retired priests, Islamic musical doctors, blind film writers, mountain psychotherapists, writer cartoonists, high school orchestra players, professors, futurists, improv playwrites, mdeia gurus, pilades instructures, scratch DJ’s, authors, singers.. and most of us gave really good/funny/interesting talks.

What’s even cooler is that beyond the common theme of ‘design’ there was a bigger theme of taking what we all did for our ‘day jobs’ and putting it somehow in the service of the world. There was the woman, Sarah who quit here industrial design

What’s even cooler is that beyond the common theme of ‘design’ there

was a bigger theme of taking what we all did for our ‘day jobs’ and

putting it somehow in the service of the world. There was the woman,

Emily who quit here industrial design  job designing doorknobs to found

‘Project H’   a comunity that puts industrial designers in service of

people who need it.  DOign things liek designing easier ways to carry

water from a river to a village.  Or Sarah who used her  network of

22,000 Facebook freinds to raise $150K for a local women’s crisis

center in 3 days (!!!!) . Or.. Shakeela who retired from teaching

medicine to promote interfaith understanding through sounds and music.

It was really inspiring company

My message was a hybrid . I started off with a short tesla coil demo

then into my usual  ‘Kids today Engineers talk… ” which looks at

causes of  decreasing number of engineers graduating in western

countries.. ..  I focused on the worldwide perceptions of engineering

and how they differed from what we know most kids want. I then  talked

about the power that the worldwide focus on climate environment  and

energy has to bring new, more socially focused folks into engineering

and technology. I then explained how living in a rat infested warehouse

for 58 days on The Colony was the best thing I could think of to show

kids that engineering was fun. relevant and could help the world..  I

talked about the colony experience and all the feedback I am getting

from kids, parents and teachers about how it is resonating with kids

interest in science and engineering.

 I then quickly assembled a potato gun on stage, fired it and walked off the stage with 10 seconds to spare .  I thought my talk was ok.. but I’m never really happy with any talk I’ve given immediately after.. I thought I’d left out so much.. As soon as I stopped, though I started gettign feedback from the crowd that it had gone better than I had  thought. .  More importantly,  I got the sense that my message ‘worked’ and resonated.  here.

Here are some bad pics from the day.. Here’s Emily talking about a mathematical playground design that her Project H had built in Uganda, Dominican Republic and North Carolina.. .She’s just written a book called soemthing like .. 100 products  that  impower people.

Here’s Joe from the NeoFuturist improv playwrites group playing his song “Hey Joe, you suck at the guitar”

Here’s Ryan talking about the funny aspects of going blind… .. and why he likes his stick

Here’s Shakeela the doctor turned interfaith music person , with DBR the amazing electric 6 string violing, me and DJ Scientific

I wish I got pictures of some of the other cool folks.. I loved talking to Aaron about Twitter (finally.. someone understood my obsession).. and he introduced me to ‘foursquare’.. (Damn another hour lost per day).   I had great Lunch with two very cool  Profs from Bradley University   (Robert… thanks for taking the SamStone) .   And I really loved learning how poorly I draw with Lynda..

In short… I overcame the shyness I was feeling yesterday

My talk wasn’t over until 8PM.. My cousin Peter had waited patiently for me .. As soon as we could get out, we sped out to Willmett and hung out with his family.. It was so good seeign them all. Here’s  Alison, Emma, Pete and Charlotte.:.. Pretty scary..

We all started to doze off at 11.. Pete called me a cab and I headed out to the hotel airport.. 

Here I sit. and it’s 2:15 AM.. Ugh.. how’d that happen again ? Damn Twitter/Facebook/Myspace

OK.. better sleep.. Night all, Night Sam
-me