Trendiness is so tiring! Making sure you have the right phone, pretending to crave pig snouts and tails, remembering to tweet everything that happens to you, wearing jeans of the proper skinniness - what trivial ways to consume one's days. We contrarians are getting weak eyeballs from rolling them too much.
So I was pleased to see that the TED conference in Richmond is being followed by the Bill Conference, with no agenda, an open stage and the slogan, "Ideas are easy. Making things is hard."
Organized by Wren Lanier and Sam Davies, this "unconference" isn't about the best, the brightest, the next or the the great. It's about ordinary, hard-working people doing useful, interesting things; it allows them to share the small, satisfying triumphs of getting things done.
What a breath of fresh air! Why chase celebrity and the Next Big Thing, when all around us ordinary people are contributing to the greater good?
Every day I see people doing their jobs and their avocations with skill and competence. Their work is what needs to be celebrated, not the inflated PR-fueled doings of some selected pretties who are admired only because we're told they are admirable.
Kudos to the Bill Conference. I hope it's an excellent adventure.
(Richmonders: It's April 6. See www.billconference.com)
So I was pleased to see that the TED conference in Richmond is being followed by the Bill Conference, with no agenda, an open stage and the slogan, "Ideas are easy. Making things is hard."
Organized by Wren Lanier and Sam Davies, this "unconference" isn't about the best, the brightest, the next or the the great. It's about ordinary, hard-working people doing useful, interesting things; it allows them to share the small, satisfying triumphs of getting things done.
What a breath of fresh air! Why chase celebrity and the Next Big Thing, when all around us ordinary people are contributing to the greater good?
Every day I see people doing their jobs and their avocations with skill and competence. Their work is what needs to be celebrated, not the inflated PR-fueled doings of some selected pretties who are admired only because we're told they are admirable.
Kudos to the Bill Conference. I hope it's an excellent adventure.
(Richmonders: It's April 6. See www.billconference.com)
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