trevor haldenby / photographer

Terry O'Reilly's presentation was on the essential "frictions" of marketing. Whether they're purchasing band-aids, hair conditioner, or Apple iProducts, consumers require and appreciate a certain amount of slowdown or friction in the product experience. Instant pancakes are more satisfying when you have to add your own egg. Antiseptics that don't sting also don't give us the impression of having been healed.

Philip Beesley introducing his Hylozoic Ground installation, featured this year as Canada's entry to the Venice Biennale. Beesley laid the foundation for a future architecture. In a world where architecture knows and cares about us, our experience is one of exchange with the environment rather than human mastery of it. I had a number of questions about how one measures the function and value of an architecture at this stage largely an artistic techsperiment.

Raymond Laflamme's talk failed where so many others have before, in providing me with a graspable crash-course on quantum computing. Nevertheless, the sheer intensity of the quantum computing wave coming down the continental shelf towards us can be made out from vibrations alone... I don't need a walkthrough to grasp the desired arc of the technology's development.... whether into cryptography, quantum queries, or the very nature of ourselves and the universe.

Maggie Greyson's company Two Way Street specializes in conference services both logistical and creative. She kickstarted a giant mural combining all of the talks' themes into a graffiti wall of cultural criticism.

Paul Saltzman's story of how heartbreak, film sound recording, and persistence led him to the Beatles in India was very exciting. The insights he's withdrawn from the experience since then have led to a powerfully empathic worldview, and body of work.

Caroline's talk on how "Western Civilization" really only accurately describes the last few hundred years, and how every major breakthrough or insight before that had been nurtured and developed into adolescence in cultures Babylonian, Indian, Sumerian.

Madhur Anand's presentation was a primer on restoration ecology, and how much of her work as a scientist has been informed and aided along by her more artistically creative processes. How has a similar contrast in understanding and exploration helped other thinkers of the past?

Michael Sacco's apparently tireless crusade to bring no-tethers-attached cacao farming to Mexico (and THE WORLD!) made for an inspirational presentation. Chocolate is allegedly a great fit for re-making the commons as it is aesthetically elegant (delicious), eco-friendly (grows best in polyculture jungle environments, not monoculture plantations), and potentially good for us too... His company ChocoSol is the first to walk the talk, and they're aided by solar-powered cultivation technology that enables total independence from governments or corporate interests.

Darren Wershler is a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, as well as a gifted writer, and editor. His talk was on technology in media, and how we can learn more about cultures from how they use media technology in science fiction than we learn about technology itself. He walked us through a number of examples of impossible and unlikely technologies, their ties to reality (and his childhood), and their value in science fiction.

Marty Avery's talk was on seeing the people around us, not as what we expect or what we're used to, but as people deserving a second glance and smile at the very least. You never know where the next amazing opportunity or life-saving chance will lie.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal is a filmmaker and author of children's books. She produced a few short films last year that showed how people can come together under uncertain invitational circumstances to make something beautiful, and that this is in fact what we do best.

The Crew - the producers of the event.

Sarah Kernohan's Drawings - One of my favourite artists, Sarah produces imaginary cartographies that spin beguiling webs of abstraction and spatial reference. I would love to spend a dream or two floating within.