Joining the global conversation with TED

I spent the day at TEDxRockford Live today. Exciting, inspirational, and I met a few people I never would have met otherwise.

NIU-Rockford played host with their beautiful auditorium. We watched yesterday's TED event recorded in Long Beach, California, streamed directly from the TED website. The talks we saw today won't be available to the general public until mid-March.

What is TED? A series of talks on "Ideas Worth Spreading," interspersed with music, dance, and other entertainment acts from cutting-edge performers. I have watched many videos of TED talks over the years, and almost always find them fascinating and inspirational.

Today their special focus meant we heard from several teenage scientists. Taylor Wilson, the teen who built a nuclear reactor in his family's garage, came on shortly after entrepreneur Elon Musk, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were a nuclear fusion of minds backstage. Another teen has developed a test strip that costs a nickel and detects cancers of the pancreas, ovaries, and lungs EARLY—while there's an excellent chance of survival.

They saved the best for last, of course. The final talk was an absolute stunner, and turned certain conventional wisdom on its ear. You'd better believe I'll be blogging more about it when I can link to the video.

I also stayed for lunch—which the local chapter paid for!—and met several interesting locals, as well as sitting in on a committee meeting.

I'm so glad I spent a day on this!

Goats really can yell like humans

When I first saw the headline "2 minutes of nothing but goats yelling like humans," I didn't think they would sound so MUCH like humans! Tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor. :)

Not unemployed

I know I need to post. It's been way too long. I keep having ideas, but not sitting down to actually write them out. 

I think I'm having a bit of resistance to writing. In my Life Group, we had the icebreaker question, "What's the best thing that's happened to you this week?" My answer was that people had started to comment on my blog. Which was my not-so-subtle way of telling them I have a blog.

The trouble with telling people you have a blog is that they want to know the URL, and next thing you know they're reading it and telling you they like it. Ack! The horror!

But seriously, there's a little thing called "fear of success" that I think I suffer from. In my case, fear of success means that if I have a success, then people may expect even more from me--and what if I can't achieve more? But good grief. It's just a blog.

I'm still working. I'm very grateful to still be getting a paycheck. But what's happening is, all but 22 people were laid off because we stopped flying. Those of us who remain are just keeping the company on life support while other companies attempt to buy it.

There were several things that had to be taken care of right away, but since then it's mostly been cleaning up, tidying up, going through storage to see what's obsolete and can be discarded... ugh. But what's enervating about it is the feeling of being in limbo. The Twilight Zone, a ghost town, the Hotel California. We feel lucky and unsettled at the same time.

We should have a closing soon, though. Then things will settle down.