I always seem to put a lot on my plate – some would say too much. Jamie, who has a lot on his own plate, asked why I was doing the graphic novel. He said he could understand all my other ventures: Off Panel, OK/Cancel, and the encore presentations of the IA Summit presentation but couldn’t see how the graphic novel fit.

Which is precisely why I’m doing it – it doesn’t fit. Doing a project like Soul Jump is really all about connecting with a different community and doing something for the sake of it and it feels great whenever I get even a little done on it.

I turned off dodgeball recently. It’s a tool that tells you on your phone where your friends are and you use it to let your friends know where you are. It’s great ofr nights when you want to be out and all your friends are roaming all the time. I still remember in university when as a group, the destination might change at the last minute but because not everyone had cell phones, one or two stragglers sometimes end up at the original destination and go, “where is everybody?” The problem is that I have no will power. If I know my friends are out and not too far away, I’m more inclined to join them even if I hadn’t planned on going out. Turning off dodgeball was liberating. Now I am back to controlling when I go out and when I’m dealing with all that stuff on my plate.

Like starting on the first two pages of Soul Jump.

Over the past few years, I have become more and more accustomed to the conference scene. As OK/Cancel has gained notoriety, I’ve also had less and less trouble breaking the ice with people. That’s because the conferences I went to were always the same demographic – designers and web geeks. On one hand, these conferences are great because you can bypass things like “what’s tagging?” and go straight into discussions that explore new domains. On the other hand, it’s easy to slip into a comfort zone because you end up knowing at least half the people at the conference.

I bring up the design conferences because I found an interesting parallel to TED. The first year I went to SxSW Interactive, I felt like an outsider. I perceived a lot of cliques amongst “A-List” bloggers (as Tycho says, there’s apparently “a list” and who maintains it is a mystery). Luckily, because we were there for the web awards, and we had some trading cards to build buzz, meeting people was made easier. The next year, a SxSWi virgin I met was expressing similar sentiments that I had. By this time, I was friends with a lot of these people and realized that it wasn’t about cliques at all. These are friends for whom this is the only time in the year they see each other – of course they’re going to seek and hang out with each other. SxSWi people are actually extremely open to meeting new people but sometimes, they’re busy catching up with old friends and need the newcomers to come and say hi (remember to say hi this weekend by the way).

Which brings me back to TED. Coming to this conference, I had a sense that I would be out of my element again. The audience and presenters were a whole other caliber and their accomplishments vast. Attendees included founders of major companies, cultural icons, inventors making the future now, scientists, musicians and of course, a former Vice Presidents. Also, TED is limited to approximately a thousand attendees via invitations (and a hefty registration fee). The assumption then, is that almost everyone there is worth talking to. Time however, is still limited and I still catch myself and others doing the “badge glance”.

Badge Glance v. To quickly scan a passer-by’s conference badge and ascertain the following in sequence:
“Do I personally know this person?”
“No? Is the person famous?”
“No? Am I interested in the company this person represents?”
This act is usually performed in seconds and can be subtle or overt depending on whether the badge glancer cares about the badge owner’s feelings.

Moreover, like SxSWi, many TED attendees are returning from previous years and thus, a reunion aspect of the conference similar to SxSWi exists. The combination of TED’s character with these pre-existing social circles made for an even more challenging environment for myself and some other TED virgins I met. Just like SxSWi, it’s not that people don’t want to meet you, it’s just hard to break that ice and there’s only so much time is limited.

TED Friend

At the beach party on the last day, I had an interesting conversation with Jacques Vroom where I brought up the intimidation factor as a TED virgin. My feeling was, “the accomplishments of most of these people is mind boggling, what do I even say?” He gave an interesting counter perspective, “that guy’s a young professional at Yahoo!, he’s probably going to talk a million miles an hour about things I don’t understand.” So I guess intimidation can work both ways and both are probably less valid than they seem. So we talked about the idea of a mentor program for conference virgins. For the sake of argument, let’s call it TED Friend. Each TED virgin is assigned a volunteer return attendee (their TED Friend). Right off the bat, you’ve improved by having someone to lunch with on the first day. Furthermore, the returning attendee can introduce you to the circle of people he/she knows throughout the course of the conference. No formal responsibility is assigned – this isn’t babysitting, it’s helping break the ice.

I’m fairly certain such a loose but slightly formalized system would work. If this was instigated at SxSW, I would gladly introduce my SxSW Friend to the many great people I’ve met and invite them to all the events I plan on attending. Further, the system could be tiered such that a second year attendee (TED Sophomore?) could have a TED Friend of their own.

I know I could still use one next year.

Speaking of mentions, I’ve noted this before in both Flickr and OK/Cancel – our project Off Panel Productions got mentioned on C|Net News.com and made the front page’s prime real estate. Sweet!