• • Olympic and Paralympic Torch Relays
  • 8 Personal Video Message Terminals
• • BC Canada Pavilion
  • 3D Immersive Theatre in Green Room
  • 3 Glass Touchwalls in Green Room
  • 2 E-Postcard Terminals in Green Room
  • Introduction Touch Screen Content for Green Room
  • CIRS Building Touch Screen Content for Green Room
  • Project Management of the New Media Room (with interactive touch screen cubes)
• • Canada’s Northern House
  • 2 Personal Video Message Terminals
  • Green Screen Interactive Terminals
• • Robson Square
  • “Front Page News” Newspaper Kiosk

Personal Video Message Terminals are kiosks you walk up to and record a video on. The ones on the torch relay were used to record videos in each community on the relay that would be played in Robson Square during the Games. The e-postcard version used at the BC Pavilion took a snapshot of you in the Pavilion that you could add a message to and send to family and friends via email with a message. If you were there, you probably saw one – so, what did they look like? or, I have a close up sexy photo.

The 3D Immersive Theatre showcased the fun things you can do in BC as the viewer follows a family on their vacation in the province. The theatre included not only 3D visuals, but wind effects, rumbles, and scents.

The Glass Touchwalls showcased four energy efficient companies in BC in a fun game-like format. The touchwalls are approximately 8ft tall clear glass with the interactive space at about chest level (for touch usability).

The Introduction Touchscreen simply showed you the different areas of the Green Room and a little bit about each area. For example, it would tell you where the Glass Touchwalls and the 3D Immersive theatre was. We supplied the illustrated graphics and text content.

The CIRS Building Touch Screen simply allowed you to view videos on how the CIRS Building was conceptualized and how it would be environmentally friendly. We supplied the illustrated interface to navigate these videos.

The New Media Room is the area of the pavilion which featured 3 large multi-touch cubes which allowed the visitors to wipe away layers of animation for such products as the Need for Speed video game as well as watch behind the scenes clips from movies like District 9. We provided the project management for this room. Watch the video featuring “The Curious Tree” cube.

A Green Screen Interactive Terminal is a booth you can walk into and record fun videos in front of a green screen to send to friends and family. It’s great fun and the videos to choose from can be customized by the venue or client using it. Watch a video of someone using it.

The Newspaper Kiosk was a fun free way for people in Robson Square to have their photo taken on the zip line, with the Olympics mascots, or in front of the GE Ice Plaza. It uses the same green screen technology as the Green Screen Interactive Terminal except it takes a snapshot as opposed to a video and presents you with a print out of your picture on the front page of the news. See some cool people in the Vancouver Sun.

Needless to say, we were quite busy and there was a lot of overtime worked, however it was quite the experience and I wouldn’t take it back at all. I loved being involved and working on something that was for a bigger cause.

In December, we had our annual Christmas banquet for Toastmasters and I performed speech project #10 – “inspire your audience”. So, in case you missed it, you’ll find the text version on my Speeches page under “Attainable Dreams”.

Now that the Olympics are done and my year of being President at Burrard Toastmasters is coming to and end, it may be time to take a step back and look at what’s coming down the path next.

Until next time, adios.

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I went to the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s Music of the Night performance on Friday night and was that ever amazing! If you’re in Vancouver, or are from Vancouver, and you’ve never been to a VSO performance, you are missing out! It’s unbelievable that you can get tickets for $25 a seat (and the sound quality is just as amazing as it would be from the $150 seats) and witness that kind of talent. It was definitely a time that I was thankful for my sense of hearing.

On Tuesday I finally got the rest of the pictures for one of the freelance projects I’ve been doing. Once I make some more last minute tweaks and add the new photos, then prepare to be amazed by the photography of Brendan Robinson! My other freelance project which consists of my first attempt at theming Wordpress, should be up soon too – so stay tuned!

This weekend I was house-sitting/dog-sitting for some people I know that live in the Dunbar area of Vancouver. Last time I stayed at their house in June I discovered something seriously cool and I forgot about it until today when I happened to drive by it again. I give you the darn coolest looking elementary school I’ve ever seen. Who WOULDN’T want to go to school when it looks like this?!

Okay so, the orange pylons kinda take away from the whole ambiance, but still pretty darn cool right? I’d go to that school! I didn’t get a good photo of the playground, however it looked pretty awesome too. That was until I discovered what made this whole thing not so cool. Deal-breaker = no swing set and no merry-go-round. WTF?! Why are playgrounds so boring and “safe” these days? Lame.

As a side note, I was gonna do this whole awesome post about the new Google Street View here in Canada, but then I got too busy and the rest of the blogosphere beat me to it. So instead, enjoy this cool post on things spotted in Toronto with Google Street View.

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This upcoming week at Toastmasters we have our Club Table Topics and Humorous Speech Contest. Originally it was so hard to get people to sign up as contestants and I even threw myself in as a contestant hoping to get the ball rolling. So now I am participating in the Table Topics contest and we have over 14 contestants between the two contests. Oh, of course some may drop out as they realize there’s no time to prepare a speech and such, but overall that’s still a good number!

I also need to get going on my regular speech projects again as I’ve only completed three and I’ve told myself I will have my CC and CL status by the end of the executive year. That means I have to do at least seven more speeches to get the CC and a few other projects for the CL as well. Writing a speech isn’t really a big deal for me, not really. It’s more about the topic to choose – what can I write a speech about that will keep others interested?

On the web side of things, I’m doing another set of demos for our hockey pool website, PickupHockey.com. The downside is I’m terribly equipped in the audio department, so my next mission is to excellently equip myself and do those demos again, with better audio. I’d also like to find a way to make them more interesting, cause they’re pretty boring to watch. There’s got to be a way of doing them in a more captivating and fun way.

With the return of Autumn, comes the return of more time indoors – meaning that hopefully more work will get done. Despite the increased time indoors, I really do love Fall. Today I went for a bike ride around Stanley Park and what a lovely Autumn day it was. With that, I leave you with a photo of Siwash Rock along the Stanley Park Seawall.

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So firstly, with Google in the world, you could just smash the keyboard and not know how to spell anything and it would say “did you mean?” and you would say “why yes, I did mean that!”. No wonder all the young kids these days spell everything with 1-3 letters, they don’t need to know how to spell because Google is all-knowing!

Secondly, Google has added this feature that auto-suggests what you might be searching for, I’m assuming based on the most common things searched for under what you’ve typed in so far. So when I began typing “how to” it was interesting to see what North Americans are asking Google how to do. It’s also interesting to see the difference between what you get in the auto-suggest on google.com and google.ca.

Google.com
Americans #3 – how to get pregnant… you mean you don’t know?! REALLY???

Google.ca
Canadians #10 – how to roll a joint. Classic.

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As for Toastmasters, my first month as Club President has been okay however since it is summer we have some difficulties filling all the roles every meeting since many members go on vacation or would probably rather be outside in the nice weather. Once September hits I think the club activity will pick up again, which will be nice – and then I can really start pushing our goal for President’s Distinguished Club.

If you live on the internet as I do most of the time, you may have heard that web developers and designers of all kinds are finally fed up and cannot stay quiet anymore on the subject of Internet Explorer 6. Enough is enough!!! If you agree I suggest you join the campaign by adding an anti-IE6 icon to your online profile pictures in the very least (I’ve used mine on my twitter account). Here is an anti-IE6 image for your convenience in a large size so that you can scale it down to the size needed for your image.

Also, see below my example:

– Rebekah

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All things considered, I think it went very well and I managed to write it and mostly memorize it in two days. I truly think I inspired the club and that we really are going to achieve what I want us to.

Blog post on how to write an inspiring speech coming soon.

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For those of you interested in participating in Thrill the World, however are not in the Vancouver area, can check for events in your city here.

Stay tuned!

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Photos from this year’s banquet can be found on the Burrard Toastmasters website.

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“Today’s table topics session is a lesson in how your body language speaks and to help you see how both speaking effectively and using your body effectively works together to make you an even better public speaker.“

The exercise included two people per scenario as one person will only be speaking, and the other will only be doing the actions to go with their partner’s speaking. This helped give a more apparent demonstration of how the body speaks and how both speaking and moving have to work together in order to make a speech truly effective. Extreme hilarity ensued with the following scenarios:

• 1. You are working on street repair and discover an indecipherable item.
• 2. You are at a local dance and meet a strange, interesting character. What happens?
• 3. You are wrestling a bear at the state fair. What is the outcome?
• 4. You are rock climbing in the middle of a hot day and are suddenly swarmed by a large number of birds.
• 5. You are demonstrating Tupperware (or some other product of your choice) and describing the strange things it is useful for (not just food).

Needless to say it was difficult for some people to not use their body while speaking (using hand gestures, etc.) and for others it was difficult to not speak or make too many noises. At the end of it all my eyes were watering from laughing so hard. Definitely a great exercise that I would do again some time.

- – Rebekah

P.S. Nam (our Past President, a super cool dude) introduced me as the Table Topics Master and used hockey references to Wayne Gretzky and Sidney Crosby. NICE. I love it. You can put me up there with great achievers any day!

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That’s right. Club elections took place, and I will be the new Club President for Burrard Toastmasters. Because that’s just how I roll, and because I’m freakin’ awesome. I actually don’t officially become Club President until July as we go through a transitional period and a training session. The point is I’m progressing in my usual pace again, yay! That’s all I have to say about Toastmasters today.

This week’s handy links:

• • 10 useful tools for choosing the right color palette
• • 5 must know web design polishing techniques
• • 50 ways to become a better designer
• • 10 Wordpress plugins guaranteed to save you time
• • 22 CSS Button Styling Tutorials and Techniques
• • Designers predict web design trends for 2010

–Rebekah

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– Rebekah

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I finished the flash book Leigh had ordered for me, and the satisfying part of it is that I knew about 98% of what it taught. My first project is going to be a Netgenetix social photo gallery which Leigh wants me to treat as a real project with a project brief, a timeline, and deliverables. That should be interesting in terms of the timeline/deliverables, only because I’ll be working on it in my free time, not on a daily basis like a client project. Who knows what client work may fill up my time in the coming weeks?

I’ve come across some awesome design/development articles and pages in the past week that I’d like to share. Take a gander, I’m sure you’ll find at least one of them useful or inspiring!

• • Create an Image Rotator with CSS/jQuery
• • 40 Tutorials for Creating Highly Detailed Icons
• • 26 Horizontal Websites for Inspiration
• • 20+ Brilliant List Styling Techniques
• • Meagan Fisher – An Inspiring Designer
• • The World’s Largest Free Textures Site
• • Run Several Versions of IE on your PC

… and you can see more of my cool website discoveries by following me on Delicious.

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It was actually fun and not hard at all – there’s a leader in me somewhere! I also did my first table topic tonight, which is the part of the meeting I’m always most worried about – so the fact that I nailed that was pretty awesome. I had several people at the meeting today say that I’m a natural and I should run for Club President. Could be a good idea for sure… I’m gonna talk to Jess about it and see what she thinks.  Plus, it would be cool to have her as the Past President to help me out.

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This week I did the word of the day and the language evaluation. I have to admit when I was trying to think of an uncommonly used word the first one that came to mind was  “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. Yes, its in the dictionary! However, that word is a bit silly, and as Justin mentioned, I didn’t want to make people hate me. So instead I chose the word “flabbergasted” cause its a fun word and its not often used. I have to say though, compared to previous meetings, everyone was good at attempting to use the word. Woot. 1 point Bekah.

Also, Jess did a last minute speech which she threw together in something like 20 minutes (or less!) for tonight’s meeting. She talked about interviews and what you can do to have a better shot at getting a job offer after leaving an interview and feeling good about any interviews you have – without feeling like you could have done better after you leave. And, of course, it was nothing short of amazing. I don’t think there will ever be a day when she doesn’t amaze me with her abilities and skills…

———

As for Netgenetix these days…

The boss is having me learn flash… that’s gonna be awesome. I know the basics and a decent amount of AS3 from school but I never got into it much at that time. So I got a book and have been doing some self-teaching but its a bit slow right now with how busy I’ve been… however I’ll hopefully be starting a class for it in the fall probably. I’m actually pretty excited… I’ve always had super good ideas for things that could happen in flash but obviously don’t have the patience for the design part of it (as usual)… but once I get good at it and I’ve got Justin to design stuff before hand, then that will be pretty sweet.

Also, I’ve been wanting to write a few more new blog entries for Citrus however haven’t had much of a chance lately. If anyone has any good ideas or things for me to write on regarding SEO please share! (Anything you’d like to know?)

Oh! And the NHL Playoffs started today! How exciting! Yay for the Canucks first win against the Blues! This means an overload of support emails on our free hockey pool website, PickupHockey.com. I’ve been helping out with these support emails a lot over the last couple days and I’m not sure what it is about them… but I’m ADDICTED! I dunno what it is, but I’m addicted to replying support emails and doing so as soon as humanly possible! It’s actually pretty exciting, Pickup Hockey is growing so much and it’s freaking awesome… I’m not sure what it is but I love watching the number of registrations and daily visits continue to climb. I’m proud to say I contribute to keeping one of the biggest hockey pool websites on the internet alive and well!!!

Anywho, that’s enough rambling for one night. Later!

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