My two day escape.


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   I'm going to keep this short because as I am writing this I am losing any last vestiges of lucidity I have on the real world (It's late and I'm really sleepy). I've been missing from my usual line-up of activities of activities for the past few days because I got the chance to attend a leadership / training course hosted by the US embassy Kuala Lumpur, typical of these types of events I arrived at the doorstep of IIUM (International Islamic University of Malaysia) on the last day of April 2012 with a clear and open mind but a conscience not really tickled by any excitement. (I've been to quite a lot of these things in the past, I was thinking that one more couldn't really change my perspective on things) 


   The two day affair was supposed to teach its the participants how to utilize social media platforms to instigate change within a community. Most of the participants were IIUM students of which a majority of them were social sciences majors. Only a small fraction of us came from Science / Engineering majors so as the topics of discussion started to unfold, the content  put forth on the table started to reveal how passionate everyone was about doing something towards making positive change, that is in a sense one of the major things that I learned from the workshop of which I hope to carry into my following blogs and social activism projects.


    We all have dreams, we all have ambitions of making the world a better place. This was a quote by Frank Drake (video link below, listen to the last part) and I think it really nails home one of the fundamental aspects of existence whether you are religious or not ( I am content with keeping God out of the picture), at the end of the day we want there to be more people to miss us when we are gone rather than those that are glad we are when the time comes.  

     I think that I definitely learned quite a few new things at the Creative Vision Workshop Malaysia / Generation Change program I also managed to reinforce a lot of old ideas that had been partially shady world/societal views at best.


This is where I was : http://www.facebook.com/generationchange.hq


    Fisrt of all, I had never really jumped on the twitter / foursquare bandwagon seeing as how these technologies were mostly mobile gadget based (I'm rather the prude preferring a big and powerful desktop to a sleek and compact smartphone). But one of the things that the trainers quickly had us familiarize ourselves with (she was an MIT grad by the way) was that these technologies are nothing but tools, we can live with or without them but how they change our lives and the lives of those around you depends on what you do with them. So on that key principle I actually started becoming far more active on twitter since realizing the potential it had on outreaching to various groups of different people. The program actually encouraged its participants to tweet while the main sessions were going on as long as we remembered to use the tag #vpeace. I think this initiative was widely accepted as a very friendly approach by most of my fellow participants.

Happy Human is Happy

    Another interesting fact that I came about to realizing during the two days of training is that Thunderfoot was right about the human race being a social hierarchical entity. No one ever wins alone and winning is nothing if you aren't a part of something bigger than yourself. We were constantly bombarded by the incentive to follow our passions in-line with the phrase "let your mission guide you" and I guess that's true when I examine it in the context of what I'm trying to do with ScienceEpic. Its not about the personal glory or number of subscribers, its about the message and the people that I'm trying to reach out to. I guess what I have to remember that as I trudge on with ScienceEpic in the years to come is that Subs and views are nice, but the truth of the matter is I still have a better message than "baby, baby, baby ... ohhhhhhh ..."


ScienceEpic: http://bit.ly/IQINBi


    And finally the most important thing I learned is, There's absolutely no time like today to go out and give a helping hand to a community in need. I know I deal with this kind of stuff every month posting YouTube videos that communicate science but there's a completely different angle that I sometimes neglect and that angle is probably the one of the most important aspects of communication, and  that is the people that I'm trying to reach out to. Whether I'm communicating science or teaching people about some radical new concept, its all about the interpersonal bonds and lines of communication we build with our words and our ideas. If we can nail these concepts down correctly, only then will the whole "YouTube: The world is watching" concept truly set in as a powerful method to deliver ideas and start revolutions

Community: changing the world since 200,000 years ago

     All in all it was an enlightening experience, I think the workshop really equipped me with a fine set of skills that I can use to make some decent change in disenfranchised communities across the country (and that is what they are expecting of the participants with a 15,000 ringgit grant on the line). Sure, I made quite a few new Facebook friends and I learned the power and required responsibility (no pun intended) of using Twitter but I think the event can be mostly likened to that of a spark, and with it I can safely say that I can now spark the glimmer of hope for other people that have never been given that fire in the first place.


SonOfTerra92 signing off, see you next time.