I played dual roles for Gathering Our Voices 2014. One role was with the B.C. Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres, and the other was with Science Venture.

The purpose of these conferences is to unite youth from throughout the country in learning, healing and sharing and to provide tangible experiences of tools, resources and knowledge that the youth can bring back to their communities.

The conference had 1800 delegates and over 2000 participants.

BCAAFC

With the Association, I played both a technical and organizational role.

I rewrote the website code from the ground up. It was redesigned to be much more robust and speedy. The architecture itself didn't change much, but everything was refined and made cleaner. While there were some bugs, as with any software, I was able to maintain a very quick turn around as they arose.

In one case we discovered a bug (due to load) on a particular database action that was inproperly ordered. In MongoDB 'transactions' don't really exist, and lead to several attendees being only partially registered for workshops. It was resolved without major issue. The patch was developed, tested, and deployed within 6 hours of reporting (even though I wasn't working at the Association that day, and it was after hours), and affected delegates were resolved within the next day. I felt horrible, but it's a lesson learned.

I worked with Geoff Howe to organize photography for the event, helped coordinate registration and workshop organization, and provided technical support both on-site and in-office to the team during the entire planning of, and time of, the event.

Acting with the Association I also hosted a workshop, taking 20 delegates on a trip to Science World on the Vancouver Skytrain. It was a 3 hour workshop and delegates were able to inquire into what interested them.

Science Venture

With Science Venture, I helped deliver two different workshops, both occuring twice. Workshops had approximately 25 participants each and lasted 1.5 hours.

The workshops were facilitated by Melisa Yestrau, Laura Bowman(?), and I. We had a great time and learnt many things ourselves.

This project was supported in part by LE,NONET. I've included their official descriptions below.

Exposing the Evidence

Explore the world of forensic science in this workshop. Enter a simulated lab, and use various techniques to solve a crime. Lab coats and hazmat suits provided. From DNA extraction to fingerprint analysis and blood typing, unleash your inner geek.

H20 Design Challenge

Ready, Set, Design! Powering our communities is essential, but how can this be done in a sustainable way? In this workshop you will design and test a water turbine for power production. How fast can you make your turbine spin?

Images used with permission. Images are copyright BCAAFC and Gathering Our Voices and you are strictly forbidden from copying or sharing these images.