In Attendance

Markus

  • Cartoonist/Animator/Designer
  • Teaching comics

Michel LeBlanc

  • Watching mind “How to get unstuck”
  • Reading a book on Quantum Mechanics

John

  • New to Vancouver 6 months ago
  • Just got a proper job in automation/electrician programming.
  • Home-brewer

Luke

  • Sci-fi board books for kids
  • Fan-fiction book club
  • Board game library

Kris

Would like accountability/updates for some ideas:

  • ConsciousCanada
  • Cold-brew popsicles
  • Resumée/LinkedIn challenger
  • Challenges App
  • Seeking investment

Michael

  • A few weeks left in Canada
  • Contributing to the challenges app

Idea development

Markus

  • How to make comics simply
  • How to make comics without being able to draw
    • “I can’t draw so I can’t make comics”, which is not true with modern tools
  • Was suggested to make a comic about the experience of Ideas Vancouver
    • Couldn’t find good photos of members of the group.
    • Will ask for reference photos of group members.
  • Simple comics and animation
    • Go-to model is South Park
    • They do any story, with any characters
    • In most comics there is a 3/4 view, but SP only has head on and profile
    • All backgrounds are 1-point perspective
    • Needs front and sideways photos to get started
    • Photographs in different expressions to use in the comic
    • Could show people how to use their own photos to make comic characters
    • Community/lego set approach to creating comics
  • Showed off using SketchupPro to create a cartoon of his brother
  • Collaborative Cartoon Creation Platform (CCCP?)
  • Michael: When at school, had to create a story with photographs, comic-like (photo comics)
  • How you trace photos makes all the difference, and makes the style your own. Also avoids copyright.
  • Luke: How does this differ from existing comic creation platforms? Examples:https://elearningindustry.com/the-5-best-free-cartoon-making-tools-for-teachers
  • Kris: How do we work around the requirement for everyone to have a tablet?
  • Does everyone want to buy a tablet for this course?
  • Could the library loan out tablets?
  • Can they be leased?
  • Gimp and Inkscape both do tracing with plugins. Maybe not as accurate as hand-traced.
  • Luke: went to Creative Mornings; Wacom was giving away Bamboo tablets
  • Meetup next week 18:00 at CC to try an initial workshop. Photo session and initial tracing process.

Sophia

  • Travelling right now, but stuck in Vancouver, because the USA wouldn’t let her get back across the border.
  • Just visiting Vancouver. Was doing trade work in a hostel in Seattle. From Germany. Visiting the USA on a tourist visa.
  • Marcus: can the hostel help? Probably not…
  • Other person: has had border problems. There is absolutely no repercussion for border people.
    • Consider creating an app to find out how popular this sort of problem is.
    • BCCLA does civil liberty work. One person had a 40 year old marijuana possession charge and couldn’t get into the USA
  • Michel suggests talking to the airline to get the flight changed, as that may be easier than battling the USA. Suggest going back to the the USA and just saying entering as a tourist.
  • Kris suggests taking ferry from Victoria.
  • Luke suggests taking train from Pacific Central Station. (Wikipedia says USA Preclearance). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Central_Station
  • Flying out of USA is a good excuse; they shouldn’t worry about working.
  • John had a flight with Condor and changed the departure details rather easily.
  • Kris: Runs a Facebook group about events in Vancouver. Will be invited.
  • Kris: used to stay at the Cambie Hostel when visiting.
  • Michael: Cambie is the cheapest practical hostel in town.

Luke

  • Book club to augment existing classical works with additional chapters (fan-fiction style)
  • Michael: Benjamin Franklin allegedly learned to write by re-writing other texts in style.
  • Kris: lurked into a friend’s book club. Every week is a lot.
  • Luke: create an online community and do it online. Larger community, and could release the results as a new book.
  • Michael: has a friend who is writing a third book. Talked about how authors need to learn how to re-write a text to make it better. Lots of writers don’t do this, but should.
    • Writing is like going to the gym: need to practice to keep up the skill.
  • Kris: On Writing Well recommended by X-Journalist. Instead of “Trying to Smart while you write”, book suggests stripping back to the basic message.
    • Michel: Conrad Black’s Flight of the Eagle talks about authors adding complex words to their text.
  • Marcus: really learned a lot about how South Park does story telling by studying it.
    • It’s easy to get stuck in an existing process.
    • Current comic books are done in a very pain-staking process, with artists doing crazy hours, and don’t have a life.
  • Luke: how to do this?
    • Marcus: look on meet up.
    • Michael: attended a writing meet up.
    • Michel: talked about a “what if” FanFic site.
  • Kris: can use meet up account to promote event.

Kris

  • ConsciousCanada: talked about boycotting things. We all have something we want to boycott.
    • Has a reddit forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/ConsciousCanada
    • Trying to get traction
    • There’s only a few things on there
    • Call out for people to post on the reddit.
  • Luke: suggests adding a Twitter feed, as companies are more likely to monitor Twitter than a subreddit.
  • Michael: where else are these things being posted? scam alert, ripoffreport etc. Try to find hashtags on social media where existing complaints are being discussed, jack their tags.
    • Have to fake it ’til you make it. Create some extra users and seed a thread.
    • Create two threads and work on them alternately. See which becomes more popular.

Luke

  • Wants to do a board book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_book
  • Was inspired by Moby Dick in board book form.
  • Wanted to do a board book version of Dune and War of the Worlds.
  • Michael: thinkgs it’s really hard to do dune in a simplified form.
  • Marcus: these books will sell to those who love Dune. Kids don’t care.
  • Michael: IP would be an issue.
  • Kris: Sasha writes kids books.
  • Kris: Dune in a tweet: https://twitter.com/kyle_maclachlan/status/765390472604971009

Kris

  • Intentions: a different topic.
  • In a conversation asked “what are your intentions?”.
  • If asked, most people will ask the same question in response.
  • Luke: what is the intention of asking this?
  • Kris: find out what intentions are, when they may be very non-obvious
    • Find out that intentions are incompatible.
  • Suggests we use the line.
  • Michael: asks “What do you want to get out of this meeting?” when going to meet ups.
    • Guided networking. People offer three things and ask for one thing in return.
  • Kris: suggests doing this question next Ideas meeting.
  • Marcus: talked about the importance of small talk, and how intentions shift.
    • small talk: breaking boundaries, social etiquette, expectations setting, builds trust
    • Love is a very loaded expression as well.
  • Michel: intention is a loaded/triggering term.
  • Kris: adds that “intimacy”, “agreement”, “Intention” and “expectation” as very words that are seldom defined fully.
    • Workshopped the word intimacy recently.
    • Ideas is an intimate meeting.
  • Luke: what is the non-violent communication version of this question?
    • Michael thinks it’s pretty non-violent already.

Luke

  • Board game library
  • There are board game cafés/bars
  • Board game stores
  • Board game places are packed on weekends
  • Kris: any board game place in the city is packed on a weekend evening
  • Kris: suggested doing a board game pop-up
  • Michael: did BYO board game meet ups when he was a kid.
  • There’s a meet up on Commercial that has a weekly(?) board game meet up.
  • Luke: VPL has lots of cool services and librarians are generally happy to help.
  • Kris: VPL has instruments you can sign out. http://www.vpl.ca/programs/cat/C1063/
  • Michael: goes to the library almost every day. Will ask about this plan there.
  • Luke: Also considered to a subscription based model, like the Tool Library.

Kris:

  • Challenges app.
  • Just finished working with a company on a wellness app, which is no longer with us.
  • Relates the story of a colleague who is an artist but suffered from “painters block”. Did a series about her “mental prison” of art. Kris offered to curate an art show for her.
  • Everyone has challenges to overcome. “Mental prisons”.
  • Wellness space is well addressed in non-scientific literature/tech app developers. The “challenges” space ties into “masculine energy” mores.
  • Michael has put a lot of work into this app and has a working alpha: https://challenges.ideasmeetings.org/
  • Demonstrated
  • Luke: a recommender system (AI) would work well for suggesting solutions to people, based upon what other people thought were effective solutions.
  • Marcus: peoples beliefs, unexamined, limit themselves.
    • Kris: trying to figure out what the use cases are at this time.
  • Luke: challenges available could change based on what challenges are already selected.
  • Michael: it’s hard to make money off adds.
    • Recommended products is a different beast. You need a sales team to contact providers.
  • Luke: sounds like the values app discussed a few months ago.
    • Michael: it was values for the first 5 minutes, then it switched to challenges.
  • Kris: speaking engagements and self-help books can make money.
  • Tech product and speaking engagements would build together.
  • Luke: what is the branding? Not just the IP, but the conceptual space (like Getting Things Done).
  • Luke: what about the privacy of the user data?
  • Kris: secure server (in the case of DecisionTree): - Crypto DB - Decrypted by the client browser. - A malicious server could serve unencrypted content, but we don’t.
  • Luke: is there a plugin that can detect uncrypted DOM communication
    • Kris: idea from a few months ago. Rather thorny issue.
    • Luke: Suggest it to Mozilla.
  • Kris: talked about the Panopticlick: https://panopticlick.eff.org/
  • Luke: wonders if there’s a easy tool to block font list.

Kris:

  • Resumée system: a standardized app that allows colleagues to verify claims made on a resumée.
  • Badges: InfoSec community uses starfighers(link?), Duolingo has levels.
  • Luke: how to get traction?
    • Kris: start in a location. Start with a certain area. Get certain employers (say HootSuite) onboard.
  • Luke: suggests adding a feature to allow fine-grained control over who can see what. I could post my profile and those who want to see “more private” info would have to click a button and request info from me.
  • Kris: Instagram paid $1M to get $100k users. Worth considering a scale-up.
  • Michael: make a layer/plugin for linked in that adds additional content on your profile.
  • Luke: Alternately, populate initial profile from any existing LinkedIn profile.
  • LinkedIn has a skills feature.
  • Michael: ValueMyCV (adzuna.co.uk) is an AI algorithm that evaluates your CV and determines what you should be able to make.