One of the people constantly popping up on my screen is Mark Pesce ( @mpesce ) who was speaking at a conference in New York so I followed his links and listened.....
Day#8 was a bit slack, I had spent much of the previous night watching a conference called PDF11 (Personal Democracy Forum) which was kind of like a 2 day Ted Talks for geeks. There were some exceptional speakers and they are all online for review here. My all time favorite and the must see was Jim Gilliam. He stepped up on the stage and I thought "here we go", he looked like a geeky, nervous, string-bean and I honestly though he was going to speak about computer code or the ilk. Mark tweeted "listen to this guy" before Gilliam started speaking so I refrained from walking away and making a cuppa and listened. I had no idea of the power of what was about to be presented. I was gobsmacked. Jim's talk was interrupted by standing ovations and those present reported not a dry eye in the house. I know mine leaked half a world away. So do yourself a favour and watch it.
After so little sleep I was physically exhausted and though inspired by many of the talks, my heart just wasn't into artistic stuff that day. Sitting down the queen having a cuppa, the pouring rain and relentless wind beating against the side I took a pic, trying to capture the feeling of the cold and bleak that swept the lake that day. This was to become "A winters day". Not a great image but enough to put up.
Day#9 and I still cant get the PDF11 talks out of my head, something had fundamentally shifted. One of the talks, by Lucy Bernholtz was about Philanthropic organizations and from that a remembrance was sparked of what I was doing before I let my life get consumed by the net (yet again). I was building a boat, well rebuilding one. The vessel had a specific purpose and was being redesigned just for that. The vessel is the "Narracan Queen" and its purpose is to take wheelchair people fishing.
Now admittedly the queen isn't very large or very flash but shes shallow draft (runs in 11 inches of water) and now she is stripped inside has ample room for wheelchairs. There's a heap of work still to do on her but my dream for a while has been to make her safe, competent, and accessible for wheelchairs. I figure its a pretty good lifestyle for an old fella to spend his time takin' people out fishing on the little lake.
Synchronicity hey? bloody thing. I had done a bit of a search on the net, trying to find designs or internal structures that would be suitable for such a vessel. The nearest I could come up with was a small tinnie designed in the UK called a "wheelyboat". No not a jet-ski to chuck wheelies on, but a small boat, rather like a midget landing craft where the flat bow folded down to make a ramp
Last year I contacted the manufacturer, which is a not for profit organisation and asked them if they were available here (Australia) but received no reply, that is until today. Wouldn't you know it! lolz. The universe waiting until I was ready I s'pose.
Wheelyboats sent me back a nice email saying that they didn't have any here and suggested I contact some local manufacturers to see if I could get them to modify a current model etc, but the pearls that they sent me were the names and contacts for other Australians who had contacted them about the same thing. There are less than a handful but its gold to me, to know that others might be interested in the concept.
I also found a blog entry from a lassy who has MS and is wheelchair bound on her experience of a wheelyboat, again synchronicity.
So day number 9 changed my direction. I sat down and wrote to these contacts asking if they were still interested, assured in my own way that even if they weren't, others would be. That people other than me had shown an interest assured me that it wasn't a hopeless cause that only I could believe in, and that it was worth striving for and could be achieved.
With my mind set I began the first steps, contacting those I knew of that may be interested and putting out feelers for others. I whipped up a quick logo on Photoshop and began publishing the meme. Thus my creation for day 9 is the Australian Disabled Fishing Association.
Its going to be a long haul, and I loath politics, but I am a creature of the net and one of the things PDF11 reminded me of is the power of it as a tool for change.
Wish me luck.
~smiles~
Be Safe and Well,
Scuzz
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