Global Kids' Online Leadership Program

We got there on Wednesday afternoon and it was literally crazy. However, looking back at it, it was pretty funny. Fortunately, the flight went pretty smoothly and we got there on time and checking in New York was not very strict. Our seats weren't too great but we had an extra seat next to us. Anyway, when we landed in Dallas all I thought was, "What happened to all the buildings?". There was...practically nothing in short terms, and New Mexico wasn't much different. It was a desert...but beautiful and mystical in its own way. On top of that, it was a cold desert! I did not pack anything warm, I packed for what I thought was desert weather. Thankfully, we spent most of the days indoor.

Anyway, when we got to the hotel...we found out that we did not have any rooms because they had put us as no-shows since they thought we were coming a day before. But after some time, we got our rooms--which were pretty nice. When you enter you see a sliding-mirror closet to the right, just outside the bathroom. The bathroom was pretty typical. But anyway, to the left, was first the door that connected to another room. Ahead of that was a little table with a medium sized rectangular mirror, and right in front of that was the bed I slept on ^.^~! Anyway...hmm... well right next to the table was the TV cabinet and then the table which had a lamp on it. On the other side of the room there was a door out and right before it was a little sofa-chair and a floor lamp. Anyway, right next to my bed was a nightstand with a reset alarm clock and lamp. Last but not least, in between the nightstand and the sofa-chair was Tabitha's bed~! In short, the bedroom was pretty nice--the furniture was all a dark mahogany (maybe black walnut?) color and the comforters and curtains were deep red colored.

Back to the actual conference... after meeting Ben we went over to the Conference Center and that's when it got chaotic. I guess, the aftermath of the flight did not leave any of us in too much of a cheerful mood--and the cherry on top was the technology issues! Of course, as a student in Machinima I know that technology challenge is something that should be more than expected. So, it wasn't so bad--but Tabitha and Ben were the ones that suffered the most since...I did nothing when it came to figuring out things about the broadcasting. Anyway, I think they made a great team because their personalities balanced each other out. Anyway, we found out that the person who was in charge of providing Internet did not find out about us needing the Internet until a week or so prior to our arrival. So, that added to some issues. Nonetheless, we got through it and everything ended up working. However, I did have to make a piece of paper and get up on stage...and we ended up being the last people to leave. But that was only being broadcasted on some random link that no one would have found...but one thing that we did find out was what went wrong at the plenary session that day...apparently, some performers showed up pretty late and they weren't even in costume. After all the chaos, we went to the East building where all the food was and we had dinner!~ Tabitha really liked her tacos ^.^!

The next morning, waking up was great because waking up “early” was really waking up late...since it was almost 8am in New York time. We had breakfast at the hotel which was great because Tabitha made her own waffles with the ready-made waffle batter (I don't know if it's called batter for sure though) and shared it with me, which tasted pretty good. I think it went fairly well on Thursday because we were both broadcasting and projecting onto the double side screens. Oddly enough, we really did not see much of Second Life being projected because they were busy projecting the speakers or slides. That came out to be a little funny because one of the Youth MC's welcome the SL residents by holding her hand out towards one of the double screens and most of the audience had no clue what was going on and I just laughed a little in my head. Anyway, at the opening plenary session, Dr. James Kielsmeier spoke with a director from State Farm (Kathy Payne) and she kept calling Second Life "Second Chance". Dr. Kielsmeier went along with it but put an exaggeration on 'chance' but I doubt that people actually got the joke because no one laughed the first time she said chance--which made me wonder if it was some other kind of company that I did not know about.

The odd thing that day was Jane Goodall's part in the plenary...because broadcasting her was not allowed. It was sad because she actually gave a pretty nice speech and she spoke for about 30 minutes...which was about a third of the entire plenary itself. However, I did get a chance to see her in her workshop which felt like a conversation, and she seemed great. She took everyone's questions and answered genuinely. However, her assistant-person (I really don't know her title or position) seemed like a true politician. I say that because when I introduced myself she did this little face and then nodded her head to say, "Oh right, yes I remember you now"...and I just smiled simply because I didn't want to be rude by telling her that she shouldn't have really known me because there was no reason for her to have heard of me before.

The first workshop was kind of scary because they set up the room to look like a hurricane just hit....and it really looked like the real thing. The workshop was called "Resources for Recovery" and it was a pretty interactive workshop based around disaster relief and recovery. The workshop was pretty funny because they ran sirens and then made people hide under the tables and etc--which was pretty scary, but I do have to admit that they did a great job in remaking a disaster scene. The con would be the fact that they set up the workshop so the processing part was all the way in the back of the ballroom where the camera couldn't go so Tabitha had to basically sum up what was going on to the SL residents throughout the workshop.

The next workshop I stayed in was very interesting. I thought doing the actual activities were interesting and well-thought out but I feel that the presenter did not manage time very well. It was interesting because the presenter spoke about service-learning with urban youths--which related to what we do in Global Kids in some ways and he had interesting points in his presentation. I liked doing the activity where we had to choose a shape to represent our leadership style the best...and I chose a circle because I guess that's what I feel most comfortable in and also because that's the usual Global Kid's conversing shape. Overall, it was not a bad workshop to participate in...on the other hand, I don't think it was very entertaining to broadcast or watch from Second Life.

The plenary session on Friday was interesting too. I felt Dr. Verna Price was a very strong speaker--but her attitude scared me a little. Most of her speech was about young girls and women being strong leaders. It was funny because I took a good look around the large theater room to notice that there was a majority of women there, but had not notice if not for her speech. Friday, I wasn't very much into actually being a part of the workshops because I was too concentrated on what I would say in the workshop that we were asked to present. Oh by the way, the lunch was great ^.^~. Tabitha was also a great help when it came to helping me prepare for what I was going to say the night before--I was very grateful for her help. One of the reasons I disliked myself in the UNICEF video was that I repeated the word “like” too many times! If only I could go back in time. “Like” should only be used when making a comparison between two things, or when using a simile and should not be used three times within a dialog that's less than 15 seconds long. Of course, I find that out now >.>~. But that's why Tabitha was a great help--when we went over what I would say she helped me figure out what I was repeating too much and hopefully I did not repeating something too much this time around.

Anyway, I think I put too much thought into what I was going to say because when it came to doing our workshop and me speaking I started off talking some weird-gibberish language that I didn't even understand. I just got tongue twisted because I was reading what I was going to say too much. I really don't know. I was afraid of the spotlight at first, but at the end that wasn't what scared me. I was scared because I was the last person presenting and we did not have much time left. We were supposed to have 25 minutes for Q&A but by the time I spoke we had about 15 minutes before the workshop would end. And all these things were running through my head~ and I was told to speak slowly and I really did not know how much I could really incorporate when I spoke slowly and still tried to include the essentials about Machinima. Anyway, I ended up skimming a lot because I did want for us to have some time for Q&A. I guess, at the end, I did okay~.

Our workshop was interesting. We had a huge turnout of teens...a majority of the people at our workshop were teenagers. We got some great feedback too based on the evaluation sheets. I think people liked the ice-breaker a lot, and I remember one person justifying themselves when they disagreed with it being safe to share information online by saying that there were a lot of creeps on the Internet. I guess, it is true to some extent, but it was kind of funny because we were being broadcasted live in a virtual community. I guess, I do have to admit that I do admire them for their honestly and bluntness. Also, the space we worked in wasn't great and far from ideal because it was not Global Kids like since everyone was dispersed throughout the room in little round tables and we were all in a pane restricted to our seats. Nonetheless, everyone liked Miguel dancing on the DDR when we showed the PSA my group is making. Plus, we had a couple of people say that they would join Second Life. So, I guess it wasn't bad ^^~! But I do think that if we could do it over again, maybe it would be better if Global Kids and Youth Noise had individual workshops because then both organization would be able to express their work in further details.

Afterwards, Brad took us to dinner which was of huge portions. I felt bad I couldn't finish my food though >.<~! At dinner, I had the pleasure of meeting a high school principal from Oregon who was very interested in learning about Second Life and what we do in Second Life. She said that the school she worked in was not exactly technologically advanced and she was looking to change that. I told her that Second Life or blogging may be the best platform to start off from. Of course, I wasn't the expert in this so I referred her to Barry because if anyone knew anything about getting kids involved in Digital Media it had to be Barry! But it was nice to see that people were actually interested in bringing digital media into service-learning. It was the one thing that made me feel like maybe I wasn't in the wrong place. I think it's great to see people actually interested in doing that because it would be taking one step forward, right? Anyway, I think I fulfilled something there. In addition, I also learned that people don't believe that I am a teen and also like my strange/peculiar name for some strange reason. Oh, and I discovered that I use too much of "actually" and "basically" when I free-write...and when I blog I use too much of "anyway" and "overall"'s.

Overall, the conference was a great experience. I would attend the conference again if I could ^-^~ but I just wish I could take everyone with me! I'm sure other teens would have enjoyed it as well, but I guess that just would have made it more hectic for Tabitha. It was a great conference and I hope that next year's Global Kids presenter enjoys it as well (and hopefully they do better than I did!) and I will be watching everything from home if they still broadcast it live in Second Life! ^.^!!!~