Submitted by Mike Williams — Managing Editor
SPARKcon 2010 started off last night with a ton of ideas, a bunch of bands and, yes, some burlesque. While musicSPARK, circusSPARK and poetrySPARK all helped kick off the fifth annual event, it was ideaSPARK that had the most bang.
SPARKcon is a group of themed events called SPARKS taking place this weekend throughout downtown Raleigh. Held at Raleigh's newly renovated Kings, ideaSPARK featured 13 presentations aimed to help the audience think and discover. Speakers had to convey their messages in a 20-slide presentation lasting only 400 seconds, like on PechaKucha Nights.
Topics included Josh Johnson's lessons that can be learned from really, really bad horror movies and Christopher Sopher's discourse on why today's young people are sometimes wrongly called the dumbest generation.
Perhaps the most intriguing presentation of the evening was Local Focal from Dave and Kim Turnage, who one day wanted to grow their own food. So they did, by planting a garden in their front yard — and buying chickens.
"We didn't know what we were doing at first but we figured it out," Kim Turnage said. "We had so much we gave vegetables to our entire street!"
But after growing all those veggies, they realized they had no protein. Dave Turnage said that's when the chickens arrived.
"We were growing our own squash and stuff but needed eggs. Each chicken pops out like four eggs day," he said.
The Turnages' presentation pushed the idea of supporting local produce, maybe even from your own front yard.
An inspiring, fresh, and surprising presentation came from 12-year-old Katherine Droujkov, who victoriously showed us her hopes of changing our cultural values to allow children to opportunity to work.
Other notable presentations included Rep. Deborah Ross, who talked about the things she's learned and continues to learn from her constituents in House District 38; and Jay Dolan, who told the crowd not to rely so much on social media to be, well, social. Dolan writes a blog called "The Anti-Social Media" where he preaches on the need to develop "small, focused and meaningful social networks."
Cyn and Carlee Mallard, two of the event's organizers, were impressed with the ideas, presenters and success of the event.
"We're in a really creative environment and this event shows the talent we have here," Cyn Mallard said. "And it takes courage to stand in front of people and get your idea across. They were all really incredible."
Carlee was happy about the unexpected applause, smiles and positive feedback. And she wants to keep the energy and excitement going.
"We are continually surprised and proud that such thought and energy exists in the Triangle and we hope to expose more of it with continuing PechaKucha Nights throughout the year," she said.
SPARKcon continues through Sunday evening in downtown Raleigh. Keep up with the event on triangle.com and see photo galleries and the latest SPARKcon news.
