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| The young audience |
This doubt about adding value was further
magnified on the day of the event, when I read the bios of my fellow
panelists. At the panel table, sitting
with me was Diana Nguyen (blogger for the Huffington Post and co-author of DISGRASIAN.com), Diane Ellis (lead editor of ricochet.com), Ayofemi Kirby (Director of
Strategy and Programs for mobilize.org), and last but not least there was Kristina Lieu (Friend and
fellow CASIC intern of class 2010). These rather distinguished panelists, had
years of experience and accomplishments over me and in the beginning it was a
bit intimidating. However, after the
first few questions, I realized I contributed the ever important student
perspective to the panel and began to relax.
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| The distinguished panel |
As the discussion progressed, I was wary about
what VC Brad Feld had wrote about panels usually being “dull, vapid, generic,
stupid, non-controversial, politically correct, or just plain boring." At the halfway mark, I
felt that as a panel we were not boring but definitely non-controversial since
we agreed on every question. After that
realization, I decided to throw caution to the wind and try to be humorous by
keeping my answers off the cuff.
When asked about the shutting down of social
networks during the Arab revolutions, I started off with “it sucks," which
caught the audience off guard as everyone else on the panel was using fairly
formal language. In another instance, a
student asked what news sites had no bias and I joked “well I can tell you that
it’s not Fox news.”
My best
line of the night came as a response to a question about whether FB liking or
retweeting gave people just enough satisfaction that they would stop
contributing to a cause because they felt like they had done their part. I bluntly told the audience that anyone who
felt they did their part by just clicking a button was probably not going to
contribute that much anyway.
Furthermore, I explained that slacktivism has some benefits including getting
the word out and more importantly providing positive reinforcement for the
people behind the cause. I closed by
telling the students "I don’t know if it is just because I am a geek but
when I get retweeted, it makes my DAY,” which in addition to illustrating my
point got a lot of laughs.
I had a whole lot of fun speaking on the panel and hope I was not
too over the top that they will not invite me back. After all, making
people laugh and dropping knowledge, what else could I ask for on a Saturday
night?
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| CAUSE team |
