Ignite convention hits Waterloo

On Tuesday Feb. 28 the Waterloo Region Museum played host to the Ignite convention. Ignite is a well-known series of five-minute talks followed by 15-second breaks by different speakers covering topics that interest them.
The first speaker, Lindsay Blackwell, had a talk entitled “My Super Pseudo- Scientific Online Dating Experiment.”

This was as defined by Blackwell, “A research project which is an analysis of male online dating.”

Some of her findings in regards to what men presented as their interests was that, “Men made at least one sport or physical activity in their profile, where the second most popular thing was music.”

Though in Blackwell’s personal opinion, “men think that women want a kind of musical-sport guy but I want a guy who can combine both and play like banjo-boxing or something like that, that would be amazing.”

During her analysis Blackwell also looked at the relationships amongst variables, as she had formulated hypothesis about these relationships.

“Shirt-less, selfies had horrible, horrible use of the English language and emoticons,” she said.

In terms of false hypotheses, “There did appear to be a relationship between the number of profile photos and the number of different interests used which I thought would be because [they’d] kind of be advertising ‘oh I can play the guitar and here’s me playing the guitar’ so it’s probably completely all lies,” said Blackwell.

Blackwell reminded the audience to be cautious in regards to the relationship between causation and correlation, that it does not necessarily mean the relationship between variables is the actual cause.
Another speaker, Julianne Bolduc, presented her real life experiences as an ex-pat family.

“[It was] an emotional experience, like a rollercoaster [because] when you first land in a new country you are excited, you’re in your bubble, you’re in your honeymoon period where everything is great, but about month [later] you crash, reality hits,” she said.

The situation of the Bolduc family was very unexpected.

“We went overseas for an eighteen month stay, and it actually turned out to be seven years,” said Bolduc. “I just came back in July 2011 and I came back with just my kids, I didn’t come back with my husband, but that’s another story”

Bolduc shared the cultural shock that she had to face when moving from Waterloo to overseas, how she went from being ecstatic about the change, then anger, depression and ultimately embracing what other cultures had to offer.
She had to endure, not only cultural norms, but also physical perceptions of what is deemed a normal body size, which she was not according to Europeans and Chinese shopkeepers.

What seemed to be a constant positive re-enforcement for Bolduc was the different foods and wines these places had to offer.

Other speakers at the event included Shaun Browne, Peter Hatch and Eva Dodsworth.