About Interesting Vancouver
“The plan is to have all sorts of speakers speak about all sorts of stuff. Not brands, advertising, blogging and twitter but interesting, unexpected, original things. I’m hoping to find fascinating people and to just ask them to speak about something they care about. I want to replicate the experience of clicking from one really good blog to another, ranging across sciences, arts, musics, jokes and whatever.”
—Russell Davies, founder of Interesting
The quote above explains it all in a nutshell. A group of people will gather at the Vancouver Rowing Club to hear others give short talks on a variety of topics. There is no theme, no break-out sessions and no pitch—just interesting discussions among interested people.
Your hosts
Mark Busse
Mark Busse is co-founder and Design Director at Industrial Brand, a brand strategy and communication design firm in Vancouver. He is also past president of the Graphic Designers of Canada, co-host of networking coffee group Likemind Vancouver, host of the monthly breakfast lecture series CreativeMornings/Vancouver and co-founder of Foodists.ca, a passionate collective of food-worshippers.
James Sherrett
James Sherrett is the founder of AdHack, an open advertising agency of 500+ top people in 18 countries. He’s a food enthusiast, a fisherman and a writer. He’s fond of smiling and saying things like ‘Learn to do by doing.’
Lauren Isaacson
Lauren Isaacson is the Director of Research and Strategy at Curio Consulting, a consultancy that helps companies better understand their business environment and direct their marketing efforts. As a relative newcomer to Vancouver and a former Interesting Vancouver speaker, she is delighted and honored to be involved in organizing this year’s event.
Jason Landry
Jason Landry is an interactive designer with IBM Interactive and spends his days designing and building interactive applications for clients worldwide. When he’s not at his computer, he can be found outside with his wife and kids. Follow along at Applied Observation.
Communications Volunteer
Cinci Csere
Cinci Csere is a marketing communications consultant at EAT Communications, a boutique agency that helps companies promote their services or products online and offline. Cinci is very excited and interested in being involved promoting this year’s event.
The Founder of Interesting Vancouver
Brett Macfarlane
I love Vancouver so much I left. Departed to appreciate it. Understand from the outside what makes it unique. Live, work, laugh and suffer in other cultures to peer back home more deeply—past the external layers to discern what beyond some fresh air, easy access to swimming, a burgeoning sin industry and people who moved there for the ‘lifestyle’—creates its DNA. A place whose cultural chromosomes are not pure—coming in and mixing from all directions. A mixture that strengthens and cleanses the archetypes, class structures and social traditions the holds other cultures back.
But enough about me.
You may know me as a man doing unspeakable things in advertising, a former crazed downhill ski racer, prolific writer of mediocre verse, failed bon vivant, some guy who studied the impracticalities of perfect market hypothesis economics, and forever wishes he had the patience to draw long enough to draft a decent comic book. In the likely event you know none of these affairs the one endeavor that you may gratifyingly know me for is organizing the first iterations of Interesting Vancouver. Not because my ego cares, but because that means you care about this place, about what the people of this city are made of, and capable of.