2017 OAA Now Lecture

As recipients of the OAA’s 2017 Best Emerging Practice Award, we were recently asked to prepare a talk as part of their ongoing ‘Now’ lecture series.

Over the past several weeks we have been preparing the content for this event. Our challenge was to somehow find a way to fill an hour with interesting subject matter. It appeared like quite a daunting prospect to be asked to speak in front of what would amount to being a couple of hundred people at Berkeley Church, Toronto.

As we do so often, we decided to share the load between the four of us. Andrea, handled opening remarks and a general summary of how blackLAB came to fruition, with Sarah discussing business related subject matter. Joe walked through our projects and general design process, and Tony finished up with extra curricular works and closing remarks.

As a collective we managed to the fill the quota, and even prompted a few laughs from the crowd; in particular Sarah’s spin on the business side of things, which can often be seen as quite dry subject matter really seemed to go over well with jokes a-plenty.

Whilst it required a great deal of preparation and in the final moments prompted a few nerves among the four of us, everything in the end appeared to come together well.

We owe a huge thank you to the OAA for their input into the event, as well to the many other people that have allowed our network to grow over the past 5 1/2 years. Without everyones assistance over this time blackLAB would simply not have been challenged the way it has, and the content of our talk would not have been so rich with diversity.

Thank you all!