During the OCCCIO conference, Fanshawe invited three speakers.

UnMarketting’s Scott Stratten, Buffalo State university’s Dr. Gerard Puccio, and Col. Chris Hadfield.

Col. Hadfield’s keynote was on the second night, right between Scott Stratten’s opening keynote and Dr. Puccio’s final day keynote. It was tough for those two, I can already imagine the pressure those two must have felt. Regardless of how famous one think one is, it is very difficult to outshine an actual astronaut, or so one would think. 🙂

Scott’s UnSelling and UnMarketting is very unique, it actually knocked some common sense into many of my colleague’s and my understanding of what represent a brand. It is a nice wake up call for many people at the conference.

Dr. Puccio’s analysis of creative thinking is very interesting. His short and condensed speech, along with his workshop afterwards, actually assisted me in understanding why I sometimes cannot be as creative as I am in other times. I seem to love putting the brakes on in many creative thinking situations. During his speech, I actually had the sudden urge to apply to be one of his Masters students.

Col. Hadfield, to be honest, I am not as excited as many of my colleagues were, especially when the colonel was announced as our Gala keynote speaker. The reason is actually very simple, I’ve listened to him once before. At FUSION 2014, he was quite interesting to listen to. This translates to the fact that I have already heard him speak once, and unless he made drastic changes to his speech, it didn’t trigger anything newer to me, actually, I think his speech at FUSION 2014 was better. The major portion of his speech ranges from the kid that grew up wanting to be an astronaut, to the man who commanded the international space station. After observing the reactions from my colleagues at the conferences, I can easily see why Scott Stratten and Dr.Puccio was saying, jokingly, it is difficult to compete with an astronaut.

However, in my personal experience, there is at least one person who out shown the colonel, at least to me that person did.

Here is what his intro was, last year at FUSION 2014, third day. Colonel Hadfield was the speaker on the first day.

“Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high! Take a look, its in a book, Reading Rainbow!” Yes, it was LeVar Burton! First off, FUSION is Desire2Learn’s annual conference. They had invited, to me, two amazing speakers. First it was real life astronaut Col. Hadfield, followed by the non-real-life astronaut Geordi La Forge (Played by actor LeVar Burton in the Startrek Universe), who just happen to be the same guy who urged kids who grew up in the 80s to learn to read and love books (Educator LeVar Burton of the Reading Rainbow series)! LeVar and his team also just finish one of the most amazing Kick-starter campaign of all time, to this date, it is still the eighth most funded project on Kick-Started. I think for those of us in the audience who grew up watching either Star Trek The Next Generation, Reading Rainbow, or both, LeVar’s impact on our lives were greater even when compared to the real life commander of a space station, sorry colonel if you are reading this.