PAB

Your Story Deserves to be Bold — My PAB2011 Jolt

Andrea Ross was diagnosed with breast cancer October 6, 2009 and intends to survive and thrive. You can read more from Andrea here.

Posted by Andrea
July 26, 2011 at 8:06 am.
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Less is More: Anthony Marco PAB2010

One of the many highlights of the fab PAB2011 experience was the wit, wisdom and warmth of Anthony Marco.

While we await publication of the PAB2011 sessions, please enjoy his thought-provoking and experiential jolt from PAB2010, A Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures (a PAB2010 JOLT! by Anthony Marco).

More words, wisdom and wide, wide smiles thanks to Anthony, here.

More Borrowed Words here.

Posted by Andrea

July 2, 2011 at 7:31 am.

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An Accidental Time Capsule

In fall 2009, during the stressful 6-week wait for diagnosis of that lump, I turned my back on our beloved podcast, Just One More Book.

Weeks later, Bob Goyetche and I discussed that decision, for the Canadian Podcast Buffet.
It was hours after my biopsy. Mark was out of town.

With all the PAB2011 captured-story excitement this week, that interview bobbed to my mind’s surface. And I took the time to listen to that 15 minute chat.

Wondering how we endured the 6 week wait. How I did that interview. And how we possibly got from there to here.

I’m glad those moments were captured. I’m glad I thought to listen.

Life’s odd. In a good way.

If you’d like to listen too, the interview is at the 18 minute mark of episode 147 of CPB.

Photo Some rights reserved by Bruce Murray (The Zedcast)

Andrea Ross was diagnosed with breast cancer October 6, 2009 and intends to survive and thrive. You can read more from Andrea here.

Posted by Andrea
July 1, 2011 at 7:41 am.
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Bold. By Default.

One million times I backed out of this jolt.

But having publicly announced and collected input for a 5 minute spiel about standing up to fear, it seemed the embarrassment of backing out might actually dwarf the embarrassment of flopping.

So I did the jolt.

And I’m glad I did.

Because life is better when we take bold steps.

Thanks to Alexa Clark for the jolt photo.

Andrea Ross was diagnosed with breast cancer October 6, 2009 and intends to survive and thrive. You can read more from Andrea here.

Posted by Andrea
June 30, 2011 at 7:26 am.
9 comments

Digesting PAB

For the 53 hours since PAB ended, I’ve been squeezing my brain, hoping to shrink the PAB2011 experience down to a blog-post-sized blurb.

My mind, my chest, my eyes are still swelling with swirling ideas and images. Huge laughs, huge smiles, huge buzzing, tingling emotions. Huge gratitude for the privilege of belonging.

This morning, as we attended Lucy’s grade 6 graduation, I realized that the stilted, tension-filled ickiness of that sweltering gym, thick with twelve years of inter-parental encounters, was the anti-PAB. And that helped boil the weekend down to its core…

PAB gets me. It lets me be me when I’m there. And seems to do the same for us all.
PAB’s about expressing, not impressing.
It’s about connecting and creating and stretching and sharing.

It’s a slingshot into life.

Thanks to everybody for the photos (and for the weekend, of course).

More PAB here.

Andrea Ross was diagnosed with breast cancer October 6, 2009 and intends to survive and thrive. You can read more from Andrea here.

Posted by Andrea
June 28, 2011 at 5:00 pm.
10 comments

Happiness Is…

Genuine, generous, creative, talented, inspiring, fun-loving PABsters.

What a wonderful weekend. Huge thanks to everyone who made it so.

Photo credit Martin Jones.

Andrea Ross was diagnosed with breast cancer October 6, 2009 and intends to survive and thrive. You can read more from Andrea here.

Posted by Andrea
June 26, 2011 at 4:32 pm.
1 comment

Happiness Is…

Here’s a window into why.

Cannot wait for PAB2011.

Thanks to Bob Goyetche for the photo, above.
And huge thanks to Andree for making my PAB2011 weekend possible.

More Happiness here.

Posted by Andrea

June 22, 2011 at 10:01 am.

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Healing Humiliation: Wise Words from Julien Smith

I’ve been planning my PAB2011 Jolt. But I’m choking.

Luckily, I remembered this sanity-saving advice from Julien Smith.

Here’s a tiny taste….

Do things that you consider embarrassing.

You must try this. Find your internal filters and break them, one at a time. Notice how society, like an ocean, smoothes over the waves you make, until what you do gets eliminated, or becomes the status quo. Work with this.

– Julien Smith, The Complete Guide to Not Giving a Fuck

If my Jolt is a flop. I’ll handle it.

Eeep.

More Borrowed Words here.

Posted by Andrea

June 8, 2011 at 8:59 pm.

4 comments

Your Story Deserves to be Told. Well.

Stories stick. Stories connect.
Stories deliver. Stories mend.

Your stories and mine.

This month (June 24-26, 2011), I’ll be treating myself to a weekend of narrative nudging, friendly faces and inspiration at the sixth annual PAB conference¹ at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

I hope you will be too!

¹ PAB2011 is an annual three day social/new media conference that includes speaking sessions, discussion, JOLTs², workshops, panel discussions, Saturday lunch and, typically, a boat cruise. The conference has flourished on a reputation of strong content and a welcoming community, attracting participants from as far away as the U. K. and South America. Online registration for the weekend is CDN$160.

² A Jolt! is a timed 5-minute, slide-free session during which the speaker wakes up the imaginations, brains and collective energy of the PAB community. Jolts are meant to get people thinking, talking, connecting and collaborating.

^* PAB 2006 was the catalyst for our “Just One More Book!” podcast.

Andrea Ross was diagnosed with breast cancer October 6, 2009 and intends to survive and thrive. You can read more from Andrea here.

Posted by Andrea
May 30, 2011 at 10:21 am.
3 comments

Reboot You

PAB2010 was an unforgettable weekend.

Thought-provoking sessions, amazing food and, most importantly, passionate, intelligent, interesting, friendly, fabulous people.

If you’re creative, online or off, you’ll want to catch the full schedule of sessions as they are rolled out at PABconf.com.

In the meantime, I can’t help sharing Sylvain Grand’maison‘s 5-minute Jolt, below.

Cancer crashed and auto-rebooted my life. Wiping out my routines, habits and friendships and leaving me with a fresh, if physically diminished, slate.

And the opportunity to start anew.

As Sylvain suggests, below, we can reboot our lives any time.
And we’re better off for it.

Andrea Ross was diagnosed with breast cancer October 6, 2009 and intends to survive and thrive. You can read more from Andrea here.

Posted by Andrea
July 12, 2010 at 8:37 am.
1 comment

A standing ovation

PAB is an annual conference and community formed in 2006 which has become a very important part of our lives both as co-organizers and participants. While its roots are in podcasting, the program has matured and become almost exclusively about content creation, community and engagement.

Andrea was part of the JOLT! program for PAB2010 this past weekend. JOLT!s are 5-minute, slide-free presentations during which the speaker is selected to wake-up the imaginations, brains and collective energy of the community.

Andrea’s Contested Irrelevance commanded a standing ovation. Not only that, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house as she shared the story of how the connections and friendships we’ve made online through Just One More Book and We Can Rebuild Her (and others) helped us through our journey to breast cancer survivorship and made us feel relevant.

Video of Andrea’s JOLT! will be available online in the coming weeks. Of course, we’ll embed it on this site.

Congratulations, Andrea. You’ve inspired and touched so many people.