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Today, I left Jaxon with Chris for the day and headed off to London for an adventure. I caught the 8:20am ish train out of Bedford station for St. Pancras. The station was fairly busy as lots of people were heading for days it’s. The family at the table next to me were discussion where they were heading. The older couple near me we’re debating who was supposed to have got the newspaper. Husband said that wife was getting it, wife said that she was getting the tickets while he got the papers. Listening to the conversations around me was fairly interesting especially as I’d only got one song on my iPhone and none on my iPad.
My train arrived into St. Pancras fractionally before 9am. This was okay but I was feeling a little flustered as I hoped to be a little earlier than that. (I had laid awake debating whether to pick Jaxon up for a cuddle after watching the news of the Paris attacks come in via Twitter. Which in turned then meant getting up was harder amongst other things).
I hadn’t had time for breakfast so I grabbed a sandwich from the supermarket opposite and headed into the conference.
I found James (@JamesPrescott77) and we had a catch up – was good to see a friendly face! As we were chatting, the doors were opened for the main auditorium. As we were walking upstairs, someone recognised James from his profile picture. While we waited for the session to start I inhaled my sandwich – clearly I’m used to eating breakfast when I feed Jaxon in the morning.
There was an introduction by Andy Walton from the Centre for Theology and Community. Followed by the opening address by Krish Kandiah, he’s President of the London School of Theology and Founder/Director of Home for Good.
Krish started his bit with a prayer and couple of silent moments to pray about what has happened in Paris during the last couple of days.
The keynote speech was then given by Miriam Swaffield from Fusion, it was entitled “Created to Create” and was to do with how God created us so that we could worship him by creating ourselves.
Before lunch I went to two breakout sessions the first was “Create a Space for Creativity” with Micah Purcell then after the coffee break I went to the “Create with Raspberry Pi” with Paul Johnston. The Raspberry Pi session was really good. It was a hands on workshop so I got to play with an actual Raspberry Pi which was really cool. Chris has been talking about how he’d like one for Christmas so when this session came up on the list I thought I’d give it a go so that I have a fraction of a clue of what he’s talking about when he gets super excited! Paul asked for a volunteer and at first no one would offer. He asked a couple of questions about what people and heard of and things like that and then asked again – I stuck my hand up and got to have a go. I know that Bex took my picture and a bit of video from over my shoulder but I didn’t realise that there was an actual camera person in the room too. This photo was taken by Jez.
The task I was given was to plug in a number of cables and resistors along with two red LEDs, the code on the computer then tells the LEDs which order to light up in – I couldn’t do that bit as I’m not used to using Linux but Paul was able to help with that bit. At first it didn’t work right but I took out some of the cables and LEDs and then put them back in again and that seemed to fix it – I don’t think I’d got them in far enough.
At lunchtime I decided to take a walk rather than get lunch and just hang around. The local coffee shops were closed even though it was a Saturday and I ended up walking to Liverpool Street station which was actually fairly close. I realised that taking both my A5 Filofax and my Midori Traveler’s Notebook meant that my bag was getting heavy and was starting to make my back ache.
I made in back in time for the after keynote – rather than one specific talk there were four shorter ones all started with Create in the title. There was a really good session that my brother would have liked which was Create Another World. This was taking a look at how video games can affect spiritual dynamics along with the opportunities and dangers that can accompany alternate realities. It was presented by Andy Robinson.
Up next was the third breakout session. I headed for the Create with Pinterest session. I guess from the blurb I thought it was going to be aimed at people already using Pinterest but it was actually more of a beginner session. It did mean that I sat there and dusted of my Pinterest account which has been sat dormant for a while.
After the next coffee break it was the final breakout session and I went to hear Bex Lewis talk a hour engagement. It was resells interesting and probably draws with the Raspberry Pi session for my favourite of the day.
Following this there were another two talks but I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and wanted to explore for a bit before catching the train home so I decided to head off. I caught the tube to Tottenham Court Road for the flagship Paperchase store however they didn’t have what I was looking for and I had some stuff on my mind so decided by that point that I’d have a quick look round but head homewards.
I caught the train home from London, we were just outside Luton at which point the train was held due to a security alert at Luton station. Thankfully we were held too long and gone on the move again.
When I got home, Jaxon was really worked up, Chris had tried putting him to bed but he wouldn’t settle. He left Jaxon with Our Sidekick and came to get me. I think it was one of those situations where only mummy will do, so Chris came to get me from the station. When I got home Jaxon and I had a big cuddle and he had some mummy milk and that was it. I put him down to sleep and it was out pretty much straight away. Leaving him all day when it ends like that is really hard but I wouldn’t have been able to take him with me. Last year when he was four months old he might have been happy in his buggy or playing on a blanket but this year he would have just got bored and not coped all day at the conference.
