 All right, I think this is a good time of being cool because our next presenter I think Who's ever heard of club penguin? Well, I couldn't get that type of excitement. All right, so he had that company He sold it to Disney and he is a new company called fresh grade now He's gonna come up here, but this is what we're gonna do. He doesn't know this is gonna happen So I got my DJ and who thinks we can convince him to dance when he's on stage Yeah, Lane to dance here. Come on up here Lane Thank you Wow That was not how I expected to start here today, but You know, I've already embarrassed myself so it can only go uphill from here, right? Wow You guys are awesome Score with the beanbag chairs, huh? early Yeah, nicely done. It's awesome All right Why I'm I'm so happy to be here. I love hanging out with folks that have heard of club penguin when I'm hanging out with People a little older You guys you guys are awesome Usually usually when I'm hanging out with people a little bit older, they're like, oh, is that like Near my golf club somewhere is that I don't know what that's about But I'm really thrilled to be here. I really am so I For those of you who don't know me. I've always I've loved building things. It's just what I do It makes me happier than almost anything else and in fact from as young as I can remember I'd love the act of creating something new out of like just raw parts and pieces In fact as a child when all my friends were running around with nerf guns, how do you guys like nerf guns? How many shot a sibling recently with a nerf gun? There you go. I Was the youngest of four my older brother used me as target practice all the time so instead I had to build myself a rubber band gun which Had bullets a little bit harder than the rubber nerf ones and I would usually get into trouble because Because I would you know increase it continue to increase the velocity with each build with with each with each revolution In fact when I was young my friends were all waiting around to turn 16 So they could get their first car and I decided that I would go around a garage sales and collect parts and pieces and build a go-kart In fact, that's actually what led to my first business Very fancy name very creative lanes lawns I Actually printed up flyers went door-to-door and for five dollars a lawn. I would mow your lawn now the reason I bring this up with my go-kart is because Prior to having this go-kart. I would push around my lawnmower from like lawn to lawn And it would be obviously take a certain amount of time after school I'd basically mow lawns until it was dark and then and then I'd go home But when I got the go-kart I went to a neighbor friend of mine who is a welder and I said hey if I if I give You like three months of free lawn mowing will you weld me a trailer for my go-kart? And so he did so 12 years old I end up like literally driving around the neighborhood on this little go-kart with a trailer with a lawnmower and all this other stuff Behind it, and I look goofy, and I don't really care because I tripled my sales And I was making like 200 bucks 200 bucks a month, which was a lot better than the $10 a week that I was earning from my from my allowance But I guess you know That pretty much kind of sums up my childhood building things and and sometimes getting into trouble in fact other teachers here today I heard there's there's some teachers That's awesome. We got the whooped teachers to you that's rad So I gotta say I wouldn't have made it through school without my ability to build and create things You know I was not a great student. I'm sure that if they had been doing some of the testing that they do today I would have been on like 14 different forms of Ritalin like I was I was high energy to say the least and So you know when every other kid would be like working on their final exam on like say something like the Western movement I would ask my teacher if I could just recreate a miniature Western town And I'd put in like sound effects and lights and other things I would always ask like can I make a can I make a film or video and usually that have to be some sort of a Nod sorry teachers earmuffs some sort of a nod to maybe like poking a little bit of fun at the class or poking fun at the teacher a little bit but but thankfully the novelty of Creating something or building something that wasn't just another report for them to read Usually they'd say yes, and frankly that was the only reason that I would pass the class because I wasn't great at taking tests And I wasn't great at memorizing But my favorite project of my entire childhood Had to be my treehouse. Have any of you guys ever built a treehouse? Awesome So every day during the summer is my best friend and I literally every single day But wake up I'd drive my go-kart to his house and we would hang out and work on the treehouse His dad showed us how to use power tools, which was awesome Safety first and there was always plenty of scrap wood lying around so we literally could just let our Imaginations and our creativity take hold and so what started is like a simple platform Just like up up on up in the tree is pretty high It's about 15 20 feet in the tree and a rope ladder after a few months had turned into something pretty special In fact by the time we were done it had grown to be three and a half levels. There was a secret entrance There's trap doors. We built a security system a full lighting system There's a zipline that would that we could exit quickly and go race across his lawn But we kept slamming into the fence that it was attached to and we were about to knock over the fence So we built an arrestor hook like like what they have on aircraft carriers to catch airplanes We literally built an arrestor hook across his jungle gym to catch us In fact by the time this thing was done We had a working elevator using like pulleys and counterweighted bricks and thankfully Me and my best friend weighed almost the same amount So I was one brick heavier than he was and you'd literally like Unhook this thing and it would whisk you up like up into the tree house. It was awesome And the irony was that at school. I was barely passing math and physics But in my backyard, I was literally putting my life in jeopardy with those very subjects And you know the funny thing about that tree house is that we didn't even spend that much time enjoying it Or playing around up there if we were up there We were building something we were adding on to it somehow until we finally declared it done And then I think when we when we did we just like gave it to his little sister Who was thrilled and he was hoping, you know, wouldn't know how to use the elevator properly You see we weren't chasing the finished product. We were finding joy in the process of building it It wasn't about just having the coolest tree house or showing off to our friends It was about the fun and the creativity we poured into it And so 20 years later, I found myself building a new project that was very similar to that tree house It had multiple levels secret rooms games secret agents zip lines a pirate ship and And a lot of penguins in fact over 300 million of them from around the world We're journeying alongside us on this crazy journey helping to create this world called Club Penguin In fact, in fact, it was folks it was folks like yourself Who were long for that journey that made it such a blast? The same joy that I felt building this tree house as a kid now came out every single day that I'd go to the office And we got to work alongside talented artists and engineers and this amazing community of players like yourselves to bring this virtual world to life Now obviously this project was a little bit more complicated than my tree house But it tapped into that same sense of joy That same love that I had for creating and building something special We were able to create the biggest most complicated world that our imaginations and the imaginations of our players could possibly dream of You know and thankfully it ended up being successful But the truth is we never chased that that was never our ultimate goal We just had so much fun building it for us success wasn't wasn't the goal for us It just happened to be a byproduct of doing something that we love to do and something that brought us joy So what does this have to do with you? What's the point? Well? How many of you have heard you can raise your hands? How many of you have heard or been or been challenged to find your passion? Figure out figure out your passion. Yeah I'm sure we've all heard it at some point Hell I used to give that advice all the time. I mean heck. I just got banned by the way. I just I should have said heck. I'm sorry I Just got a 24-hour ban The trouble with that advice Sometimes other than sounding a bit daunting although I believe in it But it can sound a bit daunting and it also sometimes assumes that we we have just kind of one passion or one thing in life One gift to give to the world that that that we that we need to go on some sort of magical quest or or so Jerm in order to find it find it And if we haven't found it yet, then we need to spend some more time looking for it it, you know that thing that one thing I don't know about you, but that can be overwhelming And it could be a little bit a little bit scary. So instead of telling you to find your passion this morning I just want to simplify it a bit. I Just want to encourage you to do things that bring you joy Now that doesn't mean like filling your day with just fun There's a difference between goofing off and having fun, which is which is fine And there's difference in that though and creating joy When an athlete like Karina spends hours in the gym training and sweating and working to hone their skills That's not all fun But it does allow her to perform so well in her sport that she can represent her country get a gold medal and Clearly has a lot of joy. Am I right? Let's give Karina a big round. That's She just exudes joy and you know, it's not just here like we were backstage earlier. She's the exact same back there Where no one's looking she's like, hey, I was going so I'm like, whoa, that's that's a lot for this time in the morning It's intense. It's awesome. She's awesome But she told us about that extra 15 minutes that extra 15 minutes today And and and showed us what an exact amazing example of joy. She is you know a musician How many of you are musicians? Awesome, awesome. I try to be a musician. I appreciate it But you know musician will spend hours rehearsing the same song over and over again in private in order to find joy and performing It for others we all know that we tend to spend significantly more time working on those things that bring us joy and in most cases time equates to becoming excellent at something and We're gonna talk about the good parts of growing up in a digital economy in a global in a global global environment like we do today But one of the challenges of that is excellence is More important than ever because you're not just competing with that person down the street or down the block right in many industries you're competing with people from around the world and so Investing the time and the effort and the energy to do something that brings you joy to become excellent something is critical Now I understand don't get me wrong. I understand at this age and stage of life Much of your day is dictated by what others expect and want you to do. I understand that But in the coming years you're going to be faced with increasing choices How are you going to spend your time? How are you going to invest your efforts? And you're going to want to make sure that you're investing them well My my last year of university. We were required to write several pages titled creating a five-year plan That's at least how I write it in my head when I saw it creating a five-year plan Uh, and so I sat down and I struggled for hours to figure out what I was going to write What was my five-year plan going to be? And you know, I was struggling because I think deep down inside. I was fundamentally Disagreeing with the question. I didn't I didn't like the premise of it really because at the end of the day I felt like how can I perfectly plan the the next five years of life, right? Life is an adventure and I didn't want my life to be so predictable That I would know exactly what direction it would take and in exactly where it might go five years from now And so I mustered the courage to to instead of answering the question. I just explained that in my paper And I explained how life is an unpredictable adventure and if we try to overplan it We may actually miss out on some better opportunities than we could have imagined Now I was hoping my courage would be well received by my professor And possibly inspire him to think deeper about why he was asking me to do this project Unfortunately, he uh, he just gave me an f True story I failed my last paper, uh But but ultimately I I didn't care because I believed and I still believe to the core of my being That we couldn't possibly that I couldn't possibly predict Where my joy was going to take me Because you know, it's going to change as we evolve as we go through life Right, we're going to be different. We're going to be different 20 years from now than we are today We're going to be different five years from now than we are today So as you navigate life, it's important to do kind of these inner checks from time to time make sure you're asking yourself the right questions Right, why are you choosing to get one degree over another? Why would you stay in a job or a company? That makes you miserable Why are you choosing to hang out with people who make you feel bad about yourself? Why do you limit what's possible? Why do you spend hours Doing what's expected of you instead of doing something that you know brings you joy You know, if we neglect to ask these types of questions, we'll wake up Slightly miserable someday and wonder how we ever got there So what does this have to do with tech? Right, we're at the bc tech summit. I'm talking about joy and building stuff tree houses Well, I assume that you're here because you have some sort of an interest in technology And so allow me to explain, you know, we tend to think of technology sometimes as like hardware and software, right bits and bytes But to me it's way more powerful than that technology is all about access and scale Think about that. It's about access and scale It allows you and it will allow you in the coming years to have opportunities to succeed doing what you love That previous generations could only dream of You know, I've seen firsthand how technology has allowed people to do things that both bring them joy and make them incredibly successful along the way Right, we've seen technology like etsy allow people to turn their design joys from a hobby into a massive business I've seen technology like unity that allows people who find joy in gaming to create and sell their own games Technology like amazon that's allowed the small corner market that that's always created these really unique things just for their space To expand and sell their products to the world I've seen technology like youtube turn an aspiring musician into a superstar unfortunately Happen to be just in beaver, but But but it worked and good for him And you know, I've seen technology like scratch Introduce my 10 year old daughter to the joy of coding I've seen technology like uber and lyft allow my retired father-in-law to find joy in driving others around when he's feeling a bit isolated or a bit lonely And I experienced firsthand how technology called html and flash Allowed us to create this amazing world called club penguin that brought joy not only to us but to but to hundreds of millions from around the world Right if you think technology is just about bits and bytes zeros and ones I encourage you while you're here while there's some amazing exhibits Right hollow lens. That's awesome. You got to go check that stuff out But while you're here try to broaden that perspective try to try to widen that perspective spend some time here Digging into all the ways that technology can enable you to build a career out of what brings you joy The tech community needs you we need artists and writers designers programmers engineers accountants marketers Managers every skillset you can imagine. So if you're sitting here and you're like man, I don't know if I don't know if coding is for me That's okay. I'm speaking at a tech conference and I can barely code Thankfully, I have some very talented friends who are able to uh, who are able to do that and thankfully We even need a few treehouse builders along the way and so I'll close with this we're so We're so fortunate to live in one of the best countries in the world I don't know if you saw the rankings lately. Canada is the second best country in the world Behind who who cares that's that's who we're behind would Number one is who cares number two is Canada And you know bc is one of the most tech friendly places than almost any other place on the planet This conference is proof of that Right. Look at this conference. Where else in the world would you see a tech conference like this hosted by the government? That's pretty amazing. That's not normal guys So do you know I just want you to think about how incredible that is for a second. Please Don't squander this amazing place that we live don't squander this opportunity You have to be educated in one of the best school systems in the world Please don't squander your time here at this tech conference Dig in learn explore challenge yourself You know at the end of the day and you'll know this but I'm gonna say it anyway We only get one life to live So let's try to live it as fully as we possibly can Thank you very much