Monday, February 20, 2006

OMG, Margaret Atwood just passed by my desk!

The excitement never ends at MaRS.
(In equally exiting news, I just ate two free yummy blueberry danishes for lunch.)

I hope someday, someone will be as excited about being in close proximity to me.

Is it worthwhile, I wonder, to have done the hard work required to get myself to that level of notoriety? Does she notice or care that people get slightly star-struck by her?

If I were to be a "star" I would certainly want it to be on the terms by which she has accomplished Canadian stardom. She's done it soley on brains and talent. It must feel good to be so validated in something you're passionate about. To have mastered a craft so completely that you can pretty much do it forever and have it open doors to other things that you've always wanted to do...

Maybe it is all worth it afterall.

* * *

Turns out that Margaret Atwood is an inventor and was actually using the MaRS Business Resource Centre!

I hope she finds our services to be useful. I'm sure she knows a lot of people who are willing to help her out, since she is well connected. Most of the non-famous inventors who come to us find that this is where MaRS offers the most value: networking opportunities.

I certainly don't begrudge her the advantage: take it where you can get it! I hope that other Canadian inventors are inspired by her story. I love that her idea came from something so simple as a need that she had to fill. I suspect that there is a story brewing here for the MaRS Portal.

Every day I think that I made the right choice to come here - I am learning so much. Perhaps one day I, too, will be inspired to bring my idea to the MaRS Business Resource Centre. I'm just waiting for the idea.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

did i ever tell you my atwood story? during my brief publishing stint, i spent a whole day with her - travelling around in taxis and eating sushi lunch with her... just mags, me and the other intern. i was even inside her house! talk about starstruck. at the end of the day, she didn't need us to take her home in the cab, she had to go buy halloween candy at shopper's drugmart, so she said she'd just walk. imagine!

CityRat said...

Is this the robotic hand/arm to sign books at book signings? I read about that...yesterday i think...controversy over it regarding the fact that the arm could be programmed to to the sig and the writer would just have to sit in front of the vid camera doing basically nothing. Others joked they would now send a robot to get all future books signed.