Proof of concept

Three weeks. That's all it took.

Three weeks ago I did a thing, as opposed to doing nothing and not acting on my idea, and I built this site. Two weeks ago I started building a database of all science, technology, engineering and maths graduate programs at universities in Ontario. I'll be expanding from coast to coast to cover all of Canada, but I started with where I am from. About a week ago I started emailing those graduate program's coordinators, administrators, directors, receptionists, or using whatever contact information I could find online requesting that information about the Conference2Classroom initiative be forwarded on and inviting graduate students to register.

A few days ago we had a registration from a participant in the Entomological Society of Canada/America Joint Meeting in Vancouver. This conference is next week. Very quickly I identified schools near the conference and reached out to them inviting them to register their classroom with us. The next day we had found a classroom to match our entomology expert with.

Three weeks. That's all it took from acting on my idea to create Conference2Classroom to confirming our inaugural activity.

And now I have proof of concept! I have gone from hoping and thinking that this initiative would be well received and work, to knowing it has been welcomed and that it can work. And now I am even more motivated to make it work, and to make sure it is awesome.