Done and Done!

My final piece of work as a UW student was to present my quarter long GIS project to the Ballard District Council tonight. Amongst the audience were members of the council, business and community leaders, and general members of the public. In addition to these regulars, this month's meeting had two groups from UW (mine and one from the Urban Planning program) and their respective professors, as well as a City of Seattle councilwoman. Meeting in the Ballard Public Library after a rather stressful day of last minute preparation and map-making (as well as a missed bus as I realized I had forgotten to put on a belt and had to run back), we were the first group to go.

Armed with fanciful colored maps and a concise yet detailed powerpoint presentation, we presented our goods with apparent ease. Things quickly fell apart when we fielded questions, resulting in one point where three of us contraded each other on the data a map represented. Diffusing the situation with a joke of how GIS always leaded to squabbles over data, we quickly glossed over an answer and moved on. As our only real hick-up, we felt we did rather well.

The next group presented and unfortunately had a long powerpoint that was riddled with data and large numbers that I don't think many people were able to grasp. Their recommendations took four slides. This was followed by a presentation about the city councilwoman who talked about the upcoming neighborhood planning updates for the city, and seemed to always come back to making a point of struggle that was the mayor's offices versus the council.

The best part of the night came when it was time for her to answer questions: an elderly woman in the back started a rant of how expensive it was to live in Ballard, citing numbers for the sales prices of studio, single bedroom, and multifamily condos, townhomes in different areas of Ballard, and a myrad of other goodies before finally concluding her tirade with a quip of how she had tried to contact the councilwoman and mayor's office for the last six years and had never gotten a response. This was the stuff of legends, only before seen in the annals of courtroom drama TV. Before she was done, she had criticized the neighborhood of Ballard, city of Seattle, the District Council, developers, New York & New Yorkian business people, the councilwoman, and the mayor. She got a round of applause afterwards -- that's how impassioned it was. It's sad that her complaints will probably never be addressed, as Ballard is going to continue the way of high density living with less bowling alleys and Denny's.

During the meeting, I thought of an ability I would like to have -- to be able to recall everyone's name after hearing it just once. At the beginning of the meeting, the microphone was handed around and everyone introduced themselves. It would have been sick if during our presentation, someone raised their hand and I would be able to call them out, "Yes, Steve in the back?" I started reading a book back in high school; one that claimed to be able to improve my memory. One of the things they said I could do after I finished reading it was to be able to walk into a room, be introduced to twenty, fifty people, and be able to have everyone's names associated with their face. I never finished the book, but maybe it's time for me to dig it back up.

Oh, by the way, I overslept and missed the last final of my collegiate career this morning. Oops...