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Surrey's second PechaKucha Night inspires

SURREY — Around 100 people attended Surrey's second ever PechaKucha Night at Surrey's City Hall council chambers last Wednesday night (Feb. 4).

The theme for the evening was Young Entrepreneurs, with six young people getting up to talk about their ideas - some fresh, some innovative, some emotional and all inspiring.

"It's really a great way to share information and allow people to do it in that format, because society is getting pretty fast-paced, and that's a fast-paced way of doing it and to cover a lot of areas and involve a lot of people," said Anita Green, Surrey's public art co-ordinator.

Surrey's first PechaKucha Night was held last October.

PechaKucha Night initially launched in Tokyo in 2003 "as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public."

The format is to showcase 20 slides for 20 seconds each, giving people a chance to voice their story or platform in six-and-a-half minutes.

Surrey is now one of 700 other cities around the world partnered with PechaKucha to be an official host of the series.

Last Wednesday's event was hosted by Anita Huberman, CEO of Surrey Board of Trade. The evening kicked off with a youth band, Switch to Black, which played songs from its debut EP, followed by six up-and-coming initiatives by young entrepreneurs around the Surrey area.

Leading the pack of presenters was Surrey's Kevin Cruz, an SFU student who created ORAScents, a home-scent device that can be manipulated in real-time through a phone application.

Next up was StreetRich's Kia Kadiri, who talked about her work with youth teaching hip-hop, music skills, graffiti and more, in a mentorship-style program.

Alice Park and Elvy Del Bianco of Share Vancouver gave their ideas on the "sharing economy," where consumers are starting to participate in shared assets, such as signing up for a carshare program like Modo and Car2Go.

Then came Surrey's own Glen Chua, founder of Surrey International Film Festival, which was responsible for bringing award-winning filmmaker Joshua Caldwell to Surrey this past year.

Paige Glazier, a survivor of school bullying, came armed with her pro-social campaign, Team Orange. The initiative, which boasts its own T-shirts and other memorabilia, is the answer to anti-bullying campaigns that quickly lose luster. Instead of putting together anti-bullying campaigns, Glazier says, reward kids for their kind behaviour toward others.

Finally, there was Surreybased father-and-son entrepreneurs, Tyler and Kevin Reid, who started a firewood company whose profits benefit Semiahmoo House, a local organization that helps people with developmental disabilities. Called Tyler's Firewood Company, it was initiated by Tyler in 2009 when he was just 14 years old.

The Reids now chop and put together more than 15,000 bundles of wood each year, according to dad Kevin.

Now that Surrey is an official host city for PechaKucha Nights, we wonder what they're cooking for volume three.

kalexandra@thenownewspaper.com