Jodi Kovitz & Denise Roy
Last night, AceTech Ontario hosted our final event & Quarterly Dinner of 2016, and in my personal opinion, we finished the year off with a bang! Cocktail hour started the night off with just under 100 movers and shakers in the technology space – all AceTech Ontario members, sponsors and guests.
The night continued with a presentation by our talented & energetic CEO, Jodi Kovitz in which she shared with us her vision for the organization. She has plans for AceTech to grow, but grow in a smart, thoughtful and intelligent way. Needless to say, there will be lots of exciting news to come in 2017! Jodi also shared with us highlights from her technology innovation trip to Israel with Toronto Mayor John Tory. (You can read more about her takeaways from the trip here). Jodi was joined on stage by AceTech members Sheetal Jaitly, Vuk Magdelinic and guest Robert Douglas who also spoke about their highlights and lessons from the trip. Lastly, we presented Denise Roy, one of our 2017 Leadership Initiative Winners, with her award. Denise, along with other winners Daneal Charney and Mark Miller, will all be presenting workshops on their winning topic to AceTech members in the coming year. Congratulations again to Denise, Daneal and Mark!
The highpoint of the night for many people was our keynote speaker, John K. Coyle, founder of The Art of Really Living. John is one of the world’s leading experts in innovation and Design Thinking. He is a thought leader in the field of horology (the study of time) and an expert on how to stop the perceived acceleration of time. The topic of John’s talk last night was Time 2.0 Counterclockwise – How to Unwind Cognitive Time and Live Forever. John challenged our audience by saying that the concept of time does not exist. “Here’s what we believe: time is linear, time is chronological, time flies forward and keeps moving. I would suggest to you that none of us have experienced it in this way at all”, explained John. In fact, Albert Einstein said that “the only reason for time is so everything doesn’t happen all at once”. To prove that our traditional knowledge of time does not exist, John asked the audience this question: “Have you ever said: “‘I can’t believe that was last year, it feels like last week’ or ‘I can’t believe this day lasted forever’, or ‘I can’t believe this day was over in a flash’?”. John continueed to explain that if you have said any of these things, you have experienced non-linear time. As a result of this, the value of an increment of time is not related to its duration.
John has since discovered three ways to stop, reverse or accelerate time:
The Law of Contraction
Expand the breadth (uniqueness) and depth (intensity) of your experiences. Take risks, find joy.
-
Don’t just attend class, teach
-
Don’t just train, race
-
Don’t just take lessons, perform
-
Never go to the same place on vacation
The Law of Inversion
Build a life full of stories and high speed moments of “flow” focused on your strengths and talents: time will speed by in the present, but expand in the retrospect.
-
Memories and meaning, not repetition and routine
-
Minimize or ritualize routine
-
Maximize “flow”
-
Create stories: all stories have a plot, all plots have a crisis
The Law of Expansion
Invest your time to create moment of such meaning and gravity they are “worth a year”. Hallmark characteristics:
-
Uniqueness (breadth of experience)
-
Beauty
-
Physical intensity
-
Emotional intensity (depth of experience)
-
Flow or peak performance state (operating from strengths)