great'n'tough week...

I'm having a TOUGH week…. And it's in a very positive sense :)

Just thought I should take time to write a couple lines for my dear blog.

Today, I've reached an important milestone. I have presented a paper at an international conference about media ethics. All the participants were YSU/YSLU professors, and the audience included some students and academic staff.
My small report will be published in a guidebook for journalists, disseminated among universities that have journalism faculties and media organizations.

Later I'm going to deliver 2 sessions at a training on the effective use of the social networks for museum workers.

I have submitted an application for a very ambitious program, gathering all the required documents, writing all the statements, etc.
I am preparing my documents for an even more ambitious competition :) lots of papers to gather.. and things to write.. i can make it...

Yesterday I was on a TV talking about the cases of companies asking for employee passwords.

Starting from today my face can be seen on HSBC ads - billboards, web banners, and in a commercial on a TV, my voice can be heard in a radio ad :) … never thought I'd be offered to feature in a commercial and moreover, never thought I'd need to sign a document stating that I'm not a parliament elections candidate (TVs required it).

These days we are actively working on the organization of the TEDxKids@Yerevan event and another smaller TEDx event.

In my workplace, I'm managing a new big project (while finalizing the previous one) and also working on the proposals of some new interesting projects.

I am organizing Foursquare Day 2012 and received a cute swag from Foursquare itself and hope we'll have a great meetup!

In two days I'm leaving for an amazing new country I never thought I’d have a chance to visit. I will participate in a huge and exciting event with more than 700 participants from different countries. I will participate in some interesting and useful workshops and even make a small presentation myself. There will be opportunities to experience some amazing activities I could only see in movies before.

Besides, I'm very energetic and full of love because I have some GREAT people around me and I got convinced that the reality can feel even better than in the sweetest and cutest romantic situation seen in a music video.

I will be posting updates about my exciting activities in my FB and twitter pages and hopefully also eventually post a detailed post in my blog...

March Equinox

Oh my... so many things happen to me daily. I'm engaged in so many activities, that I can't attempt to count all the roles I'm acting as on daily basis.
Sometimes, when I'm hell tired like this, I start to look for the guilty party and eventually I blame myself for constantly challenging my own abilities and being unable to say no to new opportunities. I don't know where the limit is, but I'm nowhere near to reaching it at all.

You never know what opportunity is going to land in your inbox at any moment... --couldn't be truer!

“You are a mashup of what you let into your life.” - Austin Kleon

I hope I'll be able to share here some part of the awesomeness I'm experiencing currently, all the amazing events, discoveries and experiences.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost …. I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.


Chapter Two I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.


Chapter Three I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit … but, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.


Chapter Four I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.


Chapter Five I walk down another street.


by Portia Nelson

Thank you, 2011

The January is almost over and I've finally got to finalize the post about my 2011.

Here are the top events that made my year so awesome.

1. Was a trainer on Personal branding and online reputation management, on effective use of social networks and twitter in particular, did a session for a training of trainers.
2. Tuned my public speaking skills with several presentations at various events.
3. Visited some interesting locations in Armenia and met some great people.
4. Became part of the geeks community with some very cool people :)
5. Helped with organization of some interesting and geeky events like Foursquare Day, BarCamp EVN 2011, TEDxYerevan 2011.
6. Did a presentation on "How to date a geek girl" at BarCamp Yerevan 2011, which later became viral on the web, and Slideshare's presentation of the day, of the week :)
7. Was a speaker at TEDxYerevan 2011, a huge milestone reached. Met some wonderful people thanks to the event. (Side effect: made my shoe collection famous :D)
8. Had a ride on a helicopter and applied for a parachute jumping (pending).
9. Was on TV live several times... as an expert on ebooks (haha), email communication (interesting), blogger (when did i last update my blog? :D) and stuff like that)))
10. Was a maid of honor for the first time in life and enjoyed my title a lot :)))) 
11. Applied for a license and became an official TEDx organizer and organized my first TEDx (out of 4 to be organized within a year) end of November.
12. Attended a live show of one of my favorite bands - COLDPLAY!
13. Went to Eurotrip - 5 countries and 8 cities in just 12 days. Saw the Paris, climbed the Eiffel, crossed the whole Germany from West to East on a car, and all of this - with my best friend :)
14. On my 4th visit to Amsterdam, I finally tried a space-cake....my advice: whatever it is... be sure you have someone to take you home afterwards :)
15. Reconnected with a special friend, who later became an even more special one to me :)

Watch my 2011 in photos that matter :) 180 photos that showcase moments that mattered during my 2011. The music is: Coldplay - We Found Love.

I'm a TEDx Organizer!

I have already told you how much I love TED and about the TEDxYerevan conferences that I took part in (also as a speaker).

I decided to actively take part in spreading the ideas of TED becoming a TEDx Activator. Now let me tell you what it is and why I'm so proud now :))

TEDx Activator is an experiment in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to support TEDx organizers who are using TEDx events to spread ideas in the developing world and unprivileged communities. Any community that does not have access to TED and TED.com qualifies.

TEDx - is an independently organized TED event by an individual who has to be granted a free license from TED. The event can be just viewing TED talks, or can have live speakers as well. TED rules state that if it's a full-day event, total 25% of talks have to be pre-recorded talks from TED.com.

In reality, TED is very strict about rules for TEDx and I actually enjoy being part of this!!! There is a strong community with many virtual collaboration tools which somehow reminded me of my beloved youth organization - AIESEC.

In the framework of the TEDxActivator program, each of the Activators will be organizing 4 TEDx events in 1 year, for the above mentioned unprivileged communities.

The first event I planned was for teenagers of various backgrounds, the others most likely will be in the regions of Armenia.

TEDxTumanyanPark organizers :)

The first event me and my friend Gohar organized on November 30, was for TUMO kids exclusively, named TEDxTumanyanPark, and made possible with the help of TEDx Activator Manager and TEDxYerevan licensee Kristine Sargsyan.  It was a viewing event with the theme "Creativity in tech". We invited 100 kids (announcing it on Facebook) to the cinema hall of TUMO.

We selected 5 short to mid-length talks with many visuals. We made sure the Armenian translations of the talks (most of which were done by me and Gohar) were there and were correct. We prepared small intros for the talks and also were telling the main points of the talks in Armenian, since some of the kids couldn't manage to read the subtitles or understand the English speech. We had a great support from the TUMO staff and it was a pleasure to work with them!
And based on what we heard from the kids - they really enjoyed it! I hope we will see TED speakers growing up out these kids who were just getting acquainted with TED :)

Here are a few official numbers about TEDx:

• TEDx began in March 2009.
• # of TEDx events 2009: 279
• # of TEDx events 2010: 952
• # of TEDx events 2011 so far (Nov. 29): 1645
• Total # events: 2876
• Countries: 118
• Languages: 40+
• Licensees: 3450+
• Videos (TEDxTalks): 10,500+
• Across various platforms, TEDxTalks videos have been viewed over 50 million times. 

Here are more pics from the event, made by my lovely cousin Semira Martirosyan.

P.S. My status msg on FB about becoming a TEDx organizer got 120 likes and 30 comments. As it turns out, there were rumors in the city that I had quit my current job and now I'm a full-time TEDx organizer :). Dear all, i'm still PanARMENIAN Arpik and I have no intention to change my job. Being a TEDx organizer does not require full time efforts, thankfully :)

a lunch with @dolboed and meeting @stevewoz at the airport. quite a day!

Often, when you wake up in the morning, you have no idea how many awesome things will happen to you on that day.


This week, I was invited to take part at the EU-Armenia Seminar on "Media Today" in Tsakhkadzor with many international guests and had a chance to get acquainted with Anton Nossik, the Russian internet guru. We had some interesting conversations over lunch and coffee and he even started following me on Twitter and 4sq! :)

You know, as a rule, I don't take photos of me with celebrities. I hate that. But i love being around them and talking to them. I get inspired by the conversations and learn a lot indeed.

Today the news broke that Steve Wozniak is arriving to Armenia to receive the Global IT award by the Armenian President. While posting a status about it I saw a Facebook suggestion to subscribe to Steve Wozniak's updates. I checked out his profile and saw his Foursquare checkin that was posted on his wall with the comment mentioning his flight number and destination - Yerevan :)
I couldn't miss the chance to go and meet him at the airport with friends. Despite not having any "i" devices to give him for signing and not quite being an Apple fangirl, it was a great chance for me to meet the Apple co-founder in person :)

My friends prepared a small surprise for Woz. He was really excited to see them (and his wife and other people there too!). He signed their iPads (they're priceless now) and got an Armenian apple from Lia (and hugged her:))

Armenian Apple fanboys meeting Woz in the airport

I was watching it from the side :)

me tweeting!

the geeks...checking in 

upd. watch the whole photo report here:  http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/photoset/1085/ 

Adrineh blogged today about the 10 reasons she loves about living in Yerevan. I can relate to the points she mentioned but would add a new one that's very true for me: life in Yerevan is full of surprises! You can hear that a legend like Woz is coming to Armenia right on his arrival day and actually rush and meet him in the airport :)

pics by Lia Mkhitaryan

"Guinea Pigs in Technology" or geek girls are cool! my TEDxYerevan talk

As I have told you already, I was honored to be selected as one of the speakers of TEDxYerevan 2011.

I was very excited about the opportunity and I also knew that it's gonna be a tough job. I had to pass auditions with the organizing team and prepare a talk which would be:

• short
• fun
• geeky
• inspiring

After my sudden success with the BarCamp's talk, everyone expected of me something similar: just an easy, funny speech about geeks and dating. But I really wanted my talk to contain a personal story (like in most of TED talks), have a message and to inspire at least some people. So i had many conversations with various people, met other geek girls. My closest friends were particularly helpful as they were "working" on my talk all the way from the start to the final submission. I even organized some small auditions at in my apartment, asking for feedback on slides, texts and even my body language when talking (a friend even recorded my rehearsal on a video so i could watch myself).

So here I can finally present the result. I'm posting the slide deck, narrative speech (a little extended with some parts that were cut out in the final speech) and also the video of the talk. 

"Guinea Pigs in Technology" or geek girls are cool (contains slide notes)

Do you know what guinea pigs and women in technology have in common?

This is an old joke i used to hear a lot some time ago. The popular answer is this: the common thing between women in tech and guinea pig is the fact that women are related to technology the same way guinea pigs are related to pigs. I'm here to tell you that this is complete and utter… nonsense.
Let me tell you a story.
So it’s about a girl, who was born in a very typical Armenian family. Normally her destiny would be pictured like this: she’ll go to school, enter university, find a husband, have some kids, become an exemplary housewife who can cook excellent dolma… and work as a teacher maybe.. well, in this particular family i'm going to tell you about, things went a little different.

Something somewhere went wrong and the first signs of the troubles have started to emerge as the family bought their first PC back in 1996 and their teenage daughter started to show signs of computer addiction.. becoming a «computer rat» in their words. Her initial plans to become a journalist quickly vanished and she started to dream of becoming a hacker.
Since the age of 13 she became the computer expert for her whole extended family, getting emergency calls whenever someone couldn't find a certain key on the keyboard, or couldn't change the font properties in the Word processor.

Since then, “Let Me Google It For You” has been a phrase she used a lot. Well and the RTFM.

She has been studying computer science and one day she realized that the profession she's chosen is changing her while studying databases when she was around 18 years old. She had this idea.. of being able to remember big amounts of information, to be able to connect things she heard.. and just to be able to fit in all the things she was learning. She found out how to optimize her brain's databases, arrange the tables with a 'foreign key' and index all the data, so that all the new information she gets, gets stored in the appropriate table with the keywords, and she can fetch the information quite easily. This was a remarkable moment when she realized that she somehow managed to optimize her brain the way, so she quickly connects the facts and random pieces of information and her memory is significantly improved…

One of the happiest moments of her life was buying a laptop. She needed a portable computer that she could use it even in bed and in cafes, and when she had it, it was not very common to walk in the streets with big laptop bags yet.. and she occasionally felt herself like the little Tiffany from the Men in Black.

With the web 2.0 and new media emerging, she became an early adopter, and was labeled as a tech evangelist. One who signs up for all the new social networks, manages to be aware of all the industry news… she has built some impressive online personality with big network, and with many followers and all…
She was labeled as a geek. Then she started to explore what’s in that word.

So who are geek girls?

These are the most common perceptions I’ve brought together.

• They are not feminine 

• They lack social skills, mostly hang out with other geeks

• Using a lot techno-slang 

• They must know good programming 

• And they work just in tech industry

Some of these things are truly just myths. In reality geek girls are:

1. Independent or better to say - self-dependent people. They solve most of their own problems :)
They can easily setup a home wireless network, configure a router, even without a prior knowledge in networking. They just know how to find it out digging through search results and technical forums.

2. Geek girls are smart, witty, tech savvy


3. They are gadget and connectivity dependentEven though they don’t depend on other people for their problems, they are very much dependent on their gadgets and network availability.

4. They learn really quickly and are actually very good at quick self-learning. They know how to google stuff, or youtube things like “how to fix damaged headphones” or simply “how to gift wrap a box”.

5. Geek girls are info-junkie and love sharing. They have to be up-to-date with the latest information on their interest and they all love sharing information and useful hacks. That’s why they are active in social networks.

6. Also, geek girls can be really cute
Just like socialites. Not convincing?

Well.. for the socialites we all know that they are:

• Obsessed with shopping and worship shoes 

• They actually admire lady gaga for some reason. 

• They are obsessed with SATC show and frequently quote the heroines. 

I know a geek girl who’s a shopaholic, with a particular passion for shoes. Well, she recently told us, she counted about 27 pairs in her 2011 spring-summer collection.
And not only her… among my geek girlfriends there are ones who think that Lady Gaga is actually cool. They read Cosmo and yeah, Sex and the City is one of their favorite shows of all time, they were noted to be stylish and pretty. Not quite like the perceptions, right?
Now lets go back to the girl I was telling you about in the beginning.

The netbook that’s the default accessory in her purse is actually pink. It has Google, Firefox, Android and Hello Kitty stickers next to each other. Among her 200 RSS subscriptions, there are many fashion, gossip blogs. Her smartphone has more fashion apps than you know existed J She meets her friends not by calling and asking where they are, or telling where she is. They have foursquare and other geolocation services for that. She tracks her not suspecting sister with the google latitude she had setup on her cellphone.

You can meet geek girls in some glamorous party, all dressed up, on towering heels, talking on her smartphone.. Explaining someone from her workplace how to fix the server..
You can meet a girl restarting that damn router at a café when they badly need a wifi.
This is Ani, she has written an alarm clock application for her friend’s phone, because it didn’t have one.

These girls - Nelly and Gayane, have created a very popular website dedicated to indie music all by themselves, coding, promotion and stuff.

Geek girls were active in Yerevan Barcamps’ organization, well; I was one of them and guess what? I was telling about “how to date a geek girl”. Somehow this presentation became a viral hit on the web, becoming the top presentation of the day, then week, then most tweeted and ended up getting about 20K views in couple of weeks. And I got featured in a Taiwanese website with a special mention of my netbook which turned out to be a Taiwanese pride. It got a huge positive feedback and I want to share some of the highlights.

When geek girl is dating a geek guy.. well. That’s predictable. They communicate via messengers (even when they are in the same room), they schedule meetings via google calendar invitations, their computers are sweetly connected via a shared folder in dropbox, and they express their emotions via likes and comments…

When geek girl is dating a non-geek. Either the guy gets paranoic thinking that their (potential) girlfriend can hack everything of theirs, starting with text messages on the phone, ending with email and social media accounts. And nothing good comes out of it.

You can never know that a pretty girl you’ll be flirting with in a bar, might have already checked your FB profile on her smartphone while you were looking away, and might have tweeted how bored she is with your conversations.
But, if guys are smart enough, they start exploring her ‘territory’, signing up in the social networks she’s in, following her posts and reacting to them.
If you follow these simple steps, a geek girl can give you the root password for her heart.

But actually, being a geek girl is really cool.

Being a geek girl makes you feel more confident, independent. You can solve your own problems actually. You become needed and demanded by everyone around, from your boss to your friends.

So what do guinea pigs and girls in technology have in common? Yes, they are both cute J

We, the geek girls of Armenia have decided to establish a community of our own. So i invite the girls to join us.

At last, I want to tell you that a geek’s image for girls actually comes with a ‘dumbness filter’. If you’re a geek girl, you can attract all the right guys and scare all the wrong ones J

Girls, enjoy being geeks.

The video of my talk

I'm really thankful to all the people who approached me, gave feedback, told me that they could relate to some parts of the talk and just told me they enjoyed it :) I'm thankful to fellow speakers for cheering me up when i was nervous and for all the support. I am so lucky to be part of this great team!

TEDxYerevan 2011 speakers

Don't forget to check out other talks on the TEDxYerevan website. 

Eventually, everything connects

I loved this line since i first read it. I even named my tumblog like that - "Eventually everything connects".

I love finding out unexpected connections between things that i never thought could be related anyhow. Facts, people, ideas...
Actually, when i googled the phrase to find out the author, I was greatly surprised. It connected, again!!!

The full phrase is the following: "Eventually everything connects—people, ideas, objects…the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se."
The author is Charles Eames - legendary designer.. and... imagine. I've met his grandson!!! A TED speaker Eames Demetrios. Who came to Yerevan for his project Kcymaerxthaere (I'm gonna blog about it separately).

Here's Eames Demetrios' TED talk about his legendary grandparents.