There's this guy named Randy McCharles who I think you should know about, because his brand of guru-ness is worth learning and emulating, in whatever small degree we might each be able to.
Results: Thanks mostly to him, there's this huge festival in Calgary now, and it's not just a festival. It's a community. It's a groundswell of excitement, community, and energy. Thanks to the festival, people are meeting people, finding common ground, forming friendships and professional alliances, and staying together in the intervening year to accomplish more, grow more, be more, than they ever would without the alliances formed at this festival.
From the conversations I heard, I understand that this festival is influencing not just the many hundreds of attendees from Ontario to Vancouver, but also their networks, their communities, their friends. Because this festival exists, people want to be a part. And to be a part of it, they're inspired.
- Inspired to be more themselves than they can be alone
- Inspired to pursue their craft and perfect it
- Inspired to set goals and do their best to meet them.
- Inspired to make things happen in the time frame between conferences.
Of course, it's synchronous growth. The conference came about as an initiative of the Imaginative Fiction Writers Association in Calgary, and started off small. Partly due to Randy's friendly welcome and benign excellent management, it has blossomed quickly, outgrowing its boundaries and selling out well before show time each year.
So, the association started the conference, and then the conference attracted writers from other associations, and then those associations are growing and flourishing more because of the conference, and they give back to the conference, and.... symbiosis. A frequent symptom of good things.
I had some photos of Randy alone, but I realized that the photo above describes exactly the reason I'm writing this article: Even though I don't know him very well (yet, anyway!), do you see how welcoming he is? He just naturally reached out an arm and drew me in for that photo. He's one of those rare people who, very soon after meeting, you feel that you are friends with. The kind of friend who you want to do things for, and who would do things for you at the drop of a hat.
That characteristic -- Randy's incredible, far-reaching ability to welcome and befriend people -- is, I think, the reason this massive festival called When Words Collide has become so influential. (Naturally, his ability to plow through mountains of work, willingly and cheerfully, has contributed to its success too.)
I must stop here and say -- of course there is also an army of volunteers who have helped create this inexpensive, influential, massive festival. It only cost $50 for the weekend for each person, and attendees could choose between 200 presentations, including frequent exposure to the likes of Diana Gabaldon, Brandon Mull, and a host of other famous and inspirational authors. That's a HUGE experience for attendees. And that's a mountain of work to get through to put it on. It required a small army of volunteers.
I asked Kim Greyson, another highly-visible volunteer, if I was doing the other volunteers a disservice by praising Randy so highly. No, he confirmed, Randy was definitely the point man and had done incredible volumes of work behind the scenes months ahead of time. I know that personally, whenever I had tech issues questions about my presentation, or questions as an attendee, Randy always found time to cheerfully and quickly answer whatever I needed. And I know too that there were 200 presentations... that's a lot of people to cheerfully juggle! Plus volunteers. Plus attendees. Plus facilities folks.
Aside from that, he managed details like finding the nicest conference bags I've ever seen at a conference, for a ridiculously affordable price. I suppose it's Randy's natural empathy that motivated him to work hard to keep the prices low, since writers aren't known as the wealthiest sector of society. At $50 for the entrance fee and $20 for a bag, even kids can afford to go (supposing their parents encouraged them to, that is... please, parents, get on this encouraging thing, will you?).
The festival was so huge that I could not keep track of what just my son and I (2 people, just 2) all wanted to do. And there was Randy juggling a starving thousand, with aplomb, and jokes, and welcome, and cheer.
And, as I told Randy in a thank you note (if you ask me, we all should have been raining gifts down on the man, so I at least contributed small Starbucks card):
An army of volunteers won't align to follow just anybody.
He's extraordinary.
Along the lines of gifts, Mark Lefebvre (Leslie) brought newfangled glowy Kobo devices for all of the keynote speakers. We were all sort of thinking, "hey, what about one for Randy?" Luckily, Mark (also a classy and interesting guy) had one for Randy too.
At the beginning keynote speakers panel, Randy was, of course, at the microphone thanking various people for being there, and we all clapped with varying degrees of politeness and enthusiasm.
The exciting part came when someone in the crowd put her hand up and said, "Randy," and then we all got to give him a roaring cheering standing ovation.
It's good to be a person that others will give a standing ovation. Not everyone can inspire that. It made me feel so glad that we got a chance to show some thanks.
Even in mid-juggle, Randy found time to inspire people. My son made an exercise of collecting autographs (EVERY autograph of the dozens of authors there, and many included nice little notes to him, thanks to any of you who might read this, because that meant, and means, a lot to him), and Randy's signature is accompanied by a praiseful little note for Yarrow.
I wrote to offer some post-conference volunteer time, and even in that e-mail, Randy made me feel welcomed. I quote:
"Great spending some time with you this weekend. Chatting with new friends and old is the highlight for me."
No wonder everyone wants to get on his team! Who wouldn't want to hang out with someone like that?
I thought I'd wrap this up with a sample of Randy's brand of encouragement. (Yes, ladies and gentleman, he can sure write, too!) I think we would all do well to emulate the warm and professional approval he injects into every interaction. This sample is copied from http://starklightpress.com/category/our-writers/
"Here is the awesome foreword written for our latest short story anthology by Randy McCharles, well-known Calgary author and writing retreat guru. Many thanks to Randy for his thoughtful, high-energy and excellently penned words!"
Foreword- StarkLight Volume 3
By Randy McCharles
“Katrina, she is death.” So begins the third compendium of quirky short fiction from Starklight Press. Like its predecessors, this issue fully achieves its mission of providing tales that are pertinent, timely and, above all, imaginative. The four words that begin the first of eleven amazing stand-alone stories are indicative of what you, the reader, will find– striking fiction that will wet the pallet, expand the mind, and bring a smile to your lips. One of the pleasures of such a collection over say, a novel, is that you have little idea of what you will find until you have devoured the book. There is no back cover blurb enlightening you as to what to expect– setting, character, theme, and plot. A collection such as STARKLIGHT offers, instead, a treasure chest of surprises; eleven jewels to pick up and examine, each gem offering its own unique color, sparkle, and appeal. What the stories contained within these pages do have in common, however, is that they provoke thought and will take your imagination to lands and times and feelings you have never seen before. Where the assembled stories differ is the second pleasure of such a collection. After discovering who Katrina is, why she is death, and why that is important, not only to the characters in the story, but to you the reader, there are still ten additional tales to enjoy, each astonishing in its own way, offering up new and unique experiences. Experiences unexpected, yet always managing to push one or more emotion buttons and resonate with realities in your life that makes each reading experience an intimate adventure between reader and author. If that is not enough, a third pleasure is that you not only have eleven unique tales to enjoy, but tales from nine exceptional authors, each of whom have their own style and voice for story telling. Let us consider the opening line of our second story, What Has Kenneth Done! by J.M. Duell. “Let’s get a hold’a this fellow about the pamphlets again Fitz, there’s too many mistakes on ‘er.” Duell’s writing style could not be more different from Virginia Carraway Stark’s as enjoyed in Katrina, yet Duell’s story will carry you along just as easily. And what Kenneth did is only one surprise in the story. It is said that variety is the spice of life, and this saying is no truer than in a compendium of short fiction. The selection of tales that fill these pages by authors no less distinguished than Virginia Carraway Stark, J.M. Duell, Veronica Robbins, Tony Stark, Roxann Alecia Harvey, John J. Higgins, G.W. Renshaw, Van Fleming, and Robert Marquiss, are stories you will wish to savour and share with your friends. So sit back, put up your feet, and prepare yourself to spend the next little while seeing the world in a different light. STARKLIGHT.
By Randy McCharles
“Katrina, she is death.” So begins the third compendium of quirky short fiction from Starklight Press. Like its predecessors, this issue fully achieves its mission of providing tales that are pertinent, timely and, above all, imaginative. The four words that begin the first of eleven amazing stand-alone stories are indicative of what you, the reader, will find– striking fiction that will wet the pallet, expand the mind, and bring a smile to your lips. One of the pleasures of such a collection over say, a novel, is that you have little idea of what you will find until you have devoured the book. There is no back cover blurb enlightening you as to what to expect– setting, character, theme, and plot. A collection such as STARKLIGHT offers, instead, a treasure chest of surprises; eleven jewels to pick up and examine, each gem offering its own unique color, sparkle, and appeal. What the stories contained within these pages do have in common, however, is that they provoke thought and will take your imagination to lands and times and feelings you have never seen before. Where the assembled stories differ is the second pleasure of such a collection. After discovering who Katrina is, why she is death, and why that is important, not only to the characters in the story, but to you the reader, there are still ten additional tales to enjoy, each astonishing in its own way, offering up new and unique experiences. Experiences unexpected, yet always managing to push one or more emotion buttons and resonate with realities in your life that makes each reading experience an intimate adventure between reader and author. If that is not enough, a third pleasure is that you not only have eleven unique tales to enjoy, but tales from nine exceptional authors, each of whom have their own style and voice for story telling. Let us consider the opening line of our second story, What Has Kenneth Done! by J.M. Duell. “Let’s get a hold’a this fellow about the pamphlets again Fitz, there’s too many mistakes on ‘er.” Duell’s writing style could not be more different from Virginia Carraway Stark’s as enjoyed in Katrina, yet Duell’s story will carry you along just as easily. And what Kenneth did is only one surprise in the story. It is said that variety is the spice of life, and this saying is no truer than in a compendium of short fiction. The selection of tales that fill these pages by authors no less distinguished than Virginia Carraway Stark, J.M. Duell, Veronica Robbins, Tony Stark, Roxann Alecia Harvey, John J. Higgins, G.W. Renshaw, Van Fleming, and Robert Marquiss, are stories you will wish to savour and share with your friends. So sit back, put up your feet, and prepare yourself to spend the next little while seeing the world in a different light. STARKLIGHT.
3. Share. Let others shine. Similar, but slightly different -- Nenshi brought in other shiny people, and wasn't afraid to give them the spotlight. My favourite of these was this lady, who dramatically stripped off her outer clothes and sang straight from the bottom of her belly. Awesome.
8. Engage your community. I was excited to tell my son about this video, but of course he already knew about it. "Mom, we saw that video at school yesterday. My teacher Mr. Jones was in the video."