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mesh success, MaRS, and I can't praise Toronto enough

By Stephanie Ciccarelli

May 17, 2006

Comments (3)

Mesh was the greatest conference we've been to yet (the food was good too!)

Greetings,

The mesh conference in Toronto was amazing! We got back late last night after plenty of networking and learning. Did I mention the food yet... conferences are always good for food, but this food was great!

I really wanted to thank the entire mesh team for all of their hard work. mesh was a screaming success!

I also wanted to take the time to personally thank Rob Hyndman, one of the mesh organizers, a business lawyer for technology companies in Toronto, for helping me out at the end of the conference. For those of you who saw an ambulance outside the MaRS Collaboration Centre, it was for me. I had a little difficulty breathing but I'm fine now (perhaps due to too many coffees, sleep deprivation and unheard of Web 2.0 excitement, and maybe the impromptu alarm going off at lunch).

Rob listened to my plea and was the first person to come to my aid, ensuring that I received immediate medical attention at the MaRS facility.

For those of you who live in or frequent the city of Toronto, MaRS is conveniently located in the Toronto Discovery District, surrounded by hospitals and educational institutes in the heart of a beautiful, vibrant and architecturally stunning centre. If anything were to happen to someone in Toronto, there is no better place to be with respect to close proximity to internationally recognized hospitals.

I even received a follow up call from MaRS this morning to see how I was doing, and they were very relieved to hear everything was well. They looked after everything including paramedics, ambulatory transport to Toronto General Hospital and the MaRS property manager Randal Froebelius even wrote a personal note and communicated the information to the appropriate parties, making sure that our vehicle was not ticketed for being in the Impark lot past closing time because of our unexpected emergency.

One of the paramedics, ironically, happened to be from London which was a comfort in itself. He's a former native of the community of Byron, and he still goes home to visit his parents. He was familiar with our neighborhood and with cheery conversation, exuded a homegrown calm and warmth. If you know the young gentleman that I'm referring to, please let him and his parents know how much we appreciated his assistance.

I did a bit of research this afternoon and found that I may have suffered a panic attack, which has never happened to me before, but apparently is more prevalent in women, starting between the ages of 20-30.

The two main causes for a panic attack could either be suffering from an illness that when aggravated mimics a panic or anxiety attack, or in my case, something traumatic happening directly before the attack occurs (i.e. the alarm going off coupled with strobe lights flashing for roughly 20 minutes in the basement of a building - that's pretty traumatic).

You can visit the site I researched here.

On a much happier note:

Many conferences are hollow, one-time affairs, but mesh, even through its inaugural conference, proved to be something very special and much more than that.

While it's true that the mesh conference was a great networking and learning environment for creatives, techies and bloggers, it was also a community comprised of people who truly care and reach out to each other.

Thank you again and we're looking forward to next years mesh!

Sincerely yours,

Stephanie and David Ciccarelli

P.S. It isn't until you need it the most that you truly value our healthcare system (Medicare) in Canada. Tommy Douglas, thank you again and again :)