When you think of crazy, you probably think of some person with weird hair and interesting behaviours. If I said that it takes a crazy person to change the world, you would probably think I’m crazy. I’m here to tell you that it does.

This is what we explored in our biggest project of the year. This project included a week in Seattle and a Pecha Kucha presentation night. This project was called Cray Cray Yay Yay. The driving question was:

Why does it take a crazy person to change the world?

What do we mean by “crazy person”? In 1997 Apple launched an advertisement campaign in which they said: “…the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

But I already answered this question. A couple weeks ago, I wrote a blog post explaining my answer to this question. Click here to read that post. What is the purpose of this post? I want to explain everything that I learned and provide a deeper insight into what I think it means to be a “crazy person” and more importantly, what I think it takes to change the world.

I mentioned that this project included a Pecha Kucha. A Pecha Kucha is a presentation format where a presenter presents 20 slides for a total of 20 seconds per slide. To practice with the Pecha Kucha format, we created a mini Pecha Kucha on one of the people featured in the Apple campaign.

I chose Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock is a very famous filmmaker who is famous for his captivating psychological horror films. I think that he was chosen to be featured in this ad campaign because he chose to explore new genres, filmmaking techniques, and storytelling techniques. This led to him being considered one of the most legendary filmmakers of all time.

For this mini presentation, I only presented 10 slides. I don’t think it went very well. I didn’t know my topic enough, had inconsistent slides, stuttered a lot, and overall gave a weak Pecha Kucha. I am thankful for being able to get this out of the way as I learned a lot and was way more ready for my final Peacha Kucha.

To gather all of the research we would need for this project, we spent a week in Seattle. Seattle is the place of many innovators and people that would fit into this mould of “crazy”. People like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Jimi Hendrix and so many more all got their start in Seattle.

The trip was amazing. Some of the places we visited include:

– The Climate Pledge Arena

– The Museum of Pop Culture

– The Space Needle

– The Museum of Flight

– Boeing

– The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation

– Microsoft

Those are just some of the many places we visited during the trip.

Overall this trip provided a lot of insight in answering the driving question on top of being a really fun time. All of the places we went to said something about how it takes a crazy person to change the world. Going to Seattle was a really memorable experience. I learned a ton and and I’m really thankful that I got the opportunity to go.

After the trip we got to work on our group Pecha Kuchas. I was in a group with Daniel, Kira, and Jessie. We were given a topic to work around. Ours was: Urban Transformation: Transforming Cities for the Future. We then decided on a thesis statement to help guide our presentation in the right direction:

The redesigning of cities for a better future is made possible by the people who aren’t afraid to reevaluate the ideas that others overlook.

We first had to come up with three examples to support our topic.

– The Climate Pledge Arena because of its sustainable, 100% carbon neutral design.

– The Museum of Pop Culture because of its unique and interesting design.

– Flight because of how it connects cities worldwide.

If you would like to read our script, click here.

We then created our slide deck.

On the night of the Pecha Kucha, we all worked hard to create a fun night of presentations. My group was the first group to present. We killed it. We never stumbled, our slides were clean, our timing was perfect, and we gave a really strong presentation. I was really happy with the work my group put in and I am thankful for how well it went.

That brings me back to the driving question:

Why does it take a crazy person to change the world?

A crazy person is somebody who is not afraid to try new things, to experiment with unexplored ideas, to devote their time and energy into their ideas and to their passions. People like this are the reason that new ideas become new realties. Without people like this, the world would not change. Without crazy people, the world wouldn’t evolve. Problems wouldn’t be solved, and the would would remain the same. Thanks to the crazy ones, we live in a world that is constantly changing, weather that’s for better or for worse.