February is usu­ally a dead month around Winnipeg. The cold­est of the cold, the final stretch of short days and wind­chill in a place that sees hot, action-​packed sum­mers with beau­ti­ful lakes and beaches and world-​class festivals.

But in February, sum­mer is a long, long way off.

So what have I gone and done? I’ve got­ten myself involved in orga­niz­ing not one, but two excit­ing events that month! The next few weeks are going to be very busy for me while I bal­ance some great client projects with two major vol­un­teer efforts that I feel quite pas­sion­ate about. Wish me luck!

The first event, TEDxManitoba is tak­ing place on February 9^th, and needs very lit­tle intro­duc­tion. Now in its sec­ond year, we have a great group of peo­ple on the orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee, an excel­lent line-​up of speak­ers from all over the place, and a stel­lar set-​up for our venue. If you haven’t checked it out yet, please do—and be sure to catch our live stream on event day.

The sec­ond event is brand new. And pos­si­bly a lit­tle bit insane.

Actif Epica, which will take place on February 18^th, began life when my co-​organizer Ian Hall rode a win­ter bike race in Minnesota last win­ter. Over the fall, he approached me and said that he would like to try some­thing like that here, and did I think there was we could make it into some­thing more than a bike race? He had the route planned out (more or less), and we began work on cre­at­ing a DIY, grass-​roots, self-​organizing win­ter fes­ti­val, with an empha­sis on human-​powered, out­door activ­ity in the winter.

The whole thing is based on an inter­ac­tive strat­egy focussed on con­nect­ing with peo­ple and cre­at­ing serendip­ity. It winds up as some­thing like a crowd-​sourced fes­ti­val plat­form—the bike race (130 km along the Crow Wing Trail from St Malo to St Boniface) and it’s var­i­ous check­points, along with five event prin­ci­ples pro­vide a frame­work for peo­ple to hook into and cre­ate some­thing new or build on some­thing they’ve been doing for a while. We all get together and col­lab­o­rate on mak­ing some­thing spe­cial. Something beau­ti­fully human.

So far, it’s work­ing beau­ti­fully! We have part­ners lin­ing up along the route, includ­ing Festival des Amis, who will host the start­ing line for the chal­lenge and Festival du Voyageur, who will host it’s fin­ish line. We have orga­ni­za­tions like Green Action Centre, who are host­ing an event that’s a lit­tle bit more on the for­mal side (though def­i­nitely fun), and we’ve heard from lots of peo­ple who are inter­ested in throw­ing together quick, low-​key games of shinny and even murm­ers of a frozen ulti­mate fris­bee tour­na­ment. It’s tak­ing its own shape, which is exactly what we hoped for.

If you haven’t yet taken the time to read the speaker pro­files for TEDxManitoba to see who you’d like to watch on the live stream, please do. They all even give us links to their favourite TED talks, so you can get a sense of what tick­les their brains.

And if you hap­pen to be around Winnipeg in February, there are lots of ways to get involved and have fun at what is sure to become an incred­i­ble Manitoban tra­di­tion of fac­ing the cold and laugh­ing at it. :)