The Akoha Away Team is flying home from San Francisco now. They did an amazing job at TechCrunch50, where they got on stage to present our amazing project. This great experiment is the best thing I’ve ever done in my life!

If you missed it, you can watch the talk on-line. Or you can read about us in CNET News, The Montreal Gazette, or The Washington Post.

Akoha is our take on paying it forward, the idea that you can make the world a better place by doing small acts of kindness, one little bit at a time. We play a game where you help your friends, family, and strangers every day. As you play, you get to see how your own actions affect the lives of others, as your generosity is played forward. It’s really cool to watch a mission you’ve played travel from place to place, city to city, passed along by a chain of like-minded Akohans.

It doesn’t just affect your own little circle of friends. We work with partners to effect change in big ways. Our first partner is Room to Read, who will help us build a library in Nepal when we reach our first goal of 25,000 acts of kindness. These guys build and stock libraries for schoolchildren in poor parts of the world, giving the gift of education so that kids can climb their way out of poverty.

In the short time that Akoha’s been played, I’ve already seen more smiles amongst my friends. It’s fun to play Akoha, to see people’s faces light up when you do something nice! And after a while, you start seeing more and more ways to help others.

If you bump into me on the street, ask me about Akoha. Or, go to our website at www.akoha.com and register for our beta list. We’re starting small, but we’ll send you a free Akoha Starter Kit as soon as we can.

I’m looking forward to playing it forward with all of you!

I just came back from the most exciting morning.

Friday afternoon was a lot of tame fun. I had phở at Pho Hung with makemyway and springbird. Then we did some shopping, split an amazing veal sandwich from California Sandwiches, and ate a salad for dinner. That was pretty normal.

So was our trip to Lula Lounge. Makemyway and I went there to see jedward play with Samba Elegua. They're an amazing act! The crowd was dancing and laughing, well some of it, which was great for Toronto.

We left relatively early so that I could swing by Makemyway's house to pick up my camera. I had forgotten it there the night before. As I left her place, I realized that I had left my credit card at the lounge. So I tried to remember how to get back, paid my bill, and stepped outside. The band was packing up their gear, so I was able to say goodbye.

I was walking east when I noticed two people huddled in a bus shelter. I poked my head inside and asked where they were going.

You see, they were waiting at a Dundas stop for a streetcar. After hours. Which meant they would be spending a very long night in freezing weather. I surmised they weren't from Toronto.

Rodrigo and Francesca are actually visiting from Brazil. And they hadn't worn enough layers. I walked with them to College where we waited for a while, ducked into a convenience store to warm up, and caught the blue-night streetcar going east. I asked the driver to let them off at Jarvis, which is where there hotel is.

I bid them farewell as I got off at the Yonge stop. Soon, the bus came north and a group of us boarded. Most of the passengers were a bit unruly because the bars had just let out. When we got to Eglington, a whole bunch of people got on the bus. They had been kicked off the previous bus, which we saw as we drove past. I asked a girl what happened and she explained that a guy got angry at some other guy and punched out a window. There were about four police cars surrounding the abandoned bus.

Since our bus was quite crowded, I did the only thing I could think of: randomly chatting with strangers. This passed the time until my stop came up. A very drunk man said goodbye to his friends and exited with me. I walked with him for a while and we struck up a conversation. It seems that he is doing an anthropology degree at York.

This didn't explain why he had misplaced his hat in one of his friend's pockets. Or why he hit on every girl on our way north. Or why he had difficulty opening his front door, which I passed on the way back home.

Wasn't that an exciting series of adventures? So exciting, in fact, that now I'm wide awake! It's a good thing that I'm good at falling asleep.

On 6 December 1989, Montréal was shocked when a gunman entered the École Polytechnique and started shooting.

He murdered fourteen people, all of them women. They were called:
Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair , Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.

Please take one minute out of your day, today. One minute dedicated to silent reflection on you can help end violence against women. And violence against humanity.

Lest we forget.

Last night, I stood in line outside of Concordia's Hall building for a good hour or so. dcoombs and I ate our dinners standing there, which was a fairly good plan because if we arrived any later, there wasn't any chance of us getting in. The line snaked all the way around the building, but the auditorium wouldn't fit us all.

We managed to chat with a girl who seemed like a perfectly normal anthropology major until she launched into an extended description of her D&D character. And then we met a girl in a fuzzy white cap who talked to us about the long lineup. Finally, we met a woman who was studying teaching and was quite upset that we didn't get into the theatre.

Oh, did I mention that we didn't get into the theatre?

Instead, we went up two escalators and climbed up four flights of stairs. The little old lady in front of us looked like she might collapse. We eventually made our way into a room with a bunch of chairs. Someone had set up a laptop that was hooked up to a projector, and we would be watching the webcast from inside the building.

Man, I could have stayed at home for that.

After some more waiting, the lecture began. The video was choppy and blurry, but it was possible to see what was going on. Now, you're probably asking, why did we wait over two hours to see someone speak?

Paul Rusesabagina was the general manager of the Hôtel des Diplomates in Rwanda when civil war broke out. He described the situation in 1994 and his time spent during the Rwandan Genocide.

His oration was not particularly compelling as he seemed to gloss over the horrors he had witnessed. Perhaps this was because English was not his first language? Perhaps it was because he did not want to focus on the deaths. It was strange to see him talk calmly about his son discovering his neighbours slaughtered on their front lawn. It was disconcerting to hear him describe the remains of his mother-in-law, and her family, and her house. And you could tell that he still was unable to comprehend just how his neighbours and friends could commit such atrocities. Even after all this time had passed.

He took his family to stay at the Hôtel des Mille Collines, where he phoned the management and convinced them to make his temporary manager. There, he offered shelter to over 1200 refugees from the hostile militia and army who patrolled the streets. And he told us about problems of daily survival: the constant telephoning for aid, the rationing of water which they got from the swimming pool, the lack of electricity, and the constant threat of violence. Even when he was offered evacuation, he refused to leave the hotel behind because there would be no-one to protect those he left behind.

I was most impressed by his story of a young man who barged into the hotel demanding to see a journalist who had taken refuge there. You see, that reporter had just published a news story about the situation in Rwanda and this man wanted to kill him. I am still amazed at what Mr. Rusesabagina did: he invited this kid into his office and talked with him for many hours. And at the end of their discussion, the gunman left peacefully. He is now studying journalism in Minnesota.

Mr. Rusesabagina was not a man of hubris. He told us how he didn't believe he could ever do such noble acts and that it was his god that was using him as a tool. Nor did he accept praise, but rather spoke to us all very humbly. Near the end of his talk, he pleaded that we demand that world leaders notice atrocities being committed right now, around the globe. Because even though we always say, "never again" to genocides and holocausts, we don't really mean it.

Do we?