Felix Jung, 20×2 Chicago: Where Are We?

August 7, 2014

Here’s my presentation from 20×2 Chicago, a fun event where 20 Chicago creatives gather together and answer the same question in two minutes or less. Our prompt for the night was: “Where Are We?”

People can choose to answer however they like, so long as they remain under two minutes. So there’s usually a mixture of a lot of things, depending on the presenters: regular talks, videos, music, singing. You never really know what to expect.

For my presentation, I answered the question of “Where Are We” by trying to track down all the different Felix Jungs out there in the world, using Facebook. My original goal was to gather as much information as I could on each Felix – and make a presentation on the similarities and differences within our lives.

I even went so far as to make a form for every Felix to fill out.

That form was… optimistic. I got zero responses, and just one Felix Jung responded back to me on Facebook with some questions (and ultimately decided not to fill out the survey). So instead, I had to go with using photos that were publicly available on Facebook.

I originally got this idea due to emails that I receive meant for another Felix Jung. My gmail address is felixjung@gmail.com but from time to time someone will send emails addressed to felix.jung@gmail.com. Typically, those are in German – and I try my best (using Google Translate) to let the sender know they’ve got the wrong person.

The thing with gmail addresses is that it treats every username as a unique name, and ignores periods. So you could theoretically send an email to f.e.l.i.x.j.u.n.g@gmail.com and it would still arrive in my Inbox.

The most popular Felix Jung I know is a German photographer, and I’d seen a few other Felix Jungs on Twitter here and there. But looking around on Facebook was a lot of fun, as I never had any idea how many other Me’s there were out there.

Researching and presenting my talk was a ton of fun, and I had a blast the whole night of the event. To see what it was like, check out this earlier recap of the event.

The full event can be found on YouTube (Part 1, Part 2). A few standout favorites of mine were:

– Rebeca Mojica’s fascinating talk on fractals.
– Keidra Chaney’s immensely personal and powerful story about her father.
– Ben’s talk about stress, worry, and living in the present.
– Sharon Bautista’s great reading of Carl Sandburg’s poem Chicago.
– Steve Delahoyde, on standing up for standing.
– Saya Hillman on losing her job, and learning to “say yes” to things.

The 20×2: Chicago event is a blast to attend, and even more fun to participate. I hope you like it enough to attend the next one (October 18), and if you’re inspired… I know they’re always looking for presenters. If you’d like to take the Stage at Schuba’s in October… get in touch.