My week was dominated by the MIGS trip. We left on Monday at 9am and arrived at the Quality Hotel a little after 3. The name of the hotel was a trap. Nonetheless, we had a few hours to ourselves to enjoy the city and soak up the Montreal culture, by which I mean we watched cartoons dubbed in French before we stumbled on the English-speaking channel and enjoyed 2 or 3 hours of Cake Boss. That brought us to what was possibly the biggest obstacle of the experience: food. Never in my life have I consisted almost solely on Tim Hortons for days at a time, but given the rigid schedule of the summit there wasn't much of a choice. At least we had WiFi.
The convention itself was great. My only real issue was trying to decode some of the finer points of the Montreal accent, but I feel that I got the full potential out of each lecture regardless. My favourite lecture and what was undoubtedly the most important for me was the screenwriting lecture given by Alex Epstein. He outlined some ways to get your audience to be emotionally invested in your narrative and expressed the importance of a "pull" narrative as opposed to a "push" narrative. In a "pull" narrative, the audience asks questions and wonders about what will happen before it does, whereas a "push" narrative simply gives the audience things without any build-up. On the other hand, there was a lecture that I went to that turned out to be a pitch for a funding company, so I ducked out when the lecturer turned to get her laptop. All in all, I had a great time and am looking forward to attending again.
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