I am honoured to be included! My next business cards will definitely say: “Samantha Stein, interesting”

And no, I haven’t forgotten this blog. The combination of working full time, learning to drive, commuting, and (supposedly) working on my upcoming e-book combined with absolutely CRIPPLING writer’s block has left very little time to post here. However, progress is being made, however slowly. I have commissioned a cover for my e-book which is very exciting, and makes it all a bit more real!

Now I just need to get round to finishing it!

I’ll be reprising my insanely popular talk from the Denkfest, so get your seats early! Anyone who wants to buy me a drink, that’ll be a dry white wine

Woop woop!

I should point out that this was not representative of my experience at the Denkfest in Zurich.

But let me rewind to the beginning.

About a year and a half ago, I met Andreas Kyriacou in Copenhagen, who was to be the organiser of Denkfest, a science and critical thinking festival to take place in Zurich. He asked me if I could come and talk, and I jumped at the chance! When I saw the line up: Lawrence Krauss, Eugenie Scott, Cristina Rad… I couldn’t quite believe I was there on the poster with them.

So on Thursday, I headed to Zurich, prepared with a workshop for the Thursday evening and a general talk for Friday morning. My workshop was a “hands on” session – allowing the participants to really experience how the sessions are run – I gave examples of projects we had done from some of the 5 CQUKs that have been run.

On Friday I talked more generally about the camps, and also about the philosophy of education at Camp Quest. People seemed very engaged with this talk, and it was so nice to hear so many positive comments afterwards – so I hope we’re doing something right with regards to the way we run the camps! (And especially glad that my huuuuge nerves didn’t show during my talk!)

This stage was way too big

Thankfully, then, I had the whole weekend to relax and enjoy Denkfest. I took Friday afternoon off to do a bit of exploring in Zurich, and discovered that it is in fact a very beautiful city! For some reason, I had imagined a corporate place, with lots of banks and shiny looking buildings. But it really is charming, and as I wondered around, everyone looked so happy! There was a relaxed and chilled out vibe never found in London. I briefly considered moving.

Zurich - the weather certainly helped!

Saturday was my favourite day. The highlights were, for me, the talks by Chris French, Kathryn Schulz and Lawrence Krauss.  These conventions always inspire me to do more activism, more blogging, and it was probably making friends with Hayley Stevens and Cristina Rad that inspired me to actually use the Youtube account I’ve been sitting on for over a year and actually, you know, make a video.

Which I admit, I cheated at by having it mainly of my cat:

But I promise I will start doing “proper” videos soon! Pinky promise!

Saturday night was also fun… we had the conference dinner, that included a Science Slam, and then a large group of us went out and did the thing that happens on every Saturday night at every skeptic/atheist convention I’ve ever been to…

Skeptics in the drunk

Best parts of Denkfest:

• “Just because you don’t pay for it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a mistake” – paraphrasing the guy mentioned in the Kathryn Schultz talk
• Food – I didn’t get glutened once!
• Meeting loads of awesome people
• “Washing our feet with the swans… like Jesus”

Worst parts of Denkfest:

• Food poisoning on Sunday
• Post Denkfest blues… everyone just goes back to being little people inside my internet box

I will be doing a workshop style presentation tomorrow evening, letting people experience first-hand some of the Camp Quest sessions that we have run, and then I’ll be doing a standard talk about Camp Quest on Friday morning. After that I get to kick back for the rest of the weekend in Zurich, hopefully enjoying the forecasted 27C sunny weather on Saturday! Oh, and brushing shoulders with some famous faces. (Well, famous if you’re in the skeptical/atheist/nerd community).

I’ve travelled a lot within Europe, and become rather uninspired with it. However, although I’m sure I have passed through Zurich’s airport before, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually been to the city. So not only do I get to be an atheist rockstar for a weekend, but I get to visit somewhere new!

Not to mention, my hotel has a “wine cave”. Now if that’s not a recipe for disaster I don’t know what is!

If you’re going to the Denkfest, come and say hi!

And what an exhilarating week it was! Don’t get me wrong, it was exhausting, but in all the right ways.

We were joined by 22 young people, a small group compared to last year’s 40. It’s funny, when I take care of the admin, the campers are just names on pages, extensions of their parents’ correspondence. And when they arrive with their parents, they are closed books, shy teenagers, unsure of what to expect. But oh, what a difference a week can make!

These open, inquisitive young people have shared their thoughts, hopes and fears with us all, and we have shared ours back. It is always a privilege to work with Camp Questers, but to hear some of them say that Camp Quest now feels like a family, make me very proud indeed.

I was not raised to be noisy about my achievements, but as the stress of the first few years lifts, and we become more established each year, I am able to look back at what I (with the help of some very dedicated volunteers) have achieved.

Children who don’t normally fit in, for whatever reason, have found themselves while at camp. I was one of those children once, and I am so pleased to be able to offer what I needed then, to the next generation.

Camp Quest UK has evolved a great deal from the original US camps. Cultural attitudes to religion (and atheism) are so very different here, that CQ in the form that it exists in the States is simply not needed over here.

But CQUK is certainly needed.

We live in a world where the media is incredibly manipulative, appearance and status are the most cherished prizes, and education has been reduced to hoop jumping, standing on hind legs, wagging your tail at the judges.

The world we create at Camp Quest aims to be the antidote – a nightlight in a darkened room. In our world, education is about mystery and uncovering truths previously unknown, about discussion and contemplation, about support.

Every year the campers make me feel awfully stupid by comparison, and every year I find myself refreshed by that feeling. It is an honour and a privilege to teach and be taught at camp, and on this miserable and wet August day I feel overjoyed to have accomplished what I have.

Well, not really. Denkfest, the science and critical thinking festival where I will be speaking in September, has produced a flyer to advertise the event, and somehow my face has ended up on it!

Let me just publicly commend Denkfest for making the effort to include so many women as speakers. As you can see, they aren’t scraping the barrel (well, perhaps with me) – there are loads of women actively involved in the atheist and skeptical movement. Not that you’d know it from some events/conferences.

I can’t wait for September. I’m brushing up on my german already.