Zap Your PRAM is a lot like good Scotch. It’s hard to find the right words to describe it. Instead of offering a feeble overview of an amazing four days with amazing people I’m simply going to offer a few sample Zap nuggets.

• Rob Paterson blew my mind with a notion that money, in many cases, is a replacement for relationship. Need someone to take care of your kids or help you move? If you have no friends or family you have to pay for those things to happen. I thought that this may be limited to personal situations but then realized that by the end of the weekend that relationship currency was actually being traded/offered in exchange for things like blogs, technology, and accommodations.
• Ian ruined many people with a fabulous Scotch tasting adventure. His breadth of knowledge and extreme likeability made tasting Scotch much more of a total immersion experience than I thought was possible. How did he ruin people? His exquisite selection of Scotches won over many new Scotch fans…. but once you’ve had the best you can’t go back. Silverorange might have to put in a new line item on the ol' income statement…
• Tessa fracking rocked touch football. Injuries and all.
• The conference refuses to end. From Dalvay it went to Casa Mia. From Casa Mia it went to Halifax. From there it apparently went to the Internet. The conference seems to be refusing to die on Twitter, Facebook, Google Groups, blogs, photo galleries and email. Long live Zap!
• These are freaking fantastic portraits. I can’t wait until mine is posted. I’m thinking of getting it blown up and framed in an ye-olde frame for my office. Need a kick-ass photographer in the Toronto area? You won’t get a nicer and more talented guy than Rannie Turingan.
• Dalvay By The Sea was magical. I believe Deane Barker summed it up by saying “there must be fairy dust sprinkled on this place”. The food, the ambiance, the setting… incredible. It will be hard to beat if we decide to do Zap again.
• John Connolly wooed us with world class talent on Saturday night. I bought his album today on Itunes and have been reliving the Zap night through his music.
• Oh the food…
• Jes Sherborne did a presentation on Decoration. It goes down as one of the most significant design presentations I have been privy to. It completely rocked. I make a light prediction that it may be a kernel that grows into an entire design movement.
• It was a mini-silverorange retreat. Each night as things wound down in the main building the silverorange cottages were just revving up. The shenanigans were legendary. We largely have Keith & Nick to thank. Seriously…. I laugh so much with the slice crew it hurts. Becky was forced to endure two nights in the cottage. On the last night we attempted to go to sleep before the cottage had cleared out. We spent the next hour laughing out loud in bed as the hilarity seeped through the thin wooden walls.

We learned from Rob's talk that banks create money out of thin air. We also learned that money is a replacement for relationships. If this is true we all cashed in at Zap. It turned out to not be about technology, the Internet, or anything tangible at all. The weekend was about the people and the relationships that were deepened or started.

The trick now will be to figure out how to leverage these relationships a thousand times, pool them into a general fund, sell that fund to someone else, sell insurance on the fund, then take out securities on the fund and the insurance.

A sincere thank you from all of us left back on PEI. We were honoured to be your hosts.