PCOC 2009 Follow-up

Though I have done origami as a hobby since I was a kid, I discovered that I have none of the intense commitment of even the most casual folder at the Pacific Coast Origami Conference. Fortunately the convention attendees are a friendly & sharing bunch, as well as being delightfully nerdy. It is easy to start a conversation simply by asking anyone, “What did you make today?” Most of the learning really happens in the exchanges between the attendees themselves. In a couple of minutes between classes, someone showed me how to fold a simple PHiZZ unit. I was later able to make 30 & combine them into a dodecahedron. During one lunch, a woman showed us a gorgeous hand-made book she had bound. The book could be unfolded into a 3-dimensional tower. At another lunch, a man from Southern California showed me a variety of sharp models he had folded out of dollars bills.

My best class experience was with Eric Gjerde, who showed us how to fold a star puff tesselation during a 3 hour session. This is a totally new folding technique to me, & I am sure I would not have been able to figure it out by following diagrams in a book. I have to admit that I impressed myself with the result.

The next Pacific Coast Origami Conference will take place in Seattle in 2011. New York holds one every year, of course on a much larger scaler. Next summer Singapore hosts 5OSME, an international conference about origami & mathematics.