A nice, lush lawn may look nice, but apart from walk on it and cut it incessantly, what does it do for you? You could be growing actual food that humans can eat instead! This talk will invite you to join the “seedy” world of urban agriculture where Nerd Nite and/or its speakers are not responsible for any obsessions that may ensue. You have been warned!

Jocelyn Crocker (BSc, MEd, EdD) is a recovering academic who now works for the public service. After replacing her front lawn with a food forest 15 years ago, Jocelyn and her family’s pantry and freezers (yes, plural) have been filled with home grown eats ever since. Jocelyn’s nerdiest triumph was representing Nerd Nite Edmonton at the International Nerd Nite conference in Washington, DC in 2015 with a talk about urban beekeeping, which means she’s been droning on about this sweet topic for a decade.

Instagram: @chezpomegranate

The joys of fermentation, yielding food that promotes healthy bacteria, dynamic flavours, and possibly inebriation… From sourdough to wine, many cultures culture.

Brooke has been cooking from the time she could reach the stove to turn on the oven, which evolved into a career. She did her culinary training at Vancouver Community College and was offered a position cooking for the American Olympic team in Turin in 2006. She moved back to Edmonton the same year and worked in many of Edmonton’s best restaurants, bringing bacterial cultures from one kitchen to another!

Instagram: @threebbb

The history of Western typography (in contemporary times typically referring to reproduced materials) has its roots in early hand lettering, especially formal styles that existed long, long before Times New Roman and Comic Sans. But how did our current alphabet come to look the way it does? Why do we read the way we do? The answers go back further than you might think!

Jennifer is a graduate of Fine Arts, Visual Communication and Design, at the University of Alberta. She has taught visual communication and typography at the post secondary level. In 2016, Jennifer earned a design-based MA, Humanities Computing; her research focussed on storytelling with interactive information graphics. While in grad school she was a research assistant for academic projects that examine how we read in the past to inform new ways of interacting with text now and into the future. Her areas of expertise include editorial, interpretive and information design.

Instagram: @seajenny