Susan G. Hauser

WDS Ambassadors

It’s been a week since I donned my orange T-shirt and joined the ranks of the World Domination Summit Ambassadors. I was a volunteer at this annual conference, whose aim since 2011 has been to help remarkable people lead unconventional lives. The founder is a determined young man named Chris Guillebeau, a Portlander who has written several books and visited every country on earth. That’s just for starters.

I began to have a sense of what WDS’s mission was on the night when all the Ambassadors gathered to meet Chris and the other leaders. My first impression was that the group was highly organized with very few loose threads. And I felt even more comfortable as the message to us was repeated: We empower you. As volunteers we weren’t at the tail end of a chain of command; we were helping to make things happen and to serve the needs of attendees.

We were all given the privilege of attending any of the academies, which were pre- or post-conference workshops. Given my love of language, Bennie Lewis’s Language Lab seemed right up my alley. That was on Thursday morning, well before Friday morning’s Great Namaste in Pioneer Courthouse Square, registration and the kick-off party.

On Saturday, after the Ambassadors greeted attendees and offered assistance in any way needed,

The Schnitz

we were able to creep into the Schnitz and listen to the presentations. Same thing on Sunday, so our intake of messages was sometimes disjointed. But from bits and pieces from the 11 presentations, I got a much clearer idea of what World Domination is all about.

To a person, the message delivered was: Follow your passion. Find a way. If one way doesn’t work, find another way. And if you satisfy your own burning passion, while at the same time giving other people something that will enhance their lives, you are already a success.

I think I was most proud to be associated with WDS at the very end, when Chris explained the method behind the madness of asking attendees to slip into a tent on registration day and record a brief video

WDS

of themselves imagining that they were speaking to their present selves from the year 2020. Chris’s foundation reviewed all the videos and selected four people to receive funding and assistance in realizing their noble dreams of building community, sharing experience and knowledge. As each person learned that he or she was being thus honored, I felt chills.

And it took me back to that evening when 60 volunteer Ambassadors met to learn our duties. “We empower you,” we were told repeatedly. And after the World Domination Summit the message has sunk in. I am empowered. I can realize my dreams.