EBOC 2024

Another year with EBOC (East Bay Origami Convention)! I enjoyed spending time with fellow local folders, and exchange knowledge via teaching or chatting while chilling. Had a lot of fun on these two days (16th to 17th March 2024), so I will share my experience on this post. Of course, this is a late post. 

Pre-Convention

About 7 weeks before the event, Cal Origami committee emailed me for the event. There were many improvements from last year's EBOC:

1. Two days event instead of just one day
2. Having a special guest: Boice!
3. Hard copy of convention book

There are forms to participate in exhibition, teaching class, submitting diagram, or volunteering. As a local, I would love to participate and bring something to the table, literally and figuratively. So I registered for exhibition and teaching, without any plan for diagram submission.

The ticket cost is $15 for a day, and $25 for both days. Any teacher will get free admission on the teaching day. To get free admission we could teach 2 classes, and that's what I did. I planned to give lecture about reference finding and folding my water boatmen. 

Few weeks later I got another email, asking if I would submit a diagram. The good thing is contributor would get a free convention book instead of $15. Well... I guess it wouldn't be too much of a work to diagram one of my simple model. These college students worked so hard to make this event happened, so I decided to commit my snail diagram, which was finished within a week.

UC Berkeley is one hour train ride from the closest train station to me (Berryessa). Last year I had to take two buses to get there, taking 1 hour 20 minutes. Fortunately this year I have (finally) got a driving license, so I could just drive to Berryessa within 20 minutes. The total commute time would be around 1 hour 50 minutes, door to door.

The first class would start at 11.00. By taking the train around 08.00, I can arrive there around 09.00. The 2 hours gap can be spent chilling in coffee shop. I love tasting good quality coffee, and there are three soft targets near UC Berkeley: MY Coffee Roastery, SIGNAL Coffee Roaster, and 1951 Coffee Company.

The remaining weeks before convention, I spent preparing reference finding lecture and optimizing the sequence for water boatmen. My classes were set to be on Sunday. There was a miscalculation, as I thought this model can be taught within 1 hour. Just 3 days before convention I asked if the committee can make my class more than 1 hour, but unfortunately the time slot to make the change clashed with Boice's class. It's generally a bad idea to have a class parallel to the special guest's class, so I took the risk of teaching within 1 hour. 

Day 1: Reunion with the Locals

Woke up at 06.15, had breakfast & other morning business, then head out around 7. I arrived in Berkeley around 08.30. While chilling I found ways to optimize the folding sequence of the water boatmen.

Around 10, I arrived in UC Berkeley and saw Miguel. We were the first participants to arrive, and we continue with setting up exhibition. Boice came shortly afterward.

Exhibition set up

While waiting for the others, I flip around the convention book. This book exceeded my expectation. I have seen many convention books whose content are just lackluster, but this one is legit great. My favorite is squid by Oliver Jiang and Dat Boi by Albert Tran.

"Leaping Forwards" - the frog-themed convention book, because 2024 is leap year.

Dat Boi
The frog is designed by Albert, and I improvised the unicycle from fish base.

My snail was there too. However somehow almost all of the mountain crease were printed just like valley fold. I double checked my pdf and this problem wasn't there. So there must be corruption happened somewhere between my submission and the printing company. I hope the arrows and description still make it clear 😅.

Step 20 should have the top crease as mountain, but here everything is valley

I took various classes for the whole day, and learned various important things that are detrimental to class:

1. A large skill gap among the class participants. Some beginner attendee got confused by uncommon precreases or maneuver like outside reverse fold, and while the teacher is helping them, the more advanced attendee will be bored. Some of them even started folding other models or have a chit-chat about life.
2. Too much leeway in the class. There were classes where the students (particularly kids) keep talking and complaining when a fold is performed like saying "oh no!!". This reduces the focus of other participants.
3. Being a smarty-pants (using the word "smart-ass" is too offensive here), by trying to predict what's the next move, e.g: "do we precrease the other side?" or "do we closed sink this?". Those questions confuse other participant, add noise to the information, and annoy the teacher.

Therefore I have to be careful before starting my class for the next day. If I see the participants that were prone to be annoy the class, I will set a rule before the class.

Anyway, I here are the results from the classes.

Miguel's axolotl head

Steve's penguin (mine in center, his in the back)

Dragon hat by Bernie Peyton (or should I say, "dragon helmet" for this tiny version)

I made a small one for fun.

Photo courtesy of Boice

After the class, we had fun activities in the form of challenge. It was to fold a thick paper used to reinforce 15 cm kami packs. There were many cool submissions, like a functional phone stand, corrugation, and mask. I made this bird using fish base, just like Yoshizawa.

Judgement time with Boice

Just like last year, Jeremy Shafer came to crash the convention. He taught an impromptu class to fold his linked rings that can be opened to a flat square by pulling apart the two end points.

Jeremy Shafer

The event ended at 19.00, and the building will be locked. It was a fun day.  

Day 2: Class Teaching

The first class of the event is my class, about reference finding. I arrived at 10.00, and went to the class to ensure the display worked. It did, so I chilled while waiting until 11.00.

Exhibition set up on the 2nd day

Unfortunately when I plugged my laptop to the display again, there were message in the TV showing something like "you can increase the resolution by opening setting, and restarting the connection". It couldn't be closed since we didn't have the TV remote. Nothing on the physical button attached to the TV works either. Ten minutes passed, and no success. To not bore the class attendee, I went old school to use white board. Feels like 2011.

Luckily Albert has been tirelessly working to make it work
. I didn't know what he did, but around 5 minutes later the message box was no longer there. The class can continue as I planned thanks to him.

We ended 10 minutes early, and the participants seemed to understand the class. That made me happy, and I hope none of them would ever suggest "make grid of 8 then cut one strip" to make a grid of 7. 

The next class was the star of the event, Boice's "Big Head". He taught a massive amount of student in 2 hours. I admire his patience dealing with the super newbie, noisy kids, and smarty-pants. 

My "Big Head", designed by Boice.

Finally it was time for my water boatmen class. Only around 10 people came, but they were highly skilled and mature folder. I knew because some of them were class teachers or Berkeley alumni whom I met on last year's EBOC. Therefore there's no need to set the rules. We blasted through the one hour time frame with fast pace. Even so, we couldn't finish the entire model. About 15 minutes before time's up, I only taught half of the legs and eye shaping. Nevertheless I was happy.

To be honest, I grew to dislike origami class that purely taught how to fold a model, sequence by sequence. There's no way the participant will remember how to fold a complex model just by attending the class. So I tried to give more substance to the class by sharing the logic of the fold, like showing that the fold we did was to make a 30 degree crease, or how this model is basically a hexagon bird base.

The last class is Oliver's phoenix. It was a cleverly designed crane modification, by adding a giant kite shaped graft. 

Oliver's phoenix, with unshaped tail part

Like the day before, we have challenges. It was a contest to make a leaping frog, who can jump the farthest. To make it extra challenging, we have to fold under the table without seeing it within 10 minutes. Once the timer ended, we line up to show how far our frog can leap.

The winner was Oliver, who modded the leaping frog with the following optimizations:

1. Thicker paper. While we all start with kami, he made the paper into 1/8 instead of 1/2 by doing extra fold in half. Thicker paper will naturally want to unfold itself, so it will jump farther.
2. Extra articulation. In classic leaping frog, we made a pleat near the rear legs. He made an extra pleat, effectively making the rear part like a spring.

Frog leaping contest. The segmented long paper act as makeshift ruler.

Oliver's modded frog, who is capable of jumping out of the table

I was exhausted by the end of the day, for whatever reason. However it was a fun event. The committee did a great job to make the event fun.

Post-Convention

Being a locally close to Berkeley, I would definitely come to EBOC again. Hopefully they have one for next year. By the way, if you like black coffee and happens to be in Berkeley, you may try MY Coffee Roastery. They serve excellent quality coffee.