I never had the joy of meeting Leo in person, but after co-creating this website with Mabel and CK – seeing all the photos and videos, reading Mabel’s accounts and all the tributes that everyone wrote – I feel like I’ve gotten to know him better than we ever get to know most people.
I think the most powerful experience of all was reading Leo’s own writings through his Digital Humanities blog, “The Leo Chan Connection.” I got a true sense of how he thought about things, how he solved problems, and how he viewed the world. One post that struck me in particular was his Text Analysis and Data Visualization Assignment, where he analyzes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I studied this classic novella when I was at university, and it has always been one of my favourites. I, too, had written more than one essay about it and had often used it as a metaphor for the dark but necessary journeys we must take throughout our lives.
As part of his text analysis, Leo created a Wordle for the Heart of Darkness. Wordle is a word cloud generator, one of the first on the internet and still one of the best. It takes all the words that you plug into it and turns them into a visual art piece that illustrates data.
The size of a word depicts how often it occurs within the text. So for Leo’s Heart of Darkness, Kurtz is the biggest word because it appears with the most frequency within the book. For Leo’s full analysis, you can read his blog post here.
Leo’s Wordle inspired me to create one for his website. I was curious to know what words would appear to help define and highlight all of the key aspects of his life. What would Leo’s message be? I took all of the text from the site – from every page and post, all the bits and pieces that everyone had written – and fed them into Wordle. This is the result:
While Leo gave Heart of Darkness a black background and autumn colours to depict its dark theme, I gave Leo’s site a sunny yellow background and rainbow colours because that’s what I see when I think of him. It’s no surprise that Leo, Inspires, Life, Young, and People are the largest words in the cloud. With each word comes a powerful message written in the book of Leo’s life. Words that continue to reach out and touch people’s hearts. Words that continue to inspire us. Words that continue to change the world.
This simple yet powerful exercise made me wonder what my Wordle would look like at the close of my life? It made me start thinking of the Wordle I want to create for myself, what words and colours I want to put out there. What potent messages will linger on long after I am gone?
In their tributes, people spoke of the potential Leo had in his life, but one conclusion I’ve drawn is that Leo could clearly see the potential of others too. That’s why he approached everyone with openness, enthusiasm, and curiosity – especially the quietest ones in the room! He knew the human potential, and deep inside, so do you. We all do.
What is your potential in this life? What kind of impact can you make on the world? What does your word cloud look like?
Now is the moment to start finding out. Let’s enjoy the adventure!
– Zia
