I need to feel strongly, to love and to admire, just as desperately as I need to breathe.
–Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
By Jun Chang, founder of eventdove.com
I can’t say what it was exactly that made me leave the computer engineering field—a field I had excelled in for over a decade. On paper, it seemed a foolhardy decision. Starting a company was a choice better left to 20-something-year-olds in Silicon Valley. Not a career path for a woman who had just turned 50.
Ms. Chang (2nd from left, front row) and her team in Nanjing, China(file photo).
I didn’t have a sudden, gleaming moment of insight or realization. No thunderbolt of inspiration. Rather, it was a feeling, a sense of a feeling, building up over the years of my life.
In the summer of 2008, I first picked up The Diving Bell and the Butterfly on a whim. In the memoir, the journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby recounts his life before and after a massive stroke afflicted him with locked-in syndrome. He compares the complete paralysis of his body to being confined inside a diving bell. His mind, on the other hand, is a butterfly in flight. His memoir is dictated through the blinks of his left eye—the only movement afforded to him by his body.
I knew that I could never fully understand what it would be to live within a frozen body, the strength of mind it takes. But I was moved, deeply so, by his heroism, his frustrations, his anger, his vitality.
I knew something about the diving bells we all impose on ourselves—our fears and insecurities, societal expectations, the limitations of history, the dictates of cultural customs and mores. I just couldn’t be satisfied with my life anymore without knowing what I could do, how far I could reach, how many boundaries I could break.
It hasn’t been easy. I’ve faced challenges being a woman. Being 50. Being a woman and 50. But I’ve also found success, people who believe in my company and I, support from friends and strangers alike, employees who have become family to me, and personal fulfillment.
Now, EventDove is in its 5th year. More and more event organizers use EventDove to manage and promote their events everyday. We’ve created and provided them with tools such as real-time badge printing and digital check-ins, all accessible through our mobile app, to enhance their attendees’ onsite experience. We are currently looking to expand into the US market.
I still don’t know where or how it all will end. But I hope to share with you in future posts parts of the path I’ve taken, a winding, sometimes circuitous path—still in flight.