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Thursday, November 20, 2008
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 | | PUSH 2005: The Geography of Change | |
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| Emerging Capital:
From Threat to OpportunityAlready more than 50% of the population in developing countries is under the age of twenty-five, with continued growth expected over the next generations. This tipping point in global demographics suggests either incredible unrest or unrealized opportunity. What will it take to liberate the great entrepreneurial urge in this population? And as globalizing influences introduce new possibilities for development, how likely are they to be our future business partners? |
| Business Models:
Lessons from DeviantsThe radicals, the renegades, the deviants – some of our most influential innovations come from the irrepressible fringes of society. What perspective can we gain from those who both live and think outside norms, conventions and laws? What activities are brewing under the radar that signal emerging markets, technologies and business models? What elements of deviant practices are creating the future first, and how can we learn from them? |
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| New Frontiers:
The Edge of PossibilityThroughout history, technology has shaped how we see the world and its possibilities. And now that the rate of innovation and change is accelerating exponentially, we are seeing ever more radical capabilities that are altering our definitions of “world,” “life,” and “human.” What new frontiers and resources are opening up as a result, and how will it affect the choices we make? What influence will it have on how we live, and on society as a whole? |
| Strategy:
Mediating ChangeThe radicals, the renegades, the deviants – some of our most influential innovations come from the irrepressible fringes of society. What perspective can we gain from those who both live and think outside norms, conventions and laws? What activities are brewing under the radar that signal emerging markets, technologies and business models? What elements of deviant practices are creating the future first, and how can we learn from them?
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Dear Friends and Colleagues, As Globalization continues to collapse time, distance and economic space, the rate of change is accelerating at a dizzying pace. Advances in technology have allowed the exchange of ideas, influences and innovations to occur instantaneously, through discrete social networks. Change itself has become decentralized and is often generated under the radar and outside our focus on (threatened) norms and standards. What’s increasingly clear is that we cannot control it; rather our power lies in how we choose to engage and leverage forces of change for a future worth creating. PUSH 2005 is a designed to give you a glimpse of that future. Our work over the next few days is to identify and understand what’s coming in from the periphery of change and the below-the-surface drivers that are creating them. Most importantly, it is intended to help you discern the changes that really matter and their relationship to what really matters to you. Together, over the next 2-1/2 days we will explore the Geography of Change and the big ideas and strategic territories that are just beginning to emerge. We will learn, laugh, be entertained, piqued and provoked by some of the greatest minds and talents of our time. Including you. The connections you make here – the insights, relationships, opportunities – are your map to a future only you can imagine. What you bring back to your life and your organization is an appreciation not only for where the world is going, but a vision for a world you must create. Welcome to PUSH 2005! Cecily Sommers
Founder and President
The Push Institute |
Iqbal Z. Quadir has taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University since 2001, focusing on the impact of technologies in the politics and economics of developing countries. His particular research interest is in the democratizing effects of technologies in developing countries with some of his initial thoughts published in the Summer/Fall 2002 issue of The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs. He is currently a fellow at Harvard’’s Center for Business and Government. Quadir spent most of the 1990s founding and building GrameenPhone Ltd., which has now become Bangladesh’s largest telephone company, with revenues of $150 million in 2002. His childhood exposure to the conditions in rural Bangladesh combined with his later venture capital experience in New York led Quadir to recognize that the ensuing digital revolution could facilitate the introduction of telephony to 100 million people living in rural Bangladesh. In 1994, he formally launched this effort by convincing angel investors to establish a New York based company, Gonofone (meaning “People’s Phone”) to help him organize what subsequently became known as GrameenPhone. Quadir’s vision of a large–scale commercial project that could serve all urban areas and 68,000 villages in Bangladesh led him to organize a global consortium involving Telenor AS, the primary telephone company in Norway; an affiliate of micro–credit pioneer Grameen Bank in Bangladesh; Marubeni Corp. in Japan; Asian Development Bank in the Philippines; Commonwealth Development Corp. in the United Kingdom; and International Finance Corp. and Gonofone in the United States. He attracted these investors by complementing his vision with a practical distribution scheme whereby small entrepreneurs, backed by loans from Grameen Bank, could retail telephone services to their surrounding communities. With the support of these investors, GrameenPhone, established in late 1996, started building a new cellular network and providing services to the public soon thereafter. To date, it has built the largest cellular network in the country with investments approaching $300 million and a subscriber base of 800,000. Its rural program is already available in more than 20,000 villages, providing telephone access to more than 30 million people, while helping to create micro–entrepreneurs in these villages. Quadir’s work has been recognized by leaders and organizations worldwide, with invitations to speak at many forums, including the World Bank, United Nations, World Economic Forum, and Aspen Institute, as well as colleges and universities. Quadir appeared on CNN and PBS and was profiled in feature articles in Financial Times and The New York Times, and in several books. The World Economic Forum, based in Geneva, Switzerland, selected him as a “Global Leader for Tomorrow.” Quadir is an active board member or adviser to several companies and organizations involved in international development. In the United States, he is involved with Gonofone, Cap Gemini Ernst and Young’s Center for Business Innovation, Voxiva, MIT Media Lab Asia, Money Matters Institute, and EnterpriseWorks Worldwide. Internationally, in addition to GrameenPhone in Bangladesh, Quadir works with UnoPhone in Norway (which is extending telephone services to rural Uganda), and the Evian Group in Lausanne, Switzerland. Earlier in his career, Quadir served as a vice president of Atrium Capital Corp., an associate of Security Pacific Merchant Bank, both in New York, and a consultant to the World Bank in Washington DC. He received an MBA and an MA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a BS with honors from Swarthmore College. Read Iqbal Quadir’s inspirational essay “Connectivity is Productivity” |
Marc Sommers is an international consultant, a Research Fellow at Boston University’s African Studies Center, and serves as CARE USA’s Youth at Risk Specialist. He has explored the impact of war and urbanization on children and youth in Africa as well as Colombia, El Salvador, and Kosovo. Dr. Sommers documents his work wherever he goes visually as well, and his photographs have been exhibited in the U.S., Europe, and East Africa. His book, Fear in Bongoland: Burundi Refugees in Urban Tanzania, received the 2003 Margaret Mead Award. He has also received the Award for Outstanding Paper on Refugee Issues from the American Anthropological Association's Committee on Refugees and Immigrants. Among his other books is Islands of Education: Schooling, Civil War, and Southern Sudanese (1983–2003). Dr. Sommers has worked for the World Bank, USAID, the U.S. Department of Defense, UNICEF, UNHCR, UNESCO, and numerous NGOs. |
Ethan Zuckerman became a fellow of the Berkman Center in January, 2003. His work at Berkman focuses on the impact of technology on the developing world. His current projects include a study of global media attention, research on the use of weblogs and other social software in the developing world, and work on a clearinghouse for software for international development. In 2000, Ethan founded Geekcorps, a non–profit technology volunteer corps. Geekcorps pairs skilled volunteers from US and European high tech companies with businesses in emerging nations for one to four month volunteer tours. Volunteers have served in 14 nations, completing over a hundred projects, and will serve in Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Vietnam and Morocco in 2004. Geekcorps became a division of the International Executive Service Corps in 2001, where Ethan served as a vice president from 2001–4. Prior to founding Geekcorps, Ethan helped found Tripod, an early pioneer in the web community space. Ethan served as Tripod’s first graphic designer and technologist, and later as VP of Business Development and VP of Research and Development. After Tripod’s acquisition by Lycos in 1998, Ethan served as General Manager of the Angelfire.com division and as a member of the Lycos mergers and acquisitions team. In 1993, Ethan graduated from Williams College with a BA in Philosophy. In 1993–4, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Legon, Ghana and the National Theatre of Ghana, studying ethnomusicology and percussion. Ethan was given the 2002 Technology in Service of Humanity Award by MIT's Technology Review Magazine and named to the TR100, TR’s list of innovators under the age of 35. Recently, Ethan was named a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. He lives the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts with his wife Rachel. He serves on the boards of regional and international organizations that focus on technology and education, including on the sub-board of the Open Society Institute’s Information Program. Current Projects: Global Attention Profiles: Major media outlets tend to report more thoroughly on rich nations than on poor ones. Media audiences, in turn, tend to pay little attention to news in the developing world. Is this a result of a biased media, or are media companies reacting to market forces and audience desires? And is there a way to short circuit this cycle, drawing attention to critical stories and perspectives in undercovered areas? Global Attention Profiles are statistical and graphical representations of where different media sources are focusing their attention. They demonstrates correlations between these distributions and economic and population statistics, most notably a strong correlation between national wealth and media attention. Current GAP research focuses on audience behavior, examining the general public's interest in developing nations through purchasing behavior and weblog authorship. Homepage for the GAP project. Global Blogging: Early work on bridging the international digital divide has focused on providing information – usually health or agricultural information – to disadvantaged communities. This focus may miss the real promise of the Internet - the ability to include people in developing nations in global dialogues, allowing people to give voice to their issues, concerns and solutions. The world of weblogs, where some of these online dialogues are starting to take place, has great potential as a medium for discussion between people in communities around the world. But, at the moment, these discussions rarely include people in developing nations. Including more of the world in the world of weblogs is a project that requires technical changes to weblog software and hosting services, education and advocacy around the world, and the building of connections between people already involved in these conversations and those who want to participate. Ethan outlined a strategy for increased inclusion of the developing world in online dialogues in a recent paper titled Making Room for the Third World in the Second Superpower. He is working with Open Society Institute–s Information Program on a project to develop globally compatible weblog software, with AllAfrica.com on BlogAfrica, a project designed to showcase African weblogs, and with Berkman fellow Rebecca MacKinnon on a set of projects and surveys designed to learn more about international blogs and bloggers. Social Source Commons: Resulting in part from Ethan’s past work at Berkman, Social Source Commons is a new initiative of Aspiration Tech, in cooperation with OSI's Information Program. Social Source Commons is intended to be a repository of software created for use in international development. SSC will collect open source software from independent developers and from government aid programs which commission this software. SSC will then work to identify deficiencies in software available and help mobilize the global community of open source developers to write code to fill these holes. Digital Democracy: Several Berkman fellows, including Urs Gasser and Colin Maclay, will be collaborating this fall with Professor Charles Nesson on a class titled “Digital Democracy”. The class will attempt to address the question "What happens to goverment in a digital age?" from a number of perspectives. Ethan will focus his contributions on the success and failure of eGovernment projects in developing nations, and on “semiotic democracy” — the ability or inability of people to have their stories heard in mainstream media. Miscellany: Weblog: ...My Heart's in Accra
Personal web page: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/
Email: ethan@ethanzuckerman.com
PGP public key: www.ethanzuckerman.com/key.txt |
Dr. Zafar Qadir is the Economic Minister and Pakistan’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization since August 2004. Prior to his present assignment, he worked as an expert on economic diplomacy for the Government of Pakistan. As head of the Foreign Trade Wing in the Ministry of Commerce, he led Pakistan delegations in most of the market access negotiations both at bilateral and regional levels. He spearheaded the successful completion of historical dialogue on SAFTA (South Asian Free Trade Area) and ECOTA (ECO Trade Agreement), besides finalizing the free trade agreement between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. During his civil service career, Dr. Qadir held top managerial positions in the district and provincial administration in Pakistan, involving revenue administration, resource mobilization, project management, social sector development, and public private partnership. Having attained the necessary skills in project management, community development, and human resource management at the University of Connecticut (USA), University of Manchester (UK), Agriculture College, Seoul (Korea), and ADB Institute (Philippines), he headed the Asian Development Bank’s major rural development initiative in Pakistan during the years 2000 and 2001. His remarkable contribution during managerial assignment in under–privileged areas of Balochistan has been the social change steered through providing high–quality English medium formal schooling under the auspices of “Taaleem Foundation” to the literally illiterate societies in the rural tribal areas. This not–for–profit organization is now the single most successful community development intervention in the tribal districts of the Balochistan province. The organization is employing some 200 educated women and is serving a large majority of school–going children in those areas. Academic excellence coupled with effective change management in social reforms process is considered the organization’s main pride and strength. Dr. Zafar Qadir holds his Masters degrees in Politics, Economics and Business Administration; and a PhD in Development Studies from the Trinity College & University, USA. http://www.taaleemfoundation.org/ |
Ingo Günther, born in 1957, grew up in the city of Dortmund, Germany. In the ‘70s, travels took him to Northern Africa, North and Central America, and Asia. He studied Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at Frankfurt University (1977) before he switched to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1978, where he studied with Schwegler, Uecker, and Paik (M.A. 1983). In the same year, he received a stipend from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf for a residency at P.S.1 in New York. He received a DAAD grant the following year and a Kunstfonds grant in 1987. Günther’s early sculptural works with video led him towards more journalistic oriented projects which he pursued in TV, print, and the art field. Based in New York, he played a crucial role in the evaluation and interpretation of satellite data gathered from political and military crisis zones; the results were distributed internationally through print media and TV news. The goal was to make military and ecological information, that was up to this point inaccessible, known to the public in order to have a direct impact on political processes. On an artistic level, the work with satellite data led to Günther’s contribution to documenta 8 (1987), the installation K4 (C31) (Command Control Communication and Intelligence). In the same year, Günther received accreditation as a correspondent at the United Nations in NY. In his capacity as artist, correspondent, and author, he worked extensively with Japanese TV (NHK), covering topics that ranged from media studies to military technology. Since 1989, Günther has used globes as a medium for his artistic and journalistic interests. In 1989, nine months before the reunification of Germany, he founded the first independent TV station in Eastern Europe, Channel X, Leipzig in order to contribute to the establishment of a free media landscape. http://republik.com http://worldprocessor.com http://refugee.ne |
An Estonian historian, Member of Parliament, and Prime Minister of Estonia in 1992–1994 and 1999–2001, Mart Laar was born in 1960 into an Estonia behind the Iron Curtain. Although never actually incarcerated, Laar braved Soviet arrest by researching the history of Estonian resistance to the Soviet WWII occupation of his country. After earning both a BA and MA from the University of Tartu, Laar, along with some associates, interviewed and recorded accounts of Estonian resistance fighters known as the “Forest Brothers” and their support network of villages and helpers from 1944 to 1956. His book containing these accounts of bravery, heroism, fighting, Soviet atrocities, and hardships was published in 1992 under the title “War in the Woods.” Called “the most successful historian among the Estonian politicians,” Laar first started his political career in Estonia’s proto–Parliament known as the Estonian Supreme Council from 1990 to 1992. In 1992 Laar became Prime Minister of Estonia and set about taking his country from an impoverished nation ruined by the Soviet occupation to a modern nation with a healthy, sound, capitalist economy that is now a full member of the European Union and NATO. Under Mr. Laar’s leadership, Estonia achieved record economic growth, reined in inflation, boosted foreign trade, and implemented a successful privatization program. Estonia’s tremendous progress under Laar’s skillful leadership is recognized by the 2003 Index of Economic Freedom, which placed Estonia in the sixth position, tying for number six with Denmark and the United States. Mr. Laar also created the world’s first working online government, making Estonia the most advanced country in this regard. As a result of these reforms, Mr. Laar has received several prizes and honors, including the European Bull Prize in 2001, the Adam Smith Award in 2002, and the Polak Award in 2003. In 2001, the Davos Economic Forum named him Prime Minister of its “World’s Dream Cabinet.” “Years ago, we were probably among the most ‘unfree’ of the economies in the world. Estonian history has not been easy. In 1940 independent Esotonia was occupied by the Soviet Union. But we never gave up. We fought partisan war for nearly ten years and continued to resist in other ways. Along with mass deportations, Estonia lost one–third of its population as a result. We fought the Cold War together as brothers–in–arms with you, and we won it together. In 1991, the Soviet empire ceased to exist.” MART LAAR FORMER PRIME MINISTER, ESTONIA |
A civil engineer by training, Torres first made his mark by growing Grandicón S.A., a major construction firm, into the largest engineering business in the country. His talents were then borrowed by such players as MasterCard, Cenpro Radio & TV, Corluz S.A. (formerly General Electric), and Pronta S. A., where he moved more than 46 companies – in all sectors – from being nationally financed to privately held businesses. Currently, Torres is President of the Consulting Group of Colombia, a multinational Latin American company that is developing energy infrastructure and production in Mexico. Torres has emerged as one of the key voices and leading experts on the global spread of narcoterrorism. He has served as an informal advisor to the Colombian President and has authored many articles for business journals and magazines, as well as a book on finance. Decision makers from all spheres rely on his insight and knowledge on this subject. A champion of trade and business development for Latin America, Torres frequently serves as a consultant to governments and large–scale business projects. Most notable among them are “Pymes,” a cooperative project between the Colombian government, universities and private business to develop export strategies, and the “InterAmerican Bank for Business Development,” a project of the Chamber of Commerce of Bogotá that supports “Pymes” companies. This will not be Torres’ first visit to Minneapolis: In 1985–86 he was a Fellow at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, and has appeared numerous times as a guest lecturer on Latin American Macroeconomics for St. Thomas University’s MBA program. Additionally, Torres taught courses in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Management at Javeriana University, Sabana University and CESA, a leading business school in Bogatá. |
Annalee Newitz is a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She conducts research, talks to the media, propagandizes, and writes policy recommendations and white papers. Although she is a digital rights generalist, her special areas of interest are expanding the public domain, free speech, and network regulation. Previously, she was Culture Editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian and was the recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship in 2002. She writes a syndicated column called “Techsploitation” (http://www.techsploitation.com) and is published regularly in national magazines and newspapers. In her off hours, she edits an indie magazine called Other. She has a Ph.D. in English and American Studies from UC Berkeley. |
James Weiss is a performance and installation artist who stages events using video, storytelling, and music. Choosing precise moments of intimacy to reflect universal themes, Weiss’ work shows some of his strongest influences: time working in Andy Warhol’s studio in 1986, two Master of Arts degrees in Art History, and Laurie Anderson. With the performance company he founded in 1992, faceitdadpictures, Weiss has produced dozens of shows collaborating with musicians, scientists, graphic designers, and psychotherapists. Recent works include “Camera Obscura” — an installation/performance where Weiss lived in a room viewable only through peep holes– and “Traces,” a collaboration with cellist Marie–Aline Cadieux, a sweet and sorrowful performance about our shared desire to leave a trace. Throughout his performing career, Weiss has continued to teach art history at Yale University, The University of Connecticut, and Kutztown University. He has performed in Philadelphia, New York City, New Haven, and other cities around the East Coast, and is pleased to bring his work west of the Mississippi for PUSH 2005. | | Push Singh is a post-doctoral researcher in the department of computer science and electrical engineering at MIT. His research goal is to understand how minds work, so that he can construct a machine that thinks. He is building a “unified theory of non-unified theories of cognition” so that he can draw on a diversity of ideas to help him in his purpose. Singh is opposed to the popular idea that machines that see, hear, move about, and think can be built by the simple application of a single, theoretically neat but conceptually impoverished idea like feedforward neural networks, statistical estimation, or first–order predicate calculus. He believes that the artificial intelligence systems of the future will contain many different internal architectures, each designed to learn to solve certain kinds of problems. Each architecture will have its own set of interpreters, languages, libraries, and other resources for expressing and managing the kinds of processes, representations, and knowledge needed to deal with those problems. Only such extensive diversity will provide the ability to cope with the vast range of situations that will appear both in the world and in the minds of the systems themselves. His advisor and mentor is Marvin Minsky, whom he assists in teaching a course based upon Minsky’s book The Society of Mind. |
| Helen Greiner is the Chairman and Cofounder of iRobot Corporation, a company that she co–founded in 1990. iRobot is currently the leader in the mobile robotics field, an emerging high growth industry. Aggressively pursuing both the consumer and the military market for robots, irobot products include the Roomba® Robotic Floorvac, an autonomous vacuum; and the PackBot™ tactical mobile robot, a military robot. Ms. Greiner attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she majored in Mechanical Engineering with concentrations in Economics and Electrical Engineering. Her Masters in Computer Science was performed in the MIT Artifical Intelligence Lab under Dr. Ken Salisbury. She worked at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a student building gripper systems for space satellites. In 1989, after graduation she founded a company commercializing JPL Technology called California Cybernetics. This company sold force controllers and performed government sponsored research in robotics. In 1990, Ms.Greiner saw this technology as the basis for a whole new class of products – ones that improve life by taking on dangerous and tedious jobs. She moved back to the East Coast to start iRobot (then called IS Robotics) with two like–minded business partners, MIT classmate Colin Angle and Prof. Roney Brook (Dr. Brooks is now the director of the Computer Science Labs at MIT). iRobot is now the industry leader in robotics dedicated to creating realistic robotic solutions to real world problems. Under her leadership, iRobot has grown from a garage venture to over $50M with 4 locations in Massachusetts, District of Columbia, California, and Hong Kong. Ms. Greiner raised $28M in venture capital to support growth. Ms Greiner took the military side of the business from zero, to running DARPA contracts, to participating in the Future Combat Systems program – the largest army procurement program ever funded. In the consumer space, iRobot’s Roomba™ Robotic Floorvac is the best selling robot ever with over one million units in homes around the world. Ms. Greiner is the recipient of many prestigious awards and honors. In 1999, she was named as one of the Innovators for the Next Century by Technology Review Magazine. In 2000, she won the prestigious “DemoGod” award with Scott Cook of Intuit and Jeff Hawkins of Handspring (now Palm). In 2003, Ms. Greiner was recognized by Fortune magazine as one of the top 10 innovators in the country. Ms. Greiner won the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for New England (with iRobot Cofounder Colin Angle) and was a National Award Nominee. Ms Greiner has appeared on numerous shows, such as Scientific American Frontiers and CNN, and has had numeous articles written about her in places such as Wall Street Journal and Readers Digest. Ms Greiner is frequently asked to speak at conferences and in 2004 kenoted the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference and the American Nuclear Society Robotics Conference. Ms. Greiner has been an active participant in the World Economic Forum. About iRobot Aggressively pursuing both the consumer and the military market for robots, our products include the Roomba® Robotic Floorvac, an autonomous vacuum, and the PackBot™ tactical mobile robot, a military robot. The award–winning Roomba® Robotic Floorvac, the most successful mobile robot ever produced, has developed a dedicated following inspiring numerous online communities. Roomba Floorvacs use iRobot’s advanced navigation technology to clean carpet, wood, tile, linoleum and other household floor surfaces with virtually no human assistance. Introduced in 2002, Roomba Floorvac was featured as one of the year's best products by Time magazine, Business Week, and USA Today. The PackBot™, the first ground robot used by the US Army in combat, was used to inspect caves, clear buildings and dispose of bombs in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Still in use in both theatres, this tough, mobile, easy to use robot is lifesaving technology for our troops. http://www.irobot.com/ |
Loretta Hidalgo has a Masters degree in Biology from Caltech and a Bachelors degree in Biology from Stanford and has participated in research expeditions to the High Arctic as well as 3,519 meters underwater to the Mid–Atlantic Ridge. In 2003 she was part of a team that dove to the bottom of the ocean with Director James Cameron to film a 3D IMAX movie discussing the search for life in the universe called “Aliens of the Deep.” In 2004 she worked for the X PRIZE Foundation as their Special Operations Lead, helping to create the events leading up to the winning of their 10 million private space flight prize. She is also an FAA–certified In–Flight Crewmember for the parabolic flight company ZERO–G, which in September 2004 became the only company to offer “weightless” flights in the United States. She is the President of the Space Generation Foundation and the Co–Creator of Yuri’s Night, the World Party for Space. Between degrees she interned at NASA in the Astronaut office, worked on Safety for the International Space Station, was staff at the NASA Academy and served as the North American Representative to the Space Generation Advisory Council. She has spoken to children about science in Africa during a total eclipse of the sun; worked with NASA in the Arctic looking at plant life in extreme environments; studied Space Tourism in Chile with the International Space University and, together with George T. Whitesides, was awarded the “Permission to Dream” Award from the Space Frontier Foundation for their work creating Yuri’s Night. Loretta's passion is bringing together people who want to use space to make a difference in the world. (And when she is not doing that, she is working on just how to get herself launched out into space...) www.aliensofthedeep.com –to see the James Cameron 3D IMAX movie trailer www.yurisnight.net –to learn more about a worldwide celebration of Yuri Gagarin's Launch and the 1st Space Shuttle Launch's Anniversaries www.nogravity.com
–to look into getting your own weightless flight! |
Tina Blaine (aka Bean) is a visiting scholar and adjunct faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center and Human Computer Interaction Institute, exploring new interface designs for collaborative musical games and interactive media. Inspired by global traditions and spontaneous music, Blaine has explored musical interaction starting in the &lsqu;80’s building electronic MIDI controller instruments and large–scale audience participation devices with the multimedia ensemble D’CuCKOO. As a musical interactivist at Interval Research, she led a development team in the creation of a collaborative audiovisual instrument known as the Jam–O–Drum, now on permanent exhibit at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Blaine’s work has been featured at SIGGRAPH’s Emerging Technologies, Design of Interactive Systems (DIS), Zeum’s Youth Art and Technology Center in San Francisco, and is currently on exhibit at the Ars Electronica Center’s Museum of the Future in Linz, Austria. In 2001, she co–organized the first CHI workshop called “New Interfaces for Musical Expression,” which has since become an International Conference on Musical Interfaces. Blaine serves on the California College of Arts & Crafts (CCAC) Media Design and Advisory Board, teaches sound design part–time at CCAC, and was recently selected for Richard Saul Wurman's 2002 publication, Who’s Really Who: 1000 Most Creative Individuals in the USA. An energetic composer and multi–instrumentalist, Blaine has written music for NPR, video games, TV and documentary soundtracks, and currently performs with RhythMix, Pandemonaeon, and Bogo. She has also recorded with Brian Eno, Mickey Hart, Haunted by Waters, D’CuCKOO, Tracy Blackman, and others lured by the muse. |
Philip Blackburn was born in Cambridge, England, and studied there as a Choral Scholar at Clare College. He earned his Ph.D. in Composition from the University of Iowa where he studied with Kenneth Gaburo and began work on publishing the Harry Partch archives, now completed after 15 years. Blackburn’s book, Enclosure Three, won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. He has been the Senior Program Director for the American Composers Forum since 1991 and continues to compose, build sound–sculptures, perform, and write about things like Partch, Vietnamese music, and the use of sound in public art. He runs the innova record label and the Sonic Circuits International Festival of Music and Art. He received a 2003 Bush Artist Fellowship to begin building a sound park in Belize. ARTIST’S STATEMENT I want to reinvigorate the use of sound in public art; to make musique concrète with a mixer and trowel; to further the practice of listening; to make a camera obscura for the mind’s ear — by subtly activating the acoustic environment and building magical resonant spaces: chirping stairs, fluttering walls, singing wires, throbbing sewers… Music with some assembly required. It is hard to escape from music. We spend more time filtering out sounds then we do being aware of them. Result: more aural clutter, more environmental pollution, more insensitivity to others and ourselves. How can I help myself and others practice listening and reclaim our soundscape? When is “Composition” “Meditation?” I compose to make us aware of our own composing: How we live, choose, arrange, experience, perform and develop our own sound world. This practice generally involves the public (rather than trained new–music professionals), takes place in non–arts venues (rather than the historically– and architecturally–loaded context of the concert hall), and seeks the simplest means of generating the most richly–complex polyphonies and group dynamics. I compose community directly (it is not a target of “outreach” for me). Passersby, virtuosos, children and adults participate in my musical world on a level footing. Fun, seductive, subversive, interactive. These are the qualities I seek in my compositions (and they are indeed structured compositions rather than improvisations or sculptural objects). They may bypass conventional means but are nonetheless disciplined. This artistic direction also requires entrepreneurship, since I generally operate outside the musical industry. How does experimental music, that most esoteric of art forms, go down with the uninitiated? My recent works have been witnessed by many thousands of people; some have personally expressed their joyful astonishment, kids go out of their way to play my sound sculptures every day after school, a woman from Paris sat by my Nevada desert piece for three days, five people were in tears after a performance of my organ piece, a hushed crowd at the Minnesota State Fair gathered for a work celebrating junk food… Cerebral, sometimes silly, my works require no training to appreciate but I hope they elicit a direct response and provoke further inquiry. I have long fantasized about creating musical experiences that are so fleeting and personal that they are essentially undocumentable and non–transportable: “You really should have been there.” My success in this direction however means that work samples cannot convey remotely the same message. The music is generally conceived for specific places for a particular audience, and is not intended to travel or enter the standard repertoire of anything. My philosophical direction, of course, in no way diminishes the more mainstream tradition and academic musical circles. I maintain a strong involvement in those but simply choose to pursue my own path (albeit not so far from a Pauline Oliveros or Maryanne Amacher world). I find the more I let go, the more my own compositional voice and concerns take shape and follow a path without the usual models. Originality, if I have any of it, is a natural result rather than a goal. The categories of sound sculptor, sound artist, performer and composer are likewise blurred in my case. I compose more than sound sculptors do; I make more instruments than composers typically do; I perform alongside others in my own compositions without controlling the specific outcome… And yet I have tried to anticipate the occasion and stipulate the kinds of musical interactions that will take place (if everyone agrees to the rules of the score). Sometimes there are written instructions (a score, like the rules of a game); and sometimes simply instruments in space for you to play (the space itself is the score). Perhaps I am a ritual designer. |
David Kuehler currently leads the Clay Street Project, a new innovation program at Procter and Gamble. Prior to joining P&G he was the Director of Project Platypus, a groundbreaking product development initiative at Mattel Toys. Kuehler’s background encompasses over fifteen years in the design and entertainment fields. His education is in design, engineering and theater. Before joining Mattel, Kuehler was Director, Creative Development and Programming for Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Centers. At the Walt Disney Company, Kuehler was instrumental in the design development and rollout of Club Disney, a location based entertainment concept for families. As an Instructor and Speaker at Art Center College of Design, he created and taught new curriculum designed to get Graphic Design Students “off–the–page” and focus on storytelling, experience design and product development. Kuehler founded an entertainment design company. In addition, he has developed television shows for Nelvana Communications and Britt Allcroft productions. He is the co–creator of SCOOBS a new kids action adventure television show beginning production later this year. Kuehler is a contributing author in the recent books: The Change Champions Fieldguide: Strategies and Tools for Leading Change in Your Organization and Best Practices in Leadership Development and Organizational Change. | | Cecily Sommers is a futurist who helps organizations manage for advantage amidst certain, but unpredictable, cultural and business change. Through her consulting firm, Unit 1, Inc. she engages multinational companies, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and others in pivotal conversations about the direction of the future, and their place in it. Her annual PUSH Conference, held under the aegis of the non–profit PUSH Institute which she founded in 2002, has become known for its bold look into the future, intellectual rigor and multidisciplinary focus. Culture, art, science, technology, economics, marketing and politics are explored and mined for inspiration and practical business application. A sought–after speaker, Sommers is often featured at conferences, business schools, workshops, seminars and board retreats across the country. She has also been featured on Minnesota Public Radio and her “What’s Up With That?” trend segment can be regularly heard on WCCO’s Pat Miles Show. She recently completed “The Energy Foresight Report,” and is currently at work on a book “The Next America.” Sommers has been described as “one of those rare people who is destined to make a mark, who has that special blend of heart, foresight and leadership” (Andrew Zolli, Founder, Z Partners, New York City). In the words of Merle Minda, President of Merle Minda Plus and former Senior Vice President of Fleishman-Hillard, “She is catalytic and brilliant.” |
| Jerry Michalski (ma–call–ski) is the founder and president of Sociate (“so–see–8”), a strategic consultancy. Jerry’s principal interests are in the many ways that technology and people interact — in private and business settings, and at all scales: as individuals, businesses, economies and societies. His point of view is informed in large part by his pursuit of the word “consumer” for the past decade. Among his varied roles, Jerry is an advisor to companies such as UBS, Boeing, Tellme, Monitor Group, IDEO, the Institute for the Future, Socialtext and Seedwiki. He advised eGroups before they became YahooGroups, and Pyra (makers of Blogger) before their acquisition by Google. More recently, he founded the Yi Tan Collective, an open, federated network of practitioners skilled in change. As one of Yi Tan’s activities, he hosts a weekly podcast about technology and change. For the five years before founding Sociate, Jerry was the Managing Editor of Release 1.0, Esther Dyson’s monthly newsletter. With Esther, he also co–hosted the annual PC Forum, the technology industry’s premier executive conference. Jerry has been quoted regularly in major news media and trade publications; he has appeared on CNBC, CNNfn and other TV broadcasts. Prior to joining Release 1.0, Jerry was a vice president with New Science Associates, a retainer market–research company later bought by Gartner Group that helped large corporate clients make effective use of emerging technologies such as neural networks, object–oriented programming and groupware. At New Science, Jerry launched and directed two research services: Intelligent Document Management (1989) and Continuous Information Environments (1991). Jerry is also an alumn of Price Waterhouse’s Strategic Management Consulting group and Mobil Oil’s domestic supply and transportation department (well before they became PriceWaterhouse Coopers and ExxonMobil, respectively). Jerry earned an M.B.A. in International Business from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (1985) and a B.A. degree in Economics (principally econometrics) from UC Irvine (1980). He was raised in Peru and Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish, German and French. http://www.sociate.com/http://www.yi-tan.com/ |
Since 1997, Ten Foot Five’s unique company of musicians, percussionists and rhythm tap dancers have astounded audiences creating music with 5–gallon paint buckets, metal cans, found objects and tap shoes as well as traditional instruments including electric guitar, bass, keyboards and drums. Founded by Rick and Andy Ausland, two brothers from Minneapolis, Ten Foot Five was born when these two teamed up with three of their friends and entered a dance competition (hence the name — five guys, ten feet). Since then, the brothers have collaborated with many other artists and performed nationally and internationally. With shows like “Soul Tribe Revolution” “Phunkeapolis” and the current acclaimed “Buckets and Tap Shoes,” Ten Foot Five continues to create unique and organic experiences to share with the world. http://www.10foot5.com/ |
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