Pop!Tech - Speakers and Performers 2008

Chris Anderson

As editor in chief, Chris Anderson has led Wired magazine to six National Magazine Award nominations, winning awards for General Excellence in 2005 and 2007. In April 2007, he was named to the Time 100—Time magazine’s list of the 100 men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming the world
An internationally known speaker and widely read blogger, Chris is the author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, and blogs regularly about the subject at thelongtail.com. His upcoming book, Free explores the socio-economic implications of companies that give away products and services for free. In the 20th century, free was a marketing trick, but in the 21st century, Chris proposes free is becoming a new economic model.

Chris is also the father of five who finds time to regularly nurture his passion of DIY drones and who blogs at geekdad.com. He is an officer of the Young Presidents’ Association and a regular speaker and participant at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Stephen Badylak

More than 20 years ago, while looking for ways to make substitute blood vessels, Stephen Badylak and his colleagues discovered the most unlikely of wound healers—small intestine material from pigs. What he calls “Mother Nature's scaffold for wound healing," has since proven valuable in a wide variety of healing issues—from minimizing scarring to healing torn tendons.

Stephen holds more than 200 patents worldwide and has authored more than 180 scientific publications. He is currently president elect of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society and has chaired several study sections for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including the Bioengineering, Technology, and Surgical Sciences Study Section.

Stephen has received numerous awards, including the Sigma Xi Scientific Society 2002 Research Award, the Clemson Award (Society for Biomaterials) in 2005, the Carnegie Science Center Award for Excellence in 2005 and 2008 and the Chancellors Distinguished Research Award in 2008.

Marian Bantjes

Admirers say that Marian Bantjes can set a mean page of type—a deliberate understatement—as the ornamental, obsessively detailed text Bantjes puts to paper is nothing short of pure art. Whether drawn in pen and pencil or crafted from sugar, the serifs and shapes flow together in perfect harmony, resembling lace or an illuminated manuscript.

A Canadian-born designer, artist, illustrator, typographer and writer, Marian’s clients include WIRED and Saks Fifth Avenue, and her designs have been featured in magazines published from Brazil to Paris. Her work is part of the permanent collection at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper-Hewitt). She is currently an instructor at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia.

“I can be inspired at any moment by the strangest things,” Marian says. “I am seldom bored. I have more ideas than I will ever be able to produce in my lifetime—some of them are even good ideas.”

Bill Bishop

Think back to the car rides of your youth and you’ll likely hear the refrain “This is my side, that’s your side. Don’t cross the line or I’ll tell dad.” This stay-on-your-own-side mentality has crept into the ways that as adults we organize ourselves socially, economically, politically … and geographically. Bill Bishop has something to say about it.

In his book, The Big Sort, Bill goes beyond the simplistic red state/blue state divide to examine the way Americans have sorted themselves into like-minded communities over the last three decades. He delves into the causes and consequences of this behavior.

Bill is an accomplished journalist who has written for The Mountain Eagle, Lexington Herald-Leader and American-Statesman in addition to owning and operating The Bastrop County Times and co-editing The Daily Yonder.

Chandler Burr

As perfume critic for The New York Times, Chandler Burr reviews the latest scents, speaks on the global stage and leads interactive classes explaining perfume to the average person.

Beyond his responsibilities at the Times, Chandler writes on politics, business, travel, food and sexual orientation. His latest book is The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York. He has served as contributing editor for U.S. News and World Report and has written two other books. His stage play, Exquisite, was nominated for the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play, and his first novel, You or Someone Like You, will be released by Ecco Press in summer 2009.

Of the style he brings to perfume writing, Chandler states, “I'm a science journalist … and I depart from a sort of relentlessly clinical, empirical approach upward toward the aesthetics of perfume.”

Dickson Despommier

Dickson Despommier believes vertical farms, also called “farmscrapers,” could provide a sustainable solution for feeding the world’s growing population and repairing ecosystems damaged by traditional farming methods. Imagine if the building in which you lived provided all the fruit, vegetables, fish and livestock you needed to eat during the year. Thanks to Dickson and his graduate students at Columbia University’s Environmental Health Sciences lab, drawings for such a building already exist.

Equal parts microbiologist, ecologist and agricultural architect, Dickson uses greenhouse techniques and recycled resources to envision buildings that could provide enough food for their residents while minimizing land use, water waste and the possibility of crop failures.

Dickson was named Teacher of the Year by the American Medical Students Association in 2003, and he has earned the same distinction six times at Columbia. He will be included in a major upcoming exhibit featuring ten great innovators at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.

Kelly Dobson

A self-proclaimed junkyard kid, Kelly Dobson has marveled at the underlying connection between people and machines since the age of four. She is a researcher and doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she developed “machine therapy,” a personal, societal and psychoanalytical study of machine design and its pervasive effects on everyday life.

Kelly’s recent work includes a voice-controlled blender named Blendie, and ScreamBody (the first in a series of wearable body organs), which allows users to vocalize emotions in otherwise impermissible environments.

“Critical infoldings happen in the connections between people and machines,” Kelly says. “Machines have expressive, engaging behaviors, strength of character, negotiative egos and neurotic propensities.”

Krista Dong

Dr. Krista Dong is the director for a program called Integration of TB in Education and Care for HIV/AIDS (iTEACH) based in KwaZulu-Natal South Africa. She has worked in International Health focusing on HIV/AIDS and TB since 1991, from Gambia and South Africa to Indonesia. She is on faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) / Harvard Medical School where she completed her Infectious Disease Training. For several years, Krista helped hundreds of destitute HIV-positive adults and children in Durban, South Africa at the iThemba Family Care Center. As a founding physician, she developed a program that incorporated local beliefs, cultural practices and at-home visits into traditional HIV/AIDS treatments, making them more successful. The South African government is now replicating her programs in other provinces. Originally drawn to the AIDS crisis after the deaths of several friends during the early 1980s, Krista is interested in continuing her HIV work in developing countries.

“Once patients accept their illness and are empowered to understand it, then they can choose life,” she said in a recent interview.

Juan Enriquez

Juan Enriquez is a firm believer in the economic power of the human genome. As chairman and CEO of Biotechonomy LLC, a life sciences research and investment firm, he is literally invested in unlocking the intersection between science and industry. His global bestseller, As the Future Catches You: How Genomics & Other Forces are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth, demystifies genetics in an effort to bring the topic out of the lab and into the family dining room. By making genetics accessible, Juan thinks we can prepare for the new economy.

Juan is a prolific contributor to a wide variety of periodicals. His work for the Harvard Business School is often showcased in the Harvard Business Review. Fortune profiled him as “Mr. Gene,” and he was one of the organizers of the life sciences summit commemorating the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA for Time.

Joining Craig Venter, who sequenced the human genome, Juan was part of an around-the-world sailing voyage that led to the discovery of an unprecedented number of new species.

“Today the most important language you can teach your kids is genetics,” Juan says. “Those who refuse to learn will be functionally illiterate and unable to understand, much less compete in, a rapidly changing economy.”

Robert Fabricant

Robert Fabricant is the creative director of frog design in New York, where he and his design teams develop user experiences for a wide range of digital platforms—from medical devices to desktop software. His client list is impressive, including AOL, GE, Coca-Cola, BBC, Nextel and more. He is a frequent contributor to a wide variety or publications, with interactive work appearing in Wired, The Wall Street Journal and I.D. magazine. He serves on the faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. In 2009, he will join the faculty of the School of Visual Arts.

Robert is also a faculty member of the Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellowship Program 2008. His work with the Pop!Tech Accelerator program provided the design services for Project Masiluleke, a mobile technology campaign that heightens public awareness of HIV/AIDS information, counseling and treatment, primarily in South Africa. Thanks to Robert, the project’s participants find a valuable, relevant experience.

“Virtual experiences have the potential to add a great deal of richness to our communications and imaginations,” Robert says.

Laurie Garrett

Laurie Garrett is a best-selling author, science journalist and the only writer to win all three of the “Big P” journalism awards: Peabody, Polk (twice) and Pulitzer.

A senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations since 2004, Laurie is an expert on global health, with a focus on emerging and re-emerging diseases, how they relate to public health, and their effects on foreign policy and national security. Her books, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance and Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, are considered required reading for anyone interested in getting a grasp on the global health crisis.

“We live in a microbial soup,” Laurie reminds us. “Humans have a hard time imagining that they are just one piece of a general ecology. And that, in fact, they are food for literally millions of microbes.”

Malcolm Gladwell

Three great things about Malcolm Gladwell:
1.    His award-winning writing for The New Yorker takes us places we’ve never dreamed of going and never want to leave.
2.    In 2000, his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference set the marketing world on its ear.
3.    In 2005, he defined the enormous human potential of the instantaneous and wrote Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking … he was then named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People.
4.    He has a new book due out in November.

Okay, that was four great things.

Malcolm graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, with a degree in history. He was born in England, grew up in rural Ontario, and now lives in New York City.

Saul Griffith

Dr. Saul Griffith lives and breathes open-source information. He co-founded instructables.com, an online clearing house where you can share what you do and how you do it, from building low-cost indoor ponds to cooking mushroom burgers that look like mushrooms. He is also the co-founder of numerous other companies, including Squid Labs, Low Cost Eyeglasses, Potenco, and Makani Power.

Saul co-writes a series of comics devoted to making and doing called HowToons! He is a columnist for Craft and Make magazines, and serves as technical advisor to Popular Mechanics. He holds multiple patents and patents pending in textiles, optics, nanotechnology, and energy production.

Of Squid Labs, one of his many accomplishments, Saul says “We’re not a think tank, we’re a do tank.”

K. David Harrison

It is estimated that in this century, more than half of the world’s languages may disappear. As co-founder and director of research at the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, David Harrison leads language revitalization projects in an effort to preserve the dying and disappearing languages of the world. Working with National Geographic, he conducts scientific expeditions to map global linguistic diversity found in “language hotspots”. He is passionate about training indigenous community members to document and sustain their own languages.

David is an associate professor of Linguistics at Swarthmore College and the author of the new book When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. He was recently featured in the documentary The Linguists, which followed his hands-on linguistic fieldwork in Siberia, India and Bolivia.

David considers the preservation and revitalization of languages the “greatest conservation challenge of our time … the loss to science, to humanity and to the native communities themselves will be catastrophic.”

Laura Waters Hinson

Laura Waters Hinson is the director and executive producer of As We Forgive, the 2008 Student Academy Award-winning documentary about Rwanda’s reconciliation movement. As tens of thousands of Rwandans are released back into the very communities they once helped destroy, Laura’s film asks basic questions of forgiveness and recovery.

Currently, she is engaged in a nationwide screening tour, presenting As We Forgive for the U.S. Congress, the State Department, Library of Congress, the World Bank and various universities and institutions. To that end, she recently launched Living Bricks, a multi-media viewer campaign to support reconciliation efforts in Rwanda.

Laura also served on the crew of 14 Women, an acclaimed documentary about the lives of the female U.S. Senators, directed by Mary Lambert.
When speaking about her film, Laura says, “I believe As We Forgive has a message for people all over the world. Reconciliation is needed everywhere, and I’m convinced that we can all learn from Rwanda.”

Van Jones

Van Jones is a human rights and civil rights activist. He co-founded and is the executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, an organization promoting alternatives to violence and incarceration. A strong advocate for national environmental issues, Van has also served on the boards of several national and global environmental organizations. A graduate of Yale Law School, Van has received a number of human rights honors, including the Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellowship.

Van believes people need to engage others with the issues they find important: “One thing I’ve been saying a lot lately is that Dr. King didn’t get famous with a speech called ‘I Have a Complaint.’ At some point, we have to say what we're for.”

Valdis Krebs

Founder and chief scientist at orgnet.com, Valdis Krebs maps, measures and analyzes the connections we make within and between our social and organizational networks. He is the developer of InFlow software, which enables users to tap into any network’s patterns of information, from the purchasing tendencies of Amazon.com book shoppers to the pre-9/11 communications of two identified terrorists.

Valdis has almost 500 social and organizational network analysis projects (SNA/ONA) under his belt. His client list includes IBM, Lockheed-Martin, Kaiser Permanente, Lucent Technologies and various universities and government offices. His work has been featured in several major newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, BusinessWeek and Fast Company.

“I think any complex system that has interactions and interdependencies can be expressed as a network,” Valdis says, “and there are various social network analysis practices that can be used to analyze them.”

George Lakoff

A world-renowned linguist, George Lakoff’s research on language-based metaphor, the embodied mind and the overall structure of language have shaped our understanding of the relationship between what we say and what we’re thinking.

George spent the last few election cycles applying this expertise to the realm of politics. He’s written a number of books on the subject, including Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think in 1996, and his latest book, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics With an 18th-Century Brain. He founded the Rockridge Institute—a progressive think tank dedicated to reframing political thought and debate—and continues to teach cognitive linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
When asked the most important thing to remember when framing political debates, George replies simply, “Words matter.”

Ian Lipkin

Dr. Ian Lipkin is an internationally recognized authority on infectious disease and neurology. His many contributions read as a list of field-defining firsts, including the discovery of over 30 viruses.

Ian is the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity in Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, China CDC, USDA, U.S. Dept. of Defense and the World Health Organization all benefit from his expertise during various outbreaks and vaccination safety inspections.

On the future of identifying diseases, Ian is clear. “New tools for detecting and discovering pathogens, new sample collections and new research models will allow us to head off future outbreaks of infectious disease and to meet the challenges at the intersections between genes and the environment. But technology is like a car with a lot of horsepower. If you point it in the wrong direction, you can run people over.”

Matt Mason

Matt Mason wants you to know there’s a lot the world can learn from piracy. Author of The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism, he defines piracy as another type of business model or marketing tool. He also explores ways piracy can bridge the gap between unbalanced, out-of-touch laws and the way we use and consume information.

Matt’s journalism articles have appeared in such publications as The Guardian, Adweek and The Independent. In 2004, he was appointed to British PM Gordon Brown’s Start Talking Ideas campaign, and presented with the Prince’s Trust London Business of the Year Award by HRH Prince Charles. Recently, he co-founded the nonprofit media company Wedia, which connects volunteer filmmakers and journalists with nonprofit organizations around the world.

“Many of us are being challenged by the problem of others sharing and using intellectual property without permission,” Matt states. “This challenge requires a new attitude, because sometimes piracy isn’t a threat, it’s an opportunity.”

Joe Navarro

Joe Navarro can read you. An international expert in nonverbal communications, Joe dissects the body language of others, pinpointing stress indicators, deceptive tendencies and other natural reactions. For 28 years, he worked as an FBI agent and supervisor. Today he lends his advice to a diverse group of people, from amateur poker players to corporate executives.

Navarro is the author of four books, most recently What Every BODY is Saying. He has taught at the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, the University of Tampa, Saint Leo University and the National College of District Attorneys. In addition, he has served as a consultant to the Department of Energy, the State Department, the Institute for Defense Analyses and the National Security Division’s Behavioral Analysis Program.

“Reading people is something you can use every waking minute of your day,” Navarro says. “It can contribute to your job performance and enrich your social life.”

Jay Parkinson

Billing himself as “a new doctor for a new century,” Dr. Jay Parkinson’s practice, Hello Health, doesn’t shy away from house calls, webcams or iPhones. He’s re-imagining what it means to be a doctor—and a patient.

For example, you can chat with the doc online, using a secure IM application, get a checkup in your office or at home and receive care, even if you are uninsured. In fact, Jay and his colleagues provide care to any age patient, insured or not.

All this innovation leaves the industry scrambling to define Jay. His explanation is simple: “I’m not so much an online doctor. I am a doctor who utilizes good communication for my patients.”

Paul Polak

Psychiatrist, entrepreneur and philanthropist Paul Polak is the founder and president of International Development Enterprises (IDE), a nonprofit that is harnessing the power of the market to alleviate poverty. After a trip to Somalia, Polak became interested in working with the rural poor. He learned about their challenges by employing the same tactics he pioneered as a psychiatrist—interviewing them in their environment to understand their specific struggles firsthand. By becoming intimate with the day-to-day needs of the poor and treating them as customers, entrepreneurs and producers, IDE has developed affordable technologies that have transformed the lives of poor farmers. Polak puts the real-world benefits of IDE’s work into simple market terms: “It is huge,” he says. “If you add $500 in net income to somebody who makes $300, in Bangladesh or rural India, they’ve moved into the middle class.”

Gustav Praekelt

As a digital entrepreneur, obsessive technologist and managing director of Praekelt Consulting, Gustav Praekelt believes that mobile phones will transform Africa. He developed the Praekelt Foundation in 2006, which provides open source mobile technology to drive access to vital information and services. The Foundation’s two flagship products, SocialTxt and TxtAlert, elevate Please Call Me (PCM) messages from merely a popular way to communicate into social marketing services that deliver measurable results.

Gustav is a faculty member of the Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellowship Program 2008, and has worked with the Pop!Tech Accelerator program to enable Project Masiluleke, a PCM messaging campaign that heightens public awareness of HIV/AIDS information, counseling and treatment.

To Gustav, the benefits of PCM messages are easily identified: “You can measure exactly how many people saw the messages, how many people called and how many people used the service."

John Priscu

John Priscu—guitar rocker, Harley rider and internationally renowned polar scientist. In between playing gigs and cruising on his hog, the rock ‘n’ roll scientist seeks out life hidden thousands of meters beneath Antarctica.

A professor of ecology at Montana State University and principal investigator in the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project, his work has been featured in Time, Newsweek, Discover, National Geographic and numerous scientific journals, as well as on BBC and CNN. In 2003, the Byrd Polar Research Center awarded him the Goldthwait Medal for outstanding contributions to polar research.

John’s research at the ends of the Earth has other-worldly implications. He says, "If life exists in outer space, it's likely in the form of microbes trapped in planetary ice."

David Rakoff

Once you hear, read, or see David Rakoff you leave with one solitary, over-arching thought: this is one witty guy. His New York Times bestsellers, Fraud and Don’t Get Too Comfortable, put him on the literary map of new humorists who, rather than reinventing social commentary, take the wise-cracking roots of the 20th century’s most thought-provoking wits and bend them to the will of 21st-century life.

He is a regular contributor to Public Radio International’s This American Life and The New York Times Magazine, a correspondent for Outside, and writer-at-large for GQ. His writing has also appeared in Vogue, Salon, Seed, Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Observer, and Wired, among other publications.

Pamela Ronald

Genetic engineering and organic farming have more in common than one might think, according to Pamela Ronald. She argues that used together, they can reduce the impact of farming on the environment, make farming safer for workers, and make food more plentiful and nutritious.

A professor of plant pathology at the University of California, Davis, much of Pamela’s work has focused on genetically engineering flood- and disease-resistant rice—a staple of food for 50 percent of the world’s population. She is also the co-author of Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food.

In a recent article for The Boston Globe, she wrote, “It is time to abandon the caricatures of genetic engineering that are popular among some consumers and activists, and instead see it for what it is: a tool that can help the ecological farming revolution grow into a lasting movement with global impact.”

Sanjit “Bunker” Roy

“Bunker” Roy returns to Pop!Tech. In 2005, he wowed us with the story of his “Barefoot College,” which was built by and for the poor, to help them apply traditional knowledge and skills to problems like drinking water quality, energy and the environment.

Sanjit is the recipient of many prestigious awards for his service, including the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, the Swiss Schwab Foundation Award and the St. Andrew’s Prize.

As to his take on learning, Sanjit likes to quote Mark Twain, saying, “Never let school interfere with your education.”

Carl Safina

Carl Safina worries that fish are heading the way of the buffalo. The ecologist, writer and lifelong fisherman loves the thrill of the hunt, but he believes overfishing is causing grave harm to the ocean’s fish, the ecosystem they inhabit and ultimately, the planet. Carl has helped lead campaigns to ban high-seas driftnets, rewrite and reform U.S. fisheries law, apply international agreements to help restore depleted fish populations and pass a United Nations global fisheries treaty.

Carl has written more than 100 articles and three books, including Song for the Blue Ocean, and most recently, Voyage of the Turtle. He founded the Living Oceans Program at the National Audubon Society in 1990, and in 2003, he co-founded the Blue Ocean Institute to encourage a compassionate, conservationist view of the ocean. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the John Burroughs Medal for literature and a MacArthur Fellowship.

“Recognizing the ocean’s importance to life and to human futures would engender a sense of moral engagement,” he says. “It would mean showing and sharing our sense of connectedness, dependence, gratitude and commitment to the sea, whose gifts include making this planet capable of supporting life itself.”

Lincoln Schatz

Artist Lincoln Schatz plays with time, narrative and memory to create what he calls “generative video portraits.” Using video cameras and computer software, he makes art that changes with each viewing, constantly revealing something new about his subjects.

In his most recent project, CUBE, subjects spend an hour inside a translucent 10-foot cube dancing, painting, exercising or doing whatever they feel best represents their unique personalities. Twenty-four cameras film them from various angles, and Lincoln uses the resulting thousands of video files to design evocative portraits from randomized, overlapping images. Esquire magazine commissioned CUBE to create portraits of George Clooney, Jeff Bezos, Marc Jacobs, LeBron James and other notable subjects for the magazine’s 75th anniversary celebration.

“My work engages chance as a means of breaking habitual modes of thought,” Lincoln says. “I invite chance in the service of creating something beyond my limitations.”

Suzanne Seggerman

Suzanne Seggerman is President and Co-founder of Games for Change (G4C) the primary non-profit and international nexus for those interested in using digital games to address pressing contemporary issues - from global conflict to poverty to the environment. Called "the Sundance of video games" for "socially-responsible game makers", G4C is working with a variety of high impact partners to foster and shape this new genre, including Microsoft, mTV, the United Nations and and a variety of NGOs. Suzanne recently won a MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Competition award. Before co-founding G4C, Suzanne was a Director at NYC-based new media think tank Web Lab, where she co-curated 'Provocations', the first national exhibition featuring digital games about social issues. Her background in online media includes community-oriented interactive environments and the design of non-traditional games, which earned her awards from New Voices New Visions and Communications Arts. Before her involvement with new media technologies, she worked as a documentary film producer for PBS, including on Ken Burns/Stephen Ives PBS series "The West" and as Co-producer of "Race For Life," a humanitarian aid and documentary film about Eastern Europe. Suzanne received a BA from Kenyon College and a Masters from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Clay Shirky

Expert in all things web-based, Clay Shirky has written extensively about the Internet for the past 12 years. His articles have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review, among other places. He has worked as a consultant to organizations such as Nokia and the Library of Congress and lectured on emerging technologies at conferences and forums. In 1996, he testified as an expert witness on Internet culture in a court case that helped strike down the Communications Decency Act.

Clay’s consulting practice emphasizes the rise of decentralized technologies, such as peer-to-peer web services and alternative wireless networks. He serves as adjunct professor in New York University’s graduate interactive telecommunications program. In February 2008, he published Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

“If I had to describe what I write about,” Clay states, “it would be ‘systems where vested interests lose out to innovation.’ Or maybe ‘systems where having good participants produces better results than having good planners.’”

Gary Slutkin

Dr. Gary Slutkin sees gun violence as a behavioral response, like smoking or drinking. As executive director of Ceasefire Chicago, he leads a community of outreach workers dedicated to changing the behaviors, expectations, and realities of gun violence in Chicago neighborhoods—and they’re getting results, including reducing shootings by up to 67 percent.

Gary is trained in infectious disease control and reversing epidemics and has worked to curb disease outbreaks in San Francisco (tuberculosis), Somalia (cholera), Uganda (AIDS), Thailand (AIDS) and more than twenty other countries. He received his medical degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. On top of his responsibilities for Ceasefire, he is a professor of epidemiology and international health at the University of Illinois, Chicago, School of Public Health.

“Our job is to change what’s normal,” Gary says. “You use multiple messengers with the same message … all saying the same thing: No shooting. We don’t shoot here anymore, it’s not acceptable. Shooting makes things worse.”

Zinhle Thabethe

Zinhle Thabethe has stood as a symbol of the strength, determination, and luck required to survive the AIDS epidemic currently ravaging Africa. Unable to acquire the medication she needed to battle a case of acute meningitis, she lay sick in bed for months facing the prospect of her own death. But Zinhle began a new journey when a stranger appeared at her home and carried her to a nearby HIV clinic. She was chosen as one of 90 fortunate patients who received the necessary medication to battle her illness. She has educated herself and fought poverty, all while facing the death, discrimination, illness, and loss associated with HIV and AIDS. Today she uses her voice to speak out for other victims. She not only speaks about the epidemic, but also sings with the Siphithemba Choir, made up of 30 HIV-positive South Africans, to spread her message and raise money for the cause.

“I used to think, why me? Why did I have to be infected with this HIV?” Zinhle says. “Now I think, why do I get to live while others next to me are dying without these drugs?”

Frank Warren

Every week, Frank Warren releases 20 honest-to-goodness secrets into the blogosphere. Frank is the creator of PostSecret, a blog that asks people to put a truthful, anonymous and previously unuttered confession on a postcard and mail it to be posted on the blog.

What started as an art installation has evolved into an award-winning website and three best-selling books. Frank was also named number 14 on the Forbes list of the 25 biggest, brightest and most influential people on the Internet. In 2006, he was presented with a special award from the National Mental Health Association in recognition of how PostSecret has “moved the cause of mental health forward.”

Here are just a few of the funny, disturbing and moving secrets:
“I give decaf to customers who are rude to me.”
“I’m 25 and I’ve never been kissed.”
“I love my wife, but my Hawaiian honeymoon would’ve been better with my ex.”

Peter C. Whybrow

Dr. Peter C. Whybrow is director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. A British expat, he finished his studies in England before coming to America to join the faculty at Dartmouth, then the University of Pennsylvania and finally UCLA in 1997.

Peter is an international authority on depression and manic-depressive disease. He is a frequent advisor to universities, foundations and government agencies and has written numerous scientific papers and five books, including his most recent, American Mania: When More Is Not Enough. He believes there is a biological relationship between our genetic inheritance and the social behaviors that balance a market economy. American Mania explains how our American culture may be in danger of losing that balance, making us sick in the process.

Peter views American Mania as a cautionary tale of sorts, saying “Affluence and a culture of excessive individual reward—unless we understand and modulate it—have the potential to slowly destroy the vital infrastructure that makes for a stable social order and for human happiness.”

Benjamin Zander

If the twenty-first century has a renaissance, Benjamin Zander will be leading it. He is a classically trained cellist who studied with Benjamin Britten, Imogen Holst (daughter of Gustav) and Gaspar Cassadó. A conductor who is considered a leading interpreter of Mahler and Brahms. And a speaker who gives exhilarating talks on the expansiveness and elasticity of human potential.

Benjamin is a four-time keynote speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he was recently presented with the Crystal Award for "outstanding contributions in the Arts and international relations." He was also awarded the 2002 Caring Citizen of the Humanities Award by the International Council for Caring Communities at the United Nations.

Benjamin is the co-author (with his partner, leading psychotherapist Rosamund Zander) of the best-selling book, The Art of Possibility, which has been translated into 16 languages.

Performers

Abdominal

Abdominal is a Toronto-based, phrase-bending hip hop MC.

Rufus Cappadocia & Friends

Rufus is a rapidly-rising cellist who channels diverse influences – from the modalities of Middle Eastern, West African and pan-European folk forms to blues, rock and jazz – to create an unforgettable music experience.

Imogen Heap

Imogen Heap is an ethereal, Grammy-nominated, electronica songstress.

Amos Lee

Amos Lee is a multi-genre (folk, soul, jazz) singer-songwriter who has toured with Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Norah Jones and Paul Simon and claims Stevie Wonder, James Taylor and Bill Withers as principal influences.