Toward Resilience: PopTech in Iceland

PopTech Iceland 2012

| resilience defined | conference recap | alphachimp artwork | photos |

In a world fraught with disruptions, what causes some systems, organizations, communities and people to break down and others to bounce back? For those that rebound, what do they tell us about how to build a secure future, and sturdier selves to inhabit it?

The Harpa Concert Hall & Conference Centre in Reykjavik, site of PopTech

To explore these pressing questions, in June 2012 PopTech convened its first international conference outside its homebase in Camden, Maine. Over 200 researchers, practitioners and thought leaders—working in fields such as international development, global business, climate adaptation, social psychology, economics, systems ecology, public health, emerging technology, disaster relief and community activism—gathered in the world-reknowned Harpa concert hall in Reykjavik for a dialogue about the emerging field of "resilience". 

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PopTech Climate Resilience Lab

PopTech at Karen Country Lodge (interior)

Last week, PopTech brought together an amazing and diverse group of thinkers, stakeholders, and domain experts in Nairobi, Kenya for a Climate Resilience Lab.  The three-day event was PopTech's first major convening around the issue of building resilience to climate change effects at the community level with a particular focus on identifying the roles of and opportunities for girls and women.

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2011 PopTech Social Innovation Fellows

My favorite time of year... at my favorite event of the year... with my favorite group of young entrepreneurs: The PopTech Social Innovation Fellows.

This program helps equip these world-changing innovators with the tools, insights, visibility and social network that can help them scale their impacts to new heights. They are exposed to leading experts in communication, presentation design, design research, fundraising, operations and organizational design.

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Better Living through Cell Biology

Research/Narration by Amro Hamdoun
Images by Perrin Ireland


There are many persistent industrial chemicals that accumulate in marine life and in our bodies. For many years we have had problems predicting which industrial chemicals will be persistent in the environment.

Artist Perrin Ireland worked with Amro Hamdoun to explain how current research in cell biology might be used to to prevent this problem from happening in the future. Click the link below to watch Perrin’s beautiful watercolor art unfold.
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Insights from the Science and Public Leadership Fellows Program

At the PopTech Science and Public Leadership Fellows retreat at National Geographic headquarters earlier this month, the program’s faculty provided key insights to help equip the 2011 Fellows with enhanced leadership, collaboration and communication skills.

2011 PopTech Science and Public Leadership Fellows

Member of this group are high-potential early- and mid-career scientists working in areas of critical importance to the nation and the planet. They represent a corps of highly visible and socially engaged scientific leaders who embody science as an essential way of thinking, discovering, understanding and deciding.

Jeff Nesbit, Dennis Dimick and Lisa Witter on storytelling

For a taste of their ideas, have a look at...
  1. Graphic Record produced by Alphachimp: http://bit.ly/PopTechSciFellows11scribe
  2. The Full Story on the PopTech blog: http://bit.ly/PopTechSciFellows11
  3. Video of 2010 Science Fellows at: http://poptech.org/sciencefellows/

PeaceTXT: Using the design process to decrease violence

photo credit: Mr.Montrose

Our tour guide points to a nightclub with a brown awning and the windows sealed up with cinderblocks.

He points as we roll by in the minivan. "That's where a lot of things start that end up with someone getting shot." 

After scanning the intersection, he slowly turns right. "The nightclub and the high school, stuff starts in those two places and ends up getting finished in the street."

Our guide is a "violence interrupter" for Cease Fire. 

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Download the 2010 PopTech Sketchbook

Influenced by a season of catastrophic downfalls and colossal system failures, the theme of the PopTech 2010 conference was Brilliant Accidents, Necessary Failures, and Improbable Breakthroughs. 

In a mobile paint studio in the skybox above the PopTech stage, over 30 paintings and drawings were cranked out in real-time over the three days.

In the last days before Christmas, we (finally) created a PDF combining incredible photos by Kris Krug.

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2010 PopTech Social Innovation Fellows

PopTech Social Innovation FellowsAlong with a cadre of stellar design professionals, educators, communication gurus, and experts in social enterprise, Peter Durand of Alphachimp served as faculty and scribe for this amazing weeklong program.

Each year, PopTech selects 10-20 high potential change agents from around the world who are working on highly disruptive innovations in areas.

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Social Crisis, Social Mapping & Social Change


Social Mapping for Social Change from Alphachimp Studio Inc. on Vimeo.

This week at at the Graham Foundation in Chicago, PopTech brought together three speakers (and a smart audience in this city of news aggregators and social good organizations) for a special salon event on the current and future impact of social mapping tools.

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Pop!Tech Fellows: 2009 presentation videos

PopTech 2009 Social Innovation Fellows from PopTech on Vimeo.

Meet all the Fellows in this video—and then learn more about each organization’s work in their individual PopTech presentations below.

You can watch their videos from the 2009 Fellows page (click the link under each project description), from their Vimeo channel, or follow the links below:

Aviva Presser Aiden & Hugo Van Vuuren of Lebônê

Jason Aramburu of re:char

Eben Bayer of Ecovative Design

Paula Kahumbu of WildlifeDirect

Deb Levine of ISIS, Inc.

Derek Lomas of Playpower Foundation

Josh Nesbit of FrontlineSMS:Medic

James O’Brien of Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School

Emily Pilloton of Project H Design

Hayat Sindi of Diagnostics For All

Taylor Stuckert & Mark Rembert of Energize Clinton County

Nigel Waller of Movirtu

Congratulations to our 2009 Social Innovation Fellows!

All video is released with Creative Commons Noncommercial-Attribution-ShareAlike license—and we hope you will embed and share these videos widely to help the Fellows continue their work.

 

Alphachimp @ Pop!Tech

Peter Durand from Alphachimp @ Pop!Tech from Poptech on Vimeo. Peter Durand from Alphachimp illustrates Stephen Badylak's lecture on regenerative medicine. From Pop!Tech Blogger Michelle Riggen-Ransom:

If you’re with us in Maine, you’ve probably noticed the colorful illustrations hanging on the walls of the third floor break room. If you’re not, you can take a look at them here.

These illustrations are the work of artist Peter Durand of Alphachimp Studio. Peter has set up an easel on the balcony of the Opera House, where he busily creates illustrations that capture the key elements of each presentation.

Peter let me peek over his shoulder while he illustrated a session. It happened to be Stephen Badylak’s talk on The Edge of Medicine. While images of exploded horse faces and dismembered fingers flashed on the screen, Peter managed to turn Badylak’s fascinating lecture on regenerative medicine into the illustration above. Watch a short video of his process here and see how language becomes visual art.

 

Mark Lynas and High Tide

With global temperatures higher now than they have been in 5,000 years, and greenhouse gas levels higher than they have been in over 20 million years, Mark Lynas argues that the problem of global climate change is now impossible to ignore.

Using Google Earth, Mark takes his Pop!Tech 2005 audience on a world tour from his Oxford home to areas he visited in researching his book High Tide, highlighting the damage already evident from global warming.

As projections show a rise in temperature of between 1 and 6 degrees over the next century, Mark reflects on the "crisis of biodiversity" that accompanies such a rise, including the death of the coral reefs and committing a third of all species alive today to extinction.


Mark Lynas was born in Fiji in 1973, and grew up in Peru, Spain and the UK. After gaining a first-class honours degree in history and politics from the University of Edinburgh (where he also edited the university's student newspaper), he joined a web start-up called OneWorld.net - helping turn it into the world's most-accessed internet portal for human rights and sustainable development issues. He was also active in the flourishing environmental direct action scene during the late 1990s, joining road protests and helping mount 'decontamination' exercises against genetically-modified crops, as well as participating in Reclaim the Streets protests in London and Oxford.

 

Since leaving OneWorld in 2000 to work full-time on climate change, Mark has also been active as a broadcast commentator and journalist, writing for the Guardian, Observer, New Statesman and various other publications, as well as appearing on radio and television news and discussion programmes ranging from Newsnight to the BBC World Service. His book High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis was published by Flamingo/HarperCollins on March 1, 2004. He lives in Oxford, but has given talks and presentations on climate change and his travels for High Tide as far away as the United States and Australia.