Held every October, in the beautiful seaside village of Camden, Maine the PopTech Conference brings together 700 influential participants for one of the world’sbest thought leadership events.
David DeSteno directs the Social Emotions Lab at Northeastern University where his research is pulling back the curtain to reveal some of the mechanics that drive human compassion. “It is not the severity or the objective facts of a disaster that motivate us to feel compassion and to help. It is whether or not we see ourselves in the victims.”
Vicki Arroyo is the executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center of Georgetown University Law Center. She studies preparedness and resiliency with respect to climate-related catastrophes. “Traditional models of who is in charge in a disaster do not necessarily operate when you have a real disaster.”
Amanda Ripley is an investigative journalist who writes about human behavior and public policy. For Time Magazine and the Atlantic, she has chronicled the stories of American kids and teachers alongside groundbreaking new research into education reform. “Kids have strong opinions about school. We forget as adults how much time they sit there contemplating their situation.”
Boxer Claressa Shields, age 17, clawed her way out of hardscrabble Flint Michigan to win the first ever Olympic gold medal for women’s middleweight boxing. She has won 31 fights -- and lost only one. “That fight made me work so much harder when I got back to the gym, even though I cried and I was sad. It made me hungrier.”
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Steve Lansing, a senior fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, discusses the Byzantine system for the distribution of water from a volcanic lake in Bali to over two hundred farming villages. It’s worked since the 12th century, it’s egalitarian and it’s still-sustainable. “It’s one of the few functioning, ancient democratic institutions that we know about. It’s kind of beautiful.” |
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Economic commentator and author Tim Harford presented a creative, challenging perspective on financial systems, drawing upon examples from oil rig explosions to nuclear disasters to make his point. He believes that by studying the triggers of major engineering accidents, we can draw lessons on how to help prevent crises in the financial world. |
Joy Reidenberg, a fast-talking, energetic anatomist captivated the PopTech audience with her talk, “Why Whales are Weird.” With one amazing fact after the next (Whales evolved from deer-like creatures! Their spinal movement is more like galloping in the water! They don’t actually spout water! They have mustaches!), she took us through the story of evolution using whales as a model. She explained that evolution is the process to mediate resilience and thus, survival.
Silja Ómarsdóttir was one of 25 people tapped to rewrite Iceland’s constitution after the country’s financial meltdown in 2008. Ómarsdóttir explains the constitution creation process and what it meant to overhaul the constitution, with considerable public input, in four months.
Anne-Marie Slaughter shares her insights on the transformation of state and non-state actors. Whereas we used to exist within a world of nation-states, billiard balls knocking against one another, we now live in a network of modular, ad hoc organizations—both governmental and non-governmental.
Kish’s organization, World Access for the Blind, trains the visually impaired to achieve greater freedom and mobility through echolocation, a technique that simulates a bat’s night vision of perceiving the environment through sound.
Dutch bulb grower, Pieter Hoff has an idea about how to make deserts bloom: capture the humidity in the air, store it in a box, and use that condensation to water plants. He calls this box the Groasis waterboxx and he thinks it can change how we feed the world and reduce greenhouse gases.
“What happens when science goes wrong?” asks psychology professor Kevin Dunbar. He studies how scientists approach the unexpected and learn from mistakes. Over the course of a year, Dunbar’s team examined the habits of four molecular biology labs. Watch his talk to discover their findings, including the surprising characteristics of successful labs.
In honor of Earth Day, check out David de Rothschild's incredible story about how he and his team built the Plastiki, a boat constructed from 12,000 plastic bottles. De Rothschild and his crew sailed halfway around the world to bring greater public awareness to the devastating impact of oceanic plastic pollutants and the need to reuse discarded plastics.
Materials matter. Everything we touch, taste, wear, drive, drink, eat — all of it is connected to the use, re-use, and ultimate disposal of materials. The health of the planet and the prosperity of its inhabitants rest largely on how we extract and use materials.
In July 2010 at Harvard Medical School, the first meeting of the Ecomaterials Lab network brought together 40 of these thought leaders and stakeholders for a facilitated dialogue regarding the drivers, constraints, opportunities, and challenges surrounding next-generation sustainable materials (with a particular emphasis on textiles). The gathering unearthed new insights and areas of disagreement, and helped form a network around sustainable ecomaterials.
Alphachimp Studio Inc. was honored to be onsite for graphic facilitation support and graphic capture of the personal insight, passion and urgency expressed by this stellar group of material scientists.
Fast Company has included the results of this event in there list of 8 of the Most Exciting Developments in Material Sustainability!
Download the full report here:
Kevin Starr, Mulago Foundation director, looks for the best solutions to the biggest problems in the poorest countries. He thinks all projects need to answer four questions: Is it needed? Does it work? Will it get to those who need it? Will they use it correctly when they get it? Too many bad ideas are using up our limited resources and that needs to change.
The story of Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton is one of liberation and forgiveness. In 1984, Thompson testified that Cotton raped her, for which he was sentenced to life in prison. Eleven years later, DNA evidence cleared him of the crime. Thompson and Cotton went on to write a memoir together about their experience.
Alphachimp LLC is a visual learning company based in Houston, Texas.
Through drawings, animations, and the design-thinking process we help people understand complex situations and make better decisions.
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