January
Andy Bichlbaum, of “Yes Men”
Andy Bichlbaum has gained international acclaim and notoriety for exposing dehumanizing business practices and helping to keep critical issues in the international spotlight. They do this through impersonating representatives of powerful corporations and government organizations such as ExxonMobil, McDonald’s, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. THE YES MEN’s famed hoaxes include a collaboratively produced fake New York Times announcing the end of the Iraq War, a phony George W. Bush website celebrating the unsavory details of the then-Presidential candidate, and the false announcement of the World Trade Organization’s dissolution in order to shift focus to helping the poor.
Ji Lee
Born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Ji Lee studied design at Parsons School of Design. He currently works as the Creative Director at Google Creative Lab in New York and teaches design at School of Visual Arts. In the past, Lee has worked as the branding director at Droga5 and art director at Saatchi & Saatchi.
Ji Lee is the founder of the widely publicized Bubble Project and the author of two books: “Talk Back: The Bubble Project” and “Univers Revolved: a 3-Dimensional Alphabet.”
Lee has given numerous lectures including Harvard University, MIT and MoMA. Lee’s work has appeared in ABC World News, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Guardian, Wired among others.
Leo Bonanni, “Sourcemap”
Leo is a doctoral candidate at the MIT Media Lab, a designer and an artist. He teaches the MIT class Future Craft: Radical Sustainability in Product Design on the social aspects of mass design. You can also find his blog, photos, and videos.
November
Jordan Seiler, Public Ad Campaign
I was born in the Chelsea hotel on 23rd street in 1979. My first bed was right above the neon H, but I really grew up on Grand street. Before I was brought into this world I helped with the gutting of my true home at 136 10th avenue from inside the womb. It was there that I would grow up and ultimately become the person I am now. Despite being a city boy all my life, I often rejected the concrete jungle. It was only until I moved far away that I realized my relationship to my city was inescapable. After spending a fateful year in California, and then three years in Rhode Island, I was finally able to settle into what was always my home.
Since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2002, I have pursued my relationship to the city I grew up in to the fullest. This has resulted in numerous projects which question both my relationship to the city I live in, as well as the way in which this city relates to me. As an individual and artist, I have come to realize that I am personally responsible for the quality of the city I live in. I help determine all of its infinite facets, both good and bad. As a public individual I take full responsibility for the state of the city I live in and pledge to improve all aspects to the best of my ability.
Heather Gold
Heather Gold is the turkey baster love child of Sarah Silverman and Rachel Maddow and tours North America as a comedian, speaker, interactive solo performer and social artist.
She brings insights and authentic conversations to companies, organizations and conferences like Google, SXSW Interactive, BlogHer, AIGA, Social Venture Network, Forum One’s Marketing and Online Communities Conference and Overlap 08.
Heather is the creator of the hit interactive show “I Look Like an Egg, But I Identify as a Cookie,” which ran for a year in San Francisco, showed at Ars Nova in New York and was selected by The Oakland Tribune as “Best of the Bay Area.”
Dan Palusksa, Roboticist/Technology Liberator
I make art. I play music. I build robots. I enjoy solving problems. I like to meet people who cause me to change my mind. I try make my best of the opportunities presented to me. I’ve lived in both small town and big city. Currently I enjoy the connections of the city. Technology is great, but people are the ones who require the most study. It is important to me to be a part of the continual dialog that artists have with the society we live in. I encourage the asking of questions. I believe in the freedom of information. I believe in releasing my work into the public domain.
September
Charlie Todd, Founder, Improv Everywhere
Charlie Todd is the creator of Improv Everywhere (IE), an unorthodox comedy group based in New York City that advances the slogan “We Cause Scenes.” IE has been profiled by national and international media, including The New York Times, The Today Show, and ABC’s Nightline. Todd was interviewed on an episode of This American Life in 2005. While touching briefly on two missions (”No Pants” and “The Moebius”), the show focused on “Best Gig Ever” and “Ted’s Birthday,” and highlighted their unintended reactions. Improv Everywhere was also featured in the pilot episode for This American Life’s television show on Showtime.
Charlie is also the editor of Urban Prankster, a blog, which covers pranks, hacks, participatory art, flash mobs, and other creative endeavors that take place in public places in cities across the world.
Scott (Spot) Draves, Creator, Electric Sheep
Scott Draves a.k.a. Spot is a visual and software artist living in New York City. Draves is best known as the creator of the Electric Sheep, a continually evolving abstract animation with over 60,000 daily participants.
He created the original Flame algorithm in 1991, the Bomb visual-musical instrument in 1995, and the Electric Sheep in 1999. Draves’ software artworks are released as open source and distributed via the internet. His latest work, Clade 1, is a rare true high-definition video artwork that runs a 26-minute loop. Dreams in High Fidelity, a moving painting that runs infinitely, is installed in the lobby of Google’s headquarters, and has been acquired by corporate and residential collections nationally.
Draves’ award-winning work is permanently hosted on MoMA.org, and has appeared in Wired and Discover magazines, the Prix Ars Electronica, the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and on the main dance-floor at the Sonar festival in Barcelona.
When not working as a full-time artist, Draves has worked for a series of technology start-ups. First was the fabless microprocessor design company Transmeta, made famous by Linus Torvalds. Later came FastForward Networks, which was acquired by Inktomi, then the PDI/Dreamworks R&D Department, which earned him a feature film credit for Shrek 2. Draves is now an engineer in the mapping division at Google Inc.
Spot started VJing at underground parties in the early 90s and still performs live. In 2004 he published SPOTWORKS a DVD of visual music which has sold more than 4000 copies.
In 1990 he received a BS in Mathematics from Brown University and in 1997 a PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University for a thesis on metaprogramming for media processing.
Zeitgeist came into existence as a personal project which was shown in New York as a free public awareness expression. After the event was over, “The Movie” was tossed online with little thought given to a public response. Within a month, the film was getting record views. Months later, the “Final Edition” was completed. In total, the views for “Zeitgeist, The Movie” have exceeded 50,000,000 on Google video alone. Considering the other posts in different formats, along with public screenings, it is estimated that the total world views are well over 100 Million.
July
Daniel Pinchbeck
Daniel Pinchbeck has written features for The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Wired, Harper’s Bazaar, The Village Voice, Salon, and many other publications. He is one of the founders of Open City, an art and literary journal, and an independent book publisher. He was a 1999 – 2000 Fellow of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. He has also been a columnist for The Art Newspaper of London, and an editor at Connoisseur Magazine. Born in 1966, he grew up in New York City, where his father, Peter Pinchbeck, was an abstract painter. His mother, Joyce Johnson, was part of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. She is the author of several books, including Minor Characters, a memoir. He went to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, then worked as a magazine editor and journalist.
In the late 1990s, after years of working in the media, Pinchbeck fell into the classic existential or spiritual crisis. Life seemed to have no point or transcendent meaning. He began to feel as if he was already dead, a ghost walking around the streets of Manhattan. At some point he recalled his fascination with psychedelic mushrooms and LSD in college. He experimented again, and his experiences inspired him to travel to Nepal and India, where he visited Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and the sacred Hindu festival Kumbh Mehla.
Back in New York, he began to study shamanism and the magical plants used in rituals. On assignment, he went to Gabon, in West Africa, and took iboga, a long-lasting psychedelic rootbark, in an initiation ceremony. He visited a shaman in Oaxaca, the son of the famous shamaness Maria Sabina. He attended a conference on “Visionary Entheobotany” in Palenque, Mexico and visited Burning Man. He went down to the Ecuadorean Amazon to visit the Secoya tribe and take ayahuasca, a visionary medicine.
Breaking Open the Head describes his own process of discovery, and a profound paradigm shift. He admits to still being surprised – even extremely astonished – at what he has found. Through direct experience, Pinchbeck learned that shamanism was a real phenomenon, that direct access to the spiritual world is available to anybody who is willing to explore for themselves and escape the prevailing orthodoxies, the “irrational rationality” of the current system. He supports the perspective of Christ in the Gnostic “Gospel of Thomas,” who said: “Open the door for yourself, so you will know what is.”
Dickson Despommier
I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana but grew up in California before moving to the New York area in 1951, where I now live and work. I received my Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Notre Dame and conducted NIH-sponsored laboratory-based research for 30 years. My long-term interests center around the environment and the ecology of infectious disease transmission. I have always been struck by the number of agents that are transmitted at the agricultural interface by the use of raw, untreated human waste. As a way of interfering with that process, I am currently engaged in a project whose mission is to produce significant amounts of food crops in tall buildings situated in densely populated urban centers (Vertical Farming; see www.verticalfarm.com). In this mode of agriculture, no fertilizers of any type are necessary (hydroponics and aeroponics) including human feces. This concept has many other advantages, as well, and has grown in acceptance over the last 5 years to the point of stimulating numerous planners and developers around the world to get involved (e.g., Amman, Jordan, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, Singapore, India, China, Korea, Las Vegas, Chicago, New York, Portland, Oregon) to incorporate them into their vision for the future city. It is very probable that some form of the vertical farm will soon (5-7 years) become part of the skyline of the built environment.
Amanda Parkes
Amanda Parkes is a media designer whose work focuses on how digital technologies and smart materials can expand our relationship with natural phenomena to facilitate a more intuitive connection between technology and the natural world. She recently completed her PhD in the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab where her research focused on computational materiality in kinetic interfaces as an area of innovation in future products– combining principles of abstracted motion in robotics with hybrid materials to empower designers in the process of kinetic improvisation and motion prototyping. While at MIT she also developed a new design curriculum entitled Future Craft, examining how digital media is affecting the product design process in terms of information transparency, materiality and fabrication. She is currently the CTO of Bodega Algae, a company developing a modular, scalable, microalgae photobioreactor for the production of high-energy algal biomass for use in the production of biofuel. She also curates and produces the annual Seamless: Computational Couture runway show series. Before joining the MIT Media Lab, Amanda developed exhibits and educational media at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, the Science Museum in London and the the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. She also holds an M.S. in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (Product Design) and a B.A. in Art History from Stanford University. Her work has been featured in various internationally recognized design and art awards including the ID Magazine Annual Design Review and the Prix Ars Electronica and she was named one of Mass High Tech’s ‘Women to Watch’ in technology for 2008. Outside the lab she likes to sew, surf, and amass exquisite shoes.
March
Mitchell Joachim
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Earned; Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MAUD Harvard University, M.Arch. Columbia University, BPS SUNY at Buffalo with Honors. He is a Co-Founder at Terrefuge and Terreform ONE. Currently he is faculty at Columbia University and Parsons. Formerly an architect at Gehry Partners, and Pei Cobb Freed. He has been awarded the Moshe Safdie Research Fellowship, and the Martin Family Society Fellow for Sustainability at MIT. He won the History Channel and Infiniti Design Excellence Award for the City of the Future, and Time Magazine Best Invention of the Year 2007, Compacted Car w/ MIT Smart Cities. His project, Fab Tree Hab, has been exhibited at MoMA and widely published. He was selected by Wired magazine for “The 2008 Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To”. Rolling Stone magazine honored Mitchell as an agent of change in “The 100 People Who Are Changing America”.
Filip Noterdaeme
Filip Noterdaeme is a New York-based artist and the founding director of the Homeless Museum of Art (HOMU), a conceptual art project that seeks to subvert the increasingly impersonal, market-driven art world and expose the sellout of cultural institutions to commerce, cronyism, real estate, and star architects. A witty parody of the contemporary art museum, HOMU has at turns been a live-in museum in a rental apartment in Brooklyn, an activist’s initiative, an exhibit in a vacant artist studio, a collection of original artworks, and a mock museum booth embedded in a commercial art fair. Noterdaeme and HOMU have been profiled by numerous publications, including the New York Times and the Believer Magazine .
Jeremy Ian Kirk
Jeremy Ian Kirk is a doctoral candidate in Christian Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. His academic interests include: the future of liberation theology, constructive praxiological response to contemporary world crises, resistance to contemporary U.S. imperialism, interrogating and critiquing liberalism, engaging postmodern and historicist critiques of religion, and the intersection of spirituality, art and social engagement. Jeremy has been an activist with Witness Against Torture, a member of Dan Berrigan’s Kairos peace community and is a co-founder of Union Theological Seminary Students for Peace and Justice.
January
Katrin Verclas, Co-Founder MobileActive.org
Katrin Verclas is a recognized expert in mobile communications for social impact.
She is the co-founder and editor of MobileActive.org, a global network of practitioners using mobile phones for social impact. She is also a principal at Calder Strategies, focusing on mobile strategy, impact evaluation, effectiveness and ROI assessment, and interactive capacity building.
Katrin has written widely on mobile phones in citizen participation and civil society organizations, mobile phones in health and for development. She is a co-author of Wireless Technology for Social Change, a report on trends in mobile use by NGOs with the UN Foundation and Vodafone Group Foundation, and author of A Mobile Voice: The Use of Mobile Phones in Citizen Media.
Katrin’s background is in IT management, IT in social change organizations, and in philanthropy. She has led several nonprofit organizations, including as the Executive Director of NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network, the national association of IT professionals working in the more than one million nonprofit organizations in the United States. Previously she served as a program officer at the Proteus Fund, focusing on the use of technology in civic and democratic participation, and in government transparency.
She is the editor of Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission, published by Wiley & Sons., and author of a chapter in Mobilizing 2.0, a book focused on engaging young people and the use of technology. She is a frequent speaker on ICTs in civil society at national and international conferences and has published numerous articles and publications on technology for social change in leading popular and industry publications.
Katrin serves on the boards of Mobile Voter and Ushahidi.
Graham Hill, Founder Treehugger.com
Gig:
Founder, TreeHugger.com and Vice President, Interactive of Planet Green
Forte:
Insider of all things green
Green Creds:
Started TreeHugger.com in 2004, one of the most respected and trafficked environmental sites on the web; Focuses on pushing sustainability into the mainstream; Co-author of Ready, Set, Green: Eight Weeks to Modern Eco-Living (Random House).
Biography:
Alternately described as serial entrepreneur, do-gooder and designer, Graham Hill certainly enjoys variety although now finds this future happily confined to the social entrepreneurship arena. Hill and the TreeHugger.com team recently joined the Discovery Communications family of networks as part of its Planet Green multi-platform, global environmental initiative. Additionally, he owns a product business that sells a New York souvenir he designed a few years ago, which is available in 175 stores including MOMA. Graham has a Bachelor of Architecture with distinction from Carleton University in Ottawa and did advanced studies in Industrial Design at E.C.I.A.D, Vancouver. Graham has lived all over the world and his guiltiest sin is air travel (offset of course). He speaks English, French, German and Spanish and is addicted to squash
Ben Donaldson, CollegeHumor.com, www.rrrrthats5rs.com
Ben is currently a Flash Developer at CollegeHumor.com, creating a smooth user experience for millions of college students no matter how sober they are at the time.
After years of child labor at his family’s graphics & advertising boutique, Ben found a swarm of unrelated jobs ranging from medical supply chain consultant to unpaid loofah photographer. He has done research in integrated product design and strategy, working with numerous startups, Fortune 500 companies and the Navy. Many of his efforts will be hidden forever inside patents, classified meetings and underachieving elementary school pupils.
Worst of all, he loves PowerPoint.
Ben is finishing an M.S. in Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering at Penn State, and was a member of the first class at Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham, MA.
Sem Devillart, Futurist and partner at Popular Operations
Sem is a managing partner at the company she co-founded in 2008, Popular Operations. Popular Operations is a global collective of thinkers, analysts, professionals and artists, dedicated to providing high-level decision makers and innovators with cultural intelligence, analysis, foresight and a process to put it all into action.
Sem has worked for numerous design studios and trend forecasting agencies, including Studio Edelkoort in Paris and Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve in NYC. Ever since she entered the field of cultural analysis, she has focused on how to track, quantify and visualize patterns in cultural change. Many years of experimentation and testing paid off in the break-through new method that became the basis for Popular Operations’ foresight practice.
Sem grew up in Peru, Brazil, Tanzania and Germany. She studied art history, comparative religion and design in Tuebingen and Milan and speaks six languages.
November
JOSH SHABTAI, VP, Marketing, Vringo
Josh Shabtai is an unabashed media junkie: a creative interactive marketing specialist, podcaster, amateur videogame historian and even more amateur experimental musician. At Vringo, Josh turns these passions towards bringing the company’s exciting, unconventional value proposition to consumers and business partners.
Cory Kahaney, Comedian
You probably know Cory best from Season One of Last Comic Standing (NBC), but she has had plenty of television appearances throughout her career. She was the ‘comedy coach’ on Nick at Nite’s, Funniest Mom in America series, she’s had her own stand-up special, Comedy Central Presents, and in June 2007 Cory made her second appearance on the Late, Late Show with Craig Furgeson (CBS). Cory was also a regular on Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn (Comedy Central) and made multiple appearances on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher.
Doug Jaeger, CEO thehappycorp
Doug Jaeger is the founder, CEO and Creative Director of thehappycorp global and an emerging creative business leader in New York City. He is also the Director of lvhrd, an unconventional event series that fuels interaction between creative professionals through digital media. He is a featured industry speaker on the trends in the creative space and maintains regular contact with cultural leaders and creative talent around the world. He is the President Elect of the Art Directors Club.
Jenny E. Sabin, Director, CabinStudio+
Jenny E. Sabin (M.Arch., B.F.A. Ceramics, B.A.)
Jenny E. Sabin currently teaches design studios and elective seminars within the graduate Department of Architecture at PennDesign. She is Director of CabinStudio+, a research and architectural design studio based in Philadelphia.
Sabin recently collaborated with the Advanced Geometry Unit, Arup London on an installation at Artists Space, NYC, “H_edge.” She is this year’s co-recipient, along with Peter Lloyd Jones, of the prestigious Upjohn research grant administered by the American Institute of Architects. She was awarded the AIA Henry Adams first prize medal and the Arthur Spayd Brooke gold medal for distinguished work in architectural design, 2005. She was an American Association of University Women Selected Professions Fellow, 2004-2005, and has exhibited at numerous galleries in Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Philadelphia and Sydney. She was a senior tutor and lecturer at the 2007 and 2008 Smart Geometry workshops and conferences in New York and Munich.
Sabin is a founder member of the Non-Linear Systems Organization (NSO), a research group at PennDesign started by Cecil Balmond, where she is currently Senior Researcher. She is also the first non-scientist member of the Institute for Medicine and Engineering (IME), University of Pennsylvania, where she is collaborating with the Jones Lab, most recently initiating a research LabStudio between the IME and the School of Design together with Peter Lloyd Jones. Sabin’s research and design practice focuses on investigating the intersections between architecture, textile structures, computation and biology. Sabin’s work has been published in A+U, 306090, 10+1, ACM and various exhibition catalogues and reviews.
October
Gaurav Mishra, Gauravanomics
Mishra is the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet at Georgetown University. Gaurav’s research will focus on how social media will be used differently by individuals and institutions in BRIC countries as compared to their first world counterparts. Gaurav is serving as the Yahoo! Fellow on leave from his role as the National Brand Head for Indica at Tata Motors www.tatamotors.com , which is a part of the Tata Group www.tata.com , India’s largest business conglomerate. Gaurav is frequently quoted in media www.gauravonomics.com/media as an authority on the emerging social media scene in India and has contributed chapters to two books www.gauravonomics.com/my-books/ on social media. Gaurav is presently writing a book how to market to consumers who define themselves by their anti-consumerism and working on MobiChange mobichange.org, a social entrepreneurship venture that will use mobile social networks to mobilize social change. Gaurav has an MBA from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore www.iimb.ernet.in/iimb.
Steven Hirsch’s, Court House Confessions
Hirsch’s work has appeared in numerous publications including Newsweek, Time, US News and World Report, Popular Photography, People, The New York Times, The New York Post, Paris Match and Stern. He has taught at the International Center of Photography, The New School, Parsons School of Design, the School of Visual Arts and is currently teaching at Pratt Institute. Mr. Hirsch has been awarded two New York Foundation for the Arts grants and his work has been widely exhibited and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Polaroid Collection, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Israel Museum, Library of Congress and the New Orleans Museum of Art, among others. Check out Steven’s blog at www.courthouseconfessions.blogspot.com.
Michael Jascz, Relationship Coach
Jascz is a relationship coach based in New York City and works with people around the world. His coaching is based on principles that have created an extraordinary new language by which we can truly understand love, intimacy and sexuality. Michael coaches people from all walks of life – in business, the arts, from Broadway producers to therapists, fire-fighters to college professors. Find Michael at www.modernintimacy.com.
Jonathan Colby, Verdant Power
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yixpZWfRvFs]
Verdant Power is a renewable energy company with current operations in the East River, just north of the Roosevelt Island Bridge. Our company develops and deploys turbines to convert the kinetic energy in moving waterways into usable electricity. These Kinetic Hydropower Systems (KHPS) are low-impact sources of reliable, predictable clean energy. The KHPS have 3 blades with rotor diameter and rated power based on water depth and water velocity. The Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) project has included the deployment of 6 turbines and the cumulative generation of more than 60 MWh of energy thus far – both firsts. This energy was delivered to a local supermarket, Gristedes, and a parking garage, both on Roosevelt Island – also a first. Verdant Power is working on additional projects in the United States and Canada.
As hydrodynamic engineer, Colby is involved in the design of the KHPS blades and rotors, as well as modeling of the flow near and around turbines. Larger scale modeling of tidal and river systems is also done. He also contributes to the monitoring and operation of turbines at the RITE site. This includes data acquisition/processing/analysis, native species monitoring, diver/boat operations and logistics, etc.
Colby’s previous research and education focused on many forms of experimental fluid mechanics, including helicopter rotor wake dynamics, hull design, atmospheric flows, and emission reductions in gas turbines
Fernando Rizo
Tom Lemons, The Hunger Project
Tom is a legacy circle member of The Hunger Project. The Hunger Project is a global, strategic organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger.
In Africa, Asia and Latin America, The Hunger Project empowers millions of women and men to end their own hunger. The Hunger Project has pioneered low-cost, bottom-up, gender-focused strategies in each region where hunger persists. These strategies mobilize clusters of rural villages to create and run their own programs that achieve lasting progress in health, education, nutrition and family income.
In all our work, the highest priority is the empowerment of women. Women traditionally bear primary responsibility for family health, education, nutrition and – increasingly – family income. Yet women have been systematically denied information, resources and voice in decisions that affect their lives.
Alexis Tuner, Mongol Rally
Techie, lockpick, chef, amateur historian, bookworm, raconteur, and scuba diver, Alexis is also the team leader the Redheaded Steppe Children, a rowdy bunch of adventurers who will undertake the 10,000 mile journey from London to Mongolia in a broken down jalopy. In the words of the Mongol Rally organizers, “If nothing goes wrong, then
Dominic Frasca
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2BOApUvFpw]
Meet the anti-Yngwie. Personally tapped by minimalist godfather Steve Reich to debut his “Electric Guitar Phase” and recent winner of Guitar Player’s Guitar Hero competition, Dominic Frasca arrives fully with Deviations. A rebel at every turn, the man Entertainment Weekly called “Eddie Van Halen for eggheads” transmutates formal beauty into elegant atmosphere that can make conversation equally with Philip Glass, post-rock legends Tortoise, or late underground acoustic legend John Fahey.
A dazzling architecture of modern sound looms behind the eight tracks of the acoustic guitarist’s solo debut, which includes Glass’s “Two Pages,” as well as Frasca’s own 23-minute title track centerpiece. Underscored by rigorous grids of percussive counterrhythm, Frasca tweaks textures from an arsenal of guitars self-mutated to include nylon and steel strings, as well as individual pick-ups wired to process through his laptop.
August
Matthias Hollwich, HollwichKushner LLC
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vtKyFsUtW8]
Matthias Hollwich is the cofounder of HollwichKushner, LLC (HWKN) and has worked prior in several internationally acclaimed architectural firms and urban design studios, including: OMA, Rotterdam (Netherlands), Eisenman Architects, and Diller+Scofidio, New York City. In 2001 Matthias founded XPEKT, a concept engineering firm based in Amsterdam. From 1999-2001, Matthias was assistant professor at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Switzerland 1999 – 2001 and part of the Bauhaus Dessau Werkstaedte between 2002 and 2006. Presently Matthias is visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2004 he finished editing his first book with Rainer Weisbach at the Bauhaus: UmBauhaus – Updating Modernism. His work has been featured in Wallpaper*, ArchPLUS, MAX, Bauwelt, Dwell, and Architectural Digest. Matthias is driven by the aim to upgrade manmade environments on a human and engaging scale with an ECONIC twist.
www.hwkn.com
John Keefe, WNYC
John Keefe is the news director and self-anointed “design agitator” at WNYC www.wnyc.org, New York’s main public radio station. Keefe has intensified the station’s coverage of breaking news, elections and in-depth investigations, and has helped craft “The Takeaway with John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji www.thetakeaway.org,” a new morning show WNYC produces with Public Radio International, the BBC, the New York Times and WGBH Boston. Lately, Keefe has been infusing WNYC with the concepts of “design thinking,” encouraging fresh, Silicon Valley-type approaches to programming, operations and innovations. This is partly because he’s been loitering at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University www.stanford.edu/group/dschool, working and playing with the smart people there to shake up public media and craft graduate-level classwork. Keefe also helped design the space, systems and newsroom for WNYC’s new broadcast facility, which opened this summer in New York’s Hudson Square neighborhood.
Matt Wasowski, Nerd Nite
Hosted by Matt Wasowski, Nerd Nite is a monthly gathering of people who like to drink and learn stuff at the same time. Its dueling taglines (It’s like the Discovery Channel with Beer and Be There And Be Square) nicely convey the light-hearted yet serious mood. Basically, really smart people give 20-30 minute presentations in layman’s terms about things we know little about. Recent topics have included Human Parasites II: Revenge of the Protozoa, Stomatopods: The Fastest Claw In The Sea, and Facial Blindness, Alien Hand Syndrome, and Other Strange Neurological Disorders. Normally held monthly at Angels & Kings bar in the East Village on the first Thursday of each month, Nerd Nite is having its first annual Nerd Nite Nerdtacular at the new Galapagos Arts Space in DUMBO on Saturday September 13. The line-up is crazy (music, Daily Show writers, and special presenters) so check it out at www.nerdnite.com. For more info, Read the article www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/nyregion/thecity/01nerd.html in The New York Times, or
Email Matt at matt@nerdnite.com
View the video www.popsci.com/entertainment-gaming/article/2008-04/driving-intellects-and-quenching-thirst tha
Sara Alonzo, Bowery Mission
The Bowery Mission & Kids With A Promise, one of New York City’s oldest charities, has been serving homeless men, women and underprivileged children since 1879. We are in the business of restoring and giving new life to those marred and broken by poverty and homelessness. For more information about how you can volunteer, donate or attend upcoming events, please visit: www.bowery.org or email: events@chaonline.org.
Leia MonDragon, Freegan.info
Strategies for Sustainable Living Beyond Capitalism. www.freegan.info.
Levan Moulton, Jambaar
Jambaar is an educational non-profit organization that seeks to prepare talented secondary school students in Africa for successful admittance to the world’s top colleges and universities. In addition, Jambaar seeks to incentivize these students to contribute to the development of their home countries through the establishment of internships and professional opportunities in Africa.
It is our goal as well as our passion to bring the dream of an elite college education to Africa’s young and gifted students, helping to develop a generation of well educated African leaders who are the embodiment of our organization’s name, Jambaar or “beacon of hope” for the future of Africa. Inspiring change from the graceful banks of the River Gambia, to the snowy caps of Mount Kilimanjaro and down to the Zulu lands of Nelson Mandela.
To join the movement email us at info@jambaar.org and we will send you our welcome materials. You can also join Jambaar’s fast-growing Facebook community.
We are going to change the world together, one Jambaar Scholar at a time.