Find X With Thought Leaders & Visionaries at TEDxBerkeley on Feb 6

From innovative surgery and extraterrestrial intelligence to reporting from war zones and Grammy-Award winning music, this year’s theme for TEDxBerkeley 2016 -- Finding X, which will be held at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley CA on February 6, will look to solutions to our world's imperfections. Sixteen riveting speakers will address how we identify these problems and make sense of them in the larger systems where they belong.

Whether it be voyaging into uncharted technological or scientific territory, reconciling our diverse perspectives of the human condition, or unearthing the parts of ourselves that give our lives direction and meaning, we all hope to make an impact on this world by Finding X.

Now in its 7^th year, this prestigious TEDx event will bring together thought leaders, visionaries, innovators and 54 performers who will enlighten and inspire more than 2,000 attendees across core disciplines impacting the world, from medicine and education to technology and diversity.

TEDxBerkeley strives to curate an outstanding group of inventive and provocative speakers who can shift global conversations in a way that makes the world a better place, central and core to TED's mission. The goal is to get us all to re-think conventional ideas and the status quo so that we can all make a positive difference in our own communities. Tickets for TEDxBerkeley 2016 are on sale through Friday, February 5 or until they sell out.

Attendees or those viewing via Live Stream at http://www.tedxberkeley.org starting at 10 am PST/1 pm EST, can also participate in the conversation on social media by using #TEDxBerkeley on Twitter, Facebook and other popular social networks.

This year’s line-up includes:

• Christopher Ategeka: Award-Winning Social Entrepreneur & Nano-Technology Inventor that identifies early detection and monitoring of chronic diseases.

• Celli@Berkeley: a cellist quartet made up of undergraduate and graduate students united by the passion to express the uniquely rich possibilities of the cello. 

• Kathy Calvin: As President and CEO of the United Nations Foundation, Kathy works to connect people, ideas, and resources to the United Nations to help solve global problems.
• Jacob Corn: Scientific Director of the Innovative Genomics Initiative & on faculty at UC Berkeley in the Molecular and Cell Biology Department, Jacob focuses on neurobiology, infectious disease, and oncology.  
• Stephanie Freid: An International Conflicts Journalist, TV correspondent for CCTV (China) and Turkish TV International networks, Stephanie reports from some of the world’s toughest conflict and war zones.
• Rose Gelfand, Molly Gardner & Isa Ansari: this trio from Oakland School for the Arts Literary Arts Department, are performance artists who specialize in the spoken word and poetry on stage.
• Rob Hotchkiss: Grammy Award-winning Musician for the Best Rock Song for five-time nominated “Drops of Jupiter”, and was the musical force behind hits such as Meet Virginia, Free, I Am and Get To Me.  
• Naveen Jain: An Entrepreneur & Philanthropist, Naveen is the founder of Moon Express, World Innovation Institute, inome, Talent Wise, Intelius, and InfoSpace.
• Jeromy Johnson: An EMF Expert, Jeromy is dedicated to mitigating the negative impacts of Electromagnetic Field (EMF) exposure, helping to implement solutions that reduce and eliminate EMF pollution around the globe.
• Reverend Deborah L. Johnson: Minister, Author & Diversity Expert, Deborah teaches practical applications of Universal Spiritual Principles and is founder of The Motivational Institute, which specializes in diversity.
• Aran Khanna: As Computer Scientist & Security Researcher on personal privacy, he builds tools that empower users to discover the consequences of the digital footprint they’re leaving.
• John Koenig: Creator & Author of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which fills gaps in language with new terms for emotions, some of which (‘sonder’) have entered the language outright.
• Ellen Leanse: As Apple’s first User Evangelist, she brought Apple online in 1985 and has since helped more than 40 companies and policy makers increase their innovation and impact.  
• Susan Lim: As Surgeon and Entrepreneur, Susan broke through the gender glass ceiling in transplantation surgery by becoming the first in Asia, and the second woman in the world to have performed a successful liver transplant.
• OSA Chamber Choir: the largest audition-only high school Vocal ensemble at the Oakland School for the Arts, this ensemble has performed for Governor Jerry Brown’s inauguration, Obama’s campaign tour and many other notable events.
• Sonia Rao: A BMI Spotlight artist, Sonia is a singer and songwriter whose latest album Meet Them At the Door is a collection of heart-felt pop songs that showcase her piano skills and soulful voice.
• Amandine Roche: A Human Rights Expert, Amandine’s focus is on civic education, democratization, gender and youth empowerment.
• Sriram Shamasunder: Sriram aims to deliver comprehensive healthcare in resource poor areas of the world through his work at UCSF and as co-founder of the HEAL initiative.
• Andrew Siemon: Andrew is an Astrophysicist, Director of the UC Berkeley Center for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Research & lead scientist for the “Breakthrough Listen Initiative”, a $100 million effort that is conducting one of the most sensitive searches for advanced extraterrestrial life in history.
• Joshua Toch: After being bullied because of Cerebral Palsy, Joshua founded Mind Before Mouth, which equips students to better deal with social aspects of life and get through times of hardship.
• UC Berkeley Azaad: UCB Azaad is a competitive Hindi Film Dance team which motivates audiences to connect with Bollywood culture.

This year’s partners include Repertoire Productions, Vÿykn Water, Zola, Peet’s Coffee, Fast Imaging, 18 Rabbits, Larabar, Victor Hugo Winery and EthiCal.    

I am proud to be a co-curator again this year, joining Chris Lew as TEDxBerkeley’s 2016 curator and co-curator R. Jennifer Barr together with an incredible team behind us, including Leilani Gutierrez-Palominos, Max Wolffe, Melody Jung, Aaron Chelliah, Mehdi Kazi, Sean Kelly, Krupa Modi, Aashna Patel, Andrew Veenstra, Alvin Wan and Joe West.

 

Melding of Minds on the Future of Humanity Over an Arc Fusion Jeffersonian Dinner

Ever heard of a Jeffersonian dinner? I've been invited to one or two over the last few years, one of which was being held in Washington DC, where it was birthed in the 1800's by none other than Thomas Jefferson himself. Because of those invitations, I had some vague idea of what they were, but never actually participated in one until the Arc Fusion folks hosted one recently in San Francisco.

Photo credit: www.smithsonianmag.com  

Rewind the clock to 1819 and visualize yourself at a long and decadently adorned table with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, his elegant Virginia home. Around the table, you're seated with a group of people steeped deep in culture, philosophy, education, history, politics, art, literature, science and theology.

The idea behind a Jeffersonian Dinner is to bring people together from different disciplines, creating a new cause-centered community around a topic of importance or significance you might want to discuss for whatever reason. This can be done to tap into new resources, raise funds for a non profit or important issue, or simply to expand the group's thinking about a variety of topics.

It's important that it be somewhat intimate so 12-15 people at a table is a good size and I'd argue that while someone's home isn't a requirement, it makes it more personal -- a private dining room could also work.

The purpose of the Jeffersonian Dinner is to build a sense of community and partnership around a shared interest or theme. One of the rules is that everyone participates in a single conversation and are not encouraged to engage in one-on-one dialogues with their partners on either side.     

Photo credit: blog.asana.com. 

How fitting that the San Francisco Arc Dinner be held at the 1880's Payne Mansion on Sutter Street and also how intriguing that the topic at hand was not about the past, but about our fears and concerns for the future, say in 100 years.

David Ewing Duncan kicked off the event. A historian, author, journalist and also CEO of Arc Fusion, which celebrates the conversion of IT, healthcare and biotech, David decided to take us down memory lane before dinner.

 

Photo credit: Arc Fusion Website.

We went back to 1915 and recalled some of the provocative insights, inventions and historical moments of the time. Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis Complete Idiot's Guide to Beating Stress was out at the time (surprising I know), the first EKG was used in 1913 and OMG was first used in 1917 (yes really). 

The industries David and his team at Arc are most interested in exploring are at the intersection of what is happening in health, IT and biotech. It's not hard to see why, with nearly $800 billion being spent on health and wellness and $1.1 trillion on IT services with $50 billion on Health IT alone. 

He asked attendees before they came to the dinner whether they felt they'd be alive 100 years from now. 18% said yes whereas 82% voted no. In case you think that even 18% is insanely overly optimistic, remember that the audience is highly vested in technology and some are actually working on the most important research in the fields on longevity/aging, science, technology and medicine.

The same audience voted on what will be most important to humanity's fate in 100 years -- 40% voted for politics whereas it was no surprise to see technology lead that vote at 60%. As far as the impact on humans in the next 100 years, 36% felt it would be in gene editing and a whopping 70% went for stem cells. Pharma only came in at 11% which tied with health and wellness and bionics took last place at 9%. 

Other things on people's minds included mood manipulation, synthetic biology, longevity tech, next generation deep learning and renewable energy. 

James Canton asked the audience to imagine a future where embedded devices and technology automate the work, resolving issues that need to be addressed in our bodies. The truth is that nano and quantum technologies are expanding so rapidly that we are now in a game changing time for our health. Innovative ecosystems will start to do disease detection for us, hopefully before it turns into disease.

Drew Endy asserted that learning "how to" solve problems is the secret to sustaining life over the long haul. His deepest wishes include a future where biology will have distributed manufacturing and distributed systems and that humans will start to think of a world outside of themselves. Hear hear.

Casey Lynett addressed where we are going with Alzheimer's pointing to some important finds for this disheartening disease that seems to be soaring not reversing. 

Artist and molecular biologist Una Ryan showed us her work, reminding us of the beauty inside our bodies through our cells, our protein and our blood. She refers to the image below as the Tree of Life since it contains everything that makes our bodies operate. 

 

The food they served at the dinner was not surprisingly farm-to-table and organic. It was also very purposely selected based on a fascinating premise -- each ingredient was chosen to serve every vital organ of the body. Dishes ranged from salads and nori rolls to fresh fish and wine for the heart -- two thumbs up for the Trefethen Cabernet Sauvignon that showed up on our table.

The most riveting part of the evening, at least for me since it touched on some of the most controversial conversations happening around healthcare today, was the fireside chat between venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur Vinod Khosla and renowned doctor Dean Ornish.

Both visionaries took the stage to share their take on the future of healthcare. Vinod formed Khosla Ventures to focus on both for-profit and social impact investments and as a big believer in the importance raw data can have the future of health, he invests in both healthcare and biotechnology.

Says Vinod, "almost nothing that is relevant in medicine today will be relevant in 20-30 years. Even though some of it may still be true, it will be too imprecise to be that useful so no one will use it." He asserts that medicine will be mostly science and data driven over the next 10-15 years.  

He added, "we will have more research opportunities but we won't use them because we won't have the causality which is most important."

He also went on to say that we won't use doctors that much in the future to get a diagnosis and what we may pay more credence to is the doctor or (non-MD) who has the highest EQ not the highest IQ. Hear hear Vinod! I couldn't agree more. Bedside manner, using common sense and logic and listening between the lines to a patient is something that so many traditional doctors so sadly "don't get."

 

Dean takes a slightly different approach although they agreed more than disagreed. While he agrees that data gives us a lot of useful information we may not have had access to twenty years ago, if all we are is a set of algorithms, then humans can simply be replaced by an app. The reality says Dean is that we are so much more.

What I love about Dean's approach and always have ever since I first met him now over a decade ago, is that while he's far from a luddite, he tries to get people (and the industry) to look at the underlying cause of an issue. He believes that lifestyle and diet shifts are fundamental game changers, pivotal to reversing symptoms and in many cases, the disease itself.

He's interested in lifestyle medicine which is very low tech, but the power of low-tech interventions is very very real and something that techies sadly discount all too readily, focusing most of their time on connected devices, data and the Internet of Things.

Personally I lose sleep at night thinking about how so many brilliant scientific and medical minds can be so misguided, overlooking the raw fundamentals of what can keep us healthy and happy, holistically so.

Bottom line, we need to treat the underlying cause and also look at the mind, body and spirit, NOT just the body alone.

This integrated approach is what the techies and scientists keep missing and a sad reason why insurance companies put holistic care like acupuncture and body work, organic food, diet modifications and supplements last on the priority list.

It's the same broken record when it comes to addressing the disgusting impact that processed foods are having on Americans today. (Note: processed food ingestion is increasing globally of course, but the yanks still sadly take the cake when it comes to fast food and boxed processed ingredients as their go-to- diet). I digress but the whole thing sickens me so much that I can't help but vent at times like this.

Truth be told, as Dean took the provocative and controversial low-tech stance amidst so many tech-centered entrepreneurs in the room that night, I wanted to stand on my chair and boldly blurt out - "GO DEAN and oh btw, don't stop here!"

He is a big advocate of lifestyle and diet changes and given recent research findings, they're finding that the same lifestyle interventions that deter heart disease are the same ones that can keep prostrate and breast cancer at bay and even in some cases, Alzheimer's.

You can apparently see a positive and reversing effects to 500 genes over the course of 3 months through lifestyle changes.  For most chronic diseases, which account for 86% of issues, we can reverse their onslaught through shifts in our lifestyle and diet. 

Dean thinks that we'll see a future where the placebo effect will be more important not less. Why? Because, it works.

Vinod doesn't disagree with Dean although he wants to see data behind it, proving that it's real. In his view, the math is the math of networks, but agrees with Dean that diet is important and that symptoms are the wrong way to look at a disease. 

Given that we live in an information age and are drowning in so much data we don't know what to do with it, I agree with Dean that while data may be important and there's no doubt having access to what our bodies are doing and why is useful, its only part of the equation. Plenty of people have data but even if you know that smoking cigarettes can kill you, if you're suffering from deep anxiety and depression, you're not going to quit smoking anytime soon.

Anxiety and depression are very real, particularly in the states. The stats are going up and pharma companies are making millions on drugs, some of which cover up the real issues that lay behind what is making them depressed in the first place.  

Dean asserts that what is even more vital is the mantra I keep beating people over the head with every day: the more so called connected we are, the more disconnected we are....I mean physically and emotionally disconnected, not the fact that we can now communicate with people instantaneously on Facebook or Skype from our cell phones in real time.

What's really missing is the deeper sense of meaning you get from being physically and emotionally connected to others. There's no doubt that people need to rediscover inner peace, joy and purpose in their lives.

Bottom line, it's all about changing the raw materials we give to people and place as a priority. I'll end with this note and thought to reflect on: if we can take this "ground level" low-tech approach seriously by beginning with the things that provide deeper purpose and meaning, then we can really begin to accelerate healing. While data can continue to feed the bigger picture, if we don't get back to the fundamental basics of what feeds the soul, we'll remain a far cry from a truly sustainable solution to holistic health, happiness and well-being. A big high five to Dean Ornish!  

For more information on Arc Fusion, check out their site at http://arcprograms.net/ where you'll also learn about their upcoming Arc Fusion Summit being held in southern California September 1-2, 2015. What David has created is a truly innovative, future thinking and leading-edge organization and he has managed to bring together some of the smartest minds to address what both plagues and interests us most today.

Meet the 2014 Travel & Leisure Smitty Award Winners

This year's Travel + Leisure Smitty Awards recently announced their winners for 2014, an Awards Program which recognizes the companies in the travel and tourism industry showcasing the best and most innovative uses of social media.

I am proud to announce that I was a judge this year, together with Skift's Jason Clampet, Twitter's Mike De Jesus, Gogobot's Travis Katz, BuzzFeed's Ashley Perez, travel photographer Cole Rise, NBC Today Show's Al Roker, Google's Rob Torres and travel social media strategist Ann Tran. We reviewed hundreds of submissions and named winners and runners-up in 30 categories.

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts took home the most awards with four wins and Virgin Atlantic and The Hertz Corporation received two wins in two categories each. The winners and their campaigns can be seen on travelandleisure.com/smittys, with additional information available by searching #TLSMITTY on social media. The SMITTY Awards is also featured in the Travel + Leisure July 2014 issue which went on stands in mid-June. To celebrate the SMITTY Awards, Travel + Leisure hosted an event on July 9, 2014 at the Refinery Hotel rooftop in Manhattan. Below are a handful of fun shots I took at the event.

Travel + Leisure's Editor-in-Chief, Nancy Novogrod, Renee Blodgett, and Rich Beattie, Travel + Leisure's Executive Digital Editor

Above, Four Seasons' Laura Fairweather

 

Above, Tadashi Matsushita from ANA (All Nippon Airways), Renee Blodgett and Athanasios "Tommy" Sikolas of ANA (All Nippon Airways)

 

Above, Rich Beattie

Above and below, kudos to the Hyatt team & a few others :-)

Above, Travel + Leisure reps from social media, digital and design!

Above, Ruth Moran (left) from Tourism Ireland even made a showing :-)

Below are the Winners:

Best Use of Twitter: Virgin Atlantic; Runner-Up: The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company Best Use of Pinterest: VisitBritain; Runner-Up: Explore Georgia Best Use of Instagram: Tahiti Tourisme North America Best Use of Facebook: Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts Best Use of Tumblr: VisitSweden; Runner-Up: Sofitel Luxury Hotels Best Chat/Hangout: Residence Inn by Marriott Best Long-Form Video: Virgin American; WestJet (tie) Best Use of Foursquare or Other Location-Based Services: Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts; Hilton Hotels & Resorts; The Hertz Corporation (tie) Best App or Technology: Roaming Hunger; Runner-Up: Oberoi, Mumbai Best Blog: Butterfield & Robinson; GrandLife Hotels (tie) Best Use of Social Media for Public Service: Montage Hotels & Resorts; Runner-Up: Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott Best Contest/Giveaway: The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel; Runner-Up: South African Tourism Best Use of and Emerging Platform: Iceland Travel; Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts (tie) Best Customer Service: Hyatt Hotels & Resorts; Runner-Up: Austin Convention & Visitors Bureau Best Use of Social Media: Independent Travel Journalist/Blogger: Amateur Traveler Best Use of Social Media: Independent Travel Photo Journalist/Videographer: Bohemian Trails; Runner-Up: Let's Get Lost

Best Overall Use of Social Media:

Airline: Virgin Atlantic; Runner-Up: All Nippon Airways Airport: Singapore Changi Airport; Runner-Up: San Francisco International Airport Attraction: Vail Resorts; Runner-Up: Rocky Mountaineer Car Rental Agency: The Hertz Corporation Cruise Line: Princess Cruises; Runner-Up: MSC Cruises USA Tourism Board/DMO/Marketing Association: Pure Michigan; Runner-Up: Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board Global Hotel or Resort Chain: Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts; Runner-Up: Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Individual Hotel or Resort, U.S.: Beverly Wilshire, a Four Seasons Hotel Individual Hotel or Resort, Global: The Westin Bund Center, Shanghai; Runner-Up: Ushuaïa Ibiza Beach Hotel Outfitter: Big 5 Tours & Expeditions; Runner-Up: G Adventures Travel Agency/OTA: Expedia Travel Resource: Fathom; Peek (tie) Restaurant/Food Truck/Market: Sam’s Chowder House Non-Travel-Industry Company: Cubavera/Perry Ellis

 

The Travel + Leisure SMITTY Awards 2014 Jury

• Renee Blodgett, Founder and Editor, We Blog the World; CEO, Magic Sauce Media
• Jason Clampet, Co-Founder and Head of Content, Skift
• Mike De Jesus, Head of Travel and Tourism, Twitter
• Travis Katz, Co-Founder and CEO, Gogobot
• Ashley Perez, Senior Editor, BuzzFeed
• Cole Rise, Travel Photographer
• Al Roker, Co-Host and Weatherman, NBC’s TODAY Show
• Rob Torres, Managing Director of Travel, Google
• Ann Tran, Travel Social-Marketing Strategist

Below is a very short video snippet shot at the event of Rich Beattie congratulating winners and giving kudos to his team. They did an incredible job pulling together yet another year's Awards event. Kudos to Rich and his team!

GlazedCon & Wearable World Expo Come to London This Fall

I've attended a few GlazedCon events now and find them to be incredibly useful from both a content and networking perspective. They are specifically focused on an area that is exploding and isn't going to slow down anytime soon: Wearables.

We're proud to be a media partner again and this time, GlazedCon is expanding to London on October 22, 2014, where they'll gather together Wearable and IoT executives, along with other top tech thought-leaders to debate the real business opportunities for the hottest emerging tech ecosystem. 

The event is instrumental for key executives, startups, media, mobile warriers and investors. In conjunction with GlazedCon London, they will be holding the first annual Wearable World Expo where over 50 of the hottest Wearable Tech companies will showcase products so cool you'll actually want to leave with them....or at least let the world know about them!

We have a special 30% discount code for those interested in attending below:

Discount Code: 30% off tickets glazed_weblogtheworld

Eventbrite: www.glazedlondon2014.eventbrite.com  

FutureCast & Andrew Keen Take on Wearables at AT&T Foundry

AT&T Foundry Innovation centers are the home to technology collaboration, innovative ideas and new projects. The center in Palo Alto teamed up with Ericsson and earlier this year, they kicked off a series of interactive discussions led by Cult of the Amateur and Digital Vertigo author Andrew Keen.   

They host a series of salon-style discussions called FutureCasts, where they bring together the brightest minds in Silicon Valley to tackle the future of a wide array of technologies. Each event brings together more than 30 leading experts – enterprise executives, startup founders, academics, journalists and public officials – on a technology topic. 

The latest FutureCast focused on the Wearable Revolution and featured Recon CEO Dan Eisenhardt Wednesday night, May 7.

The discussion centered around how wearable technology will change our lives in the areas of sports, manufacturing, health, lifestyle and beyond. Dan talked about how their heads up display technology got started and is now being frequently used by skiiers and athletes around the world.  

Says Dan about simplicity and design in wearables, "you have to focus on the user and what they want. It's often about saying no rather than saying yes which is harder to do. In other words, we need to take more things away and dumb it down so it's an easier experience for the user."

Andrew organically brought people into the conversation including myself....my input focused on my hot button, the #1 reason I don't wear ANY wearable product on the market today -- Design -- or rather lack thereof. Since it's still early days, we have a whole lotta technology being built by technologists for technologists and designers are not an integral part of the development process.

To my left was one of the guys behind the Rufus Cuff from Rufus Labs which is currently on IndieGoGo. The Rufus Cuff is an advanced wearable device that has 3-inch wide screen, a radical design, and what they refer to as a reimagined form factor. While their campaign is doing well, the product is far too geeky "looking" for me to ever wear, despite how useful it may be.

Today, there's not enough conversations between creative designers who care about form factor and the technologists who care about function. Since the space is still premature, early adopters are the ones driving sales and interest. A wearable product has to solve a problem between form and function yet it also has to be stylish and attractive.

Monisha Prakash from Lumo Bodytech piped in whose product tracks your body's position and alerts you when you're slouching. They have sold 23,000 units so far with Lumo Back being their flagship product, a wearable sensor and smartphone app for lower back posture and activity, which impacts back pain, fitness, confidence, and yes...appearance.

Lumo Lift, their other product, focuses on chest, shoulder, and upper back slouching, a big problem for many office workers who sit at desks all day long.   

AT&T's Chris McConnell and David Garver shared several insights along the way, including to the above, "23,000 units sold" stat. Their main point was while the numbers may be decent, whether that number will explode or not will dependo on whether that product (or any other product in the wearables space for that matter), can continuously solve a problem of contextual relevance.

In other words, if someone has a back problem then a niche wearable solution will be useful enough for them to spend the money. It solves their problem so its a worthwhile spend and in this case, a beautiful design will likely be secondary, although if its something they need to wear long term, then design will increasingly become more important.

Says Dan of Recon, "if you want to go out for a run or a ski, you may want to be able to leave your phone home especially if a watch, a necklace or a band can give you the data you need and perhaps just the text messages from only 3 people you care about."

In addition to regular communication, there's also communication when security and safety is a concern. Meet Artemis, whose tagline is smart jewelry for personal safety.

The team behind the products are seasoned travelers who have experienced adventure, street crime and worry over the safety of loved ones. I spoke to founder and CEO Jeff Axup who feels that wearable products will play an important role in making that happen. Their goal is to use Artemis wearable jewelry to help reduce the threat of personal violence.

A different approach but also one that focuses on safety comes from Zach Vorhies and his team at Zackees who have created cycling gloves with comfortable leather palms, an absorbent towel around the thumb, retro-reflective trim and breathable spandex throughout.

If you need to get around a car that’s blocking a bike lane, you can extend your left hand and active the turn signal gloves and check the lane for oncoming traffic. Signaling your intent before you pop out of that bike lane will go a long way in making your intent clear, keeping you safer from other drivers sharing the road.

 

The Magellan guys were also there and while they're mostly known for their GPS systems, they're out and about pumping up their Echo Smart Sports Watch.The Magellan Echo solves the biggest problem when doing sports with a smartphone -- viewing and controlling apps while the phone is tucked away. Echo streams data and controls from your smartphone to your wrist.

At a glance, you can see distance, pace, and heart rate from apps in realtime. While the colors are bright, fun and oh so sporty looking, they're still a bit clunky and masculine looking for me.

 

Clark Weber from their team however had a great point when he said to me, "it's designed to be worn when you go off and do a sport and don't want to bring your phone with you or a larger device, not necessarily for everyday use." It made me rethink the usefulness and functionality of it and perhaps even testing it out.

I was there with Kolibree, the world's first connected electric toothbrush. While not a traditional wearable, a lot of people have been throwing connected devices into the wearables space. As our phones become less of an attachment and more of a fixure on our clothing, purses and wrist bands, smart phones that share data on what's happening with our health, including dental health, start to fall into the wearable space.

Kolibree is currently on Kickstarter until May 25 and while their goal has already been met, you can still order toothbrushes for less than you will be able to get them when the product ships in the Fall.

The real question the AT&T guys ask - "are mainstream consumers ready for wearable clothing and products that are connected and fixtures of our "selves"? They think not, although agree with the Accenture guys who are mostly focused on larger scale B2B projects.

Enterprise makes sense and in that space, price point is less of an issue if increased productivity will save tens of thousands or millions of dollars on an expensive running conveyor belt. Fashion is also less likely to be an issue.

Brent Bloom from Accenture talked about the work they're doing in the enterprise space, helping Fortune 1000 companies save money. If someone can do their job more efficiently then we have a win win. Today, they are already successfully helping desk-less workers keep their hands free and be more productive while getting access to data.    

Says Greylock's Sean White, "products need to be both utility and fashion and we need to understand the social implications of what the utility will create if the fashion isn't there." Hear hear Sean! Dutch born fashion designer and engineer Anouk Wipprect, who is currently doing a project with AutoDesk, couldn't agree more. 

The holy grail asserts the AT&T guys is that as a consumer, I want to pay one price per month and connect to all of my devices. Will carriers across the globe add smaller low bandwidth devices to your existing services in the future? Inherently economic models will change -- they have to.  

Simplified plans that support more devices without making a serious dent in your wallet is what needs to happen for wearables to become mainstream says Anthony Pelossi of Magellan, who asked the room who has a tablet and pays for 3 or 4G service rather than just rely on the wifi. Only a few people raised their hands and remember that this audience is a room full of early adopters and movers and shakers in Silicon Valley, so you can imagine that price is a serious consideration for mainstream users.

"Solve that problem," says Pelossi and "you've solved half the battle with wearable devices." I'd agree on this to a point, but bottom line, as a woman who does care about fashion as much as function, until the wearables also become stylish enough to WANT to wear, there will be a significant delay on adoption and social acceptability. I'd also argue that we'll expect to buy wearables at more traditional retail outlets rather than Best Buy or some geeky online site.

Keep your eye on AT&T Foundary's upcoming FutureCasts. While a list of topics and categories haven't been officially announced nor have specific dates, they promise that many more of these engaging discussions are coming. Thanks Ericsson, AT&T Foundary and Andrew Keen for a tintilizing evening!

DLD Kicks Off Their First NYC Event in Chelsea

The DLD (Digital-Life-Design) Conference has been around for awhile albeit more well known in Europe than in the states. It makes sense since it started in Munich Germany in 2005 and only expanded in recent years, first in Israel and most recently to the states with their first official U.S. conference in New York City from April 30-May 1, 2014.

Their mission is to act as a global network on innovation, digitization, science and culture which connects business, creative and social leaders, opinion-formers and influencers for crossover conversation and inspiration.  

DLD is organized by DLD Media, which is part of Burda Digital and originally founded by Steffi Czerny and Marcel Reichart. DLD has also hosted events in Beijing, San Francisco, London, Moscow, New Delhi, Rio, Hong Kong and Tel Aviv, where there is a growing community because of the efforts of Israeli-based Yossi Vardi who acts as Chairman of the conference together with Hubert Burda.

Who attends? The conference is invite only, but the categories and interests of those who make up the audience are aligned with the content. Think creative communities, international leaders, disruptors and thinkers from digital and consumer markets, as well as media, technologists, scientists, designers, politicians, artists and social scientists from around the globe.

The format is a combination of keynote style talks and panels.  

I last attended the original DLD in 2010 and still remember the magic of Munich in January. Snow fell on me as I walked from my hotel to the venue every morning and back every night, the majority of my commute on pedestrian only streets. As cold as it was, I took plenty of shots of remarkable people and activites over the course of a few days.

I lived on salty pretzels, sausage, beer and coffee and recall having a fight with my new Google Nexus phone, brutal enough that I tossed it in a snowbank because it wouldn't work after umpteen attempts. DLD felt like early days of TED except without the celebrities and Monterey Beach nearby. 

One of the things that make DLD so unique is the eclectic and rich curation of tantilizing voices and minds from around the globe by Steffi, Marcel, Hubert and Yossi. Like TED, Davos and Renaissance Weekend, the attendees could equally be speakers because they all have inspiring, compelling content to share.

When the audience is as engaging as the people on stage, but are also compassionate and eager to help make the world a better place, then you have a "creative global community with heart" in a business setting. It's a bit how I see and would describe DLD! 

Imagine hearing and engaging in discussions on the future of investment, net neutrality, youth marketing, the future of art and design, urban planning, violence, social physics, failure and neuro science all within a 48 hour period.

Imagine in that same 48 hour period, having a chat with Deepak Chopra on spirituality in the workplace and then hearing about future plans for the Arctic Passage from Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson. I originally met Grimsson at the Startup Iceland Conference in Reykjavik last summer (refer to my write up on the event including his talk). Below is a shot I took of him in the networking area at DLD during a tea break.

By now, you're pretty energized, which is great preparation for your visit to a nearby German biergarten for massive plates of sausage, pretzels, sauerkraut and pickled vegetables while listening to an authentic Bavarian band. 

Imagine that sometime during your day, you discovered an interesting project or two by Victor Chan, the Founding Director of the Dalai Lama Center, who has also co-authored books with the Dali Lama. Below, he reflects in the courtyard while we took a session break after the rain finally cleared.

Then, later, you dive deep into a discussion about where beauty is missing in the world from architecture to schools and churches.This small group of really smart people you met over German beer care enough to think of solutions about where the world can start. 

I chatted with right brain and left brain thinkers from Sweden, China, France, England, South Africa, Australia, Germany, Israel, Finland, Austria, India, Iran, Pakistan, Estonia, Russia, Singapore, Ireland, Denmark, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Canada.

This is a sample of some of my warmest memories over the course of two days. Welcome to DLD! Their first New York event did not disappoint and held to the same top notch standards they're so known for at their main event in Munich every winter.

One of the other fabulous things about a European run event, is that they care about food. And, of course, presentation matters!

While the conversations in the lounge areas and the after parties could keep you engaged for hours, they also have an hourly agenda for conversations happening on the main stage. I'll start with one of my favorite talks by an Austrian designer I originally met at TED more than a decade ago.

Stefan Sagmeister kicked off his thoughtful and quietly provactive session on Beauty with stunning images of a medieval castle in Lisbon. He said, "Every aspect of this castle was informed by form."

He asks, "how did we manage to get from the darkest side of the middle ages into the 20th century and somehow along the way, lost our desire to make things beautiful?"

He points out that the end of the 19th century was obsessed with beauty and weaving in culture and history into architecture, art and design: the Parliament which is Greek, the Opera which is of Renaissance architecture and the Gothic-ness of Vienna's City Hall.

Yet today, Sagmeister asserts, "theres not a single high end designer who talks about beauty, which IS about being human."

Below is an image taken from his design website.

I had an interesting chat with Dutch-Brazilian visual artist Rafaël Rozendaal who uses the Internet as his canvas. His artistic practice consists of websites, installations, lenticulars, writings and lectures. Spread out over a vast network of domain names, he attracts a large online audience of over 30 million visits per year.

His work researches the screen as a pictorial space, reverse engineering reality into condensed bits, in a space somewhere between animated cartoons and paintings. Rafaël's installations involve moving light and reflections, taking online works and transforming them into spatial experiences.

The below digital image is a website called Room Warp. Note that the below screen capture is a still of a moving digital image that will make you a tad dizzy if you stare at it for too long. You need to go to roomwarp.com to see the live image in action.

He creates digital art that all have their own website name. Others fun examples include FutureIsUncertain.com and IfYesNo.com. 

While we're on the topic of art, let's move to Kollabora founder Nora Abousteit who was on a panel entitled Creative Cities which Peter Hirshberg moderated. Says Nora on art as it relates to cities and technology, "Art helps us reframe things in the technology world." What's happening in Las Vegas with the Downtown Project is certainly an example of this.

Also in the discussion was Burning Man's Jenn Sander, Gidi Schmerling from the Tel Aviv Municipiality and CEA's Gary Shapiro.

This engaging discussion was about all the elements that make cities thrive. How do you turn a city/metro area into a creative technological hub like Silicon Valley?

If similar factors come together argues Shapiro then a similar ecosystem can evolve. He pointed out that Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley share a culture that allows failure and supports entrepreneurs taking risks which is necessary for a startup culture to succeed.

While I missed the Cracking the Code of the Art Business panel, Arty's Carter Cleveland, Artnet's Ben Genocchio, Christopher Vroom from ArtSpace, Aditya Julka from Paddle 8 and Michaela de Pury explored this topic in depth.

Digital Music was also part of the agenda, another game changing industry. Says Shazam's CEO Rich Riley, "the way people consume music is changing dramatically and it's important that the industry responds to how people want to listen to and share music." In other words, don't force a square hole into a circle! 

Below, Blaise Belville and Torsten Schmidt discuss digital trends in music.

I'm a sucker for meeting a new musician regardless of what instrument they play or style they're passionate about. As a storyteller, I often find that musicians have the most interesting stories at conferences, particularly technology ones.

Given how many Israeli attendees there are, it was no surprise to see Israeli violinist Miri Ben-Ari perform on the main stage. She had me at hello; her energy is electric, her style vibrant and her music foot tapping. 

I also attended the Wearables Panel because it's a hot topic right now and one I have a personal interest in because the design is crying for innovation. What was most refreshing is that of the four panelists, three were women.

The problem with wearables today for me as a woman, is that none of them are desirable enough to want to wear. Despite how functional and cool they are, the design behind the wearable is still being made by technologists for technologists.

Intel's Sandra Lopez, MIT's Amanda Parkes and Nike's Stefan Olander discussed the future of wearables and where it's heading. The session was moderated by the Financial Times' Vanessa Friedman.

Sandra and Amanda noted that while today, we might think of buying a wearable device or object of clothing on a technology site or online store, in the future, if it is a fashionable item we want to wear because of how it looks and makes us feel, then we'll expect to buy them at more traditional retail outlets.

I certainly don't need another technology infused bulky plastic black watch or geeky looking Fitbit-like arm band to clash with my outfits. 

Another fabulous panel of all women was the Freedom of the Internet in the U.S. and Europe. Bloomberg's Diane Brady moderated a discussion between Miriam Meckel from the University of St. Gallen (solo shot below) and the European Commission's Viviane Reding. 

As if suggesting that it rarely happens, Viviane says "a government should have power to do precisely what they want and need to do to make Internet safe and open." She was fabulous btw.

The "Building a Vertical Business for the Consumer Internet" Panel

Adding some humor and controversy to the DLD stage was Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock. "A photo with $4.6 billion dollars printed under Evan William's face in the Wall Street Journal is NOT disruption," he asserts as he talks about humanism and how current economic and investment models are not necessarily supporting the best entrepreneurs and ideas.

If there's not a significant return on investment, then the idea and entrepreneur doesn't get funded, when in fact, it could return a small return on investment and perhaps offer something of great value to the world. The money guys around me seemed to have smoke coming out of their ears while he was talking. It would have been fun (and spicy) to have a debate after his talk!

On a media panel moderated by Jessica Lessin, John Markoff and Steven Levy discussed the state of technology journalism and how it has evolved over the past twenty years.  

"The art of real investigative reporting has been lost to fast twitch journalism," says Levy who went on to share his opinion on the pitfalls of curation. He suggests that after content gets recycled umpteen times, no one knows who the original author is anymore since the primary source gets lost when it is replicated so frequently. 

Below, the 20 Years of Funding panel included Landmark Ventures' Zeev Klein, Acton Capital Partners Christoph Braun, Time Warner Investments Scott Levine, Israel Growth Partners Moshe Lichtman and Greycroft's Alan Patricof.

The closing interview was originally slated to be a fireside chat between Richard Saul Wurman and Iceland's president Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson but there was a change of plans. The final act was instead, a touching interview between Yossi Vardi and his former "boss" Steve Case.

Steve talked about his old days at AOL where he said he was less of a CEO and more of a mayor. In those days, he said the focus was on the 3 C's: context, content and community.  

Other pressing issues he raised was the fact that we'll fall far behind the innovation ladder if we don't make it a priority. "Immigration reform necessary to make sure we attract the best people to Startup America," he said. Vardi agreed which led to the role of startups today and how people will succeed. "People are not interested in facts, they're interested in good stories," says Yossi. 

Now, please join me on a visual journey to DLD NYC, starting with the DLD NYC Band Michael Aranella and his Dreamland Orchestra.

 Shahar Nechmad

 

 

Dina Kaplan

Ryan Rzepecki of Social Bicycles, David Rose with his new book Angel Investing, Brad Templeton and Dr. Amol Sarva.

 Steve Case watching one of the presentations from the front row.

I went back in time when I ran into this trio -- a former dynamic team together so many years later minus Jerry Michalski of course. Below, Daphne Kis, Kevin Werbach and Esther Dyson.

 Gino Yu, Renee Blodgett

 Yossi on stage

 Lakshmi Pratury, Steve Case, Renee Blodgett

 Sunny Bates and Nate Mook

 Dan Dubno and Gary Bolles

 Don Dodge, Petra Vorsteher, Renee Blodgett, Shara Nechmad

 Peter Hirshberg

 Jeff Jarvis

 Lakshmi Pratury, Asha and crew

 Lara Stein and Yossi Vardi

Steffi Czerny

 

 Renee Blodgett, Burda's Olga Kammerer and ELLE Magazine U.S. Correspondent Nadine Sieger 

The sax player gave me a closer look at his marvelous instrument.

Simeone Simeonov 

 

 Stephanie Hospital

 

 

Holly Harper Dodge & Don Dodge

Andrew Keen

 

 

 Stuart Gannes

 

Did I mention that they had live entertainment at the closing night after party? 

Kudos and hats off to Steffi, Yossi and team for pulling off yet another perfectly crafted and curated event!

All photo credits: Renee Blodgett, except for the group shot of Creative Cities which was pulled from the DLD blog.

Denting The Future With Passionate Geeks in Sun Valley Idaho

When you hear the word DENT, you might have a visual of a dental brand or maybe an auto repair company, but your mind might not automatically jump to a conference in the middle of the Idaho mountains whose goal is to shake things up across industries with technology.

Now in its second year, Steve Broback and Jason Preston are the visionaries behind this event, which aims to explore the magic and science of visionary leadership and groundbreaking success.

While so many events and conferences focus on one main track or trending idea, i.e, mobile apps, enterprise software, wearables or connected devices, DENT the Future has focused on creating an "experience" for its attendees, all centered around entrepreneurship, leadership and having "fun."

Sessions and discussions ranged from mobile development, gaming, delegation and goal setting to the art of design, crowdfunding, wearable tech, data visualization and decoding the language of glamour.

We delved into education and IPs and then onto the importance of creating support networks when building a startup, before embarking on a dialogue with Richard Douglas "Dick" Fosbury, who is one of the most influential athletes in the history of track and field.

We also heard from Chris Anderson of the CSI Centennial Observatory and the Falukner Planitarium, who shared how the current best understanding of gravity -- based on Einstein's relativity -- suggests that everything creates its own dent in the universe, however small, how this connects everyone to everything, and how the relativity of simultaneity means that we all inhabit our own unique universes. 

With crowdfunding on the rise as an alternate to traditional angel and seed investment, it was no surprise to see IndieGoGo Founder & Chief Development Officer Danae Ringelmann on the stage in an inspiring fireside chat with Jeremiah Owyang.  

We explored the benefits of crowdfunding and debated if the crowd is actually wiser than vetted professionals from established companies.

Says Danae Ringelmann of the value add for VCs, "we derisk the investment process, allowing them to step away from the vetting process so they can focus more on the amplification. We’re creating pre-markets from the community up and because we’re open, we don’t infiltrate the results."

She asserts that by being open, IndieGoGo can inherently be a true market testing platform. "If you’re unsuccessful at raising money, you don’t have an audience that cares. If the market doesn’t care, you can either hone your product or go back to the table and focus on features or projects that truly matter to people."

The notion is that as a true market testing platform, they democratize results, rather than corrupt them. This crowd-based approach is opposite to the corporation approach says Jeremiah, so "what can big corporations learn from a crowdfunding model like IndieGoGo?"

She says that large companies and brands are now using IndieGoGo as a market testing platform. For example, Phillips sponsored an effort where various projects went up to get feedback from the market so they could learn about what to incorporate into their products. Companies like Honda and Whole Foods are also using crowdfunding as a customer engagement and cause marketing platform. In essence, the crowd gets what they need from each other.  

 My favorite learned "stat"?  Apparently, 47% of all successful ventures on IndieGoGo are run by women.

While Jeremiah may have shone in his bright red sneakers, Robert Scoble also did his interview with Fosbury in bright red. They weren't the only ones walking around shining like Rudolph's nose since Scott Jordan of ScotteVest gave away newer models of his fabulous jackets and most people chose "red." In other words, there was a whole lotta red happening at DENT 2014.

Virginia Postrel took us in the opposite direction, showing us how to decode glamour and where it shows up in places you'd least expect it, like the Marines. She asserts that people have a narrow idea of fashion and glamour and their images are largely made up of make up and old fashioned holiday movies.

"Glamour draws people to technology," she says. There are clearly a lot of glamorous images and ideas which shape what technology gets built and also how we use it. It's never been easier to work at the beach with your laptop and mobile phone. Even language we use in technology has a quality of glamour to it.

A few observations: rather than think about what glamour is, think about what is glamorous. I loved this distinction: glamor allows you to build your own Reality-Distortion Field.

She nailed it here: Glamour is a nonverbal persuasion, a projection of longing. There’s an audience and an object and in the interaction between that interaction, a distinctive emotion is evoked. 

A lot of what glamour does is make us buy things; it focuses us on careers we choose, it makes us show up at certain places and wear certain things because of what the association means and buy things to look like celebrities we aspire to be.

From technology to Hollywood, we then dove into politics, focusing on Obama who exuded glamour by creating mystery. He was relatively unknown and people projected their hopes and dreams for the world. We saw what happens when a brand becomes a movement through all the people who supported him.

It's so true: glamour is in the audience. Whether it's funny or not, it's not how hard you’re trying; the success is whether the audience laughs or bites. We learned that glamour is an illusion that tells the truth about desire -- it is known to be false but is felt to be true. Glamour is a spell that makes us feel more magical than things really are. It contains the illusion of magic. Of escape. The illusion is the grace. Ahhh yes...Spot on Virginia!!

This is the quirkiness and magic of DENT. Just when you think you're going to get another speaker from the world of all things tech, an astronomer, an author of glamour or a designer and illustrator comes onto the stage. 

Chief Freak and founder of Freak'n Genius Kyle Kesterson is another great example of the speaker mashup so well curated by Jason and Steve. 

I loved Kyle's human-ness. Rather than focus on his successes, he shared his life "story", which dragged him through homelessness, numerous drop outs and years of suffering from severe depression. The discovery of artistic expression and creativity changed everything leading him through a series of wins at Giant Thinkwell, as Seattle 2.0's "Best Startup Designer", a Geekwire "Entrepreneur of the Year" nominee, a toy developer, photographer and beatboxer.

He talked about consumption, a word I love because of the complexity of the word and all that it represents. People either associate it with negative actions or positive ones depending on your orientation of the world.

Kyle asserts that there are two things that can come from consumption: Inspiration and Education. I think there are probably more, but inspiration and education are great places to start.

He reminded people that along your journey, it won't always be easy and that critics will suck the wind out of you so fast you won't know what hit you. Ask yourself: are you sucking the air out of other people’s dreams or are you contributing to making them happen? Great question!

Which person are you most of the time? How do you enable others to create, explore and let others shine?  

Along your journey, you will have a story to tell and velocity will come through that communication. But, do you have a compelling story? Having a compelling story that is genuinely authentic is where you will get empathy from time and time again. You need to create more value for your listeners so that you accelerate their story not just your own. Are you inspiring and educating them, taking from them or merely a megahorn? It doesn't get more human than that...

Then, Noah Illinsky took us on a data visualization journey. Noah suggests that successful visualizations need to have the right:

• Purpose – why we are creating this?
• Content – what we are showing?
• Structure – how we position it?
• Formatting – formats, labels, fonts, etc.

The problem Noah asserts is that most people go through the process in the wrong order. It must be in this order because they stem from each other. You need to know what kinds of questions you need to answer and what actions you want to enable before you create a visualization.  

Once you identify the answers, you need to think about what data you want to show and what graph (ic) you want to use to share that data. Lots of engineers start at the end rather than trying to identify what the goals are first. Engineers haven’t been trained how to go back upstream to figure out what problem they’re trying to solve. He suggests that as a team, you need to define the upstream sooner before the coding and creation begins.

Bottom line: nobody cares about your brand, they only care about whether you make them feel good. People don’t have time. The take away here was: serve your customers – purpose is everything and it dictates the deliverable. It always comes back to purpose!!     

Google Comparison CEO Dan Shapiro lives and breathes the comparison shopping space.  

Rather than focus on his "stuff," he discussed what does it mean to be a CEO and what they do, which is basically Hire, Inspire and Fire. The job of the CEO is to hire effectively so you can delegate effectively and the team is the single most important part of the CEO’s role.

Vision can come from a bunch of different places but it's the CEO’s connection to that vision that drives the company. The CEO must be the keeper of the strategy, which is something that he asserts, can never be delegated. Dan suggests that in fact, there are six things you can’t delegate as a CEO:

1. Strategy - the CEO needs to drive that from the ground up.
2. The Team - getting the right team in place is one of the most important things a CEO does.
3. The Vision - it's critical that the vision comes from the leader.
4. Financing - investors want to see you in action. How you negotiate your deal with them is how you will work other deals and they want to see that. Investors also want to build a relationship and a friendship with the CEO.  
5. Investor Relations – investors want to hear from the CEO.  
6. Company Culture – sometimes it's like a fungus, sometimes it's like a ferry ring. No one knows what a company culture is about or how it evolves, but whatever the culture is comes from the leader.

From astronomy, data visualization, illustration, glamour and leadership, we moved to violence with Dr. Gary Slutkin. Slutkin is a physician and epidemiologist, an innovator in violence reduction, and the founder of CureViolence, a scientifically proven, public health approach to violence reduction which uses disease control and behavior change methods. 

Through their work, they've statistically demonstrated reducing shootings and killings by 41% to 73% by three extensive independently funded and independently performed studies.

Gary has a fascinating story and history -- he was recruited by the World Health Organization where he worked in over 20 countries, including leading the efforts – using behavior change methods - to reverse the AIDS epidemic in Uganda. The analogy here is that Slutkin sees violence as an infectious process, and credits his WHO training and experiences in multiple countries to informing his understanding and approach to violence and behavior change.

I was inspired by other on and off-stage discussions including Andy Grignon, Mark Anderson, Kathleen Warner, and The North Face founder Hap Klopp.

Speaking of inspiration, a great conference isn't complete without art and music and this year's musicians blew me away.

Roem Baur whose roots are in opera, has played thousands of shows in a career that spans 4 continents. He nailed it on guitar and with vocals alongside Tae Phoenix, whose 3 octave range voice made me cry on two occasions.

The other inspiration came from the humor and intellectual wit from the team at Buick. Yes, Buick. I left DENT with a much more hip view of the brand than when I arrived, so much so that I'm now dying to try out a few Buick vehicles as well as experience a much more cooly polished culture than I ever imagined. And, truth be told, their marketing and social team is smart, genuine and fun, a rare combination. Thanks for the insights Nick Richards and Phil Colley.

Of course we all know that most of the learning and engagement at an event comes from the hallway chats, the after parties, the breaks, and the other activities that 'surround' an event. What makes DENT such a standout is not just the unique and eclectic curation by Steve and Jason, but the interesting things to do in between.

Want some examples? How's this for off-the-charts?

On the two days leading up the conference, activites included an at-dawn trek where you learned about the world of wolves led by Oliver Starr, a photography walk led by the ever so endearing Kris Krug, a scavenger hunt led by Buick, a private gathering at ScotteVest CEO Scott Jordan's house where great wine was poured, a rustic mountain lodge visit where we drank more great wine by a blazing fire, skiing at Sun Valley Resort and an evening of hosted dinners where we were thrown together with interesting personalities from all walks of life.

I personally attended the SouthWest Airlines dinner, which was a perfect match given that I run an online luxury travel magazine, only to be led afterwards by local and not so local entrepreneurs to three more stops in downtown Sun Valley where we experienced more fabulous food and tons of warm Idaho hospitality. SouthWest Airlines also sponsored a nerd bird flight from Oakland to Boise where their social media guru Adam Rucker not only applauded the geeks from the front of the plane but gave away surprise $100 off coupons to everyone on the plane, not just DENT attendees. All I can say is "classy move!"

It all came together graciously through a combination of efforts and hard work -- a huge thanks to:

• Steve Broback who is personally responsible for dragging me to Idaho 
• Buzz Bruggeman and Doug Rowan for pestering me to attend for the last year and a half
• Maryam Scoble for making the logistics seamless and easy and for making me smile
• Greg Randolph of Sun Valley Tourism for making sure I knew where to go, what to do and why
• Therese Magner of Sun Valley Resorts who went well above and beyond the call of duty to make sure I left the area with one thing on my mind....returning
• Shannon Allen of Knob Hill Inn for her gracious generosity
• Beryl Barnes of Zenergy for providing a place to relax and reground myself 
• Wendy Muir at Globus for amazing sake and an exquisite culinary treat

And, hats off to Jack Sibbach and Therese Magner for getting me on the mountain more than once and to Therese, Ellen, Cecile and Alex for supplying me with jackets, socks, hats, gloves, glasses and gear to make sure I didn't freeze my ass off on the top. 

Be sure to check out my upcoming blog posts on Sun Valley over on We Blog the World where I'll be covering two properties, a spa, two restaurants, the mountain and the culture. 

While we're getting personal, it's time to meet some fellow DENTERS...

 Did I mention how much fun we had?

We even hung upside down somewhere along the way. Well, a few of us did anyway!

And as always, Robert Scoble and Shel Israel signed books.

Of course, Robert reinforced that geeky and ever so adorable brand of his....oooops, that's his finger. Or is it actually the brand, or is it his....you get the idea.

Below are chief DENTERS Jason Preston and Steve Broback who deserve an applause for bringing passionate inventors and thinkers to the American wild west for a whole lotta reflection, learning and fun!

Next Generation Power Summit Kicks off on March 5

I recently agreed to participate in an online video series on social media in business called Next Generation Power Summit, produced and organized by Australian entrepreneur Rosemary Burnett.

The series will kick off March 5, 2014 and run through March 18 and the schedule of social media gurus and expert interviews are listed below.

The video interview series aims to help businesses with their online and digital strategy through advice and insights from a host of folks living it and breathing it every day. Objectives of the series are to:

• Get clear about your core message and brand
• Build a following on social media
• Attract and connect with your ideal client in the places they are hanging out.
• Turn those connections into relationships and sales
• Learn the strategies the experts have adopted themselves, to achieve ‘big business’ success.

I'm up on March 17 however there's a host of great other consultants and specialists in the line-up starting on March 5 beginning with Rosemary's kick off. Note that it is free to participate but you have to register on the main Next Generation Power Summit home page.

I'm told that this Tele-summit series is similar in approach to a Global Mentor Mastermind event. There will be the opportunity to watch the video interview replays for a limited time if you can’t make it on the launch date however you will need to register regardless to get access to the content.

 

Speakers Rethink, Redesign & Recreate at TEDxBerkeley 2014

This year marks the fourth year I've been involved as co-curator at TEDxBerkeley, an annual TEDx event held at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley California. Now in its fifth year, this was the first year the event sold out at 1,700 and that's not including volunteers and our team. We had an outstanding line-up of speakers and performers this year, and the talks were centered around this year's core theme: Rethink, Redesign, Recreate.

Below is a summary of a handful of the talks, but you can find out more about the speakers on the TEDxSpeaker page and through their online videos which should be posted sometime in February or early  March 2014.

Kicking things off in the morning was well renowned entrepreneur and former Apple evangelist, Guy Kawasaki,  whose talk was entitled The Art of Innovation. 

Addressing entrepreneurs and wanna-be entrepreneurs, he suggests that rather than draft a mission statement, create a vision with real meaning...in other words, a mantra of why you should exist. Fedex doesn't equate to a series of trucks that deliver packages, but Peace of Mind.    

He also pointed to the fact that so many companies try to innovate from the same growth curve rather than jump ahead of the curve which is where real innovation happens - that was Kodak's fail btw. Change in an industry is inevitable, so don't lag behind because you're too set in the way you do business and too inflexible to pivot to a new vision before it's too late. When you start to think from a truly innovative place, you're essentially rolling the dice.  

If you have indeed jumped to the next innovation curve like Apple did, it’s okay to have some crappiness in your product suggests Guy, as long as you get it out there. No surprise coming from an Apple veteran who worked alongside Steve Jobs who is known for his infamous slogan: Real Artists Ship. Taken from Steve Levy's book Insanely Great, which chronicles the creation of the first Mac, he writes: 

"One’s creation, quite simply, did not exist as art if it was not out there, available for consumption, doing well. Once you get the computers into people’s homes, you have penetrated their minds. At that point all the clever design decisions you made, the turns of the interface, the subtle dance of mode and modeless, the menu bars and trash cans and mouse buttons and everything else inside and outside your creation, becomes part of people’s lives, transforms their working habits, permeates their approach to their labor, and ultimately, their lives. 

But to do that, to make a difference in the world and a dent in the universe, you had to ship. You had to ship. You had to ship."

I couldn't agree more and have seen more ego and time spent on details that simply don't matter get in the way over the years of getting a product to market for the long haul. The next part is also true - once you ship, you will suddenly be surprised how people start to use your product in ways you didn’t even anticipate. With Twitter, it was the same case as well as from countless other products and services which have been documented over the years. It’s up to the customer not to you since they drive your future.  

 He also thinks its smart to polarize people even at the expense of major push back from corporate brands. He cited Tivo as an example because of its ability to time shift TV. Great products polarize people – don’t be afraid of polarizing people because that will upset the status quo.

He also spent some time on the "pitch." Hear hear Guy since so many social media purists argue that there no longer is a pitch, it's just a conversation.

Bottom line - both need to happen in a raw and inherently authentic way for sustainable success. It's astonishing to me how many CEOs don't get that.

Also in the first session, Carol Sanford started her talk with a moving statement “It took me 42 years to find an answer of how to change the world.” She moved into a dialogue about what she refers to as The Responsible Entrepreneur, which is anyone who is helping to bring a new business into the world which creates a better world. To learn more about the modern entrepreneur and the responsible ones, she dives into the Four Game Changing Archetypes.  

Of those timeless archetypes, she cites the warrior who can see things the rest of us cannot see, the clown or the court jester who thrives on bringing the connections to those who cannot see the nation, the hunter who thinks about governance and how things work.

Every Responsible Entrepreneur represents an archetype, each with a unique role to play in the entrepreneurial system.

As she references in a post she wrote, "cultural anthropologists have identified all four in every healthy culture, and all four are needed to ensure the health of our own evolving social system. Each takes on change differently in search of different outcomes and all four approaches can also be found inside established organizations, among intrapreneurs who lead change." 

Archetype 1 is the Freedom Entrerpeneur, driven by the desire to live freely and creativity, and their contribution is the intense pursuit of perfection, potential and "doing it right." Examples include Steve Jobs and a Samurai warrior. 

Archetype 2 is the "Social Entrepreneur", who is the  foundation of change, since they play a key role in identifying and exposing gaps in traditional thinking. They often sacrifice for the greater good while seeking to mend a tear in the fabric of society others often don't see. 

Richard Branson exemplifies this archetype when he takes on outrageous endeavors to call attention to what’s missing from the global dialogue, or when he designs businesses that foster camaraderie and mutual understanding. 

Archetype 3 aka, the Reciprocity Entrepreneur supports the whole by making sure that all life gets what it needs. In other words, they work to make the systems that nourish us healthy. Reciprocity entrepreneurs see the need to work in balance with human and natural systems. They seek to reduce the harm we do on Earth and in society.

An example of this archetype is Oprah Winfrey, who in the course of her routine business has done more to evolve education—for girls in particular—than anyone in the traditional school systems. Lastly, Archetype 4 who is the Regenerative Entrepreneur. They seek to guide people and organizations as they cross boundaries and create transformations for a better world.  

What I loved most about her talk was the correlation to tribal behavior that can be garnered from each modern stereotype and why each one is valuable to the "whole" since each of the four archetypal entrepreneurs approaches growth and change differently. She notes that each is critical to revitalizing democracy and, on the larger world stage, capitalism itself. 

Rather than go into the works of Richard Branson and Steve Jobs, she talks about the warriors who are doing innovation in the fishing industry and in sectors and products most of us may have never heard of, but are bringing forth true consciousness in a unique way.

She refers to them as the reconnection entrepreneurs. She says to the audience: "If you’re one of those people who wants to change the world, ask yourself:

Do I want to change industries by connecting us with values and can I go after a whole industry?  Can I bring conscious to the way I do business or the way I do a non-profit? Do I want to bring a sense of repriocity where we understand that we’re all part of a whole? Do I want to reconnect us to government and corporate business and individuals where we are all complete?" I loved this woman's energy!

Connective Bahavior Expert Kare Anderson spoke on the power of mutuality and how to think about mutuality in work relationships. What do you well and with whom and when do you not?  That wonderful sweet spot of shared interests can be an inoculation and help us see things in a bizarre way," said Kare.

For most of our lives in the business world, we’ve been advised to lead and manage others. We’ve been taught to resolve conflict, influence, negotiate and otherwise attempt to get what we want from people.

Through self-improvement, we’re told we’ll become happier, smarter and more attractive, successful and self-aware. The problem with that paradigm however, she asserts, is that there is no "us" in the equation.

Wouldn't you prefer the camaraderie of smart collaboration over being lead, persuaded or managed? What’s missing is the guidebook on how to engage with others to accomplish something more powerful together than we can alone.

From within that mindset, she addressed successful methods to be successful, such as the best ways to find and recruit the right partners and groups, following a set of rules of engagement? 

Mutuality happens in the military, it happens in the operation room, it happens in boardrooms, it happens when we create big things, says Kare. There are benefits to hanging out with those who can help you think about a process differently, i.e., fast thinkers hanging out with slow thinkers. 

Seeking people out who are different can provide more meaning, more adventure and more assistance. The more grounded we are, the more we can see people more clearly and understand what they are saying and not saying.

Specificity creates clarity. Sometimes you need to slow down to get that clarity and to make things happen. When you slow down, people suddenly start smiling more which improves interconnections at work and at home. Often, when we see something that move us, we project other qualities that have no relationship to them. 

Think about when you get in sync, you suddenly start to walk together. Welcome to the power of mutuality. When you walk together in sync, you suddenly start working together more effectively.  Whatever holds our attention controls our lives and what gets rewarded, gets repeated. Our behavior is contagious to the 9^th degree.

In a civilization where love is gone, we turn to justice. When justice doesn't work, we turn to violence.  Violence isn’t just about shooting, it is about ignoring humanity. The anecdote is mutuality. Great great talk!

Paul Rucker is a visual artist, composer, and musician who combines media, often integrating live performance, sound, original compositions, and visual art. His work is the product of a rich interactive process, through which he investigates community impacts, human rights issues, historical research, and basic human emotions surrounding a subject.

Paul spoke about Recapitulation, his Creative Capital project that parallels slavery with the current day prison system. He did this with data visualization of maps he created of the US prison system with data from the organization Prison Policy Initiative, and a slave density map from 1860 showing slave populations in some areas of the south at over 90 percent. 

Even though the US population is only 5 percent, the prison population makes up 25 percent of the worlds prison population.

Whereas African Americans comprise only 12 percent of the country’s total population, they make-up 40 percent of those incarcerated. His work also examines the colossal disparity in the racial composition of the U.S. prison population and points to the vast number of African American’s whose lives have been affected by both the institution of slavery and prison system. Paul says “Slavery worked”.

From a cost benefit analysis, you can’t argue with free labor. The economic impact was tremendous. In 1860, cotton was 60 percent of US exports. The US provided 75 percent of the world’s cotton. This was an estimated 200 million dollars at that time. 

Rucker taught about the importance of knowing history, and the amendments and how language was used and manipulated.

He paralleled lynching with current shootings by police of unarmed men and then showed an animation of a postcard from 1915 that he brought to life and composed new music for the imagery.  A powerful cello player, Paul often weaves in controversial and painful issues into his playing and his storytelling.   

Before, during and after giving us a historical glimpse into these issues through animated video, sculpture and digital prints, he fired up his cello again and again, each time breathtakingly beautiful. A refreshingly creative approach to storytelling, his execution was a sweet mix of a rich interactive process through combines community impacts, human rights issues, historical research and basic human emotions.

You're left feeling that his work is rare, his findings are important as are the way he presents them and that he's one helluva musician.

 

One of the more intensely passionate talks was by biologist Tim Shields, who is more excited about tortoises than life itself. Because the world looks at environmentalism and issues surrounding it as boring, a bit like "broccoli," says Tim, it's not a lot of fun. If something isn't fun, people won't spend time doing it.

For someone who has spent his entire life dedicated to studying and observing the life of tortoises, it's also not a lot of fun seeing their dramatic decline, largely because of the increased numbers of ravens who are destroying them, now growing by roughly 1,000% in the West Mojave Desert. Ravens destroy desert tortoises and they are also destroying trees.  

Says Tim, "it’s in parallel to the human species through its negligence of having no idea of what their impact is having on the planet."

It’s the truth but not the whole truth. After growing tired of reporting on the tortoise decline, he began to focus all his efforts on the raven problem. In that process, he created a laser and they are now working on the notion of enabling people to fire a remote laser via email or via the Internet. The idea has a few moving parts.

Given that the world of gaming, drones and rovers are thriving, he wanted to figure out how to merge that growth with protecting a species.  

Taking environmental action has to be deadly serious business is how we think of environmental action. We take it with a sense of grimness, as if we’re sacrificing some of our time for a worthy cause. He asserts that this approach could make conservation fun. 

Players could monitor feeds from an array of drones over the region of Africa and report on poachers on the ground. How about games to monitor tropical forests or far less than stellar activities happening in the Amazon? 

Ecologists and biologists could identify possible candidates for the games since it's a win for them given they'll have thousands of people out there with eyes and ears to report back.  

The gear heads and the inventors can manufacturer the devices, the game players can bring their skins and talented thumbs, the game developers can create the games and rovers and environmental organizations can help spread the word.  It's a fascinating idea and personally, I can't wait to follow his progress.

Randy Schekman, who teaches molecular biology and has won a Nobel Prize, addressed the issues that are throttling the ability for more scientific papers to make it into the public domain. He suggests that we are faced with a broken system for scientific reviews.

Does that mean we're in the dark ages with the review process? After all, it is the 21st century so there should be no reason to limit someone’s access through a print only model or place limitations so only a fraction of scientific papers can ever be read. 

"We need to democratize science publication so any reader of science has the ability to read a paper free of charge," says Schekman. He encouraged people to sign a paper called DORA (Declaration of Research Assessment), which is being put forward by scholars in an effort to defeat the influence of commercial venues which negatively control the output of scholars around the world.

Beth Kanter is most known for her work around social change for social causes and her area of passion: ”Individual Social Responsibility" or ISR.

She notes that individuals taking small action online can have a huge impact, whether its to help you raise money for a non-profit, someone's sickness or cause or to metabolize grief, which she did when she lost her dad. She launched an online fundraiser to honor her father and benefits went to the surf rider foundation and an ocean conservation program.  

She encourages people to start their own ISR program. Key ways to get started: first, identify your passion and your spark, in other words, find something that you care about. Then she suggests, start talking about what you think makes the world a better place.

She gives the example of a 13 year old who wanted bullying to stop at her school and started talking about it online, an effort which led to reduced bullying around the world.

There are also organizations like Giving 2.0, which is designed for college students to learn about social responsibility with your peers - you can join or start an organization. Think about what you can do to make the world a better place and start speaking out about it. All it takes is a droplet into the online ocean so to speak.

Marnie Webb's work is also around non profit work and social responsibility as well as tools that create a 'better good.'  Marnie wanted to recreate how we look at social issues and how we think about abundance.

She says, "when we start thinking about abundance, we often don’t think we have enough, but if you start thinking about abundance differently, from a possibility place, things start to shift."

Marnie raises examples of organizations which have made a dramatic impact, such as D.C. Central Kitchen, whose mission is to reduce hunger with recycled food, training unemployed adults for culinary careers, serving healthy school meals, and rebuilding urban food systems through social enterprise. After they kicked things into gear, people began to realize that people in soup kitchens were eating better than kids were eating in local schools.

They made a paradigm shift. Youth Uprising helps youth kids in Alameda, in apparently one of the worse areas of the United States. Kids were crying out for a safe place to hang out and so they turned an abandoned Safeway supermarket, then a derelict building, into a a safe environment and playground where kids could go to play.

Asks Marnie: "what if we look at resources that exist and figure out a way to do this together by orchestrating a way to raise enough money and resources and get it out to the right people?" For what it's worth, I have been a fan of Marnie's work for years.

Brenda Chapman touched my heart when I first heard her speak at TEDxUNPlaza, an event I was also involved in earlier this year. She started her career as a story artist at Walt Disney Feature Animation where she worked on films such The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Fantasia.

Chapman was the story supervisor on The Lion King (my favorite modern musical and yes, I've seen it a half dozen times). She is most known for her work as writer and director of the Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe winning Brave. 

Brenda is a great storyteller and this came out as she went back to childhood to share her journey with the TEDxBerkeley audience.

She spoke of her professional timeline starting back to the days when stories depicting the dreams of a little girl revolved around marrying a prince and living happily ever after to the more modernistic and adventurous image we see in BRAVE.

My favorite moment (and this was during rehearsal) was when she spoke of the moment she knew she'd become a feminist.

She looks at us with tender but intense eyes as she goes back to the past and recalls that defining moment, "when my father said 'we can't find the salt and I have 3 women in the house?", a man who retired to the LazyBoy chair after work every day while women made dinner, cleared the table and washed the dishes.

While my grandfather changed his thinking and behavior dramatically once he hit his late seventies, this way of 'being' for men in the 1960's and 1970's was very common. I couldn't help but think when she recited her defining moment live on the TEDxBerkeley stage the next day, "was this woman also in my kitchen when I was a child?"

The woman behind me, also in her forties, burst out laughing and one eye exchange said it all - Brenda had clearly been in her kitchen when she was growing up too.

"It's about observation and change," says Brenda. Observe something deep in your heart and deep in your core and do something about it." She asks, "what is the one thing that keeps you up at night and what can you do about it?" Her work is indicative of her childhood history and of her commitment to making a change for how women are perceived starting at an early age through the medium of children's animated films which may end up as musicals on Broadway, which Beauty & the Beast most definitely did.

I applaud you Brenda Chapman for your soul-searching work and for making the world a better place for women by depicting a different image of what we (as women) will accept and also what is possible.

Other speakers included Leslie Lang, Roberto Hernandez, Sarah Hillware, Dr. Alan Greene, Edward Miguel, Dutta Satadip and Ashley Stahl. 

Performers included The California Golden Overtones, Yonat Mayer, musician/clown and aerial acrobatic Nikki Borodi and Vangelis Chaniotakis and New Orleans Manifesto, a jazz group which included bandleader John Halbleib, Chloe Tucker, Manuel Constancio, Stephan Junca, Adam Grant, Hermann Lara and Sam Brown-Shaklee.

All photos: Renee Blodgett.

To Matriarchs & Our Roots

I’ve always loved the word Roots. In English at least, the word always made so much sense to me since the word’s foundation is in fact, a foundation….Roots are the source of where things are formed and grow; they are the part of a plant which attaches to the ground and gives it support, just like a family does. It is also the basic cause and the source of origin of something, like our culture and “hood” provide us throughout our lives.  

We are all born from a root, a strong thread of sorts that binds us to a known place, a known culture, a known color and a known value system and just like a maple tree knows its soil, we know our own. And, just like that tree grows and blossoms into something rich, pure and beautiful before it eventually withers and dies, we too go through a similar journey, passing through cycles just as nature does, calling on our “roots” to give us the support and strength we need to get to the next stage of our lives.  

Somehow we have this notion as children that our parents and grandparents won’t ever die because they were the first source of strength, protection and support we ever knew; it doesn’t seem possible that the matriarch or patriarch everyone turned to for strength, would someday lose their own.

Having been raised by my grandparents, I’ve experienced the journey to death more often than most people my age and seen more people I care about and love slip away before I felt it was their time. We’ve all experienced death in some shape or form -- even as children, we have seen a family pet or bird we may have only nurtured for a week or two die before our eyes.

Amidst all of this tearing and pulling away from our strong albeit gnarly roots, a matriarch or patriarch was there to see us through. While we were fortunate to have a few in our extended family, it was hard to hold a candle to Aunt Jo, the feminine and graceful force behind so many functions and gatherings.

Above, she carries one of her five boys in the 1950s at a summer family outing. Below, four generations gather under one roof.

Traditionally a matriarch is a woman who rules or dominates a family, group, or state or a mother who is head and ruler of her family and descendants.

In some cultures, the matriarch holds more weight than it does in other societies. In the first half of this century, they often came from extended families in the states because the “extended family” was something we cared about and nurtured much more than we do today. The American culture if there is such a thing, was created from a mishmash of quirky customs, each generation struggling to extend the traditions they held most dear.

Aunt Jo who married into a family with customs stemming from Eastern Europe, Wales, England and French Huguenot culture, was one of those matriarch forces. Her roots came from Polish catholic descent and from those roots, I learned to polka, make a mean rice pudding, how to maintain dignity and grace under pressure (especially amidst a whole lotta male energy) and remain constant when things go south.

Together with my great grandmother and grandmother who raised me, these three matriarchs created a family thread for which our roots never strayed.

(The blurry photo below is made up of family members who were nearly all born in the 1800s, including my great grandmother who I lived with for awhile. Albeit short, she is the one who assertively stands in the front with the 'fake chicken' as if she's commander-in-chief...and oh btw, she always believed she was) 

We always knew Aunt Jo would outlive every family member from her generation even as children, and so she did…I learned of her stroke not quite a week ago and this afternoon of her passing, the day after her 95^th birthday.

Her passing is not just the passing of an amazing soulful woman but of an era, a time when extended family connections mattered, a time when we made time to cook homemade meals for our children and TV, PC and mobile screens didn’t preside over face-to-face talks. We partied together and also mourned together. We went to church together and fought when we got home. Passing the time pissing and moaning over martinis and gin and tonics were the order of the day and most of it was done through a thick cloud of smoke, something people did inside not out.

Adults swore but told us not to, boys would get whacked when they misbehaved and girls took piano and dance lessons. We washed our hair under the kitchen sink in the winter and used green Prell from floating plastic bottles in the lake during the summer. We had curfews but few followed them and if we missed a day of school to help our dad fix a car, it wasn’t considered truancy. We played poker and pitch with adults by the time we were ten and there was always plenty of music, dancing, vodka, sauerkraut, kabasi sausage on the grill and horseshoe matches on the lawn.

This was the small town New England working class America I knew. It was…and remains, my roots. Aunt Jo’s dignity, grace and strength were part of it, as was my grandfather’s “beat-the-system” attitude and my grandmother’s “don’t ever abandon your feminine self.”

Above is a group of women you should be equally scared and honored to know - a treasure, a joy, a lifetime of stories and an inner strength they wore so proudly. Had I not known them and seen life through their eyes, I would not be able to write these words today.

My three mentors sit in positions #2, 4 and 6 in the photo above -- very few women in my life since this miraculous generation I'm proud to call family have given me the courage and strength to move forward as I have, AND even more importantly, accepted me for who I was as a 'let's challenge the status quo child" and who I have now become, which merely extends that same child's dream and heart.

Like many Americans, I grew up learning to embrace four different ethnicities and three religions, even though there were fights between family members over more than one of them. The catholics in the family hung crosses in the dining rooms and bedrooms and the protestants went to boring Sunday morning services and raised their kids with a sense of honor and ethics, yet overdid it on weekends in rural Mad Men style.

At some point, we decide to leave our roots behind for awhile to explore and dabble. Along the way, we taste different kinds of candy, speak in different tongues, drape ourselves with different materials and shades, and discover that there are nearly 1,300 varieties of bananas and 17 species of penguins. Who knew?

Even though I’ve now lived in California for awhile, I still can’t call it home nor ever will. More than any other state, I consider California the most rootless state because its purpose historically hasn’t been to create roots but to sow them. Although immigrants first landed in the east, those with entrepreneurial spirits fled west when the Gold Rush hit in 1848 in hope of a better life.

Beyond the Gold Rush, the promise didn’t stop – from Hollywood and beach culture to America’s first sushi and award-winning wine, California led the way. Today, it’s technology and people now swarm to Silicon Valley for the promise of abundance or the opportunity to build their own thing.

California is a place of “roots” of things and inventions but not people; the melting pot of voices and ideas all stem from somewhere else. Skype was invented by Estonians, Google’s founders are from Russia and Yahoo’s founder is Taiwanese born.

These entrepreneur’s values and roots came from far away foreign lands and while mine came from a combination of five of them, they were all deeply planted in New England.

Some of us run from our roots forever and have good reasons to do so, whether it be a black cotton farmer who left the South in the 1950s because he had no choice, a Holocaust survivor who landed wherever a boat took them, the small town boy from a small European town whose dream was to produce Hollywood movies, or the Chinese girl who might have been killed in the early 1980’s had she not found a new country to call home.

As Ping Fu and Baratunde Thurston exemplify in their books “Bend Not Break” and “How to be Black”, our roots never escape us. In his book "Rescue America," Chris Salamone talks about his Italian roots as a first generation American and how today’s generation has abandoned the very thing that made this country the force it became.  

Without our roots, America will look, sound and feel like a bland echo-chamber of brilliant minds without soul, without culture and without purpose. When we sleep most peacefully at night, it’s when our soul is aligned with our purpose and both are in alignment with our roots, even if we are not living on the soil which birthed us.

We’ve all been there.

Richard Russo who writes painfully at times about our shared hood, is so raw in his storytelling, I knew that if I were to meet him, we’d inherently understand each other without needing to exchange a word simply because we share the same roots.

After reading a few of his novels, I wondered if his Uncle Richard had ever sipped whiskey with my Uncle Alton or brought in the morning with a bad cuppa coffee at an old Main Street diner which no longer exists. Or, perhaps they labored in a leather mill together or one of his cousins had played cards with my Aunt Jo.

Ahhh, Roots.

Nearly a decade into living in California, I don’t feel as if I truly “know” anyone or even worse, understand anyone. This is the truth. And yet, I have 5,120 blah blah whaaadevveerr friends on Facebook.

I write this on this longer than normal American Airlines flight from JFK to SFO, and to my right is a man from Turkey who moved to New York over twenty years ago and to my left is a woman whose mother was Syrian and father was British, yet she grew up in Canada. We talk about roots – their soil, their food, their religion.

When we stop talking and the movie is over, the plane is silent. I can’t stop thinking about my Aunt Jo, the glue who kept an otherwise dysfunctional family functional and strong. The wife of Ed, my grandfather’s closest brother who was blinded in the war, she raised five boys while maintaining elegance, fortitude, strong traditional family values, tradition and faith.

Fighting the tears knowing she could be gone by the time the plane landed, I thought about the countless family gatherings at their house and our summer camp, my grandparents singing at some alcohol-infused function and my Aunt Jo and Uncle Ed dancing in the driveway of their house where many a’ clam bake and barbecue took place.

Above, the early 1960's. Below, the mid-1990's.

When a family member we love dearly passes, we reflect on the beautiful memories of our childhood but in doing so, we also relive some of the painful ones too...the times when we weren’t understood or accepted by the family members we somehow felt we needed the most approval from -- sound familiar?

I’ve learned over the years that in order to fully embrace our roots in a healthy way, we need to absorb the stories and lessons learned from those who did accept and love us for who we were and are today, not those who didn’t and simply won’t. Secondly, roots isn’t just about the people, customs, religion and food, it’s also about the soil which nurtured us.

It’s important to embrace the nature and soil from our hood because what our hands and feet felt as a child is what our body knows and understands and even more importantly, “it” understands and knows us.

The Adirondack Mountains understand me and I them – there’s no judgment or need to be anyone or anything I am “not” around them. I walk among her trees and I swim in her lakes. And in doing so, it brings me more peace, serenity and acceptance than anything I’ve ever known.

Ahhh, Roots.

Long walks in the snow, swims and canoe rides, red cardinals sitting on maple trees, lumpy mashed potatoes, corn on the cob at clam bakes, flower corsages on Easter Day, handpicked blueberries over French toast and parties with adults who drank more martinis and smoked more packs of cigarettes than days they went to school.

Ahhh, Roots.

This is a Tribute to you my Dear Aunt Jo, one of the most precious women I have ever known and have had the honor and opportunity to love. Thank you for all that you were and the beautiful imprint you have left on all of us. It’s hard to imagine a life without you in it, so when you decide what bird you will present yourself to us in the months ahead, please let us know. I will look for you outside my kitchen window.

"Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 Top photo credit: jtl.us. Red cardinal bird credit: quoteko.com. All other credits Renee Blodgett.