Live Blog: TEDxMidAtlantic

TED Take 3. Today, we’re at the Sydney Harmon Hall in downtown Washington DC for TEDxMidAtlantic. As I’ve experienced in the past, I’m filled with anticipation to hear the inspiration and success of so many distinguished speakers. The TEDx crowd is mixed, I’m surrounded by young and old, government workers and accupuncturists — if there is one thing I love about TED it’s that there is never a shortage of diversity in the crowd. The speakers today are just as diverse. Everyone from Steve Case, AOL co-founder, to Sam Shelton, local DC design icon from KINETIK will be presenting. Needless to say, I’m ready.

The first session is actually already over and I know I’ve been remiss is blogging throughout, but third row center is not the ideal place to blog from. For act two, Ive secured a balcony seat so, stay tuned. In the meantime let’s use this break to get caught up. Due to a last minute cancellation Steve Case (@stevecase) was actually our first speaker of the day and started off by taking a picture of the audience — check his Twitter feed- it may be there. Steve talked to about the change he’s seen over the past 25 years in the Internet, DC as an innovative city, and politics. Most interesting of Steve’s points was the second wave of the Internet revolution which ne sees coming — a revolution where we transform the Internet into a useful tool in our everyday lifemand use it in areas such as healthcare.

Next up, Matt Mountain, a telescope scientist. Matt spoke to us about science outer space and the possibilities of other Earths, and other life. Much like Galileo did when he first turned his telescope to the sky, if we innovate, we can find new things.

UVA professor Saras Sarasvathy was up next. Saris spoke about the entrepreneurship that has revolutionized brands. BFI, the waste management giant, was started by an individual as a way to solve his HOAs trash problem. he saw a need, found a solution, and eventually made it his livelihood. In Saras’ research, she has found that entrepreneurs resist the idea of predicting the future, and instead finds that entrepreneurs succeed when they co-create. Changing “what I know” and “what can I do” into “what we know” and “what we can do” is when new things are created.

Our fourth presenter was Otis Rolley, a Baltimore city planner. He spoke of the relationships that exist in neighborhoods, and how humans and relationships build neighborhoods, not city planners.

Our final presenter before our artistic performance was Esther Dyson. Esther spoke about genes and predicting death and how based on our current situation, our predictions of death changes. Esther works with a company called 23andMe.com which takes you genes and predicts your likelihood of contracting certain illnesses.

Break one is almost over, so I’m going to secure my blog-friendly seat and will be back in a few.

Susan Shaw is kicking off our second session. Susan was a speaker at TEDxOilSpill, and is showing the lessons learned since the Gulf Oil – corporate negligence and lying. So what are we doing about the oil and the oil spill? We’ve formed a DOI Working Group. That working group has pointed out the impacts on a number of areas – including health impacts. The health impacts are many, and range from skin reactions to internal bleeding and liver and kidney problems. Susan asks, what if corporate culture integrated public health into accountability?

Francis Beland, another TEDxOilspill speaker, points out that we have had the same oil spill cleanup technology that we had when the Exxon Valdez spill. To motivate advancements in this area, a competition has been formed to challenge teams to create this new technology: www.iprizecleanoceans.org.

Cesar Harada, developer of Protei, is developing a boat which can pick up more of the oil then the typical surface collection will (3%). By creating a fleet of ocean blimps and allowing crowd sourced control over the skimmers, we can pick up more of the oil. Adam Pruden, is also developing oil skimming technology — SeaSwarm. Using a self-controlled robot with an oil absorbent cloth, a swarm of robots can skim more of oil off the water surface.

Christoph Gielen is a photographer who takes shots from above to show land use and infrastructure to show the sameness of development. Christoph chooses his locations based on foreclosure rates to identify patterned communities — something he defines as proof that developments are not just visually unappealing, but also financially unsustainable. Additional environmental issues can be spotted from above near planned developments; something that has caused Florida to reversed some of its planned land use from development zones to development-free zones.

Jackie Savitz from Oceana, is dedicated to saving oceans and ocean life. As a result, she works with Oceana to move from drilling to find fossil fuels to ocean wind power. From their findings, wind creates more energy and jobs, and powers more homes. She wants to change our national chant from “drill baby drill” to “turn baby turn.”

Microbiologist Dickson Despommier asks what if cities behaved like ecosystems? Currently, cities are an unsustainable entity. Can we change that? Yes, if create an ecosystem for our cities using urban farming – no runoff, no crop seasonality, no weather related crop loss, minimal controlled chemicals, fresh foods, creates jobs. One indoor acre is equivalent to ten outdoor acres. Dickson wants to see a federal interest in vertical urban farming.

If we can move a ton of goods at 423 miles per gallon why do we move a person at 18? Bill James wants to know the answer to that. He has developed the JPods, which look like a ski lift pod on a monorail, but is powered by a small motor and solar connectors. By switching to this technology the average family will increase their disposable income by more than $5000/family.

Yash Gupta shows how through lessons from business, we can learn the skills of resilience, rhythm and renewal; all things that our society — and our children — need to achieve.

Back from lunch, Iyeoka, who actually performed earlier in the day, is now on stage. Iyeoka is a poet, performer and pharmacist. Her poetry is stories of her life, her experiences and her memories.

Paula Kerger of PBS, a visionary in arts and media, believes that artists are the keys to the future. We must transform our classroom into places where creativity in the classroom. Why are students starting businesses outside of the classroom in their garages in their spare time and not in the classroom? Our classrooms are designed for the industrial age, not the modern innovative culture we are in.

Diana Laufenberg, a Philadelphia teacher, leads with the title “Embrace Failure.” When you give kids the tools to learn, you have to give them the opportunity to fail. Learning has to include a certain amount of failure, because without failure you can’t learn. If we continue to look at school as a place to get information we will miss the mark — we need to make it an experiential place that moves beyond the right or wrong of the standardized test.

Full disclosure, I’ve skipped blogging about the last two speakers and am skipping ahead to Sam Shelton, who I mentioned previously. In addition to being a partner at Kinetik, Sam is an adjunct professor at the Corcoran and asked students to come up with a real problem within the community that the students could solve. The first problem students identified was the commuter problem in DC and created breakthejam.com. Pedestrian safety was the second problem identified. They researched intersections with the highest fatality rates. They drew chalk outlines and handed out information about pedestrian safety. The students took the skills they learned and encouraged change.

With that, our tired fingers are signing off. The event is still going on for a few more speakers, so catch all of the action here:

Procrastination with TED

What am I supposed to be doing? I’m supposed to be working on the content for my new website. My new fabulous website. My new fabulous website that is so fabulous I actually have no desire to update my comparatively old, ugly, outdated website. The new one is really great — it’s modern, it’s clean, it’s bright, and it has lots of fun tools that I love and my developers hated. (Thanks, Related Media!) So why isn’t it live so you can all sing your praises? Procrastination. (That and my fabulous clients have kept me super busy — which is a super good thing that I’m really grateful for.) But tonight is a slow night, there is decent TV to keep me company and I really should be doing laundry so that I’m forced to take breaks every once in a while, and it really is an ideal time to knock out some web copy.

But oh! Is that a new issue of Fast Company? And I really would like to take a bath! And read my new magazine! Ok, I will! So I did. And now, I’m writing a blog post, because writing anything other than my web content sounds really fun right now. Sigh.

As I flipped to an article on “How TED Became the New Harvard” it reminded me of one of my favorite TED talks “Schools Kill Creativity” by Ken Robinson. Ironically, it was listed alongside “Surprising Science of Motivation” — a talk I clearly need to watch today.

The Fast Company article explains how TED actually started: Richard Saul Wurman, renowned graphic designer and information architect, realized conference participants wanted a single track of programming — a shared experience that they could discuss in depth on breaks. Despite having participated in two different TEDx events in two different cities, I really hadn’t ever realized that the talks permeate the entire event. I knew I met lots of people at the events, I knew I discussed the talks, but I never realized that the shared experience of watching these talks was what I enjoyed most.

A few days ago @davidmcgraw posted a link to his favorite TEDxPotomac talk. The @joshsundquist TED talk was one of my favorites too, and one I had mentioned previously in my blog post on the event. So, we exchanged a tweet and continued the experience. I’ve been to a number of conferences and TED is the only one where I remember specific emotions, reactions, and topics. Perhaps it’s magic of the event, and perhaps it’s the shared experience. Or perhaps the format of TED is a format more conferences should emulate.

Below, my two favorite TED Talks from TEDxPotomac. Enjoy!

(These aren’t the official TEDxPotomac videos, in fact Luke Spring’s video isn’t from TED at all, but work with me!)

Event Recap: TEDxPotomac

Well folks, it’s here – TEDxPotomac. I know when I attended TEDxMidAtlantic I promised a blog post and never came through. So today, I’m blogging at the event. My advance apologies for the note form, and typos, etc. Enjoy!

First up, Bob Corrigan – The science of names. Grasshopper walks into a bar. Bartender says I have a drink named after you. grasshopper says you have a drink named Steve? Spelling – there are 47 ways to spell one type of beetle. Causes a challenge with organizing – need to be able type in any of those and search for any of them. Need context to have meaning. cod = 125 different terms to refer to a cod. Encyclopedia of Life (Corrigan is product manager) must be able to return meaning for any of those terms. When you add a little bit of context to names, you get a little bit of meaning; when you get a lot of context, you get a lot of meaning. (ref Vietnam memorial.)

Next, Berit Oskey, founder of Affinity Labs. “The deep dark secret” -we learned in elementary school not to share so secrets. So why are businesses sharing secrets? Co-opetition. Two competing businesses with different specialties working together on a project. Rewards: make-up artist shares tips and tricks with other artists – feedback on ideas, learns other artists tricks. When partnering 1+1 doesn’t have to equal 2 – go after larger contracts when partnering.

Try a partnership – catalog rewards financial and process
Share services and ideas with competition to come up with best practices
Make co-opetition a habit.

Josh Sundquist – There is nothing greater than to have a teammate that will always standby you. You will never strike out if you keep trying. “OMTOMT” – what is the one more thing you can do one more time? Sometimes the path changes (Josh lost his leg at age 9) – how do you adapt? (Josh became a world class Paralympic skier, best selling author and motivational speaker.)

Craig Newmark – Newmark (founder of Craigslist) believes “trust is the new black”. Background in customer service – Listen to people, do something about it, share the result, repeat. Social media is an example of this – whatever you need to be connected for, with whomever, social media encourages you to share your experiences and results.

Roshini Thinakaran – Find something you are passionate about, follow your passion, and you will achieve success. Fear (example of Afgan women photographers) should not hold you back.

Frances Moore Lappe – 16,000 children today will die of hunger. Who wants that world? No one. So, why are we working together to create that? Human beings are doers; we need to create an evidence based mental map of what we want and, with cooperation we will get there. With new mental map, go from existing scapegoating to group accountability.

Laura Zam – Art can, and should be functional in society. Historically, art was created for arts sake, which is why we now make the distinction between “art” and “design”. Zam wrote a play to bring awareness to genocide; and realized that her play might not be helping, but rather hurting by making her viewers feel more helpless. Used this experience to find fluidity between art and design to make art, make money, make a difference. Called “social entrepreneurship.”

Finishing up lunch now… We’re about to head into this afternoon’s sessions. The themes are urban alchemy and indispensable I/O. Watch live at http://bit.ly/9VMQgF and follow the conversation on Twitter with hash tag #tedxpotomac

Yoko K – creates “organic electronical” music, a combination of sound, design, music. Aspires for her music to be an elixir of harmony. “We are the proof that love does exist across ethnics division” how do you translate that into your own language? Music is a language that transcends languages. As Yoko creates a composition in front of us, she looks like a pianist; her music is a sound like none I have heard before. Amazing.

Neil Takemoto – What place would you be passionate about creating with others in the community? How do you create this? People, planet, profits; crowd sourcing – sourcing the crowd to make places we are passionate about. The Better Block, in Dallas, TX, is an example – crowd sourced the community to make a pedestrian block. What will DC do? Find out at Crowdsourcedc.com

Dr. Shannon Hader – “DCs AIDS Tzar” believes in data, minding the gap (what we know, think we know and want to talk about). 1% of population = CDC definition of HIV epidemic. 3.2% -DC’s HIV population. 4-5% estimate of actual DC population including untested with HIV. Data is power. DC had no data prior to Oct. 2007. With data, myths of young people, gay people, prisoners and poor were disproven. Now we can take actions based on real data that will change the HIV epidemic in DC.

Bjarke Ingals (video)- Amazing ideas in architecture and green building design.

Warren Brown – Founder of CakeLove. “Mixing up life’s ingredients”. Live your life in pursuit of what you love – the voice that makes you want to go. What has priority – Butter, sugar, flour, eggs? The excitement and challenge of this balance of ingredients is what motivates Brown. If you are going to an entrepreneur, you have to be ready to roll with the punches. Listen to what’s inside and what the voices in your head say. Mantra – direct yourself to greatness, answer your calls, and answer to yourself. Who were you as a child before you were distracted by life? Find that happiness again when you are an entrepreneur. It’s blind faith. Follow your passion. Go ahead and make yourself.

Luke Spring – I wish when I was seven I could tap dance for three minutes solo in front of a 400 person audience! Go Luke!

Dr. Gary Wynn – innovations in neuroscience – make humans more human. Rather than treat disease with shock therapy, pills, use waves to treat problems. Non-invasive, more human. How can we capture outgoing brain waves to control movement, etc? With a reader, we have started to be able to capture the thoughts that allow movement to happen outside the body.

Colin Beavan – No Impact Man – Assume you are in charge of the world. Let’s redefine progress. What are we doing here? 2011 will have cooler cell phones ran 2010. Is that progress? Or more of the same? Beavan stepped away from electricity (anti-progress) resulted in getting to know his neighbors, his community, his farmers. Was happier and healthier as a result. Ask – what are we here for? What is the result? Should we do it forever and ever? No Impact Week – one week of no impact on the planet. What would you want to change in your community as a result of this? Better cell phones or better access to drinking water?

Steve Moore – H Street – 1st through 15th – regarded as progressive – Moore asks, “oh really?” Why do we use barb wire to keep people off public spaces on H St? Why for 15 blocks do we not see one flower box? Yet, we go to a shopping center and we see manicured lawns and potted plants. If you go somewhere you want to be, you spend twice as much as stay twice as long. Is refacing the street going to be enough? The elements of experience and place are well understood. Create public art, mentored business, oral histories, pushcarts. Be apart of the change through DCWeek.

Alexandra Cousteau – Politics is the process by which we make decisions. So what does it mean to go “beyond politics?” it means we reimagine our world and we develop a different idea of what is possible. It’s not about saving the whales or the rivers, it’s about saving our way of life.

One final thought after following these recaps…What would your TED Talk be about?

Recap: Stefan Sagmeister – Design and Happiness

I’m a little embarrassed to say that after seven years of living in Washington DC, Monday night was the first time I’d ever visited the Corcoran. Perhaps subconsciously I was waiting for just the right event to make my inaugural visit; Monday night was certainly that night as the Corcoran Gallery presented graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister on the topic of Design and Happiness.

Stefan Sagmeister has worked with clients including the Rolling Stones, HBO, AIGA, and the Guggenheim Museum; to say he is a design idol is an understatement. And while Monday’s lecture touched on some of the amazing work he has produced for his clients (this is by far my favorite piece from his CD cover work), his lecture focused on finding happiness in your career. (We like happy clients.)

First, a bit of background. Sagmeister founded his studio in 1993, with desire to focus on the music industry. After working with clients such as David Byrne, Aerosmith, Lou Reed, and the Talking Heads, Sagmeister realized that he was doing work he liked, with clients he liked, and he was bored. So, Sagmeister did what every logical designer would do: He closed his studio. (!) In fact, Sagmeister, Inc. closes its doors for one year every seven years. If you happen to call or visit their Website in this time, be prepared to see the following greeting:

“Hello. You have reached Sagmeister, Inc. We are conducting a full year of experiments and will be back September 1, 2009. Please call us then.”

Surprisingly, the justification behind this plan is quite logical. Traditionally, age 0-25 is considered the “learning” years, 25-65, the “working” years, and 65-80, the “retiring” years. By readjusting this schedule to “retiring” at age 70, Sagmeister has five extra years of “retiring” to intersperse throughout the “working” years. Or, roughly, one year every seven years. Genius, right?

So what does one do with a year off? Besides “practice for retirement,” as Sagmeister puts it, he reads (especially psychology), designs, and plays. A lot. One study that Sagmeister spoke about is the “Giggle Twins” — two twins who had lived such parallel lives (including marriages, miscarriages and eventually, children at the same age) that when they were separately asked to write the first sentence that comes to mind, they not only wrote the exact same sentence, but you they made the exact same spelling error in the exact same space. Oh, and these nearly identical twins were separated at birth.

When Sagmeister is not studying the works of great psychologists, he’s making lists, and it is these lists that lead Sagmeister to realize his personal correlation between design and happiness. To start, he made a list of every moment that made him happy and then divided it into categories. In more than half of these happy moments, design played a major role. His list ranged from everything from a motorcycle ride through mountains to a Stones meeting in New Jersey. Sagmeister was able to find design in almost all of the moments that made him happy.

Like any good designer, Sagmeister also looks beyond his own work and life to find happiness in design. Three specific examples of design that made Sagmeister happy:

1. James Turrell’s “Skyscape” exhibit — Turrell creates a transparent ceiling above a seating area that essentially creates a frame for the sky directly above the viewer. Sagmeister’s reaction to the exhibit: “I’ve never seen the sky the same way since.”
2. Ji Lee’s “Bubble Project” — Lee placed blank adhesive speech bubbles on corporate advertising throughout New York City. As viewers filled in these speech bubbles, Lee would go back and photograph the results to document the dialogue between the corporations and the public.
3. Anish Kapoor’s “The Bean” — The now famous Cloud Gate, or Bean sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park, was inspired by liquid mercury and allows the viewer to distort the reflect skyline as they walk around and through the sculpture.

So how can the average person find happiness? Sagmeister suggests we start by “doing more of the things we like to do, and fewer of the things you don’t like.” Here are eight of Sagmeister’s ideas to get you started:

1. Thinking about ideas and content freely — and with deadlines far away.
2. Working without interruption on a single project.
3. Using a wide variety of tools and techniques. (ie. Get off the computer!)
4. Traveling to new places.
5. Working on projects that matter to you.
6. Having things come back from the printer done well.
7. Getting feedback from the people who see your work.
8. Designing a project that feels partly brand new and partly familiar.

Stefan Sagmeister: The power of time off

Recap: Social Media for Creatives and Their Clients

This past Tuesday, the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington (ADCMW) hosted “Social Media for Creatives and Their Clients.” The lecture was presented by John Bell, Managing Director of the 360 Degree Digital Influence Practice within Ogilvy PR. John developed 360 Degree Digital Influence to connect Ogilvy’s brand-building PR expertise with insider’s knowledge of new digital trends.

During his lecture, John addressed five trends the team at Ogilvy has noticed in social media over the last year:

1. Engagement replaces “creative.” Where audiences previously looked for unique or unusual design, audiences are now looking to be entertained and delighted when interacting with brands. Ogilvy has revised their creative brief to include an engagement strategy — basically answering the question “why the heck would anyone give a s* about spending time with your brand” as John explains.

2. Facebook. John suggests that Facebook is the most important platform for brands right now. Because of its real-time nature, Facebook is, and will continue to be, a hub for people. Developers will continue to enhance Facebook’s applications and interface and users will continue to adapt and adopt the increased capabilities.

3. Twitter for business. John points out that many brands were eager to jump on the Twitter bandwagon, and many of those brands are not using Twitter as well as they could be. In order to be successful on Twitter, brands must have a strategy for interacting with the Twitterverse. American Express (@askamex and @americanexpress) not only uses Twitter to answer customer service questions and promote their products, but they also have an Amex “Twitter Fairy” that rewards members for talking about their brand on Twitter.

4. Social media ethics will become a bigger deal. According to John, a number of groups are involved in crafting ethical guidelines for disclosing compensation and freebies for product reviews. In October, the FTC released its set of guidelines, and organizations such as WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) have developed ethical guidelines. John follows this rule of thumb: If the bias is clear to you, it’s fine. If it’s not, that’s not fine.

5. Search Intent Modeling (SIM). Search must be core to all of our online marketing campaigns. SIM prioritizes keywords and aligns them to business goals and consumer interests. Search intent modeling is now essential to everything from SEM/SEO to messaging to consumer behavior research to tagging. As John describes in an article on Ogilvy’s Web site “The state of the art starts with search intent modeling, a process advanced by our SEO experts, Global Strategies International13. Not only do we listen to what consumers are talking about in relation to our brands, we are also paying attention to how they are searching. Using the language that our customers are using is the key to creating highly relevant owned media that pops up high in Google search results.”

These five trends are important ideas to keep in mind when developing a strategy for social networking within your brand.