TEDxSoMa

Jeff Lawson’s presentation Forcing Ideas: Innovation on a Timeline at TEDxSoMa on May 21st, 2010.

Jason Tester’s presentation Using the Future to Save the Future, in 4 Steps at TEDxSoMa on May 21st, 2010.

Jeffrey Betcher’s presentation Hug v. tech: Traditional Community in the Digital Age at TEDxSoMa on May 21st, 2010.

Jeffrey started his talk with a compelling film about Annette Smith and Karl Paige who started planting flowers in an area with a lot of drug dealing. Things started to change quickly. People came out of their houses and fear and isolation to join with each other. His work is not just about gardens, but also involves public art projects, history projects, cultural events. “This is a real community building project.”

Jeffrey Betcher lives and works in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood. He is a community organizer and writer with social policy experience at the national level. He advocates for strengthening local systems, especially social systems, and for prioritizing community-building as a primary social change strategy. He co-founded and leads the award-winning Quesada Gardens Initiative, in the heart of Bayview, and organizes Bayview Footprints, a network of informal community-building groups building social cohesion and telling a positive story about a maligned neighborhood.

Jeffrey expresses the same commitment to local systems and community values in the private sector. His company, YamStreet, is in development as a values-driven apparel business modeling local production and applied technology. He is President of peopleWear SF, an apparel industry trade association working to reinvigorate the industry by emphasizing local, sustainable practices.

David has a cabinet in the corner of his office that reminds him that the world is full of wonders. “We are at a best when we are curious in learning new things.” Sparking curiosity in people is one of the best things you can do for them.

“It isn’t faith that makes good science…its’s curiosity”

In his talk, David shared a lot of items that are in his cabinet of curiosity and wonder – both physical and virtual. Many large cities have curiosity shops to spark creativity and imagination and these types of objects are showing up in main stream mall shops. In fact, David states, “curiosity is fueling the current do-it-yourself attitude that is embodied in things like the Maker’s Faire and Make magazine.” In this 24/7 digital age, people are ready to unplug, roll up their sleeves and actually do something.

Science could be saved if people are encouraged to do their own exploration, rather than just rely on other people’s research.

David Pescovitz is co-editor of the popular weblog BoingBoing.net and also editor-at-large for MAKE:, the DIY technology magazine. Pescovitz co-wrote the book Reality Check (HardWired, 1996), based on his long-running futurist column in Wired magazine where he remains a correspondent. He has also written for Scientific American, Popular Science, New York Times, Washington Post, Salon, and New Scientist, among many other publications. In 2002, he won the Foresight Prize in Communication, recognizing excellence in educating the public and research community about nanotechnology and other emerging technologies. Pescovitz holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Electronic Media from the University of Cincinnati and a Master’s in Journalism from UC Berkeley.
Pescovitz has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times, IEEE Spectrum, Industry Standard, Spin, MTV Online, Discovery Channel Online, and Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. His writings on technology and culture are featured in the books What Are You Optimistic About? (Harper, 2007), The Happy Mutant Handbook (Riverhead, 1996), and The ‘Zine Reader (Holt, 1997). In 1996, Pescovitz created Nrrrd, a critically acclaimed technology and youth culture Web site for Turner Entertainment. Pescovitz is a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Science and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs and networks including CNN’s Sonya Live, NPR, Fox News, ZDTV, and CNET.

Meaning is more powerful than price and performance
Meaning lasts longer than emotional reactions
Meaning transcends values: people are willing to pay more for things if they connect with their values.

How we express and prioritize meaning is very different, but the importance of meaning is universal.

The most successful experiences are the ones that are most meaningful.

Here is how it works.

- Experience has 6 dimensions: significance, duration, breadth, interaction, intensity and triggers

- Meaning is the top layer of a 5 layered dimension of significance: values/identity, emotions, price, features

The 1st 2 layers of price and features are rational considerations. The 3rd layer of emotions is very powerful because emotions are often unarticulated.

There are 15 core meanings understood by everyone in the world:

accomplishment, beauty, creation, community, duty, enlightenment, freedom, harmony, justice, oneness, redemption, security, truth, validation, wonder

(definitions form making meaning.org)

You can’t create meaning for people. You can trigger meaning by creating meaningful experiences within people’s own core level of meaning.

Meaning is at the core of Values: Priorities and Expressions.

Should companies evoke meaning? Individuals already evoke meaning. Design companies might as well design products to be more meaningful.

There are 3 useful questions to ask as a company, employee or person:

1. What do you do to create meaning in the lives of people you serve, whether customer, audiences, or children…

2. What meanings does your organization prioritize?

3. What meanings do you prioritize?

4. What meanings do your competitors trigger?

What is meaningful to you?

Nathan Shedroff is the chair of the ground-breaking MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, CA. This program prepares next-generation leaders with a vision of business as sustainable, meaningful, ethical, profitable, and truly innovative. The program unites the perspectives of systems thinking, integrative thinking, sustainability, and new tools for leadership into a holistic framework.
He is a pioneer in Experience Design, Interaction Design and Information Design, speaks and teaches internationally, and is a serial entrepreneur. His many books include: Experience Design 1.1, Making Meaning, Design is the Problem, and the upcoming Make It So.

He holds an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School and a BS in Industrial Design from Art Center College of Design. He worked with Richard Saul Wurman at TheUnderstandingBusiness and, later, co-founded vivid studios, a decade-old pioneering company in interactive media and one of the first Web services firms on the planet. vivid’s hallmark was helping to establish and validate the field of information architecture, by training an entire generation of designers in the newly emerging Web industry.

All of us use technology and think about the future. In 1994 when he moved to Silicon Valley, the internet was new and strange. Now we use the web for everything.

The telephone was invented in 1876. In 1983, the mobile phone was invented. The advent of the mobile phone dramatically accelerated telephone growth.

Pankaj believes that the mobile phone will similarly unleash the internet and enable personal connections. It will not take 100 years for the internet to go mobile.
Today 18 B people access the internet, primarily using a desktop or laptop PC. 4.5 billion people in the world have access to a mobile phone. In the next or 6 years, Pankaj believes that these two markets will come together. The new reality will be the mobile internet with 6 billion users.

Mobile Internet = power in your hands.

There is an explosion in online learning. Education package helps subscribers in China learn English on the mobile phone. China this year will become the largest English speaking county in the world.

The mobile internet can also be very powerful in causing political change by building a mass movement. It can also help with trade. In India, for instance, farmers have access to daily closing and global pricing trends. This results in transparency, increased info access and rural transformation. Pankaj also sites an example where people have more access to health information in Rwanda. Even in Amreica, the mobile phone is helping in re-defining democracy around the world. Mobile internet engages citizens and grows outreach. If mobile phones were used to identify voters, it could reduce voter fraud and increase participation.

Internet = information = power
mobile internet = power in your hands

Pankaj Kedia is the director of Global Ecosystem Programs for mobile Internet at Intel Corporation. He is responsible for working with the industry to enable complete solutions for handhelds/smartphones, ensuring the availability of applications, content, and services, and taking the complete products to market. Over the last 3 years, Pankaj has worked to establish Intel’s presence and momentum in the handheld and smartphone categories, and launch the Intel® Atom™ processor, which is specifically designed to address these market segments. Previously, Pankaj played an instrumental role in accelerating the deployment of Notebook PCs in the industry by defining and implementing the company’s mobile strategies. Pankaj joined Intel in 1996 and has held a range of executive advisory, strategy, marketing, planning, and business development roles across the company.

Pamela Hawley’s story starts when she was 12 in Mexico on a family vacation and saw abject poverty. She felt that this was unacceptable and started doing what she could to help people. She new she wanted to use technology to help people.

There are 3 main experiences that helped Pamela decide to found Universal Giving

1. glue – When she was in Guatemala, she saw men who stole glue from local factories to pass out and be unconscious because their lives were so miserable.

2. Pot – She worked in Bangalore on microfinance. The women she worked with had to put their newly born baby girls into the pot to kill them, because it was not popular to have baby girls.

3. People in Cambodia who gave up their lives, killed by the political regime.

Universal Giving is an award-winning website allowing people to give and volunteer with vetted projects across the world.,

-Proprietary QualityModel
-100% of donations go directly to the project.
-Corporate Service generates revenue.

Think about your story. Universal Giving allows for a personal use of technology. You can create a gift registry highlighting your favorite projects for a wedding, anniversary or birthday.
This technology allows the ability to connect from country to country to contribute.

Technology is not just about the web. Identity Revelation is a future trend. You will be able to use your smart phone to remember people’s names and preferences. Chose your technology strategy based on your vision and the story that drives you.

UniversalGiving™ is an award-winning website allowing people to give and volunteer with the top performing projects all over the world. Our projects are vetted through a proprietary Quality Model™ to ensure the most effective, trustworthy philanthropy possible. Unique to UniversalGiving, we take no cut on donations. 100% of your donation goes directly to the cause.
UniversalGiving has been profiled on CBS and in FoxBusiness News. We have also been featured in WomenEntrepreneur, BusinessWeek, Change.org, Oprah.com, NBC News, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, The Financial Times, CNNMoney.com, and The L.A. Times. UniversalGiving is a Webby Award Honoree, and a winner of the Jefferson Award, eTown’s E-chievement Award and the Silver Award for W3 Creative Excellence on the Web.

UniversalGiving Corporate (UGC) is a customized service that helps companies manage their global Corporate Social Responsibility Programs. UGC handles the strategy, operations, and NGO vetting to ensure the success of international giving and volunteer programs. In doing so, we help a company’s bottom line by increasing corporate brand image, employee attraction/retention, and client attraction/retention. Sample clients include Cisco, MTV and BEA.

The universe is all patterns of vibration. Artist Christopher Willits expresses his belief in his art using systems composed of interacting tools and of patterns of sound and light.

3 layers of Interaction:

imaginative, haptic, software

Christopher has a software system he uses for his art. He has an audio and video processing system set to surprise him so that he can remain novel and in the moment.

“Random but not Random, Intended yet unintended” patterns emerge .

He is creating a systems of systems – software modules that interact with other software modules to create his performances.

Through the process, the pattern emerges.

He thinks of his art as a co-creative process with the software.
“I am constantly surfing these patterns of sound and light” It all comes down to resonance.

Christopher Willits creates patterns of vibrations with sound and light. He occupies a unique corner of the electronic-art-music universe—hovering above the intersection of electronic production’s nuts and bolts, new media art, and a wide-open creative mind. “i am a conduit of the process, a kind of gardener,” he says. “I simply imagine, intuit, respond and do the work laid before me.” Willits’ tireless responding and doing and working has produced 20 albums in 10 years—solo and in collaboration with artists including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Matmos, Zach Hill, and Taylor Deupree—and an organic, multi-faceted sound that expands like the vines of an electro-acoustic kudzu plant. Christopher Willits is a teacher, a label owner (the experimental hub Overlap.org), a meditator, a tech geek, a visual/new media artist, and virtuosic musician in one. In other words, there’s no one out there quite like him.

Dev Patnaik, the CEO of Jump Associates, talked about how companies can be more effective by creating an environment of empathy.

He sited the example of Nike where most employees who work on the shoes are runners themselves and the office complex has tracks and gyms. Employees can use their intuition to aid design, even if the market research showed different results.

Patnaik also mentioned Harey-Davidson’s attitude of care as being successful – “we are not trying to sell to consumers, we are trying to serve riders”.

Places that have empathy feel good and are more productive.

Dev’s definition of Empathy

the intuition to feel a vibe before you see it
the gut sense to know your’e right
the passion to take a leap on something new
the courage to stick with something shaky
the clarity to make better decisions faster

Dev then described the different parts of the brain and said the corporations are acting like reptiles, devaluing empathy to the detriment of a whole generation of consumers and employees.

Dev Patnaik is the CEO of Jump Associates, one of America’s premier growth strategy firms. Together with his teammates, Dev works with companies to create new businesses and reinvent existing ones. Jump has helped to define profitable growth platforms in highly ambiguous spaces, as well as build the systems, processes and metrics to actually make it happen. In recent years, Jump has become particularly known for its pioneering culture, and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top workplaces in America.
Dev is a trusted advisor to senior executives at many of America’s most admired companies, including GE, Nike, Target and Hewlett-Packard. A frequent speaker at business forums, Dev has been featured as a guest on the CNBC series, “The Business of Innovation.” His articles on innovation and strategy have appeared in numerous publications including BusinessWeek, Fast Company and Forbes. Dev is the author of the book Wired to Care: How Companies prosper when they create widespread empathy.

When he’s not working at Jump, Dev is an adjunct professor at Stanford University. Since 1999, Dev has taught a course called Needfinding. In the class, students draw upon methods from anthropology, design and business strategy to discover insights about ordinary people and create new products and services.