2013 Conference | 2013 Social Innovation Fellows | Financial Inclusion Lab | The Resilient City | Full PopTech Collection 2004-2013
Held every October, in the beautiful seaside village of Camden, Maine, the PopTech Conference brings together 700 influential participants for one of the world’s best thought leadership events: a shared exploration of the issues, trends and technologies that will shape the future of our businesses, economy, society and world. Since 2004, Peter Durand of Alphachimp has created on-site paintings live during each presentation. These are the results. Enjoy!
Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 6:56PM 
Anne-Marie Slaughter shares her insights on the transformation of state and non-state actors. Whereas we used to exist within a world of nation-states, billiard balls knocking against one another, we now live in a network of modular, ad hoc organizations—both governmental and non-governmental.
gender, politics in Pop!Tech 2011 Monday, November 21, 2011 at 10:10AM 
Anand Giridharadas, child of Indian parents who immigrated to the United States, returns to live in India as an adult. He encounters a culture shifting from traditional and collective values to a me-centric individualism. Giridharadas asks if the “American Dream” is better represented in places like the New India, rather than in our own increasingly calcified class system with limited upward mobility.
Nationalism, PopTech 2011, Urbanization, culture in Pop!Tech 2011 Friday, October 28, 2011 at 11:56AM 
Kish’s organization, World Access for the Blind, trains the visually impaired to achieve greater freedom and mobility through echolocation, a technique that simulates a bat’s night vision of perceiving the environment through sound.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 11:21PM 
Dutch bulb grower, Pieter Hoff has an idea about how to make deserts bloom: capture the humidity in the air, store it in a box, and use that condensation to water plants. He calls this box the Groasis waterboxx and he thinks it can change how we feed the world and reduce greenhouse gases.
global, science, social change, sustainability in Pop!Tech 2010 Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 12:20PM 
“What happens when science goes wrong?” asks psychology professor Kevin Dunbar. He studies how scientists approach the unexpected and learn from mistakes. Over the course of a year, Dunbar’s team examined the habits of four molecular biology labs. Watch his talk to discover their findings, including the surprising characteristics of successful labs.
science in Pop!Tech 2010 Thursday, April 21, 2011 at 7:22PM disaster, energy, environment, ocean, oil, water in Pop!Tech 2010 Thursday, April 21, 2011 at 8:19AM 
In honor of Earth Day, check out David de Rothschild's incredible story about how he and his team built the Plastiki, a boat constructed from 12,000 plastic bottles. De Rothschild and his crew sailed halfway around the world to bring greater public awareness to the devastating impact of oceanic plastic pollutants and the need to reuse discarded plastics.
activism, environment, ocean, water in Pop!Tech 2010 Monday, April 11, 2011 at 9:01AM 
Tom Darden is the Executive Director of the Make It Right Foundation, an organization founded by actor Brad Pitt to build 150 green, high design homes in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Darden said he wants to take what has been a local conversation about green construction to the national level.
Share Article Architecture, Green, design in Pop!Tech 2010 Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 11:38AM 
“Is water still running?” is perhaps the most important question when considering water initiatives worldwide, concludes Water for People CEO Ned Breslin. He’s tired of seeing broken hand pumps and taps litter Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These signs of failed projects underscore the critical need to overhaul water aid for real impact.
Share Article Africa, data, development, innovation, mobile, water in Pop!Tech 2010 Monday, March 21, 2011 at 10:04AM Materials matter. Everything we touch, taste, wear, drive, drink, eat — all of it is connected to the use, re-use, and ultimate disposal of materials. The health of the planet and the prosperity of its inhabitants rest largely on how we extract and use materials.
In July 2010 at Harvard Medical School, the first meeting of the Ecomaterials Lab network brought together 40 of these thought leaders and stakeholders for a facilitated dialogue regarding the drivers, constraints, opportunities, and challenges surrounding next-generation sustainable materials (with a particular emphasis on textiles). The gathering unearthed new insights and areas of disagreement, and helped form a network around sustainable ecomaterials.
Alphachimp Studio Inc. was honored to be onsite for graphic facilitation support and graphic capture of the personal insight, passion and urgency expressed by this stellar group of material scientists.
Fast Company has included the results of this event in there list of 8 of the Most Exciting Developments in Material Sustainability!
Download the full report here:
ecology, innovation, science Monday, February 28, 2011 at 1:49PM 
Adaptation is the basic idea that we get used to stuff and interpret signals. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores how these types of signals relate to pain and social adaptation. How does our previous exposure to pain alter how we experience it now? How is it that we all appreciate the pinnacle of beauty in the same way, but we’re drawn to partners with a level of attractiveness similar to our own?
Share Article Economics, culture, psychology in Pop!Tech 2010 Friday, February 18, 2011 at 10:49AM 
Designer Orlagh O’Brien gave a simple emotion-specific quiz to a group of 250 people. Asking respondents to describe five emotions – anger, joy, fear, sadness, and love – in drawings, colors, and words, O’Brien ended up with a set of media she used to create Emotionally}Vague, an online graphic interpretation of the project’s results.
Share Article culture, design, social media in Pop!Tech 2010 Friday, February 11, 2011 at 2:21PM 
Kevin Starr, Mulago Foundation director, looks for the best solutions to the biggest problems in the poorest countries. He thinks all projects need to answer four questions: Is it needed? Does it work? Will it get to those who need it? Will they use it correctly when they get it? Too many bad ideas are using up our limited resources and that needs to change.
Business, development, poverty, social change, sustainability in Pop!Tech 2010 Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 7:17PM 
The story of Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton is one of liberation and forgiveness. In 1984, Thompson testified that Cotton raped her, for which he was sentenced to life in prison. Eleven years later, DNA evidence cleared him of the crime. Thompson and Cotton went on to write a memoir together about their experience.
forgiveness, identity in Pop!Tech 2010 Tuesday, January 4, 2011 at 2:50PM 
Kathryn Schulz is an expert on being wrong. The journalist and author of “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error,” says we make mistakes all the time. The trouble is that often times being wrong feels like being right. What’s more, we’re usually wrong about what it even means to make mistakes—and how it can lead to better ideas.
psychology in Pop!Tech 2010 Friday, December 10, 2010 at 8:35AM 
Elizabeth Dunn conducts experimental research on self-knowledge and happiness with a focus on how people can use their money more effectively to increase well-being. Dunn determined that by rethinking how we spend our money, we can “change the world, increase our happiness, or win a game of dodgeball.”
psychology, science in Pop!Tech 2010 Tuesday, November 30, 2010 at 4:38PM 
Alan Rabinowitz overcame a debilitating stutter to speak on behalf of big cats. After creating the world’s first jaguar sanctuary and world’s largest tiger reserve, the wildlife biologist says we need new models of conservation, like wildlife corridors, which allow humans and animals to coexist more peacefully.
conservatism, nature, zoology in Pop!Tech 2010 Tuesday, November 30, 2010 at 9:21AM 
Dr. Mukherjee’s fascination with cancer is rooted not just in how to fight it, but in where it originated. Discovering almost nothing on the subject, the cancer physician and researcher wrote The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer that explores the history of the disease that causes one-quarter of all American deaths.
cancer, medicine, science in Pop!Tech 2010 Friday, October 29, 2010 at 9:36PM 
Neuroscientist and best-selling author David Eagleman introduces the concept of Possibilianism, a new philosophy that simultaneously embraces a scientific toolbox while exploring new, unconsidered uncertainties about the world around us.
faith, psychology, science, spirituality Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 1:04PM 
Dr. Amin has a vision for the future of energy infrastructure in North America – smarter, sustainable, more resilient and secure. We’ve learned a great deal in the last 15 years about complex “lifeline” infrastructures – not just powerlines, but anything that absolutely, positively needs to survive failure.
Electricity, Green, efficiency, environment, grid, infrastructure, power, transportation in Pop!Tech 2009 
