Pop!Tech X Concludes

One opera house, 3 days, 500 participants, hundreds of "dangerous" ideas... this was Pop!Tech X.

As official Pop!Tech artist, I built out a mobile paint studio, perched up in the loge box above the opera house stage.

I managed to crank out 36 paintings totalling 43,200 square inches of art to give form to the ideas propogated by the superstar speakers.

PHOTO: Pop!Tech curator Andrew Zolli with members of the Sinikithemba Choir.
Credit: Asa Mathat

The amazing roster included musician Brian Eno, futurist Kevin Kelly, science fiction writer Bruce Sterling, military strategist Tom Barnett, historian Juan Enriquez, culinary scientist Homaro Cantu and the longtailed Chris Anderson.

The original works (all 30" x 40" acrylic paintings on archival posterboard) are up for auction to raise money for the Pop!Tech Scholarship Fund. This will enable more students, women and minorities from other parts of the country and the world to attend this amazing event held each year in Camden, Maine.

My favorite presentations:

Sinikithemba Choir,
an HIV-positive singing group from Durbin South Africa, spreading the
word about AIDS and medication around the world: "If you're negative,
stay negative! If you're positive, think positive!"

The presentation by the creator of Ask A Ninja.

HP was one of the corporate sponsors and a team of writers and designers were on-site to compile a 300+ full-color book incorporating photos, artwork, scibbles, post-its, wiki posts, blog posts and random submissions. The book is currently printing and will reach each of the 500+ participants at their homes within 3 days of the event's conclusion!

I used our new web-based tool for capturing events, MissingLink, to publish the results in almost real time.

See results: http://alphachimp.missinglink.biz/poptech/poptech-2006-dangerous-ideas

Live at Pop!Tech 10

Today is the first day of Pop!Tech, a three-day conference featuring the most creative, innovative and dangerous thinkers on the planet.

Yahoo has a giant satellite truck out front of the quaint Opera House here in Camden, Maine. They are beaming the audio and video of the presentations and musical performances directly to Houston, parsing the files and streaming to viewers on-line in real-time.

This morning you can listen presentations for free by such luminaries as musicisn Brian Eno, the inventor of SimCity Will Wright, columnist Tom Freidman and futurist Kevin Kelly.

To listen in and to contribute to the conversation, visit http://live.poptech.org/

I'll be inside the Opera House, with a mobile paint studio set up way up in the loge seats producing large graffiti works for each speaker. All paintings created during the conference can be seen on MissingLink at: http://alphachimp.missinglink.biz/poptech/poptech-2006-dangerous-ideas

You can see the results from past years at
http://www.alphachimp.com/poptech/simpleviewer2005/

Click below to see the schedule of speakers, with times listed being US Eastern Standard. Hope you catch some of the show!

=====================
POP!TECH SCHEDULE
=====================

Thursday, October 19
-------------------
9:00 AM Emergence with Brian Eno and Will Wright
10:30 AM Break
11:00 AM Technology's Embrace with Kevin Kelly,
Marianne Weems, and Hasan Elahi
12:30 PM Lunch Break
2:00 PM GreenShift with Tom Friedman, Steward Brand,
Lester Brown, and Robert Freling
4:00 PM Break
4:30 PM Fabricating the Future with Bruce Sterling,
Blaine Brownell, and Alex Steffen
6:30 PM Free time for dinner and friends
9:00 PM Three-Minute Miracles: Open Mic Night

Friday, October 20
-------------------
9:00 AM Taking on Superpowers with Juan Enriquez,
Tom Barnett, and The Yes Men
10:30 AM Break
11:00 AM Identity Reframed with Ayaan Hirsi Ali
and Kwame Anthony Appiah
12:30 PM Lunch Break
2:00 PM On Faith with Martin Marty and Richard Dawkins
3:00 PM
3:30 PM Pop!Tech Social
4:30 PM The Edge of Learning with Education Fellows,
Erin McKean, and Losang Rabgey

Saturday, October 21
-------------------
9:00 AM Tails and Tales with Chris Anderson, Kent Nichols, and Ze Frank
10:30 AM Break
11:00 AM Community Cures with Victoria Hale, Neema Mgana, and Zinhle Thabethe
12:30 PM Lunch Break
2:00 PM Artful Invention with Clifford Ross and Homaro Cantu
3:30 PM The Neo-Futurists
4:00 PM Break
4:30 PM Risk and Revolution with Roger Brent and Craig Venter
5:30 PM Wrap-up with Bob Metcalfe and John Sculley

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Monkey on the Move

From Jarrell McAlister:

Robot Vacuum + Animatronic Chimp = Sheer Terror

Some experiements should never see the light of day!

From YouTube. Where else?

Tri-Dave & Operation Caterpillar

Life in the Middle East is no bowl of cherries for the US military. But that doesn't mean that a life without access to wine, women, water, trees, bathrooms, shopping malls or ice cream parlors needs to be boring.

Just witness the results of the moustache-growing competition (code named Operation Caterpillar) launched by the comrades of our good friend and Navy SeeBee, Tri-Dave.

Other extreme sports experienced by the crew: catching up on LOST episodes on DVD, watching a broadcast football game in the middle of the night, and betting on another soldier's attempt to eat an entire block of cheese for $50.

Get more of an insight into life at http://www.tridave.blogspot.com/:

Overall the base has everything you could ask for and in some instances the amenities are better than most stateside bases. I live in a PCB (Pre-Constructed Building) in the “1400 Block” neighborhood. It is like a “suburb” of tract housing with a bunch of buildings, all exactly the same, for berthing. Each one holds up to 50+ people so the troops are really packed in. As an Officer, we have more room and I even get a corner since I am the senior person in my building. There are bunk beds galore and a bunk of wall lockers that I was able to use for privacy screening. I created a little pod and even put my Seabee Flag over the entry for a little more privacy. All the lights are on one switch so you have to get used to sleeping with lights on or getting ready in the dark, but it should not be too terrible.

[The outside temperature this August: 120 degrees Fahrenheit]

D.I.R.T.: The Art and Science of Bioremediation

Few experiences top the drive from Northern Indiana into South Chicago. First, you are hit by the noxious exhalations from putrescent organic matter; this is the massive methane-belching dump. [photo by trailerafire]

Then the Skyway takes you and your vehicle a hundred feet in the air, affording an exhilerating view of Gary, Indiana: deserted mills, refineries sending flames into the night sky, expanses of industrial miasma, abandoned by the knowledge economy.

Take the route through Northern New Jersey that flies by the car window of Tony Soprano, and you too may feel a drop in your gut and an exhileration in your chest. There are few sights more disheartening or inspiring than driving through America's industrial wastelands.

It was here that landscape architect and vanguard of the bioremediation movement, Julie Bargmann, grew up -- cruising through the New Jersey Turnpike, under powerlines, past the oil refineries and through America's dumping ground, The Meadowlands.

According to Wikipedia, Bioremediation can be defined as any process that uses microorganisms, fungi, green plants or their enzymes to return the environment altered by contaminants to its original condition. Bioremediation may be employed to attack specific soil contaminants, such as chlorinated hydrocarbons that are degraded by bacteria, or a more general approach may be taken, such as oil spills that are broken down by multiple techniques including the addition of nitrate and/or sulfate fertilizers to facilitate the decomposition of crude oil by indigenous or exogenous bacteria.

Archinect writer and landscape architect Heather Ring, interviews Bargmann who is collaborating with others to reclaim some of the millions of acres in America currently considered industrial blight. [read interview]

Now she dedicates her research and practice, D.I.R.T. (Dump It Right There) Studio, to taking on abandoned railyards, closed quarries and landfills, disused factories and former coal mines. And with more than half a million contaminated sites in the US alone, there's a strong argument for remediating what's been used, rather than sprawling out and building new. Her practice is a critical one, which means there's no erasing the evidence. Instead, she works to transform the waste produced by a century of manufacturing and consumption into something culturally and ecologically productive. She's got a pink hard-hat and a quick wit, and a willingness to get her hands dirty and talk about things like "beauty," in a way that redefines it for us all.

From University of Virginia faculty profile:

Julie Bargmann is internationally recognized as an innovative designer in building regenerative landscapes and with interdisciplinary design education. Her on-going design research Project D.I.R.T. (Design Investigations Reclaiming Terrain) continues to excavate the creative potential of disturbed landscapes.

Design research infuses projects at the D.I.R.T. studio (Dump It Right There) where past and present industrial along with urban processes lay the groundwork for ecological systems, cultural constructs and emerging technologies. From closed quarries to abandoned coal mines, fallow factories and urban railyards, Bargmann joins teams of architects, artists, engineers, historians and scientists to imagine the next evolution of these working landscapes.

From Worldchanging, Sarah Rich writes on the nature of transformation (from nature to industry to art):

"That experience of profound beauty amidst industrial decay encapsulates our changing perception of land. It's unmistakable in contemporary art such as Ed Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes or The Canary Project's photos of altered geographies, which portray places we'd once have concealed from public view, and surely never granted status as art."

Harvest Art in Massachusetts

From graphic facilitator Kelvy Bird:

"Come enjoy the harvest!"

RECEPTION Friday, October 13, from 6-9 PM
Gallery at 38 Cameron, with Beth Galston and Lou Jones
38 Cameron Avenue, Cambridge, MA
Through December 29: Tues and Wed 12-5 or by appointment 617-492-2848

Preview | Exhibit | Map

Sacred Sense at The Nave Gallery
Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church, 155 Powderhouse Blvd., Somerville MA
Through October 15: Fri 5-8, Sat 1-5, Sun 1-3

Preview | Exhibit | Map

Malden Contemporary at the Gallery at Elm Street
First Parish in Malden - 2 Elm Street, Malden MA
Through November 12: Tues and Fri 10am-1pm, Sat 10am-2pm, Sun 10am-1pm

Preview | Exhibit | Map

Monkey Management

Being a primate isn't easy. Especially since, as one myself, I find other primates so unpredictable and silly. Not to mention, sneaky and overly scatological.

Brad Farris of Anchor Advisors in the Chicagoland area, sent us a link to serve as a helpful guide for those primates who have to manage the time and energy of their fellow simians: The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey by Kenneth Blanchard, William, Jr. Oncken, Hal Burrows.

(photo: Digger Digger Dogstar)

The scientific community has also begun to realize that primates really -- I know it's hard to believe -- can not be "managed". In the light-heartedly titled paper, Animal Behavior Research Findings Facilitate Comprehensive Captive Animal Care: The Birth of Behavioral Management, the authors describe the startling discovery:

It is clear that the major focus of current environmental enhancement programs is more than just providing supplemental toys for animals to manipulate. This is true regardless of whether animals are housed in a research laboratory or zoological collection. The concept of behavioral management addresses questions about animal behavior as a critical and integral component of the overall health and well-being of these animals.

So, is your work environment more like a research laboratory or a zoological collection? Has management (including yourself) tried to make the beasts more manageable by implementing "environmental enhancement programs" such as casual Fridays, office birthday parties, wacky furniture or (on the high-end of the enhancement program spectrum) a Foosball table? At corporate off-sites, are your breakout tables strewn with "supplemental toys for animals to manipulate"?

If so, beware! They may be making a stab at morphing your unwieldy, monkey-like tendancies into more malleable behavior that fits nicely into their matrixed structure.

From About-Goal-Setting.com:

So, effective management means 'monkey management'!

But just how can a manager be helpful to others while at the same time keeping the monkeys where they belong, fairly and squarely on the backs of the persons responsible for them?

The whole scenario just described and the way to manage monkeys is explained in "The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey".

This paperback is brilliant!

By using the Four Rules of Monkey Management, managers learn to become effective supervisors of time, energy, and talent - especially their own.

Achieve a balance between supervision and delegation.

Make sure your personal library has a copy of "The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey".

Rearranging the Human Family Tree

from Washingotn University in St. Louis:
Modern Humans, not Neandertals, may be evolution's "odd man out" By Neil Schoenherr

Sept. 7, 2006 -- Could it be that in the great evolutionary "family tree," it is we Modern Humans, not the brow-ridged, large-nosed Neandertals, who are the odd uncle out?

New research published in the August, 2006 journal Current Anthropology by Neandertal and early modern human expert, Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, suggests that rather than the standard straight line from chimps to early humans to us with Neandertals off on a side graph, it's equally valid, perhaps more valid based on the fossil record, that the line should extend from the common ancestor to the Neandertals, and Modern Humans should be the branch off that.

The most unusual characteristics throughout human anatomy occur in Modern Humans (right), argues Trinkaus, not in Neadertals (left).