While US legislators are busy arguing about wether or not the EPA has the constitutional right to regulate air pollution, a massive ecological design experiment is underway place across the Pacific. For China, the worlds most highly populated country and heavily industrialized economy, the stakes are high to develop and implement an integrated sustainability framework for their cities.

Dr. James Caldwell, has spent the past year consulting to the sustainability planners of the city of Nansha, China on exactly this topic. At this dinner he’ll share the story of working with the urban planners of Nansha to develop a Green Specification System for the city.

He will compare Nansha with several other eco-city developments in China where he has worked with planners and reveal the insights gained from co-organizing and co-hosting a Chinese Mayoral Delegation that came to the Bay Area to compare Eco-City development efforts here with their own in China.

Come on out to dinner and expand your innovation worldview!

Click and Register

This event is a collaboration between Sustainovation and Silicon Valley Innovation Institute (SVII).

Schedule:

6:00 PM – Doors Open (Networking)
6:45 PM – Dinner is Served
7:15 PM – Program Begins
9:00 PM – Wrap-up

Location:

Bay Cafe, Palo Alto Golf Course
1875 Embarcadero Rd
Palo Alto, CA 94303

Thank you for sharing this event with a friend!

 « prev      1   2   3   4   5   6   ...  48      next »  
(192 Photos)

Left / Right Brain Interactive Dinner Panel w/ CAST Labs - Part II

Title

Left / Right Brain Interactive Dinner Panel w/ CAST Labs - Part II

Runtime

44:44

Views

397

Title

Opera Singer-Neuroscientist performs at CAST Party

Runtime

9:18

Views

294

Title

Left / Right Brain Interactive Dinner Panel w/ CAST Labs - Part I

Runtime

41:05

Views

140

Title

Tango Performance

Runtime

1:24

Views

32

Title

Neubop plays at SVII

Runtime

1:17

Views

7

SVII and CAST Labs joined forces for an end of the year celebration. The program featured live jazz, opera arias, a tango dance performance, and a dinner-debate. The theme of the evening – art, creativity and innovation, a collaborative exploration.

A multi-talented panel of accomplished left-and-right-brainers lead a panel discussion moderated by CAST Labs founder Sylvie Leotin. A wide range of opinions, talents and personality made for a stimulating discussion that involved the whole room. Here are some images and videos of the event:

Panelists:

• Sylvie Leotin – CAST Labs founder and moderator, ballerina, computer scientist, blogger and entrepreneur.
• Michael Killen -  Artist, filmmaker, and serial entrepreneur, driving awareness and change for sustainability through art and TV programs.
• Howard Lieberman - SVII founder, DARPA senior science & technology advisor, serial entrepreneur, composer and jazz musician.
• Indre Viskontas - Singer and neuroscientist, specializing in contemporary opera and the intersection between memory and creativity.

The premise of this dinner was that to be relevant, you have to move past contemplation and cross the threshold to actually CREATE something that can be shared. To jump out of the box, and JUST GO DO.

The focus was on the creation of a Green Community Center in North Fair Oaks, CA. Activist architect Morton Frank presented a social venture to manufacture green certified, prefabricated housing units, onsite, in the community and for the community.

The is aim to demonstrate a scalable model of neighborhood improvement through energy efficiency.

Elements of this multifaceted vision include: creating livable and eco-friendly low income housing, green jobs training, energy efficiency, renewable energy generation, community communications infrastructure, and bridging socio-economic divides in Silicon Valley.

Three SVII’ers served as “lenses” to guide the group dialog:

David Allen Foster – Mutlifarious Designer & Parallel Entrepreneur

Gary Shamshonian - Corporate Green Building Champion

Bill Veltrop – Architect of Generative Change

Title

A Storytelling Renaissance

Runtime

8:06

Views

369

Title

Storytelling business model

Runtime

11:10

Views

185

Title

The Current Shift in Socio Economic Balance of Power

Runtime

3:01

Views

62

Title

We are in a Movie Right Now

Runtime

2:41

Views

27

Title

What the kids Teach Us

Runtime

4:40

Views

24

Title

Group Dynamics of Summer Camp Mischief

Runtime

2:12

Views

21

Title

What style of Music do Howard and Dave play?

Runtime

2:11

Views

8

Sheridan Tatsuno and Suzanne Connolly facilitated an inspiring dialog on converging trends in technology and society that are creating huge opportunities for the art of storytelling. As the evening progressed, diners began to share their own stories.

Topics ranged from the use of storytelling by children to document and expose corrupt government practices to unlocking the increasingly woman driven consumer economy. SVII is looking forward to further collaboration in capturing and creating stories to support innovation advocacy.

origional description
Storytelling is a core competency of innovators and innovation advocates – what better way to transmit insight and provide context? A convergence of trends is now creating tremendous new opportunities for the art of storytelling.

“The Stage” – The entire world is several orders of magnitude more connected connected than only 5 years ago. And, the rapid growth of social networks, mobile devices and cloud computing isn’t slowing down anytime soon. The barriers to doing business internationally, particularly for communications-centric ventures, are drastically lower than ever before.

“The Play” - Stories take on many forms, eg. writing, music, film, drama, fashion or game design.  These are the “Plays” on this new digital “Stage”.

What are the storytelling opportunities for global ventures and digital studios right now? How can small businesses leverage global networks? What are the kinds of stories that businesses should master?

Sheridan Tatsuno is a worldly man fluent in four languages. A longtime Silicon Valley market researcher, business strategist, and visionary thinker, he has touched the lives of many with his involvement with things like the “Intel Inside” campaign and AMD’s sub $1000 PC. He is also a screenwriter with several of his writings on Japan that have been subsequently produced into documentaries. Today, he champions the arts with two Silicon Valley initiatives via Facebook:

Silicon Valley Global Network – focuses on global entrepreneurship and collaboration (the IT and business platforms, or “the stage”).

RENAISSANCE: SF – promotes transmedia storytelling in Silicon Valley (the “plays”).

Suzanne Connolly is the co-founder RENAISSANCE SF. She will also be participating in this dinner program. As a writer, editor, filmmaker, advisor to startups, and political advocate for technology and telecommunications, she has a passion for the convergence of storytelling and the democratization of technology.

We are pleased to have Sheridan Tatsuno and Suzanne Connolly share their vision that the current social media IT platform boom (mostly run by engineers and programmers) will soon lead to an explosion in Web/mobile storytelling (led by liberal arts and humanities grads).  The left brain will finally connect with the right brain! — the only way the U.S. can compete against left-brained China and India that offer much cheaper labor in the hundreds of millions.

SVII Society’s first ever live foods dinner was a smash hit! The party already started during setup as helping hands danced the tables and chairs into place to the tune of Howard Lieberman and Micha’el Bedar improvised piano and flute duet. Jillian Love gave a practical demonstration of how to make a live foods pesto.

Zesty flavors of live foods pizza and delicate cherry ice cream delighted the palettes of the evenings participants, some of whom had never experienced live foods cuisine before.

After speakers shared their personal journeys to becoming live foods advocates, the dialog broadened and touched upon many topics including healthcare reform,  epigenetics and the role of people’s psychology on their level of health. Everyone who attended deserves a big Thank You from SVII, when it was time the return our ad hoc dining room back into an empty hall - never before have we seen such a helpful crowd. Many hands made light work!

Check out the awesome photos of the event taken by Jessie Chen

see also: New OaklandDiabetes Prevention and Reversing Project

original event description

To what degree can you reinvent your life through what you consume?

Is it possible to obliterate a debilitating disease simply by changing what you eat?
What mysteries have been revealed through documenting the effects of a raw foods diet?
And for you meat-loving innovators out there…
Is it possible to soar to the heights of culinary delight… without the daily filet mignon?

Featuring:

Jillian Love: Sensational raw food chef and educator. Dazzle your taste buds with an all-live dinner menu. http://www.jillianlove.com

Michael Ruescher (SVII) & Reba Vanderpool (The Visionary Edge): Q&A time with SVII’s own Michael Ruescher and film-screening extraordinaire Reba Vanderpool as they share their personal transformative encounters with innovations in wellbeing. http://www.visionaryedge.org/

Michael Bedar: Associate producer of the revolutionary documentary “Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days” shares his work and experience. http://www.TEEMwithlife.org/

There are finally several ways to get high quality audio signals in and out of iOS devices (via Apogee, Alesis and Sonoma Wireworks peripherals.) Performers can now integrate these multipurpose devices into their performances without apology for sound quality.

The cost of music apps running on an iOS device is at least an order of magnitude less than the equivalent hardware purchases. (10x bang for your buck!)

For those of us in Silicon Valley, there’s the unique opportunity to be part of the iterative feedback loop between musicians and developers as the core of musicians innovation ecosystem.

Join us next Tuesday to explore the evolution of tomorrow’s musical tools that some of us are building on the most current platforms. Consider to bring your favorite instrument and / or mobile device for experimentation. FREE PIZZA!

Mobile Musicians SIG
Tuesday, 10/25/11, 4-7PM

Serena Software
1900 Seaport Blvd, 2nd Floor
Redwood City, CA

Title

The Hackerspace Movement w/ David Weekly

Runtime

22:38

Views

68

Title

The HackerSpace Movement: Q&A w/ David Weekly

Runtime

58:07

Views

19

July’s dinner was a meeting of two great innovation networks. David Weekly shared his remarkable story of creating the Hacker Dojo. A rich discussion followed as SVII’ers shared their own experiences of innovation culture at its heights. The shared value of fostering an innovation culture between Hacker Dojo and SVII was strongly evident and poses the question for future collaboration. Here’s some things mentioned this evening.

Alan Kay
Don Norman
Gary Starkweather
Ivan Sutherland
Arduino
GAFFTA

original event description:
The office cubicle simply isn’t the ideal workplace for those who are collaborative creators. This dilemma led pioneers to create a new kind of work place which encourages communication and mind sharing. One such approach has become what is known as the “Hacker Space” Movement.  A hacker space is essentially a community workspace where people can go to work on projects or startups. In hacker space vernacular, the term to “hack” means to build or create, and is not to be confused with to “cracking” the act of breaking a system or breaching security commonly associated with the word “hacker”.

One of the worlds premier hacker spaces has sprung up right here in Mountain View, CA. It is known as the Hacker Dojo. Since it opened two years ago, it has become a hotbed of activity of people working together to create amazing things and ideas. Our guest for July’s dinner is David Weekly, Founding Director of Hacker Dojo. He is also the Founder of PBWorks, a company that was built around the idea of making a wiki as easy to make as a Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwich. PBWorks currently empowers over 1,500,000 collaboration communities worldwide. He is an advocate for both the physical as well as social architecture that leads to a more productive and satisfying place to work.

Title

Passive Solar House Tour - Inside

Runtime

24:13

Views

378

Title

Passive Solar House Tour - Outside

Runtime

10:29

Views

137

Passive solar design is quite possibly one of the most efficient building techniques ever. Yet we rarely see the conscious implementation of this timeless way of building structures which are in-tune with the energy balance of their environment.

It’s a perfect example of how innovation is also about the challenge of adoption. Thomas Wagner has met that challenge head on by building a passive solar home in Palo Alto in 1982. He graciously hosted a potluck and gave a tour of his home that keeps warm in the Winter and cool in the Summer with little to no active heating or cooling.

At SVII’s April 6 Wednesday night gathering Bill Veltrop unveiled his nomination for “The Next Big Thing” — and it wasn’t a thing. It was a strategy for growing a Societal Metamorphosis Movement, with the “region” being the primary unit of design.

The purpose of the April 6 gathering was to plant the Regional Metamorphosis seed-meme in the SVII community to see it would germinate and take root. Howard had already embraced the meme and followed up the presentation by challenging the SVII community and Silicon Valley to play a leadership role in growing a global regional metamorphosis movement.

If you haven’t viewed the video for that SVII session http://vimeo.com/22894801 we encourage you to review it. It provides a reasonably coherent context for our next steps.

At the May 10 Tuesday afternoon followup gathering at Serena Software, the Monterey Institute for Social Architecture (MISA) co-founders showed their support for growing a “Silicon Valley Regional Metamorphosis Initiative (SiV RMI).”

INVITATION TO OUR TUESDAY JUNE 7 GATHERING AT SERENA SOFTWARE

The purpose of this gathering is to organize our selves in a way that will support the SiV RMI seed-meme in germinating and taking root.

Below are four tasks that seem essential to gaining traction in our region — and beyond:

1. Evolve the Story — How might we evolve our emerging story in a way that —

• Becomes increasingly clear, coherent, concise and compelling?
• Speaks to the various potential SiV game-ready infinite players (GRIPs) we want to attract and engage?
• Invites these GRIPs to evolve the story in a way that includes and challenges each of them?
• Supports it becoming viral, contagious and self-evolving?

Wanted: Translators, story-tellers, media magicians, producers, synthesizers, web masters, marketing mavens — GRIPs who together can grow this RM story in a way that will be owned throughout Silicon Valley, the Bay Area and beyond.)

1. Communications/Collaboration — What communications/collaboration infrastructure makes the most sense at this bootstrapping stage? — and for the long term? How might we jumpstart such infrastructure immediately, in a way that is value-adding, energizing and generative?

Wanted:  Communicators, moderators, connectors, network enliveners, who can grow and implement a living, evolving “nervous system” for this emerging movement.

1. Scouting for Generative Allies — Which SiV individuals/entities do we believe could become our most important generative allies at this bootstrapping stage? How might we best engage them?

Wanted: GRIPs who have a rich network of trusted relationships with other players who could become excited about the helping to pioneer this transformational movement. High on the list would be the Evolutionary Angels able and willing to help evolve an incubator to nurture our early growth.

1. Becoming Self-Organizing, Self-Managing and Self-Improving — We intend that we learn to function as a generative action-learning community, where we not only become productive, but also evolve ourselves at all levels — inner mastery, relationally, in community and within the larger system.

Wanted: Emerging evolutionary architects with design, change and facilitation expertise.

Preparation for our May 7^th gathering

• Review the above video if you haven’t already done so.

• Review the above four startup tasks to see which one(s) speak(s) to you.

• Review your digital Rolodex and see who emerges as a potential fellow-pioneer, someone you’d like to see involved in this audacious undertaking. Then invite them, and help bring them up to speed if they want to play.

• Connect with Bill Veltrop or Max Shkud re any questions/ideas/suggestions.