Unboundary really out-did themselves this time with hosting TEDx in Atlanta. I want you guys to chime in on this one, because there is some controversial stuff here and the dialogue is GOOD!
Re:learn was a huge success and I think the reason is that there is so much passion about creating situations and environments that foster relationships for social good. Whether that be physical environments or virtual environments technology and humanity are coalescing.
Take these two speakers for example. Gever Tulley and Jane McGonigal. Both address our need for solving the fundamental problem of FUN in solving problems. I cant really say it much better than they have, so I’ll defer to their videos for your viewing and …
You guys are all familiar with these now. These local TED conferences, called TEDx’s here in Atlanta that Unboundary hosts. (x=independantly organized TED event).
Well I’ve done a good bit of writing about these and I’m about to kick-off the most recent (3rd) installment called RE:LEARN. As with all the TEDx’s so far, we get our brains loose by listening to excellent performers playing powerful music. This TEDx is no different. (See Zoe Keating and Eric Lewis for events prior.)
Enter Billy McLaughlin.
Billy was an famously talented guitarist in his day for his originality and complexity of his compositions and style of playing. However, in the late 90’s Billy was diagnosed …
In another TEDx Atlanta installment, Melissa Kushner (yes, brilliant sister of Marc Kushner, Co-Founder of Architizer) talks about her lessons learned running and operating her organization Goods 4 Good that she started after a few trips to Malawi while with the U.N.. Goods 4 Good is an organization taking surplus’s from US organizations and supplying resources to children less fortunate in developing countries.
However, this talk isn’t entirely about Goods 4 Good, instead it’s about Melissa’s experiences in what she calls ‘5 Steps to International Development’. I think there’s a lot to be learned from these 5 steps even beyond international development and even into the work of our own lives. The 5 …
In December, Life at HOK released its 2009 reading list which turned out not only to give us great gift ideas, but aslo to be an awesome glimpse into the minds of HOK. In the same spirit, we thought it would be great to bring to you a list of HOK’s favorite documentaries. What better way to get to know us then to see what we spend our free time watching? Each title will link you out to either streaming video, a site where you can purchase the video, or some other informative website. So without further ado:
Cosmos
Carl Sagan
Recommended by Blake GallagherComment: “Okay, so …
For all you chaps who didnt know. I’m also blogging (1 post so far) over at my friend Martin’s blog called “Off the Green Wall“. Martin is the president of Ecoscorecard along with his two business partners Paul and David. These guys are all around awesome, but I’ll save that for another post.
The important thing is that you watch this TEDx Atlanta talk by Gregory Todd Jones about cooperation and collaboration in networks and how vital it is to understanding this movement we’re all in. It’s less about cars, people, buildings and food and more about ourselves and communication.
After you watch, go on over to Off the Green Wall to read …
TED. That’s all that needs to be said. It’s been such a big part of my personal development over the last few years and it’s something that has grown to be so beloved for its accessible brilliance that it’s permeated even the most prominent of new sources today including all over CNN. (it’s about time “good” became mainstream)
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Well a lesser known “baby TED” is home right here in my own backyard, and its called TEDx Atlanta. Some of you may have read my earlier posts about the September TEDx, interviews and more, and for others I hope you will read them soon. Even if you don’t really read …
When I wrote about Eric Lewis my prior TEDx post, I was supposed to continually update you with video’s from the conference/gathering here in Atlanta. However, I’ve been waiting to write about the lecturer’s so that I could include video footage which was taken by Unboundary.
Ciannat Howett is the director of Sustainability for Emory University and has done quite a bit for the development of the way Emory operates everything from buildings, to courses, to social events. She is a wonderful speaker and you should definately check out this video.
I love it when she talks about the expectations of the students and reveals that it’s much less about Emory marketing, and more about Emory Education and defining …
I was chatting with one of my colleagues today (via email), and without getting into any detail as to the specifics of our conversation, I want to springboard this post off of a thread where TED came into the conversation. As we chatted, it occurred to me that not everybody knows about TED, and if they have perhaps heard of it, they may not be exactly sure what it is.
Sure, TED has been referenced in a few HOKlife posts, but the big picture of its significance has been understated.
So what is TED? My response to my colleague was, “TED is an enterprise that hosts talks by those who are on the cutting edge of research and …
http://www.vimeo.com/6612927
As some of you have read in an earlier post, I had the wonderful opportunity of attending the local TED event here in Atlanta. Hosted and curated by Unboundary, the TEDx Atlanta talks were a great way to, like most TED talks do, leave you thinking for days upon end, playing in the ‘ether’ of ideas. So much so that in fact it has been two weeks since the event and I’m just now getting around to understand what I heard and writing about it in a way that readers can get what I’m talking about.
I’ll start a series of posts (starting with this one) that will talk about each of the …
http://www.vimeo.com/6198030
I got a chance to sit down with the Tod Martin, CEO of Unboundary in Atlanta and talk about the upcoming TEDx Talks that they are hosting. Watch as Tod talks about when he started attending TED, where and when TEDx Atlanta will take place, who the speakers are, and more! A full list of TEDx Atlanta speakers can be found HERE.
Also, a big shout-out to Kyle Jones and all of the other cool-cats at Unboundary for the interview and the tour!
Very inspiring presentation by Gordon Brown from last week’s TED Global Conference in Oxford. [Not sure I agree with all the institutional government layers being a 'ground up' guy]…but certainly was moved by the call for a global community and the reality that no one nation [location] can get it all done. Much of his focus on global alignment around a common set of values is right on…and is something we need to improve at HOK. Few other firms have the opportunity at the scale we do to get this right. What is the ethic [ethos] that uniquely holds us together at HOK?…How can HOK leverage our technologies and incredible reach to solve critical global issues? Seems to …
So you all might have read my earlier post of excitement about the localities of the TED talks (called TEDx) and now I have a bit more details for the Atlanta event which is just a couple months away. (September 15th, 2009)
Unboundary will be curating and hosting the talks and so far they have some exciting stuff posted up on the TEDx Atlanta website. It looks like Eric Lewis, Dr. Carl Hodges, and Dr. Richard Farson are already up for slated performers/speakers. You can watch Eric Lewis perform and Ray Anderson speak at …
For all you hipsters keen on TED lectures and who can’t get enough of the erratic addition to knowledge, may I suggest viewing one NEAR YOU!
That’s right folks, TED has been piloting these in other cities such as Tokyo with much success and now they are planned for tons of cities around the world!
TEDx Atlanta is coming in September! Visit the site for more details!
Time magazine named her a “Hero of the Environment,” TED invited her to speak at its influential conference…and HOK St. Louis welcomed Janine Benyus to our home to share her wisdom on biomimicry (the science she pioneered).
HOK is working with Janine and her Biomimicry Guild team to integrate nature’s genius into the planning and design of buildings, communities and cities worldwide.
Keep your eyes peeled for our overzealous photographer, who peppers Janine’s comments with FLASHES and makes his official cameo appearance at about :55.
http://www.vimeo.com/3771653
After enriching all of us with her genius, Janine visited Washington University to inspire the next generation of architects, planners and urban designers.
The Laws of Simplicity
Originally uploaded by Ryan Heath
I did this design discussion/ presentation with our Interiors group at work the other day which dove right into the realities of simplicity and complexity. We quickly found all of our perceptions to be different for the meaning of both of those words.
I tried to address the issue at all scales from product design to archtecture. I was really inspired by John Maeda’s talk for TED about how humanity really does love complexity. He went on to hypothesize that we really like simplicity when it comes to work, and that when it comes to enjoyment we enjoy …
In 2003 I traveled to Aspen on an adventure to attend the International Design Conference in Aspen to listen to some of the most intelligent individuals I’ve ever had the privilege of hearing. Some of the names there were Gregg Lynn, Natalie Jeremijenko, John Maeda, GRAFT, UN Studio’s Ben Van Berkel, and Imaginary Forces. There was a lot that went on that weekend, but I wanted to focus on two of those names for this post; Gregg Lynn and Imaginary Forces.
I’ve talked some about SEED magazine in my posts and especially their collaboration with MoMA for the ‘Design and the Elastic …
I’m not even going to try and lie. I hate foie gras. I don’t like the smell, the taste, the texture, or the idea. All around I just think it’s a pretty disgusting food. (I’ve even tasted it at the most coveted of restaurants in Atlanta)
Having said that, I watched this lecture anyway from Dan Barber about his experience with a farmer of Geese in Spain. I don’t want to give too graphic of a summary about how foie gras is typically produced (it involves force feeding) but this video was rather interesting in that this farmer of geese allows them to gorge themselves (instead of force-feeding) by pampering them with a huge farm …
So Jeremy Smith here at HOK in Atlanta has just passed along a video to me that’s very interesting. I won’t make any save the world claims just yet as it seems ‘too good to be true.’ In this interview John Christie claims that he and his partner have been ‘tinkering’ with this generator for 6 years. This device uses magnetic polarity and physics to spin a rotor in the generator (as best a layman such as myself can understand it.).
The video interview had a 5:1 input/output ratio, but this website says15:1 by the physicist Jacco Van Der Worp.
Personally, I’m a skeptic on this particular project. However, it’s the first time I admit I’ve thought of the …
Today I received an email from TED encouraging me to watch a short video, assuring me it would be the most inspiring thing I’d see this week. And on this cold and rainy Thursday morning, it definitely has been.
So, I’m passing it along to you… below an excerpt from the email sent by Chris Anderson (TED Curator) and Amy Novogratz (TED Prize Director):
“… this website mark[s] the launch of an inspiring global endeavor to celebrate compassion and to promote a new collaboration between the world’s religions. What we’re doing, starting today, is to begin writing the Charter for Compassion that Karen Armstrong called for earlier this year …
Good morning!
If you have 20 minutes to spare, love particle theory and pretty pictures by nature’s design, enjoy this lecture at TED by Garrett Lisi: A beautiful new theory of everything. After this you might not want to take the triangle and the circle for granted ever again!
Before entering the architectural academia, I studied genetics, physics, and geology. I loved the formulas, the graphs, the connections. Later, through a desire to translate theory into the built environment, I engaged architecure. These theories are still a source of inspiration to me.
“Nature’s grand book, which stands continually open to our gaze, is written in the language of mathematics. Its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, …
The 2009 TED Prize winners were just announced, and as always it is an interesting group – deep-ocean explorer Sylvia Earle, astronomer Jill Tarter, and Maestro José Antonio Abreu. All of them leaders in their fields, all unconventional in their views. Each wins $100,000 plus “One Wish to Change The World. No Restrictions.” Their wishes will be announced at TED2009 on February 5th, 2009.Sylvia Earl talks about “stabalizng our connection to nature”, Jim Tarter asks…”Are we alone?” and the Maestro believes that music is the “agent of social development in the highest sense“. My wish? That one day I will get to attend TED!
