Maria Kalman: The humor of the everyday

Watch, laugh and delight as remarkable designer, author, and artist Maira Kalman shares her work at the intersection of several disciplines and interests. For more information, visit poptech.org.

Maira Kalman is the author and illustrator of numerous books for adults and children including What Pete Ate, Looking at Lincoln, The Principles of Uncertainty and My Favorite Things. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and the New Yorker, most known for the NEWYORKISTAN cover created in collaboration with Rick Meyerowitz. 

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David Granger: The Eternal Now

In media, the pressure of the now—publish now, get page views now—can overshadow the great work that has come before. Esquire editor David Granger discusses how he has tackled this challenge as he brings his magazine’s 82 year legacy into “The Eternal Now.” For more information, visit poptech.org.

David Granger was named editor-in-chief of Esquire Magazine in 1997. Since his arrival, the 82-year-old magazine has entered its most successful era. Between 1998 and 2014, Esquire has been a finalist for more than 70 National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest honors, and has won 16, including the award for General Excellence in 2006. In 2004, the magazine received four National Magazine Awards, the most of any magazine in America. And in 2009, it won three, again the most of any magazine.

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Edith Elliott: People, not just patients

Calling on her experience as a 13-year old helping her mother recover after brain surgery, Edith Elliott co-founded Noora Health to provide critical support services and training to hospitalized patients and their families, ensuring a smooth transition from hospital to home. "We exist to transform health care from a scary and sterile experience into something full of compassion and love." For more information, visit poptech.org.

Edith Anne Elliott is the co-founder and CEO of Noora Health, which provides critical support services and training to hospitalized patients and their families, ensuring a smooth transition from hospital to home. Leveraging human-centered design, Noora Health has developed a simple, interactive and low-cost approach to teach basic treatments, encourage proper dietary/lifestyle changes, and recognize early warning signs of medical emergencies.

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Andrew Hessel: Writing chromosomes with code

Scientist Andrew Hessel explains the exciting possibilities of synthetic biology, including the potential to move from blockbuster drugs to a pipeline of personalized medicines. In so doing, he makes a case for his ambition to “genetically engineer everything in the world.” For more information, visit poptech.org.

Autodesk Distinguished Researcher Andrew Hessel is a catalyst in biological technologies, helping industry, academics, and authorities better understand the changes happening in life science. Andrew is a key member of the Bio/Nano/Programmable Matter group at Autodesk Research. He is also the co-founder of the Pink Army Cooperative, the world’s first cooperative biotechnology company, which is aiming to make open source viral therapies for cancer.

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Primoz Kovacic: Development is personal

"Development doesn't have to be sexy; it just has to work. " Primoz Kovacic and his team are giving communities simple tools they need to bring about development in their own communities, communities whose members are often forced to seek asylum in other countries, including his own. For more talks, visit poptech.org.

Primoz Kovacic is the co-founder and director of Spatial Collective, a Nairobi-based social enterprise that uses Geographic Information Systems for community development. Through data collection and visualization, Spatial Collective helps communities to identify available resources and apply this knowledge in development initiatives. 

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Ti Chang: Products for women, by women

When she became the first female industrial designer at Trek, Ti Chang realized that since her field had so few women, real women were underserved by the products companies create. This sparked her mission to design products for women, by women. Watch...after your kids are safely tucked into bed. For more information, visit poptech.org.

Ti Chang is the Co-Founder and VP of Design of CRAVE, a San Francisco-based company specializing in discreet and beautifully designed luxury sex toys. The DUET, Ti’s first design at CRAVE, debuted through a crowd-funding project, which ultimately secured over $100K from over 900 donors and become the world's first crowdfunded sex toy. Since then, Ti has continued to lead the concept and design for the company’s full line of products, including its celebrated foreplay jewelry. 

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Jessica Banks: Real furniture from unreal visions

Levitating tables and robotic chandeliers seem like the stuff of surrealist visions. In a way, they are. Jessica Banks, founder of RockPaperRobot, discusses how a ‘defect’ in her eyes helps her imagine and create improbable, innovative furniture. For more information, please visit poptech.org.

Jessica Banks is an inventor, roboticist, and entrepreneur. She is the founder of RockPaperRobot, a company specializing in responsive objects that expand the functional and aesthetic versatility of traditional decor. From levitating and transformable tables to robotic chandeliers, RPR aligns time-honored craftsmanship with progressive engineering. She is also a creative and technical consultant on major advertising campaigns, global initiative development for international corporations, and robotic designs for high visibility clients. 

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Marissa Vosper & Lauren Schwab: Positively Negative

Marissa Vosper + Lauren Schwab speak to the business of comfort and of disrupting the status quo. For more talks, visit poptech.org.

At Negative, Lauren Schwab oversees design, product development and production management. She works directly with the brand’s hand-selected factory partner in Medellin, Colombia. The daughter of a fourth generation childrenswear manufacturer, Lauren learned the ins and outs from her father, the former CEO of Little Me and Ralph Lauren Childrenswear.
 
Marissa Vosper was born and raised in Boulder, CO. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in Politics and Spanish, she moved to NYC, where she currently resides in Soho with her husband and fellow entrepreneur. 

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Fred Swaniker: Reimagining university

What will the university of the future look like? How will technology change the face of education? Fred Swaniker, Founder of African Leadership Academy, argues that in Africa, limitations such as money, time and available classrooms provide an opportunity to re-imagine education and to build the university of the future for Africa and beyond. For more information, visit poptech.org.

Ranked among the "top 10 young power men in Africa" by Forbes Magazine, and as one of the top 15 social entrepreneurs in the world by Echoing Green, Fred Swaniker is leading a quiet revolution in Africa. He is training Africa's future decision-makers, politicians, entrepreneurs, scientists and Nobel Prize winners. This serial entrepreneur has founded 5 organizations that aim collectively to groom 3 million high-impact leaders for Africa over the next 5 decades.

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Erika Hall: Asking "why?"

What is the world like now? What should it be like? Mule Design co-founder Erika Hall makes the case that the design process is simply determining the space between “is” and “should.” She argues that designers must also be philosophers, and that the question “why?” is their most vital tool. For more talks, visit poptech.org.

Erika Hall is the author of Just Enough Research. In 2001, she co-founded Mule Design Studio in San Francisco where she is the Director of Strategy. Erika speaks and writes frequently about cross-disciplinary collaboration and the importance of natural language in user interfaces. In her spare time, she battles empty corporate jargon at Unsuck It.

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Shah Selbe: Making conservation proactive

The Earth is in the midst of its sixth great extinction—and the first one caused by a single species: us. PopTech Fellow Shah Selbe discusses how “the internet of environmental things” enables conversationists to better monitor the heartbeat of the world’s ecosystems. For more information, visit poptech.org.

Shah Selbe is an engineer and conservation technologist focused on identifying and developing innovative technologies that can improve how we protect our marine reserves and delicate terrestrial ecosystems.

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Raj Jayadev: 1,862 fewer years in prison

How do you keep people out of prison? Empower their loved ones. PopTech Fellow Raj Jayadev discusses “participatory defense,” a new method of justice-seeking that tells the story of individuals in the court system through their families and communities—and turns “time served” into “time saved.” For more information, visit poptech.org.

Raj Jayadev is the founder and director of Silicon Valley De-Bug, a media community organizing and social entrepreneurial collective based in San Jose, California.
Through De-Bug, Raj started a family and community organizing model, the Albert Cobarrubias Justice Project – a methodology for families and communities to impact the outcome of criminal cases involving loved ones, changing the landscape of the power of the court system. 

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Joyce Kim: 6 million financial transactions for just 20 cents

Joyce Kim, PopTech Fellow and Executive Director of Stellar.org, explores how the global financial system is a highway littered with roadblocks and tolls. Joyce discusses how connecting siloed systems with an open source financial network can foster affordable access to the economy.

Joyce Kim is the Executive Director of Stellar, a technology that enables money to move directly between people, companies and financial institutions as easily as email. Stellar sees financial access as not the final destination, but rather a necessary precondition for people to fulfill their other basic human needs, such as education, food, healthcare and safety.

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Taylor Downs: Systems that just work

“Technology isn’t the answer, but it shouldn’t be the problem.” PopTech Fellow Taylor Downs speaks about his company OpenFn’s mission to make disparate technologies speak the same language, unifying sources of information to enable social impact organizations to act faster and smarter. For more information visit poptech.org.

Taylor Downs is the founder of Open[Fn], a non-profit, fully open-source data integration platform that connects the "technology for development" sector.
Open[Fn] strives to make technology tools work more efficiently and effectively in the social sector through a process that ensures easy access to the best technology tools – in a sense, serving as its “app store.”. Beyond accessing the right tools, Open[Fn] also allows users to connect various technologies with clicks, not code. 

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Susana De Anda: Toxic California water

One million Californians are exposed to unsafe drinking water every year. Immigrants and the poor are the most affected, even as they pay exorbitant rates. Susana De Anda is creating a new advocacy model that give voice to the voiceless on the issue of life's most fundamental substance.

Susana De Anda is the co-founder and co-director of the Community Water Center (CWC), which helps build strategic grassroots capacity to address water challenges in small, rural, low-income communities and communities of color. Since opening its doors in 2006, CWC has worked with local residents from 82 California communities to improve access to safe, clean, and affordable water. CWC has trained over 2,674 residents as clean water advocates, and provided technical assistance to over 15 local water boards struggling to manage efficient and accountable water systems.

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Ed Boyden: Seeing very small things

Neuroscientist Ed Boyden says that there is a moral imperative to demystify the brain in order to address diseases that affect over a billion people. To do so, however, scientists must map seemingly infinite, tiny connections. Boyden discusses how his lab is using the same technology used in diapers to make the brain’s mysteries visible.

Ed Boyden is Associate Professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT McGovern Institute. He leads the Synthetic Neurobiology Group, which develops tools for analyzing and engineering the circuits of the brain. These technologies, created often in interdisciplinary collaborations, include 'optogenetic' tools, which enable the activation and silencing of neural circuit elements with light, 3-D microfabricated neural interfaces that enable control and readout of neural activity, and robotic methods for automatically recording intracellular neural activity and performing single-cell analyses in the living brain.

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Jill Magid: Art of surveillance

Artist Jill Magid collaborated with Liverpool Police to create Evidence Locker, a work that explored the depths of the city's CCTV system. The Dutch Secret Service, however, confiscated the work they commissioned from her and declared her a national security threat. Watch to find out what happens when the all-seeing don't like what they see (even when they ask for it!).

American artist Jill Magid’s work is deeply ingrained in her lived experience, exploring and blurring the boundaries between art and life. Through her performance-based practice, Magid explores the emotional, philosophical and legal tensions between the individual and ‘protective’ institutions, such as intelligence agencies or the police. Her work tends to be characterized by the dynamics of seduction, the resulting narratives often taking the form of a love story.

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