The World’s Premier Conference for Young People
Changing the World brought together the world’s greatest visionaries to inspire young people to innovate and better our world. The topics covered included: technology, science, design, entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and the arts. Among this year’s speakers were:
1 Nobel Peace Prize winner (for stopping nuclear war)
1 Star designer
1 Architect designing Asia’s tallest building
12 Entrepreneurs
1 Giller prize winning author
2 Internet millionaires
1 Engineer who creates $100 laptops for developping nations
1 Girl who was curing Alzheimer’s at age 15
1 Girl who gave British young people the power to vote
1 Scientist who stops human aging
1 Guy who created Mac OS X
9 Technologists
1 Futurist creating blob computers
… and more.
The Format
Each speaker was given 18 minutes to deliver their epic talk. Every attendee had the same experience. One day of rapid fire inspiration.
Innovation for All
As a non-profit organization, we want to provide a world-class conference to all students regardless of their age, financial background, and past leadership experiences. We believe that every student should be given the opportunity to be inspired and to learn from some of the world’s most fascinating people.
Well we did it - the Changing the World conference was a huge success! With over 1300 attendees and 15 amazing speakers we have established ourselves as THE conference for emerging youth leaders in art, science and business. A special thank you goes out to all who helped. Keep an eye out for myself (Connor Dickie), Justin Lee, Sylvia Cheng and Doug Wightman, because we are doing it again next year and it’s going to be even bigger and better!
I collaborated with Jacky Lee while in Taiwan on this interactive TV project as part of our ongoing research into interactive and emotionally-reactive television. It was installed at the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the 2007 Animamix Biennial.
The “Community Vending Machine” or simply “Pepsi Machine” was a project that I completed while at the MIT Media Laboratory that was shown at Wired NextFest 2006 in NYC. I don’t have time to go into details now, but just know that it’s an interactive media purveying platform that uses multiple (14) individual spanning screens, computers, microphones and computer-vision to allow people to interact both explicitly and implicitly.
Most interesting for me is the fact that the machine passively generates knowledge about the specific audience that visits it and can then use this data to inform the content creators or even as a commodity to sell to 3rd parties. To this end the Pepsi Machine has expanded possibilities for generating value… I’ll elaborate more later.small, medium or large video demos available.
This technology is currently jointly PATENT PENDING with myself, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and PepsiCo.
If You don’t see me online or wonder why it’s taking me 12 extra hours to reply to your emails it is because I am in Taiwan giving a series of talks and demos.
Yesterday I spoke at Gamania about the Pepsi Machine, kameraflage and demoed my Motion-Sensing Dog collar concept (Which they totally loved).
Today I was supposed to give a similar talk at ITRI, but there is a category 5 typhoon on the way and it is dangerous to travel… Plus I have serious jet-lag, and need to save my energy for Nightmarket; a 3-day hack-a-thon.
As I am resident technologist/artist/hackist for Nightmarket, I will be helping the participants implement their ideas in addition to building my own installation from scratch with Jacky Lee to be unveiled/installed at the National Taiwan Museume of Fine Art
I’ll be back in Cambridge, MA. the first week of September with serious jetlag and a hankering for a cheeseburger.
A few weeks ago Natasha took me out for lunch on Newbury St. (Boston’s poshest area). As we were walking down the street a lady approached us and stated that we were the hottest couple on the street (um… ok) and that she and her partner were doing a documentary on the iPhone. She wanted to know if I wanted to say a few things on camera about it. I hesitated but Natasha urged me to do it, so I did.
A few weeks later I get a call from some producer at Moxie Pictures which is an agency that makes the commercials for Apple on behalf of Apple’s ad agency TBWA \ Chiat \ Day. The lady congratulated me and said that I landed the role as the next guy to be in Apple’s iPhone ad campaign! My reaction was like the caveman from the Geico commercial “YEAH, uh… what?” They said that they would fly me to NYC for a 2-day shoot next weekend. I even had to sign and FAX an NDA.
Apparently the documentary was just a cover, and that those people were simply casting for the agency.
Anyways, to make a long story short I am not able to do the campaign because I am not legally allowed to work in the USA.
