Assaf Biderman: Sentient Cities

/

Assaf Biderman is a technology inventor, author, and entrepreneur. He is the Founder of Superpedestrian, a technology company that focuses on the future of personal urban mobility. He teamed up with a group of veteran roboticists to develop their first product: The Copenhagen Wheel - Senseable City Lab's award winning bicycle project. Superpedestrian has received multiple awards including the 2014 Red Dot: Luminary - the highest Red Dot distinction, the 2014 Deutscher Werkbund and Time Magazine's 25 Best Inventions of 2014.

FULL BIO | WEBSITE  

Eben Upton: Raspberry Pi

/
Eben Upton

Eben Upton founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, shows how he is hooking a new generation of kids on computer programming.

“I remember sitting down with my wife for dinner…and we had this sudden, appalling realization that we had promised 600,000 people that we would build them a $25 dollar computer.”

Steve Lansing: Bali’s water temples

/
Steve Lansing

Steve Lansing, a senior fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, discusses the Byzantine system for the distribution of water from a volcanic lake in Bali to over two hundred farming villages.

It’s worked since the 12th century, it’s egalitarian and it’s still-sustainable.

“It’s one of the few functioning, ancient democratic institutions that we know about. It’s kind of beautiful.”

How not to save the world according to Kevin Starr

/
Kevin Starr - PopTech 2010 - Camden, MaineKevin Starr, Mulago Foundation director, looks for the best solutions to the biggest problems in the poorest countries. He thinks all projects need to answer four questions: Is it needed? Does it work? Will it get to those who need it? Will they use it correctly when they get it? Too many bad ideas are using up our limited resources and that needs to change.
Read More

Will Allen : Growing Power in the Urban Food Desert

/

Edible Future: Will Allen

Will Allen is co-founder and director of Growing Power, Inc., an organization that is transforming the production and delivery of healthy foods to underserved, urban populations. Growing Power operates as an urban farm and education center in Milwaukee, WI, and more recently, Chicago, teaching urban youth how to produce low-cost healthy foods for their communities.

Read More

Michael Pollan : The Gospel of Sustainable Food

/

Edible Future: Michael Pollan

Author and activist Michael Pollan is a passionate advocate for sustainable food. In his compelling talk at PopTech, he explores how our industrial food system is keeping us overly dependent on fossil fuels, destroying our environment, and making us sick. Breaking this cycle requires fundamentally changing our relationship to food - and eating more meals together.

Read More

John Fetterman : The Invested Mayor

/

American Stories: John Fetterman

John Fetterman is the hulking, tattooed and impassioned mayor of Braddock, PA, a tiny town ten miles from downtown Pittsburgh. Braddock was built around the steel industry: vintage pictures show a thriving downtown area boasting 30 tailors, 5 banks, 51 barbers in their community. Over the last few decades, the town has imploded and now none a single one of those businesses remain.

Read More

Cary Fowler: A global backup of the world’s agricultural biodiversity

/

Agricultural impresario Cary Fowler is kind of a latter-day Superman: his mission is to protect life on Earth, and he even operates out of an arctic fortress. While Dr. Fowler can’t fly or leap tall buildings, his work has captured the world’s imagination, and he’s safeguarding mankind’s future with a practical solution: seeds.

Read More