Pop!Tech 2009: America Reimagined

America stands at a complex crossroads, economically, technologically, socially and geopolitically. Major forces are reshaping the idea of America, its government’s contract with its citizens, its brand, and its role in the world. And there is not a single global challenge that can be addressed without it.

Zoe Keating performs a unique, soulful "Amazing Grace" | Photo by Kris Klug

The speakers and performers at Pop!Tech this year are examining the questions: Is reinvention possible? What would it look like? Here’s the beginning of this conversation >>

Peter Durand illustrates in real-time a presentation using sumi ink, pastels and acrylic paint.

Alphachimp Studio is on-site in Camden for the 6th year to capture each speaker's vision of an America re-imagined.

View more PopTech art on Flickr >

Yee-Haw Industries: One Monkey Don't Stop No Show

For inspiration and the best in frenetic prints, y'all got's to know Yee-Haw Industrial Letterpress!

For afternoon inspiration, check out any of the places their work resides:

http://www.yeehawindustries.com
http://yeehaw.etsy.com
http://www.yeehawindustries.blogspot.com

COME EARLY, STAY LATE! BRING YOUR COUSIN IF YOU CAN'T GET A DATE!
OPENING RECEPTION FOR YEE-HAW EXHIBITION
THIS TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6 from 7-9PM
CHELSEA MARKET
75 9th Avenue (Between 15th and 16th Streets), New York, NY

 

From OCTOBER 4-JANUARY 2, 2009, Yee-Haw's work will adorn the vast and cavernous Chelsea Market, located in the Meat Packing District in Manhattan's West Village. Chelsea Market is an enclosed, urban food court and shopping mall in New York City. It is housed within the former Nabisco factory complex where the Oreo cookie was invented and produced. The 22-building complex fills two entire blocks bound by 9th and 11th Avenues from 15th to 16th Street.
www.chelseamarket.com 

Personal Design Kaizen: 15 Tips for your continuous improvement

from Presentation Zen:

Kaizen (改善) means "improvement" — "kai" (改) means change/make better, and "zen" (善) means good — but as the term is used as a business process it more closely resembles in English “continuous improvement.”

Kaizen is one of the keys to the steady improvement and innovation found at successful companies in Japan such as Toyota. Says Matthew May, in his book The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation, “Kaizen is one of those magical concepts that is at once a philosophy, a principle, a practice, and a tool.”

Though Kaizen is a tool used by corporations to achieve greater innovation, productivity, and general excellence, it’s also an approach, an approach that we can learn from and apply to our own lives as we strive for continuous improvement on a more personal level. We can call this “Personal Kaizen.” Others have applied the personal kaizen approach to personal efficiency or GTD. You too can take the spirit of kaizen and apply it to your own unique personal kaizen approach to improve — step-by-step, little-by-little — your design mindfulness, knowledge, and skill. READ MORE >>

Chad Hagen's Nonsensical Infographics: BYO Data

Minneapolis-based designer Chad Hagen takes our love of infographics and turns our little heart inside out. For these are no aesthetically-plotted data sets full of statistics. In fact, we see no handy information at all, just the colors and shapes that typically make an infographic chart pleasant to examine in the first place.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Humans Closest Relative

"It is a world full of conflicts." notes Jon Stewart in his intro to this report. "Some are more important than others. And some are much, much less."

In the contentious field of science, there are many accepted truths. These two ape scientists duke it out over who is our closest ancestor. Fortunately, The Daily Show correspondent John Oliver is there to conduct an evidence-based debate: Chimps vs. Orangutans.

(A 'must-see' in that you must see the scientist with a mohawk who lacks any capacity for self-deprication or free-style rap skills.)

Comparing the Human and Chimpanzee Genomes

(via FlowingData)

As part of the Explore Evolution exhibit at the University of Nebraska State Museum, Judy Diamond displays a segment of the human genome in line with that of the chimpanzee that matches very closely. The point is to show how similar two are with the few differences represented by a drawing of a man, distinguished geneticist Svante Paabo.

See video of scintist Richard Dawkins explaining the exhibit.