PopTech Blog

The age-old practice of gleaning has taken an urban twist in Toronto, where Not Far From the Tree, a local not-for-profit, harvests fruit from backyards across the city. The gleaners are volunteers, armed with cargo bikes, ladders, pruners, baskets and a sweet tooth, eager to divert a fraction of the estimated 1.5 million pounds of fruit that this “urban orchard” produces per year. They’re not collecting the unwanted leftovers; rather, they’re collaborating with the trees owners to ensure that their backyard abundance of fruit doesn’t go to waste. Last year, their best harvest yet, Not Far From the Tree’s pickers reaped 20,000 pounds of fruit: Apples, pears, plums, cherries and mulberries were just a few of the season’s edibles that didn’t return to the earth on their watch. One of the organization’s unique features is the way it divides up the spoils: one-third goes to the homeowners, one-third to the pickers and one-third to local food banks, shelters and community kitchens.

Like the best ideas, Not Far From the Tree’s model has been embraced in other cities, from Auckland, New Zealand to Argyll, Scotland to Atlanta, Georgia. And there are plenty of other like-minded organizations around the U.S. Backyard Harvest of Moscow, Idaho has registered more than 500 residential fruit trees, berry patches and grapevines in its area, and through various gleaning, gathering and growing programs has distributed more than 100,000 pounds of food to families in need. In addition, City Fruit of Seattle and Village Harvest of San Francisco, are focused on gleaning edibles from public spaces rather than residential lots.

Fallen Fruit, based in Los Angeles and more of a collective of artists than gleaners, pioneered a mapping project for public fruit. In black and white and boasting the slogan “learn your fruits,” these maps not only connect people to free food in public spaces but also to nature in the city. Another Fallen Fruit project is “Neighborhood Infusions,” in which spirits are infused with fruit picked from a certain street or area in an effort to capture its essence—literally and figuratively.

Whether the goal of these 21^st century urban gleaners is sustainable living, self-sufficiency in uncertain times, reconnecting with nature or something else entirely, it all sounds like delicious summertime fun, doesn’t it? 

Image: Fallen Fruit fruit map

At the PopTech Science and Public Leadership Fellows retreat at National Geographic headquarters earlier this month, the program’s faculty provided key insights to help equip the 2011 Fellows with enhanced leadership, collaboration and communication skills.

For a taste of their ideas, have a look at this wonderful graphic record produced by Peter Durand.

Jeff Nesbit, Dennis Dimick and Lisa Witter on storytelling

You’ll find:

• Storytelling tips from people like Lisa Witter of Fenton, Jad Abumrad of Radiolab, Joe Palca of NPR and Jeff Nesbit of Climate Nexus;
• A view into science policy-making through the eyes of Thomas A. Kalil of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy;
• Peter Lee of Microsoft Research on how idealism and diversity drive scientific discovery;
• The ten rules of collaboration from Philip E. Bourne of UCSD; and more.

Philip Bourne and Peter Lee on collaboration and science in industry

PopTech is very grateful to the faculty for generously donating their time to benefit the Fellows, and to our partners, Microsoft Research, National Geographic, the Rita Allen Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, for supporting this program.

Stay tuned for PopTech 2011, where you’ll have a chance to see the Fellows in action when they present from the PopTech stage.

Images: Peter Durand

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• In his latest project, 2010 PopTech speaker Colin Rich sought to capture the electric radiance of Los Angeles at night. If you ask us, he totally succeeded. 

• Collector of secrets, Frank Warren (PopTech 2008) has collaborated with Flavorpill to go mobile with PostSecret. The brand new PostSecret app will be released at an event at the Bell House in New York on August 29th.

• Health entrepreneur Jay Parkinson (PopTech 2008) responds to the recent news that Chris Hughes's Jumo and GOOD are joining forces, reflecting on how he feels he failed to meet his vision for Hello Health and what it takes to move on to explore new ventures. 

• OK Go (PopTech 2010) joins musicians Andrew Bird, Weezer, My Morning Jacket and others to contribute to "The Green Album," a new collection of Muppets covers. Listen to OK Go's version of the Muppet Show theme song and explore the rest of the album on NPR. 

• Sinan Aral (2010 Science Fellow) has published "The Diversity-Bandwidth Tradeoff." The findings from he and his co-author Marchall W. Van Alstyne serve as "...‘proof-of-concept’ for using email content data to analyze relationships among information flows, networks and social capital." Want more? Download the paper and let Sinan know what you think!

If you'd like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.

Image: Colin Rich

Most folks reading this blog would agree that science is scintillating. But to the general public, science is battling a bad reputation: geek speak for the elite that's boring and/or incomprehensible. Guru Magazine is a new, bi-monthly digital-only "science lifestyle magazine" seeking to change science's belabored, white-coated status by making it more accessible, prettier, even fun.

Founded in June of 2011 by friends Stuart Farrimond, Sarah Joy and Ben Veal, Guru wants to change the way people view science, encouraging them to see it not as dry and irrelevant, but rather as the very stuff that life is made of. Farrimind, a former medical doctor, was inspired to create the project after recognizing the popularity of his "Doctor Stu's Science Blog". The blog proved that there was an active interest in and need for science-related news; it just needed to be packaged differently.

“With Guru, we’re looking to bridge the gap between popular science writing and lifestyle magazine journalism," notes Farrimond. "A lot of people are turned off when they hear the word ‘science’ – but really, by its very nature, science is interesting to most people." Intended to be read on a mobile device, Guru is saving trees while planting the seeds of science knowledge. It also has the potential to appeal to a more youthful audience, who are increasingly abandoning paper for pixels. And the magazine is crowdsourced, meaning if you love science and can write well about it, you can be a contributor.

At PopTech, we think promoting science and supporting scientists is a great thing and applaud Guru's efforts to get the word out. Think you've got what it takes to be a Guru? Head to their site and drop them a line. 

Twitter: @gurumag

A new web app called Mapnificent can help lessen the pain of commuting by letting users visualize how far they can get by public transit, in a given city, in a certain period of time. Developed by a young German programmer, Stefan Wehrmeyer, it uses publicly available data to turn Google Maps into an even more powerful trip-planning tool. It won’t tell you how to get to A or B, but it will tell you whether that house you have your eye on means a 30-minute trip to the office or an hour-long one. Just pick a city, enter an address and slide the commuting-time rule. It also lets you plan a meet-up point. Say you’re meeting a friend from the west end of town and you’re in the east end. Mapnificent lets you determine the coffee shops or parks, for example, that are an easy 15-minute trip for you both.

The program is currently in beta and maps a few dozen major cities in Canada, the U.S., and abroad. Sure, it’s a handy data visualization tool. But Mapnificent is also a powerful example of what happens when data are made public. As The Economist points out:

The easier it is to get information about public transportation, the more people will use it. That's better for the environment, keeps cars off the streets, and encourages denser, more pedestrian-friendly development—and shorter commutes. Huzzah!

via The Economist

Foreign Policy's latest issue is focused on the theme, What will the world look like in 2025? In Anne-Marie Slaughter's (PopTech 2011) response, Problems Will Be Global -- and Solutions Will Be Too, she sees a world dominated by multilateralism and sub-U.N. state organizations. The countries that will fare best are those that will be able to do more with less.  Global statecraft and grand strategy will be a thing of the past as smaller non-state actors will take advantage of an unprecedented ability to self-organize around issues of importance. 

As the full consequences of genuinely global interconnectedness continue to make themselves felt, the world of both states and the societies they represent will have no choice but to adapt.

Ultimately, the potential for tremendous catastrophe will continue to grow until something monumentally terrible happens.  A global calamity might not be good news for individual humans but will most likely be beneficial for humanity.

Image: EIGHTFISH/Getty Images via Foreign Policy

We’ve just announced our second class of PopTech Science and Public Leadership Fellows, ten dynamic scientists who are spearheading research to change the world.

To learn more about this new crop of Fellows and their work, we posed one question to each of them: In one sentence, what impact do you hope to have through your work?

We’ll be highlighting one Fellow’s response per day for the next ten days. Stay tuned!

My work dramatically increases public participation in scientific progress through Internet-based simulation tools.

-- Adrien Treuille

Image: FoldIt

The ways we access information may be evolving, but books still have a powerful hold on us, as much for their ability to bring people together as for the knowledge they hold. The following projects offer a snapshot of the creative ways that libraries and citizens are adapting to our on-the-go culture and using books to enrich our communities.

Madrid-based Bibliometro, a spin-off of the city’s library system, makes books available to commuters through stands located in about a dozen metro stations throughout the city. Passengers can borrow and return titles as they travel about, from station to station. According to Paredes Pedrosa architects, which designed the sleek lending pavilions, the goal of Bibliometro is to “not only traffic culture across the subway of Madrid but also to make readable the journeys of millions of passengers a day.” The project was launched in 2005 and seems to have been inspired by a similar program that started in Santiago, Chile, 15 years ago.

Stockholm launched its first subway library in 2009, where travellers can also surf the Web and download audiobooks to mobile devices. One of them, at Högdalen station, even has a children’s room and a café.

Read more...

We’ve just announced our second class of PopTech Science and Public Leadership Fellows, ten dynamic scientists who are spearheading research to change the world.

To learn more about this new crop of Fellows and their work, we posed one question to each of them: In one sentence, what impact do you hope to have through your work?

We’ll be highlighting one Fellow’s response per day for the next ten days. Stay tuned!

I aim to accelerate the development of clean energy that will be viable on a large scale, by optimizing the design of technologies from solar cells to batteries.

-- Jessika Trancik

Image: NREL via Treehugger

There's always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week's highlights follows.

• Founder and CEO of Growing Power, Will Allen (PopTech 2009), has received the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award for his work as a farmer and community activist dedicated to supporting low-income and small family farmers who bring healthy, affordable food to urban areas. 

• Economist and MacArthur "genius award" winner Esther Duflo (PopTech 2009) is featured in Fast Company for using free lentils and flatware as incentives to encourage India's poor to immunize their children. 

• Check out the wonderful video from 2009 PopTech performer Zee Avi performing "The Book of Morris Johnson," the first single from her new album, "Ghostbird," which comes out August 23rd. 

• This week professor of history and family studies, Stephanie Coontz (PopTech 2009, 2012) contributed to The New York Times' Room for Debate: Is America Ready for More Old Men? Coontz responded, "Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves."

If you'd like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.

Image: Stephen Ausmus