During PopTech 2009, I shot an interview with The New York Times scent critic Chandler Burr about his PopTech 2009 “scent dinner,” where he collaborated with Executive Chef Lawrence Klang at Natalie’s Restaurant in Camden, Maine. For each course, Chef Klang created in taste and flavors what Chandler created in scents:

Chandler told me that he has fallen in love with culinary perfumes, a category of scents little known in the U.S., which are either conceptually food – for example, a perfume that smells of salt – or perfumes made with food raw materials – such as peruvian pink peppercorns or crushed sugarcane used in the rum-making process.

This led him to his scent dinners – a delicious and educational experience that actually consists of two parallel dinners – one olfactory, the other edible.

Kudos to Camden-based David Berez at Post Office Editorial for his smart editing, Scott Buffrey for audio sweetening, Daniel Stephens for his artful shooting, and Mo Kirkham for his patience, even when the audio stopped mid-interview.

Oh, and Chandler’s NYT column is “Scent Notes.”

Editor’s note: For more on the FLAP off-grid solar project, see the PopTech FLAP page.

One might think of living at the “base of the pyramid” as an unimaginably difficult situation confined to those in the developing world, but there are plenty of people living at the base right here in the United States in the 21st century—people like Pat Boone.

I met Pat Boone just outside of a ceremony his community was holding in order to heal his brother’s abdominal pains after traditional medicine failed to provide relief. Pat is a tiny man with laughing eyes that are partially blind, leaving him unaware that his white shirt was caked with the dust that his boots and the wind had stirred up.

“Grandpa” as we were told we could call him, invited us to interview him in his home – a small hogan with a dirt floor, a kerosene lamp, and an outdoor latrine, located twenty-five miles down a cracked and rutted dirt road.

Pat lives in the Cameron chapter on the Navajo reservation in northeastern Arizona, where he cares for his elderly sister and looks after his sheep and his goats. Many elders here, like Pat and his sister, are living in poverty.

There is an important distinction between those living at the base of the pyramid in the United States and those in the developing world: not far from where Pat Boone lives, there are people with running water, electricity and indoor plumbing, all fixtures which he would consider unthinkable luxuries.

Pat was one of many home visits my colleague Cordelia and I made this past Fall on a Navajo reservation to test the FLAP solar bag (we have also tested it in Haiti and Africa). With introductions from PopTech Social Innovation Fellows Emily Pilloton and Heather Fleming, Cordelia and I traveled the reservation landscape, seeing miles of land in all directions dotted with hogans belonging to Navajo elders who, like Pat Boone, cling to tradition while striving to make a living. Cordelia was here to see how the FLAP project might benefit this community, and I was here to document the fieldwork.

Rather than waiting for power to come to those without it, the FLAP project distributes power where and when people need it, although the bag sometimes requires explanation—our taxi driver Gater wanted to know immediately what it was:

Once explained, everyone finds their own uses for the bag. We met Clay Bigman on one of our home visits a few days before his 90th birthday, and this former WWII Navajo Code Talker (he transmitted messages by phone and radio in his native language, a code that the Japanese never broke) was hoping for a chocolate cake:

Leena’s son had just moved off the reservation to find work. She now lives alone, and more than anything she wants a security light. Our local guide, Dorothy Lee, felt that the FLAP bag would be useful to her in the meantime:

Kee Cody was sent to the Phoenix Indian School, a Federal boarding school originally founded in 1891 to assimilate Native American children through education. He graduated in 1955, and the school closed thirty-five years later, in 1990:

Huge shout out to the extremely talented and generous folks at lullatone.com for donating music to the project.

For more about the FLAP project on the reservation please see Cordelia’s blog post on Fast Company.

And if you know of communities in need of portable light and would like to help us get prototypes into their hands, please email Cordelia at [her name] at PopTech.org.

We announced a call for nominations for the 2010 class of PopTech Social Innovation Fellows this week, so I edited a video to accompany the email announcement.

Typically during the PopTech conference I’m running around with the camera crew, missing all the edifying and moving moments taking place on stage, so I was excited to finally watch the 2009 Fellows’ videos in their entirety while pulling this short piece together.

Editing always involves a dance between what’s being said, where the camera was focused when the great moments took place, and how each piece fits with every other piece.

The best part of choosing the shots that wound up in the final version was realizing how many great moments happened on stage! To see all the footage, check out the full fellows’ talks.

I hope this inspires you to nominate and help us find the next class of Social Innovation Fellows!

What are your favorite moments from the Fellows’ presentations? Let us know in the comments.

Editor’s note: Beth Cohen is PopTech’s Director of Media Production. She made the below video to give everyone a taste of winter in Camden, Maine, where PopTech holds its annual ideas summit and where one of the PopTech offices is located. Here’s how she describes the weather yesterday.

First snow day of the year. All the local schools were closed, and many businesses closed early.

First it snowed, then it got really windy, then it started pouring rain. Winter is finally here.