Happenings:

• Earlier this week John Fetterman shared the latest news from Braddock, PA on the Colbert Report.

• Last week marked the opening of Studio H, the core educational initiative of Project H Design, a nonprofit design organization founded by 2009 PopTech Fellow Emily Pilloton to mobilize innovative product design for social good.

• Recent photos from Carolyn Porco Imaging Science Team on the Cassini mission to Saturn include stunning shots of Saturn’s moons, Epimetheus, Tethys and Dione.

• The microforestry organization KOMAZA has a beautiful video that shows how a half-acre tree farm can change a woman’s life in rural Kenya. KOMAZA founder and 2008 Social Innovation Fellow Tevis Howard partners with poor families to plant high-profit commercial tree farms that generate life-changing income and help preserve indigenous biodiversity.

• What we’re watching: The Majestic Plastic Bag – A Mockumentary by Heal the Bay, narrated by a straight-faced, fully emoting Jeremy Irons, tracks the tenacious migration of a plastic bag from a grocery store parking lot to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

• What we’re reading: The new “Money and Mission” blog from PopTech board member and Nonprofit Finance Fund CEO, Clara Miller.

• Failure quote of the week: “There is no failure for the man who realizes his power, who never knows when he is beaten; there is no failure for the determined endeavor; the unconquerable will. There is no failure for the man who gets up every time he falls, who rebounds like a rubber ball, who persists when everyone else gives up, who pushes on when everyone else turns back.” – Orison Swett Marden

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

Happenings:

• This week PopTech contributor Joshua J. Friedman interviewed Water For People’s Ned Breslin about why it’s important to shift from short-term to long-term thinking — and move from charity work to sustainable development.

• Designer and typographer Marian Bantjes has designed the wildest graphically enhanced sailboat we’ve ever seen. You might remember the special poster Marian created for the attendees of our 2008 conference, which was inspired by the theme, ”Scarcity and Abundance.”

• Our pals at Ushahidi announced a free “Ushahidi in the Cloud” for non-techies called Crowdmap.

• Do you “speak human” at work? Provocateur Daniel Pink makes a case for ditching ‘professionalese.’

• Will Allen started a food revolution by creating new urban farmers across the country. State of the Re:Union explores one of those farms in Milwaukee called Sweet Water Organics. Check out their incredible process which utilizes aquaponics and hydroponics, as well as their philosophy on taking another step to fighting the phenomena known as food deserts.

• Friend of PopTech and designer Joey Roth has a great new poster out — are you a Charlatan, Martyr or Hustler?

• Failure quote of the week: ""Hint: there is no category of: ‘does risky exploration, never fails.’" – Seth Godin

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

Happenings:

• As part of our Ecomaterials Innovation Lab, we’re exploring how competitions might spur the development of greener materials. PopTecher Colleen Kaman recently caught up with Erika Wagner, Executive Director of the X PRIZE Lab @ MIT, a partnership between the university and the X PRIZE Foundation, to talk about using contests to drive radical innovation.

• Our friends at Project M have a new project called 100 Hammers, a collaborative effort inspired by Maine artist David McLaughlin, a locally known craftsman and collector who passed away in early May of 2010. David spent his life inspiring others not just through his art but through his passion to see new life in otherwise unwanted materials. The M’ers gathered 100 second-hand hammers with the intention of keeping David’s dream alive by passing the hammers along to people who could give them a life they otherwise wouldn’t have had, creating a new and unique history for each hammer.

• Social Innovation faculty member John Balen, a General Partner at Canaan Partners and a board member at numerous early-stage firms (including Blurb and ID Analytics), tells us about pitching a VC.

• 2009 PopTech speaker Jonah Lehrer explores the The Neuroscience of Inception. (About this post – Jonah says the entire post is a spoiler. Stop reading if you have not seen Inception, because 1) It will reveal major plot points and 2) It will make no sense.)

• Worth a listen: Secrets of Success a romp of a conversation between Radio Lab co-host Robert Krulwich and PopTech speaker Malcolm Gladwell.

• Secretary Clinton gave a nice shout to Ushahidi and Apps4Africa at the African Leaders Forum in Washington, DC.

• Failure quote of the week: “If you’re a politician, admitting you’re wrong is a weakness, but if you’re an engineer, you essentially want to be wrong half the time. If you do experiments and you’re always right, then you aren’t getting enough information out of those experiments.” -Peter Norvig

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

Happenings:

• This week we released Kurt Andersen’s talk on renewing America, accompanied by an interview with Kurt in which he explores the concept of failure as it relates to the insect world: “For some people, it will take hitting bottom to behave like the ant instead of the grasshopper. Some people are just naturally virtuous ants, sure. But it’s a lot more fun to be a grasshopper and dance and play and sing until winter comes and you have no choice but to figure out a way to get inside.”

• We wrapped up our incredible Ecomaterials Innovation Lab. Take a peak into the work of the collaborative PopTech network and the future of new low-impact materials.

• The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has selected Lincoln Schatz’s 2008 commission for Esquire magazine, Portrait of the 21st Century, for inclusion in their collection.

• Just published: Memory Wall, a book by Anthony Doerr, award-winning writer who last year shared with us a story about how networked technologies can alienate us from nature and the things that matter most.

• Reuben Margolin, kinetic sculptor who created a custom wave that was installed for PopTech 2009 at the Camden Opera House last fall is currently building ‘Nebula,’ a multi-tiered, geometric structure made of more than 10 miles of aircraft cable, 1,780 pulleys and over 4,500 amber crystals. Measuring almost 100 feet long and 50 feet wide, it is the largest mechanism he has ever built.

• Speaking of Reuben, a man inspired by a caterpillar wave, did you know that a caterpillar’s innards move before it does? Way.

• What we’re reading: How Will the Smart Grid Handle Heat Waves?

• Peer-To-Peer Edition of The Yes Men Fix The World has been released for download. The Yes Men are masters at impersonating business leaders and smuggling stories to the public to expose big business wrong-doing. In 2006, the The Yes Men gave us a behind the scenes look at their unique method of activism.

• Failure quote of the week: “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” -Truman Capote

We’re Hiring!

Are you or someone you know passionate about science, technology, and social innovation? We’re looking for amazing, energetic people to join our growing team.

Available positions:

• Web Designer / Developer
• Evangelist / Blogger In Chief
• Media and Marketing Associate
• Director of Operations
• Executive Assistant

APPLY

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

Happenings:

• Earlier this week we released a talk by Braddock, Pennsylvania Mayor John Fetterman. In 2009 John shared his ambitious plans to revive Braddock (a town that has lost ninety percent of its buildings and most of its population) using measures that include repurposing abandoned lots and fostering numerous arts and community initiatives.

• To complement our video release, we caught up with John to find out the latest news from Braddock. Postive developments include the building of a brand new mixed use facility, a grant from Department of Labor for a jobs training program and a partnership with the iconic denim company Levis.

• Interactive media artist and 2009 PopTech speaker, Zach Lieberman has been named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business of 2010. Zach’s recent projects include an open-source eye-tracking system that allows disabled artists to draw using their eyes, and a performance that includes drawn sketches that react to a visitor’s touch.

• What we’re reading: How Do You Teach Social Good? by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith from GOOD.

• We were excited to find out that the video hosting site Vimeo has added Creative Commons licensing options to the site. We release our talks under an Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license so this announcement is music to our ears.

• We discovered that Maine-based Partners for World Health recovers useful medical supplies that U.S. hospitals must discard due to government regulations, and distributes them to organizations and people around the world who have great need.

• Failure quote of the week: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” -Winston Churchill

We’re Hiring!

Are you or someone you know passionate about science, technology, and social innovation? We’re looking for amazing, energetic people to join our growing team.

Available positions:

• Web Designer / Developer
• Evangelist / Blogger In Chief
• PR / Communications Consultant
• Media and Marketing Associate
• Director of Operations
• Executive Assistant

APPLY

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

Happenings:

• This week we were excited to release a talk by Jay Rogers on revolutionizing the automobile industry. In 2009 he talked to the PopTech audience about how he believes that making car production local – and personal – holds the key to fostering a sustainable car culture that also tackles our dependence on oil.

• In addition to the video release, we caught up with Jay to find out more about designing cars geographically, but also psycho-geographically. He explained how this design local philosophy has sparked unexpected breakthroughs.

• In PopTech speaker news, we’re excited to find out that 2009 Speaker Aydogan Ozcan’s cellphone microscope built to detect infectious diseases is currently in field trials.

• The sex ed entrepreneur who trades bananas for broadband is none other than 2009 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow Deb Levine.

• PopTech intern Raquel Brown caught up with 2009 Social Innovation Fellow Eben Bayer about Ecovative Design’s recent partnership with Steelcase.

• This week 2008 speaker Clay Shirky explains in an interview about his new book why he believes that “No medium has ever survived the indifference of 25-year-olds.”

• Elle Magazine is auctioning off a variety of chic, sustainable bags that can not only charge your phone, but also benefit the Portable Light Project, an initiative of the PopTech Accelerator.

• Failure quote of the week: “So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might have never found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I believed I truly belonged.” – J.K Rowling

Get Involved!

• Are you or someone you know passionate about science, technology, and social innovation? We’re looking for amazing, energetic people to join our growing team.
  APPLY

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

Happenings:

• For your viewing pleasure, we released videos from our Science Salon in DC. So sit back, relax, and immerse yourself in science, living systems and the edge of change.

• We got the scoop that at PopTech 2010, OK Go will probably look and sound like friendly robots on a goodwill mission demonstrating ways in which they are helpful and make for good friends.

• We also learned from OK Go that, “oftentimes the accidents, the failures, and pushing an idea so far that it breaks into something you had never thought about that ends up being the inspiration you weren’t even looking for that drives your idea home.” FAILURE QUOTES

• We caught up with The Future of News and learned how new initiatives are helping news organizations adopt new technologies.

• We were inspired by Ira’s Glass’s thoughts on Being Wrong. FAILURE QUOTES

• We spent the best $8 of 2010 on Zoe Keating’s newly released album, Into The Trees.

• We’re pleased to share Meet Your Farmer, a series of short videos about farming in Maine that offers peak into one of the many reasons that we’re proud to host our annual conference in Camden.

Get Involved!

• The PopTech crew is looking forward to the long weekend. We’ll be catching up on magazines (some of our staff favorites are the New Yorker, New York, Economist, Vanity Fair), some of us will be indulging in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Steig Larsson, Anthony Doerr’s new collection of short stories called Memory Wall, and Graham Greene’s End of the Affair. What will you be reading this weekend? Let us know in the comments.

• Are you or someone you know passionate about science, technology, and social innovation? We’re looking for amazing, energetic people to join our growing team.
  APPLY

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

Happenings:

• Want to know more about connectomes or programmable bacteria? See what happened when we brought together four speakers, a performer, and a lively and engaged audience for a salon on Science, Living Systems, and the Edge of Change in Washington, DC.
  READ: Eco IQ’s, Violas, Mammoths, and Genes that “Seek and Destroy”
  LOOK: Images on Flickr

• This week we also released Massoud Amin’s 2009 PopTech talk on the critical need for a “Smart” Energy Grid. Massoud believes this will provide national as well as environmental and financial security.
  WATCH: Massoud Amin: A Smart Grid

• We explored a bunker in the Arctic that stores the seed for human survival. Agricultural impresario Cary Fowler gave the PopTech audience a sneak peak of the seed vault as it was being constructed.
  WATCH: Cary Fowler: Conserving Bio-Diversity

• We congratulated 2009 PopTech Fellows, Josh Nesbit and Jason Aramburu for acceptance into the Echoing Green Fellowship program.
  WATCH: Josh Nesbit: Mobile Healthcare and Jason Aramburu: New Energy

• We’re still collecting quotes on failure. We got some great ones this week, so keep ’em coming. “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” – Henry Ford
  FAILURE QUOTES

Get Involved!

• Did you attend the Science, Living Systems, and the Edge of Change salon in Washington, DC? Did you take pictures? If you did, be sure to add us add as us a contact on Flickr and add your pictures to the PopTech flickr pool.
  ADD YOUR PICS

• We’ve been thinking a lot about our conference theme, “Brilliant Accidents, Necessary Failures, and Improbable Breakthroughs” and how lots of wonderful things come about when you’re not looking for them. Let us know if you come across any great quotes or examples of the role accidents, failures and serendipity play in success.
  TALK TO US

• Are you or someone you know passionate about science, technology, and social innovation? We’re looking for amazing, energetic people to join our growing team.
  APPLY

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

Happenings:

• We are over the moon to announce OK Go as our first performers for PopTech 2010. OK Go just released their latest music video — we know this one’s going viral.
  WATCH: End Love

• We released videos from the Chicago Salon that present ideas about how networked mapping and the innovative application of multiple technologies can more deeply reveal the dynamics of problems as well as drive social change.
  READ AND WATCH: Visualizing Data to Drive Social Change

• We were moved by Ocean Voices’ ethereal auditory collages.
  LISTEN: Ocean Voices

• We loved this quote by Joel Garreau: “Innovative cultures have in them fables of ‘honorable failure.’ — knowing losing as winning.”
  FAILURE QUOTES

• We were proud to learn that Steelcase has adopted 2009 Fellow, Eben Bayer’s biobased, ultragreen packaging.
  WATCH: Bio-packaging

• We read about why Tom Friedman thinks that we are both the enemy and the solution to the oil disaster.
  READ: This Time is Different

Get Involved!

• Do you live in the DC area? There are a few tickets left for our PopTech Salon in Washington, DC, which will feature three scientists at the cutting edge of potentially world-changing discoveries. The event is free but space is limited.
  SIGN UP

• We’ve been thinking a lot about our conference theme, “Brilliant Accidents, Necessary Failures, and Improbable Breakthroughs” and how lots of wonderful things come about when you’re not looking for them. Let us know if you come across any great quotes or examples of the role accidents, failures and serendipity play in success.
  TALK TO US

• Are you or someone you know passionate about science, technology, and social innovation? We’re looking for amazing, energetic people to join our growing team.
  APPLY

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

Photo credit: Edwin Roses

We are incredibly excited to announce that OK Go is performing at the PopTech 2010 Conference in October!

If you haven’t yet seen the band’s incredibly innovative videos — from their Grammy Award-winning “Here It Goes Again” to the amazing Rube Goldberg machine built for “This Too Shall Pass” — check them out. We can’t even imagine what these guys will cook up for the PopTech Conference. You won’t want to miss it.

Check out their new, just-released video, “End Love.”

Register today for PopTech 2010.