PopTech : Blog : This Week in PopTech: Irrationality, Violence Interrupters and Smart Growth

This Week in PopTech: Irrationality, Violence Interrupters and Smart Growth

Emily Qualey ( Bio / Posts ) | Thursday, June 10, 2010 UTC

Happenings:

We caught up with PopTech Speaker Dan Ariely about his new book, The Upside of Irrationality. Dan’s 2009 talk may explain why paying banking CEOs huge money actually makes them more stupid. At PopTech 2009, Dan discussed an excerpt from his new book, The Upside of Irrationality, about the role of emotions in the workplace.

We went behind the scenes to learn about the work of Violence Interrupters in Chicago.

We were awed by Chris Jordan’s incredible new interactive website.

We were inspired by The Smart Growth Manual and reminded of how Assaf Biderman’s 2009 PopTech talk explained how distributed technologies can be used to create more sustainable ways of interacting in urban environments.

We discovered why Dan Ariely thinks failure “means a kind of success.”
FAILURE QUOTES

We found out that 2009 Fellow, Jason Aramburu has been named one of America’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs 2010 by BusinessWeek for his work with re:char, developing low-cost technologies that fight climate change while improving the quality of degraded soils.

Our network was well represented by PopTech Board Members Jason Rzepka and Andrew Rasiej at The #Promise (an initiative to advance how companies and consumers can work together to address pressing global challenges). We also heard a nice shout out to PopTech Social Innovation Fellow initiatives, Frontline SMS and Ushahidi for their post-quake efforts in Haiti.

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