judyrodgers's blog

If you haven’t yet picked up (or downloaded) Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus – and especially if you are struggling to see the beauty of this Web 3.0 era in media – you’ll want t

Sometimes everything works out perfectly. And that’s how it was at this year’s Images & Voices of Hope Summit. There were the full moon cresting the mountains on the opening night, the four days of warm sunshine, the 15 students, the moving memorial to Lindsay Gund ... and that's just for starters.

In the early days of TED, before it was the global phenomenon it is today, it was an opportunity for those excited by new technology to sit together in intimate settings with some of the most creative minds in the technology, entertainment and design industries (hence the name TED).

It was a place where those who were “in the know” were invited to hear these early heroes from Silicon Valley talk about their ideas and their hopes for what was unfolding as a new era of technology and culture. It was the brain child of the very interesting Saul Wurman.

 I love it when we start working on the Images & Voices of Hope World Summit. All of us who work on IVOH search the media landscape for the most interesting and worthy work being done in media today. This year's theme, Inspiring Media in an Open Source World, has led us into some interesting new places. We're reading the Nieman Report's current issue on What's Next for the News: the Digital Landscape.

One of the highlights of last years Images & Voices of Hope Summit was the stirring presentation by Mike Hughes, the brilliant and beloved CEO of the Martin Agency.  Right after the Summit, Mike found out that his lung cancer had returned.  He has spent the past six months fighting back with new rounds of treatments.  I ran into his son Jason yesterday who told me that Mike's recent diagnosis is that the tumers have shrunk again and that he is almost back to normal  Jason also told me that Mike has been inducted into advertisings "One Club Hall of Fame."  His people at the M

I am reflecting on the recent meeting convened by the Kalliopeia Foundation to bring together its various grantees:  native American grandmothers and elders, artists, film makers, actors, those experimenting with new science, community supported agriculture, and new ways of thinking about money.   Educational thinker, Parker Palmer, was there and economist Rianne Eisler.  Plus representatives of the late Thomas Berry, Rudolf Steiner, and many religions. Tables were piled high with DVD’s, books and brochures. 

I see that the Haiti earthquake is fading from the front pages and headlines, as of course it must do.  It reminds me of a presentation our friend Keith Woods (who is on his way to National Public Radio) made at an Images & Voices of Hope Summit one year.   His brother was a prison guard at a prison in the South of the US and was a victim in a prison take-over when prisoners overpowered prison guards imprisoning them and changing clothes with them.  When the outside world got wind of what had happened, police officers were afraid to shoot because they didn’t know who were the prisone

This year the world lost Thomas Berry, the cultural historian who, in his book Dreams of the Earth, first said, “the world needs a new story.”  I don’t think there are very many people in the world who would disagree with this – especially among the world’s media and arts community, which is constantly engaged in writing and disseminating the stories of the world.

Institutions commit to things, but at the end of the day it's often one determined person who makes it happen.  In a recent story in digital marketing magazine, Click Z, Zach Rodgers tells the backstory of the "Hopenhagen" campaign as the "Climate Change Ad Campaign That Almost Wasn't" [http://www.clickz.com/3635862].  We all have lived this kind of situation:  in the moment of excitement throngs of well intentioned institutions pledge their support.  This is what happened with "Hopenhagen":  a dozen agenc

I don’t think we can ever really understand a place until we move into its streets in the midst of its people and until we listen to what they talk about and what they remember.  Every place has experiences that have galvanized them as a people and moved things in a new direction.  Often the media plays a crucial role in framing these experiences in ways that crystallize a thousand thoughts and feelings into one clear understanding.