Question: can a talk that begins "Ladies and Gentlemen: we're screwed!" leave one feeling hopeful?
Answer: when it's given by our own Alex Steffen, it can.
Alex was a presenter at last week's Poptech conference, a nifty confab started by WorldChanger Andrew Zolli which brings together smart people, new ideas, and incisive discussion. Alex's talk last Friday could be called "WorldChanging 101." It brought together, in one 25 minute package, the themes and motivations driving us here at WorldChanging, along with myriad examples of why we are certain that another world is, in fact, here.
People who were there at Poptech seemed to love the speech. Fortunately for those of us who weren't there, IT Conversations has made streaming and downloadable audio versions of Alex's speech available, in multiple formats (APX, MP3 streaming, AAC for iPods, and vanilla MP3). Download them all!
Updated: you can see a "Graphic Facilitation" image created during Alex's talk at this link. Graphic facilitation is a kind of note-taking-by-illustration popular with some consultancies. The photo of Alex on that page, by the way, is one of my favorites.
(yet more below...)
Long-time readers will likely find much of what Alex talks about familiar, but it's always good to see the pieces put together. New readers will find the speech to be full of surprises, and since just about everything he mentions is something we've detailed here on WorldChanging over the last year, if you want to learn more about an interesting tidbit, search for it!
As Alex works without a net -- that is, without a pre-written script -- we don't have a handy list of the posts he refers to ready quite yet. As soon as Alex recovers from his travel-induced bout of SARS or Avian Flu or head cold (probably the latter), we'll get that list up for easy annotated-speech fun.
