Archive for February, 2008
Making movies that make change
Jeff Skoll made his fortune as the first president of eBay. Now he’s spending it at the movies. His company, Participant Productions, makes entertaining, issues-driven films that inspire real change — Murderball, Syriana, An Inconvenient Truth … Here, he talks about the people who’ve inspired him to do good, and about some upcoming films that [...]
Life at 30,000 feet
When Richard Branson was at school, his headmaster predicted he would wind up either a millionaire or in jail. Since then, he’s done both. He talks about the ups and the downs of his career, from his multibillionaire success to his multiple near-death experiences, from Virgin’s line of spacecraft to the failure of the Virgin [...]
Cars off the road, data into the skies
Robin Chase rose to fame by founding Zipcar, the world’s biggest car-sharing business, but that was one of her smaller ideas. In this presentation she travels much farther, contemplating road-pricing schemes that will shake up our driving habits and a no-fee mesh network as sprawling as the United States Interstate highway system. But how could [...]
Fighting injustice with a videocamera
Musician and activist Peter Gabriel starts his talk by sharing the painful, personal story behind his own investment in human rights causes. He relates some of the terrible stories he’s encountered throughout his extensive travels, and explains how these stories inspired him to create the human-rights watchdog group WITNESS, which distributes digital cameras to ordinary [...]
