Amazing People, Inspiring Work

It has been a while since my last entry. I spent three weeks traveling in the United States including Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York, Montreal, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. I visited many friends and family (met my nephew for the first time) and also visited some MERECL clients. The main draw for the trip was to attend the Creative Leadership Summit (http://www.creativeleadershipsummit.org). The event brought together neuroscientists and other academics, NGOs, leading business and media figures, and government officials working to make a difference in the world in a round-table style setting. The sessions were recorded and available online in addition to being streamed live.

For me, it was a really amazing event as I got to meet a lot of people that I find really inspiring. I also made a lot of new friends and discussed several new projects opportunities. I find it incredible that creative and intelligent people all around are coming to the same conclusions and working towards similar goals. I find it really validating and empowering. Throughout my trip, it seemed that everyone was working on or towards something related to consciousness, the environment, education, or poverty. I hope that they continue to run the event next year (and invite me again!). I wrote a paper for the event which can be downloaded at http://www.merecl.com/~gino/Docsntalks/CreativeLeadership.pdf.

In Washington DC, I visited with my friend Chuck Hillig (http://www.chuckhillig.com/). He has a house near a lake and a boat which we cruised around in. We had a great time hanging out. Chuck’s friend, Tom Kubat was also there. Tom’s company (http://www.sunyatastudios.com) produces spiritually oriented media.
In Philadelphia, I visited with Michael Highland (who came to Hong Kong for 6 months earlier in the year) and was able to meet Andrew Newberg (http://www.andrewnewberg.com/) who is also working on the science of spiritual experience. I also visited briefly with cultural psychologist Paul Rozin (http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~rozin/) and Martin Seligman’s Center of Positive Psychology (http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/).

Montreal was a quick client visit (http://www.a2m.com). I also saw a friend (had an amazing Italian dinner), and went to the party for ADAPT (http://www.adaptmontreal.com/).

I spent some time visiting friends in San Francisco and was able to hang out in Berkeley for a bit. I popped down to San Diego for a day to see my sister and a good friend, Bill Lin. The following day, my sister, brother-in-law, and I drove up to Los Angeles to see my mother and brother for lunch before flying back to the Bay Area. I got to see Frank Echenhofer (http://www.ciis.edu/faculty/echenhofer.html) for dinner (we roomed together in Budapest), visited Maurizio and Alex Black who I’ve known since he was six (http://www.turingstudio.com/).

Overall, it was a really refreshing trip. Tomorrow, I head for a week in Japan.