Inspired by Ideas

Earlier this month, I was fortunate enough to attend a truly inspiring event, The Entertainment Gathering (http://www.the-eg.com). What made the event so amazing was not only the incredible speakers and live performances, but also the fellow-attendees, each of whom were working on projects driven by their passion to make the world a better place. The EG is hosted by Michael Hawley of the MIT Media Laboratory and also an accomplished pianist and founded by Richard Saul Wurman who also founded the TED Conference in Monterrey (which I will be attending in a few months). There is a blog of the event (http://blog.the-eg.com/).

Some of the chance meetings bordered on the surreal. For example, a chance meeting and discussion with Max Palevsky who as introduced to computers by John von Neumann and later went on to help fund Intel and his wife, Jodie Evans who is also accomplished in her own right and co-foundered Code Pink a peace and social activist movement. Being invited to Danny and Pattie Hillis’ “ranch” home in Encino (they have a parrot, mules, and lamas). Pattie does a lot of work on environmental and sustainability issues while Danny is a legend in computers, entertainment technology (former CTO of Disney), and attacking hard engineering problems (http://www.longnow.org) for the sheer fun of it. The photographers Peter Menzel and Faith d’Aluisio were another inspiring husband-wife pair.

One of my personal favorite moments was bumping into jazz legend Herbie Hancock in the bathroom and nearly dropping to my hands and knees in a “we’re not worthy” moment.

What also made the event particularly meaningful were the live performances (including a finale piece by Leon Fleisher) and visuals (not to mention the Getty where the event was held). Being hit with ideas, raw emotion, multimedia, and the interactive networking. Reflections by Comedy legend Jonathan Winters was deeply moving. Events such as The EG, TED (http://www.ted.com), The Creative Leadership Summit (http://www.creativeleadershipsummit.org), and Gadgetoff (http://www.gadgetoff.com/home.html) bring the mystery, wonder, joy, and camaraderie in life. Hong Kong could really use an event like this.

While in LA, I also visited MARC (http://www.marc.ucla.edu/) and got to spend time with Dan Siegel (http://drdansiegel.com/) as well as attending the anniversary party at AGAPE (http://www.agapelive.com/) and meeting Michael Beckwith. A lot of good going on in LA.