Gevo Website Is Live
Tue, October 9, 2007 | Events + Conferences
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Frances Arnold, our last speaker, just announced that Gevo's website has gone live... http://www.gevo.com. For those who were interested in learning more about her new company which counts Richard Branson and Vinod Khosla as investors, check it out.
I'm also pleased to announce that Frances has joined The Hollywood Hill's Science & Technology Advisory Board.
I’ll See You At The Catalyst Center!
Tue, October 9, 2007 | The Catalyst Center
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I'm incredibly excited about our progress on the creation of The Catalyst Center. For those who don't know what it is, it's going to be our hi-tech permanent event facility and our global operations hub for the hundreds of projects we'll be taking on annually. One of the hardest things we grappled with as we've gotten through our first 24 months is the logistical headache of doing events. Because we constantly have to do them at different homes and offices around town, we're always having to spend a lot of time coordinating the set up, breakdown, food and beverage stocking, and transportation of all of our A/V equipment to new event locations that are never ideal for doing high-end multimedia presentations. They're also not cheap. Rentals cost a lot, as does valet. We've minimized these expenses by purchasing our own A/V equipment with member donations (Thank you Jonathan Segal & Betty Thomas!). Lawrence Bender further assisted by not only giving us use of his house once a month until we could get our own permanent event facility, but also picking up the valet costs (the approximately $20K to date) for every event we've done there (we're about to do event #10) - for this we owe him a HUGE gratitude.
Having our own permanent facility is going to completely reshape our capabilities. No longer will we have to spend time setting up or breaking down. 100% of our staff's time will be focused on crafting the content of the actual presentations. Every member will receive custom briefings before each event with videos filmed by the staff introducing them to the topic so that members come to events at an intermediate knowledge level (nothing is stupider than having experts fly in from half away around the world to do "Intro" presentations for Hollywood professionals). We'll have multimedia presentation systems, high-end projection and sound equipment, and seating for 300 vs the 90-person capacity of Lawrence Bender's living room. We'll have a web rsvp system similar to the Arclight Cinema where you'll select your seat location for the next event in advance along with a customized gourmet meal. You'll come through the front entrance, sign-in with either fingerprint or retinal scan and your name tag will automatically print out of a sticker machine. You'll have a drink with fellow industry members in the georgeous bar lounge, and then transition into the main event room. Every seat will be wired with keyboards to enable members to submit their speaker questions throughout the event into a consolidated que. And we'll be doing high-end filming of events for distribution to those who can't make it that night. It will be a seamless experience.
It will also house an Intelligence Gathering Lab where we'll be keeping tabs on the world's innovations, tracking the marketplace, and measuring the progress of our projects, as well as a small green screen room for film production. It will be a brick-and-mortar home for exciting conversations on world affairs, innovations, and social change... an intellectual hub for our community... a Centcom for our social projects... and undoubtedly a "cool" experience.
Here's a promo packet on The Catalyst Center
Related Resources - Part I
Mon, October 8, 2007 | Social Activist 3.0
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Members are always asking me for a list of videos, websites, articles, etc. that give a good glimpse of the future we're entering, the future we're going to attempt to shape. So I'm going to start listing them in chunks. Every member of The Hollywood Hill should watch these! Part I...
Cool Videos
1. Did You Know? (we use this one in our New Member Orientations)
2. Virgin Galactic Intro with Richard Branson (click on "view the movie")
3. Charlie Rose Interviews Muhammad Yunus
Some great TED.com videos to start with...
4. Craig Venter on DNA, Genes & The Sea
5. Nicholas Negroponte on The Vision behind One Laptop Per Child Project
6. Sir Ken Robinson postulates whether Schools Kill Creativity
7. Neil Gershenfeld on The Promise of Personal Fabrication in Fab Labs
8. Hans Rosling gives New Insights on Poverty and Life Around The World
9. Jefferson Han unveiling Multi-touch screens
Welcome!
Mon, October 8, 2007 | Musings
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Welcome to The Naked Hill - where we'll be pulling back the curtain on The Hollywood Hill and the other 3 organizations in our social change machine. We're in a time of tremendous change, both in Hollywood and throughout the world. And we've set out to create one of the most sophisticated nonprofit organizations on the planet.
Early on, when we started our monthly events, Ted Halstead, the founder of the New America Foundation, came to town as one of our first speakers, and mentioned over lunch that it took him a good five years to get his thinktank fully up-and-running. Now entering its eighth year, the New America Foundation is one of the largest and most important think tanks in DC. I've always viewed his five year mark as a target for us, and now that we're entering our third year of events and our fourth since we started writing the business plan, the organization is finally reaching critical mass and getting large enough to affect real change.
There are lots of people to thank for our significant growth over the past several years, and I'm going to do so periodically in postings. Buckle your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.
