TEDxJerseyCity 2015 Conference 'Metamorphosis'
Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre
54 Journal Sq
NJ
40.73208408553133
-74.06419694423676
Description
November 14th, 2015 12-6pm. Reception 6-8pmAn action packed day of inspiration that happens just once a year. TEDxJerseyCity is returning with our 3rd annual conference. "This years speaker line up includes award winning author and world renowned physicist Leonard Mlodinow, CNN Hero and Blinknow founder Maggie Doyne, avant garde Cooking Channel host and explorer Justin Fornal, author of "I am Dandy" Nathaniel Adams and many more incredible speakers. During intermission refuel with a gourmet selection of food and beverages available for purchase. Check out the Smart Tech engagement for demos of the newest in technology and apps, play brain games, invent dances, put yourself through JCF Bootcamp or any other number of things we've got waiting for you. As the curtains close at 6pm the lobby reception begins. Sip cocktails and enjoy hors d'oeuvres. Take in music, games and mingle with fellow guests, speakers and performers. After party tofollow at 8pmMiss Wong's/Talde8 Erie Street Who, you ask, will we see at Metamorphosis? We will be adding one speaker name per day, keep checking back. ^"The Crazy History of Quantum Mechanics." - Leonard MlodinowEveryone knows quantum mechanics is crazy and mysterious. What they don't know is that the history of it's discovery is just as odd as the theory. Physicists spent decades chasing strange clues about the atomic world before finally deciding they had to completely alter the way think about the universe. This unfamiliar road often led to self-doubt, and turmoil and disputes among some of the worlds most brilliant thinkers. This journey into the unfamiliar ultimately echoes the path we all take as we navigate the many opportunities and decisions that make up the story of our own lives. Leonard Mlodinow is an award winning author and physicist holding a PhD in theoretical physics from UC/Berkeley. Mlodinow is the author of 9 books, five of them bestsellers: The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules out Lives, Subliminal: How our Unconscious Mind Rules our Behavior, The Grand Design and A Briefer History of Time both co-authored by Stephan Hawking, and War of the Worldviews written with Deepak Chopra. He also wrote for numerous television series, including Star Trek: The Next Generation and MacGyver.Using Love and Community to Build a Sustainable Model for Orphan Care - Maggie Doyne On a journey to discover herself and the world a decade ago, 18 year old Maggie Doyne landed in war-torn Nepal. Shocked at what lay before her, and dismayed by our human family, a determined Maggie then used her life savings to build a safe, clean, stable home for the region's many orphans. Today, Kopila Valley provides a loving, joyful home for over 50 children who call her "mom" and a top rated school for many of the region's most needful children. Through this journey Maggie has discovered a means to provide a new and transformative idea of what orphan care could and should be through the power of community, connection and love. Maggie created the BlinkNow Foundation to sustain, grow and support Kopila Valley Children’s Home and School in Nepal, and to serve as a vehicle to share her ideas with young people, especially those in the U.S. Maggie believes that in the blink of an eye, we can all make a difference. At age 19, Maggie used her life savings to build a home for orphaned children in war-ravaged Nepal. Today, she is mom to over 50 children. In 2010, she opened a school for the region’s most impoverished children. The school now serves 350 students and is rated top in the region. In 2013 a Women's Center was added to provide vocational skills and opportunities to community members.Investing for a Better World: Utilizing Wall Street to Implement Social Change. - Jenny Coombs Why occupy when you can unify? Steering society with the help of the stock market is not a new concept, but in an age where money dominates the world, it is important to see investing as an instrument for change. There are two powerful ways to accomplish this…and neither way requires having a personal banker or a finance degree.Jennifer N. Coombs is a stock analyst by day, and an artist by night with a passion for guiding individuals on making wise investment decisions. After nearly a decade of experience in the financial world, Jennifer is currently an economic contributor for The Street and Seeking Alpha, and recently founded her own firm, GradMoney, which develops education programs for investing strategies specifically for young adults and novice investors.Freedom of Fashion: Dress Codes and Sartorial Liberty - Nathaniel AdamsDressing is a function as basic as eating or drinking and, in the right conditions, putting together an outfit can be as pleasurable and rewarding as cooking a good meal or mixing a good drink. But dressing is also a form of personal expression, and in our country protected as free speech under the first amendment in most circumstances. We value our right to dress as we please and bristle at dress codes that tell us what we can and can’t wear. Yet in our increasingly globalized and multicultural world people’s sartorial choices and traditions come into conflict, and clothes become as potent a source of contention as words. From freeing the nipple to banning the burqa, the arguments over values, identity, equality, and liberty can revolve around clothes in a profound way. Can (and should) there be true sartorial liberty? What might that look like? Are dress codes ever necessary or desirable, and to what extent do they infringe on our right to express ourselves? And just what is the sartorial equivalent to shouting “fire” in a crowded theater?Nathaniel Adams is a writer and menswear designer living in downtown Jersey City. He is the co-author, with photographer Rose Callahan, of I am Dandy: The Return of the Elegant Gentleman, and the co-founder, with Dr. Lee-Jon Ball, of the Secret Empire custom suiting firm. An expert on the topic of dandyism, Nathaniel has spoken at New York University, the Fashion Institute of Technology, Pratt Institute, the National Arts Club, and Disneyland. His has written for The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Men’s Journal, The Rake, and The Chap, and is currently writing a biography of 19th-Century champagne magnate CharlesHeidsieck as well as a second volume of I am Dandy."The Container Globe - a Punk Reimagining of Shakespeare's Classic Theatre." - Angus VailIn the Globe theatre in 1599, Shakespeare's new plays were performed big, bold, up close and personal, and the boisterous audience were all part of the action. The Container Globe is a modular, mobile reimagined version of the original Globe, built from shipping containers.Angus Vail is a rock music business manager, who developed an annoyingly expensive Shakespeare addiction in his 20's, and from a desire to make the arts cheap and available for anyone, built the "ArtBloc" performance and art space from repurposed shipping containers. Truth Telling in Relationships, are we There Yet? - Willie EarleyMost people would say that a key component for any successful relationship is honesty. Yet in reality, while in romantic relationships, we often lie to ourselves, lie to each other and often have a fear of disclosing our true selves. Is authenticity real or imagined?Willie Earley is a physician with over 25 years of clinical and research experience in psychiatry. He is originally from Chicago, but now resides in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.Down the Rabbit Hole: Valuing the physical quest in an increasingly virtual world. – Justin FornalAs new technology presents us with more and more virtual ways to experience the world, there are seemingly less reasons to get one’s hands dirty. With all that one could desire being just a finger swipe away, we are missing out on the challenges of the journey that gives the destination its value. In the quest for one’s personal Holy Grail, the quest often turns out to be greater than the Grail itself. Where has that quest gone? From infiltrating a Sierra Leonean diamond mine to find a conflict free diamond for his girlfriend, to obsessively combing the Bronx to speak with the last maker of an ancient tribal drink, Justin Fornal discusses how opportunities to explore the world are all around us and can be experienced everyday. Anthony Bourdain has described Justin Fornal as “a showman, iconoclast, explorer and gourmet.”, while John Waters described his style as “postmodern Little Richard.” Since traveling to Vietnam as a young man to seek out and document the world’s rarest condiment, ca coung (the thoracic exudate of the giant water bug), Fornal has been on an impassioned explorer’s journey to uncover, experience, and share the world’s vanishing cultural traditions. Whether being buried alive in a Haitian Vodou ritual, attending an arms market qat chew in Yemen, or transcribing the contents of sacred jini oil in Zanzibar Fornal lives his research 24/7. 5 years ago he created the Annual Bronx Small Game Dinner which introduces guests to indigenous protein sources such as porcupine, skunk, coyote, and beaver. He is currently working on God Juice, a series of sculptures depicting deities from global mythologies assembled from intoxicating ethnobotanical plants of the world. The sculptures are submerged in vodka so that viewers may drink their favorite god.Makerhoods; Creating Economic Opportunity through Affordable Work/Live Communities. - Avi TelyasThe war on poverty has been lost, at least in its mission to increase self-sufficiency, primarily because the built environment was not designed for self-employment. From the earliest mill towns to today’s metropolis, cities are designed for wage employment with distinct employment and residential zones. Makerhoods.org was founded to reduce this barrier by constructing urban work/live and mixed use developments specifically designed for low to moderate income entrepreneurs. Coupled with a business development support system, a Makerhood community is structured to offer meaningful self-employment for an urban population with few alternate opportunities for work.Avi Telyas is an American real estate developer, serial entrepreneur and pioneer in lean manufacturing and large scale modular construction. His passion for architecture and craft entrepreneurship has led him to found the organization called Makerhoods, an organization which advocates for urban land use policies that foster self-employment and self-sufficiency through affordable working and living space for low income urban entrepreneurs. Mr. Telyas is a 1986 graduate of the Harvard Business School and a former trustee of Pratt Institute.'Breaking to Build: Dismantling Black Archetypes through Collage as Performance Art' - Quanda JohnsonMetamorphosis is change; as a performance artist and scholar, I'm looking for innovative ways to disrupt, fragment, and/or dismantle entrenched ideas/archetypes about Blackness. Collage, usually relegated to the world of visual art, is a device that can be utilized in performance as a "change agent," or catalyst to initiate fresh ways of thinking about race and, consequently, moving our culture beyond tolerance to actually seeing the other as ourselves.Quanda Johnson is a Fulbright Scholar and a Dean's Graduate Scholar at New York University's Gallatin School for Individualized Study. A performer from Broadway to grand opera, she seeks ways to utilize performance to disrupt and consequently alter entrenched, cyclical conversations concerning Blackness and the African Diaspora."The Death of Literature" - Jody AzzouniReading is declining everywhere. Surprisingly, this is because of cognitive and biological reasons. It's a cultural shift of enormous magnitude--essentially the death of several art forms.Jody Azzouni is currently professor of philosophy at Tufts University. He's published many articles and several books in philosophy, most recently, "Semantic Perception: How the illusion of a common language arises and persists." He also publishes short stories and poems regularly in literary magazines such as Alaska Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, and many others. Some of his literary work can be found on Azzouni.com. "Virtual Reality and Theater: Simulacra and Simulation" - William CusickTheater has evolved, adapted and transformed to embrace new technologies for over 2,500 years. Virtual Reality, as both concept and technology, has been rapidly developing for the past 50 years and is now approaching a tipping point of accessibility. As the tools of VR creation become readily available to theater artists, questions emerge: How does a live performance medium wield VR as a storytelling tool? What are the possibilities for a wired audience? Can a simulation of live theater, outside of the live performance space, transcend its own theatricality? The histories of these two art forms are fundamentally connected and suggest many ways forward into the unknown.William Cusick is an award winning filmmaker and theater artist. Cusick has written and directed two feature films, both highly stylized combinations of live action and animation: Pop Meets the Void, and Welcome to Nowhere (Bullet Hole Road). Cusick’s video projection designs for theater, music and dance have been featured in productions around the world, on Broadway and as representative of American Theater Design in the 2011 Prague Quadrennial. Cusick received the 2007 Henry Hewes Design Award for Projection Design for The Coast of Utopia on Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater. Cusick is on faculty at The New School in New York City where he teaches creative technologies and filmmaking at the School of Drama. ^
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Start:
2015-11-14T12:00:00-05:00
End:
2015-11-14T18:00:00-05:00
Category
Other
Tickets
Student
15.0
USD
200
General Admission
25.0
USD
1000