TedxGotham's inaugural event on October 15th, 2010: “Collaborate, Experiment, Inspire", examined new models of collaboration that are building communities, businesses, and a better world. Attendees heard how New Yorkers, through their willingness to experiment and stumble, are coming together to inspire a new wave of innovation in design, social media, architecture, government, science and education in New York City.

New York
United States

Craig Dykers

Craig Dykers co-founded Snøhetta as an integrated architecture, landscape and interior design company, first in Oslo, Norway in 1989, and subsequently in New York City in 2004. He has worked on the design of several prominent cultural projects including the Alexandria Library in Egypt, the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo, and the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the World Trade Center site. Snøhetta’s latest project is the MoMA in San Francisco.

Juliette Powell

Juliette Powell is a media entrepreneur, a community catalyst and the author of 33 Million People in the Room: How to create, influence and Run a Successful Business with Social Networking, (January 2009, Financial Times Press). Drawing on first hand experience as a social media expert and co-founder of The Gathering Think Tank, an innovation forum that connects technology, media, entertainment, and business communities, Powell writes about the patterns and practices of successful business leaders who bank on social networking to win. Her clients include The Biography Channel, Women’s Entertainment Television, E! Entertainment Television, Cirque du Soleil, and Bravo. Most recently, Powell was commissioned to create Canada’s first cross-platform interactive show designed for TV, Internet, radio, and mobile applications.

Rasanath Das

Rasanath Das is President and CEO of the Bhakti Center, a non-profit venture which together a rich array of talented painters, musicians, yogis, philosophers, performing artists and culinary artists in Manhattan who collaborate using their talents to uplift human consciousness and solve global problems on a personal level. Rasanath earned his bachelors degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT – on par with MIT and CalTech) where he published two papers on “Smart Structures” – an AI-based approach to the design and development of building structures. He also holds an MBA from Cornell University where he received the prestigious Old Ezra scholarship for high-achieving international students. Post MBA, Rasanath worked as an Investment Banker covering the Technology and Media space before taking on the role of CEO of the Bhakti Center. He is also a practicing monk and a teacher of the epic Bhagavad Gita, through which he integrates his personal experience with science, technology and business to communicate deep spiritual insights. He is also a regular columnist for the Huffington Post.is speaker

Ira Flatow

Former NPR science correspondent and award-winning television journalist Ira Flatow is host/executive producer of Science Friday, now celebrating its 20th year on NPR. He anchors the news/talk show each Friday, bringing radio and Internet listeners worldwide a lively, informative discussion on science, technology, health, space and the environment. Flatow also is founder and president of Science Friday Initiative (SFI), a non-profit company dedicated to reaching new, younger audiences with new Internet science content and Internet projects. Flatow’s most recent book is Present at the Future: From Evolution to Nanotechnology, Candid and Controversial Conservations on Science and Nature, including some of his best known Science Friday Interviews.

Manu Prakash

A professor of bioengineering at Stanford, Dr. Prakash is a physicist and a prolific inventor. His inventions range from microfluidic computers for ultra-high throughput biology in nanoliter droplets to glass windows that double as wireless antennas and vending machines that dispense rechargeable batteries. Dr. Prakash’s new interdisciplinary lab at Stanford explores mechanistic understanding of living matter – from molecular to organismic scales – often uncovering hidden physical constraints shaping life forms. An MIT alumnus, for his ideas and inventions, Dr. Prakash was awarded the 2008 Lemelson Student Finalist Award, Milton Fund New Innovator award, MIT 100K development prize and MIT IDEAS award. For his creativity and resourcefulness in research, Dr. Prakash was nominated as a junior fellow at Harvard society of fellows (2008-2011) – to pursue his research interests independent of any departmental boundaries.

Chris Elam

Elam is the founding Choreographer and Artistic Director of Misnomer Dance Theater, an award-winning dance company in NYC. Heralded as “a true original” (The New York Times), whose “clarity of vision delights the soul” (the Village Voice), Elam’s work with Misnomer has toured to over 300 theaters in 11 countries, and the breadth of his creative projects include choreographing for Bjork, the Sundance Channel, Apple Computers and the Danish Dance Theater. An innovator in connecting people with the arts, Misnomer is currently developing the Audience Engagement Platform (AEP), a disruptive web and mobile system to give audiences ways to directly interact with artists and their art. AEP has received wide recognition in the business, technology, and arts communities and significant Foundation and public support. Elam frequently speaks at conferences ranging from TEDx to Fortune Magazine’s Brainstorm:Tech summit.

Carne Ross

Carne Ross is a former British diplomat who, after resigning over the Iraq war, founded the world’s first non-profit diplomatic advisory group, Independent Diplomat. Independent Diplomat (ID) is now based in five international centres, and is advising governments and political groups on three continents. As a British diplomat, Carne was Britain’s Iraq and Middle East “expert” at the UN Security Council; he has also worked on Afghanistan, terrorism and climate change, and was speechwriter to the British Foreign Secretary. Today, Carne is a frequent commentator on international affairs on CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera; his work has been profiled in the New York Times and Time magazine. Earlier this year, the Harvard Business Review called “Independent Diplomacy” one of its top ten ideas for 2010. His critique of contemporary diplomacy, Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite was published by Cornell University Press in 2007.

Leslie Koch

Leslie Koch is President of the Trust for Governors Island. Governors Island is a 172 acre island in New York Harbor with historic buildings, fortifications, and open spaces. Ms. Koch is responsible for the redevelopment and on-going operation of 150 acres of the Island, including creating world-class open spaces, expanding public access, preserving historic structures, and planning for mixed-use development. Under Ms. Koch’s leadership, Governors Island has become home to an eclectic array of arts and cultural events and programs, and last year drew a record 275,000 visitors over a 60 day season. Prior to GIPEC, Leslie Koch was the CEO of the Fund for Public Schools where she developed initiatives to increase public and private sector support for public education in New York City. Under her leadership, the Fund secured nearly $160 million for system-wide initiatives. She graduated summa cum laude from Yale College with a B.A. in history and received a Masters in Public and Private Management from the Yale School of Management.

Heather Knight

Heather is currently conducting her doctoral research at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute and running Marilyn Monrobot Labs in NYC, which creates socially intelligent robot performances and sensor-based electronic art. Her installations have been featured at the Smithsonian-Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, LACMA, SIGGRAPH, Mindshare LA, TEDxUSC and the Fortezza da Basso in Florence, Italy. Her work also includes: robotics and instrumentation at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, interactive installations with Syyn Labs and sensor design at Aldebaran Robotics. She is an alumnus from the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab, earning her bachelors and masters at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a minor in Mechanical Engineering. Twitter: @heatherknight

Steve Crandall

Steve grew up in Montana acquiring an interest in the night sky, the back side of TV sets and amateur radio. This led to a physics and math journey that hasn’t ended, but left him with a particle physics Ph.D. from SUNY at Stony Brook along the way.Steve joined Bell Laboratories and became part of the institution for two decades. He learned about multidisciplinary collaborations and has made contribution in applied physics, lithography, high bandwidth networks, free-space optics, early cable modems, digital audio and data mining. At the AT&T/Lucent split he joined AT&T Research and branched out into social computing, digital music systems, sound field reconstruction, geo-aware systems and assistive technologies while still doing some physics. In 2002 he left AT&T Research and cofounded Omenti Research where he consults on energy, technology and social computing issues where a fundamental approach or a diverse background is helpful. He and his wife Sukie live in New Jersey with their ferrets.

Andrew Hoppin

Andrew Hoppin was appointed the first Chief Information Officer for the New York State Senate in February 2009. The CIO’s Office works in three main realms: opening up the Senate’s legislative and administrative data for public access (for transparency), overhauling the Senate’s internal communications and collaboration infrastructure (for efficiency), and launching new Web 2.0 / social media technologies for the Senate (public participation). Previously, Andrew co-founded the NASA CoLab program at NASA Ames Research Center, which increased efficiency and transparency at NASA by building new partnerships between NASA and external communities of practice such as the entrepreneurial technology community, the global open-source software movement, and constituents in the virtual world of “Second Life.”Andrew has also founded several startup technology companies and has served as a strategy consultant, Advisor, or Board member for Craigslist Foundation, Netroots Nation, the Space Generation Advisory Council and the New Organizing Institute.

Russell Granet

Arts Education Resource (AER) founder Russell Granet is an internationally recognized leader with more than 20 years of experience in arts education. He draws on his background as an academic, artist, and teaching artist in his work with cultural institutions, nonprofits, and public and private schools to ensure that all students receive a sequential, quality arts education. Granet founded AER after a decade at The Center for Arts Education (CAE) – The NYC Annenberg Challenge, where he was Director of Professional Development. Prior to joining CAE, he was Director of Education at The American Place Theatre and a senior teaching artist at the Creative Arts Team. Since 1995 he has been on the faculty at New York University, where he developed and teaches the course Drama with Special Populations. Granet’s career has been greatly influenced by his work with students with disabilities as well as their teachers and caregivers, and he has been part of the international faculty for VSA arts, which was founded by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to work toward a society where people with disabilities learn through, participate in, and enjoy the arts. He serves on the boards of The Association of Teaching Artists and The American Place Theatre and was a founding board member of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable and the chair of arts education for the Columbia County (NY) Arts Council.

Reggie Watts

Hilarious, brilliant, unpredictable – comedian/musician Reggie Watts is a staple of the international performance scene. Reggie’s improvised musical sets are created on-the-spot using only his formidable voice and a looping machine. No two songs are ever the same. An avowed "disinformationist," Reggie loves to disorientate his audiences in the most entertaining way. You may not know what Reggie is going to do, but that’s okay – he doesn’t either.

Asi Burak

Asi is a veteran game maker, technology executive and social entrepreneur. As Co-President of Games for Change, he leads the curation, development and execution of programs that raise the impact of social impact games. Asi is the award-winning Executive Producer who co-founded Impact Games, the creators of the internationally acclaimed “PeaceMaker” and “Play the News” gaming platforms (acquired 2010). He also served as a consultant to companies such as Newsweek and McCann Erickson, around the strategic use of games to further brand engagement. He is often interviewed by international media, and has been invited to speak at conferences and institutions including The Sundance Film Festival, The Skoll World Forum, SXSW, GDC, and The US Army War College. A native of Israel, Asi was VP of Marketing and Product at Axis Mobile (acquired 2008), where he introduced pioneering mobile apps and games to a worldwide market. He holds a Masters of Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon University and a BA in Design from the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem.

Dana Mauriello

Dana Mauriello is the Co-Founder & President of Profounder. Dana lives, eats, and breathes entrepreneurship – and has for as long as she can remember, as she has helped start and run multiple family businesses in a wide range of industries. Dana is a master of developing a deep customer understanding and applying this empathy to creating, marketing, and selling outstanding products. Working on the Corporate Product Innovations team at Estee Lauder, she created new product concepts and brought them to market. Dana created a unique major at Stanford University, earning her BA in Product Development, and double-dipped to earn her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business a few years later. Dana is a champion powerlifter, and die-hard New Yorker.

Edward Hall

Edward T Hall III is the co-director of AcaWiki.org, collaborator with WindowFarms.org and dedicated poet of science. He conducts behavioral economic research at Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions where social scientists of all stripes collaborate to figure out “why our brain isn’t green.” He researches human “impatience” and collaborates extensively with researchers at the London School of Economics and Yale. But Edward is not limited to behavioral economics. He draws upon the fields of evolutionary neuroscience, cultural anthropology, emotion research, environmental economics, industrial ecology and social psychology. Before entering the research realm, Edward studied photography and the fine arts under the instruction of Stephen Shore, Tim Davis, Liz Deschenes, Lowry Burgess, and Golan Levin. He believes artists, citizen researchers, social networks, gamer designers, writers, theologians and DIYers must become help shape the poetry of science, to make it human.