Theme: Wild Thoughts

Venice Beach has always been wild--
artists, designers, innovators, freaks,
and dreamers. Ambitious visions,
radical experiments, and innovative designs--
were all hatched here.

In this unprecedented moment,
our wildest ideas
and most radical dreams
are needed more than ever.
We need bold ideas,
crazy notions, and brilliant schemes.

These times call for
Wild Thoughts.

former Charles & Ray Eames factory
901 Abbot Kinney Blvd
Venice, California, 90291
United States

Josh Radnor & Ben Lee (Radnor & Lee)

Music

Friends for over a decade actor/director Josh Radnor and indie-troubadour Ben Lee have formed a new indie-pop duo by the name of Radnor & Lee. Combining their shared interest in spirituality and philosophy, the two sat down to write a song together, which subsequently turned into ten, and their musical partnership was born. Their debut album, out November 10, is a set of dynamically uplifting, spiritual folk-pop tunes that instill the feeling of pure joy in the listener’s core via the infectious melody, sweet violin, heavenly harmonies, and foot-stomping choruses. It's enlightening, charming and perfectly delightful.

Moby

Musician & Activist

Richard Melville Hall (born September 11, 1965),better known by his stage name Moby, is an American DJ, record producer, singer, songwriter, musician, photographer and animal rights activist. He is well known for his electronic music, veganism, and support of animal rights. Moby has sold over 20 million records worldwide. AllMusic considers him "one of the most important dance music figures of the early 1990s, helping bring the music to a mainstream audience both in the UK and in America".

Adam Peters

Musician

Adam Peters is a British composer and musician. His works include the films Savages, Snowden, Icarus, Oliver Stone’s Untold History Of The Untied States, Paddington, and albums Ocean Rain ( Echo And The Bunnymen ) and Daybreaker (Beth Orton). Originally a cellist and keyboard player he began his musical journey playing with the band Echo And The Bunnymen. Their album Ocean Rain is considered to be one of the top twenty most influential British albums of all time. Mixing orchestral arrangements, multi tracked cello and electronics Adam further developed his writing and arranging with bands in London and New York. During this period he played with The Triffids, The Flowerpot Men, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Mercury Rev and Beth Orton. Upon a full time move to the USA he began composing uniquely for movies. Adam’s film music is known for its wide variety of sound and emotions, combining fractured orchestral writing with analogue electronics and electric cello.

Agnès Varda

Filmmaker

Agnès Varda is a film director who was born in Belgium, but has spent most of her working life in France. Her films, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary with a distinct experimental style. Film historians have cited Varda's work as central to the development of the French New Wave film movement; her uses of location shooting and non-professional actors were unconventional in the context of 1950s French cinema. Her films span decades and genres and both her fiction and nonfiction works are considered seminal. Most notable films include La Pointe Courte (1954), Cléo From 5 to 7 (1961), Vagabond (1984), Jacquot de Nantes (1991), The Gleaners & I (2000) - which is cited as one of the most influential documentaries of recent decades. Her 1981 documentary Murals Murals followed the murals of Los Angeles from Venice to Watts.

Ben Weiss

Mathematician, Fractal Geometry

Ben is a computer graphics researcher at Google, with a focus on image processing and machine intelligence. He is also the principal developer of the app Frax, a tool to bring the beauty of interactive fractal geometry to a worldwide audience. Ben is a former competitive freediver, with a 7-minute breath-hold, and has been a member of the US Freediving Team in multiple world championships. His career has included stints at Apple, Microsoft, and MetaCreations, where in the 90’s he was the co-developer of the Kai’s Power Tools suite of graphics apps. He currently lives happily on the Venice Canals.

Brooks Brown

VR Wizard

[Bio intentionally left blank.]

Dan Buczaczer

Dan Buczaczer is responsible for getting attention for Quid through a mixture of storytelling, growth marketing, press relationships and experiences – all designed to demonstrate the power of understanding text-based data at scale. Prior to Quid, he was EVP of Creative Partnerships at Publicis Groupe where he built strategic collaborations between digital startups and advertising agencies. While at Publicis Groupe, Buczaczer also co-founded an innovation practice called Denuo and started Reverb, a division of Starcom Mediavest Group focused on social media and word-of-mouth. He has also led advertising at Taco Bell and worked at BBDO. The z’s in his name are pronounced like h’s.

Diane von Furstenberg

Fashion Designer

Diane von Furstenberg entered the world of American fashion in the seventies, when she arrived in New York from Europe with a suitcase full of Italian jersey dresses she had designed. Her iconic wrap dress soon became a symbol of power and independence for an entire generation of women. Today, DVF is a global luxury fashion brand celebrated for its creative and chic effortlessness and its bold approach to color and print.

Ed Cooke

CEO of Memrise

Ed Cooke is the CEO and co-founder of Memrise, a comprehensively un-boring language learning app with 25mm users. Formerly a cognitive scientist and memory champion, his writings have been published in The Times, The Guardian and the Journal of Consciousness Studies.

Franklin Leonard

Founder of The Black List

Franklin Leonard is the founder of the Black List, the yearly publication highlighting Hollywood’s most popular unproduced screenplays and the company birthed to continue its mission of identifying and celebrating great screenwriting. Over 325 Black List scripts have been produced as feature films earning 275 Academy Award nominations and 50 wins including four of the last nine Best Pictures and ten of the last twenty screenwriting Oscars. Franklin has worked in development at Universal Pictures and the production companies of Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella. He was also a delegate and speaker at the White House’s 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, The Root’s 100 Most Influential African-Americans, Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business” and was awarded the 2015 African-American Film Critics Association (AAFCA)’s Special Achievement Award for career excellence.

Jen Sotham

Writer

Jen left her career as a psyhosocial counselor in her mid twenties to pursue her true calling: writing. She spent the next several years in New York City, diligently studying the crafts of screenwriting, journalism, and creative non-fiction. Soon, her words started to find homes in a variety of magazines and book anthologies. At 30, Jen placed international travel at the top of her priority list, as she felt that the best way to be a good writer was to experience novelty, and the best way to experience novelty was to immerse herself in unfamiliar cultures. In 2006, Jen moved to Busan, South Korea to teach English, with the intention of completing a one-year contract and then traveling around the world. Eight years later, she found herself still in Busan, teaching conversation, film appreciation, and composition at a university; food and culture editor of one of the largest English language publications in Korea; and a guitarist/singer in a rock-n-roll band.

John Gottman

World-Renowned Relationship Expert

World-renowned for his work on marital stability and divorce prediction, Dr. John Gottman has conducted 40 years of breakthrough research with thousands of couples. He is the author of over 200 published academic articles and author or co-author of more than 40 books, including The New York Times bestseller The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Dr. Gottman’s media appearances include Good Morning America, Today, CBS Morning News, and Oprah, as well articles in The New York Times, Redbook, Glamour, Woman’s Day, People, Self, and Psychology Today. Co-founder of The Gottman Institute with his wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, John is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Washington where he founded ”The Love Lab" at which much of his research on couples interactions was conducted.

Julie Schwartz Gottman

World Renowned Relationship Expert

The co-founder and President of The Gottman Institute, Dr. Julie Gottman co-created the international clinical training program in Gottman Method Couples Therapy. A highly respected clinical psychologist, she is sought internationally by media and organizations as an expert advisor on marriage, sexual harassment and rape, PTSD, domestic violence, gay and lesbian adoption, same-sex marriage, and parenting issues. The author of five books, Julie is the co-creator of the immensely popular The Art and Science of Love weekend workshops for couples.

Luis Rodriguez

Poet Laureate

Luis J. Rodriguez is an award-winning author of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and children's literature, including the bestselling memoir, "Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A." He's also a Native American and Native Mexican spiritual practitioner, having been taught by elders among the Lakota, Dine (Navajo), Mexica (Mexico), Ki'che (Guatemala), Pibil (El Salvador), and Quechua (Peru). His mother has roots among the Raramuri people of Chihuahua, Mexico, also known as the Tarahumara. Luis and his wife Trini founded Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore in this area, and they produce a podcast for iTunes and SoundCloud called "The Hummingbird Cricket Hour."

Mahalia Jean Pierre

Singer

Mahalia is a soulful pop singer, songwriter, and ukulele player from Massachusetts. She began with her vibrant sound doing street performances of her original songs and covering popular songs. With family troubles, and a lack of a stable living situation, Mahalia left the east coast for Los Angeles California to pursue music. While recovering from homelessness, she is currently dedicated to her craft, and diligently building the foundation of her musical discography. Her passion is to help others in similar situations, and share her voice across the world. Her career ia taking off like a rocket. She most recently secured an audition for America's Got Talent, and played at the WNBA Finals at the Staples Center! As a motivator and team player she cannot wait to collaborate with the powerhouses of the music industry.

Max Lugavere

Filmmaker, Author, and TV Personality

Max Lugavere is a filmmaker, author, and TV personality. He is the director of the upcoming film BREAD HEAD, the first-ever documentary about dementia prevention through diet and lifestyle, and is publishing his first book in early 2018 documenting his findings on how to optimize focus, productivity, mood, and long-term brain health with food. Lugavere is a regularly-appearing "core expert" on The Dr. Oz Show, has been featured on NBC Nightly News, in the Wall Street Journal, and has contributed as a health journalist to Medscape, Vice/Munchies, the Daily Beast, and others. He is a highly sought-after speaker and has been invited to keynote events such as the Biohacker Summit in Stockholm Sweden, and esteemed academic institutions like the New York Academy of Sciences. His newest book, GENIUS FOODS, is a New York Times best seller.

Nicole Landers

Co-Founder of Community Healing Gardens

For more than two decades, Nicole has been an advocate for environmental and human health as her mission is to guide the next generation into meaningful action. Nicole is the Co-Founder of a non-profit that launched in Venice, Community Healing Gardens (CHG). The mission of CHG is fostering community through urban gardening while educating on planetary and human health and growing local food systems. CHG focuses on underserved and diverse communities as well as the next generation living in these areas of Los Angeles. Nicole is a recent graduate from the Sustainability Certificate Program at UCLA as well as a trained Climate Reality Leader under VP Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corp. Residing in Venice Beach with her fiancé, and two fur babies she loves yoga, stand up paddle, shopping at farmers markets, cooking, eating locally and watching movies.

Ruben Rojas

Co-founder of Beautify Earth

Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, Ruben Rojas is an artist, social impact entrepreneur, and co-founder of Beautify Earth. Beautify Earth (BE) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with the mission of eliminating urban blight, by “painting the world in color,” and reimagining every bland wall into a canvas for inspiring urban creations. BE empowers artists, businesses, communities, and municipalities through action. The transformative power of art further inspires, motivates and instills pride in the community. Increased business revenue, massive community participation, and the “stop-and-look” effect of murals help to stimulate the local economy. BE continues to show that when art becomes the norm in place of urban blight, the world is a happier, more colorful, and peaceful place. Through his work he hopes to inspire the communities he paints in, reshape the conversations people have and beautify the typical boring bland walls into something unique and inspiring.

Satchin Panda

Circadian Biologist

Dr. Satchin Panda’s circadian rhythm research has discovered that light and meal time have profound health impact. He found a new light sensor in our eye measures blue light to tune brain functions ranging from falling asleep to throbbing migraine pain in a sunny day. This simple discovery has triggered a new field of light therapeutics in which phones have come up with features to flip a button to “night shift” and blue filtering glasses are new sleeping pills. Dr. Panda also discovered that the number of hours between our breakfast and dinner may be as important as day’s calorie counts. Dr. Panda grew up in India, did his doctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute, and postdoctoral training at Novartis before starting his independent research lab at the Salk Institute, La Jolla. He is a Pew Scholar in Biomedical Research, an American Federation of Aging Research mid-career scientist.

Thomas Kingsley Brown

Scientist and researcher, psychedelic therapy

Dr. Thomas Kingsley Brown has been researching ibogaine treatment for substance dependence since 2009, when he began conducting interviews with patients at a treatment center in Playas de Tijuana, Mexico and collected data for the purpose of studying quality of life for those patients. In 2010 he began working with MAPS (the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) on a Mexico-based observational study of the long-term outcomes for people receiving ibogaine-assisted treatment for opioid dependence. That study is complete, and the first research article from the study has been published. In 2013, he published a review article on ibogaine treatment in Current Drug Abuse Reviews. Dr. Brown is an academic administrator at the University of California, San Diego. His academic training is in chemistry (B.S., University of Pittsburgh and M.S., California Institute of Technology) and anthropology (M.A. and PhD, UC San Diego).

Tom Insel

Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist, Co-founder & President of Mindstrong Health

Thomas R. lnsel, M.D., a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, is a co-founder and President of Mindstrong Health. His career in mental health has been long and non-linear. After training in psychiatry at UCSF in 1979, Insel did clinical research at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, MD where he established the value of serotonergic antidepressants for OCD. In 1983, he shifted from clinical research to study the molecular and cellular basis of complex social behaviors, helping to create a new field of social neuroscience. First at NIMH and later at Emory University, he demonstrated the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in maternal and affiliative behaviors in non-human animals. In 2000, he founded an NSF Center for Behavioral Neuroscience across 8 colleges and universities in Atlanta, GA.