- Olie Westheimer
- Founder, Brooklyn Parkinson Group
- Posted: 03/15/10 | Recorded at Gel Health '09
People with Parkinson's disease have a lot in common with dancers, explains Olie Westheimer: they are constantly learning how to move. With this in mind, Olie co-founded "Dance for PD," a series of dance classes for people with Parkinson's and their caregivers - taught by professional dancers in Brooklyn's Mark Morris Dance Group. This story shows the difference that one person can make, in creating a community - and the difference a community can make in the world.
See also: Brooklyn Parkinson Group
- Javette Orgain
- Family physician and Chairperson, Illinois State Board of Health
- Posted: 02/04/10 | Recorded at Gel Health '09
Practicing medicine on the south side of Chicago, Dr. Javette Orgain describes her work at a community health center there. The challenges and issues in the patient experience, she says, would be better addressed with improved "health literacy."
- Fred Kent
- Founder and President, Project for Public Spaces
- Posted: 02/03/10 | Recorded at Gel 2009
Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry take some licks from Fred Kent in this Gel talk, as he describes what "placemaking" means in creating a better urban experience. Good architecture, Kent says, serves the needs of the community.
See also: Project for Public Spaces
- Jim Withers
- Founder, Operation Safety Net
- Posted: 01/20/10 | Recorded at Gel Health '09
Bringing healthcare directly to the homeless, as Dr. Jim Withers describes in this Gel Health talk, is difficult but rewarding. As a founder of the global street medicine movement, and the subject of the documentary "One Bridge to the Next," Dr. Withers has accomplished a great deal - both in his home city of Pittsburgh with Operation Safety Net and throughout the world in dozens of cities now maintaining street medicine practices.
See also:
• Operation Safety Net, Dr. Withers' project in Pittsburgh
• streetmedicine.org, the initiative supporting street medicine practices globally
• One Bridge to the Next, the documentary about Dr. Withers' work.
- Scott Heiferman
- Co-founder, Meetup.com
- Posted: 12/28/09 | Recorded at Gel 2009
The "silver lining of economic collapse" is visibly apparent when considering the thousands of communities enabled by Meetup.com, the company that Scott Heiferman co-founded and organizes.
- Gel 2009 montage
- Featuring speakers and attendees
- Posted: 12/07/09 | Recorded at Gel 2009
Here's a brief look at some moments from the Gel 2009 conference. The next Gel event is Gel 2010 - hope you'll sign up!
See also: Videos of Gel 2009 speakers
- Noah Scalin
- Creator, Skull-A-Day
- Posted: 08/12/09 | Recorded at Gel 2009
- 4 comments
To design a different skull every day for a year, it turns out, you need a little help from your friends - and some strangers, too. Noah Scalin talks about one of the boldest creative challenges you'll ever hear about.
- Clay Shirky
- Author, "Here Comes Everybody"
- Posted: 04/21/09 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 2 comments
Social networking thinker Clay Shirky talks about the transformations in corporations and society brought about by the spread of networked communications. His book Here Comes Everybody covers similar themes.
- Ted Dewan
- Author, artist, transportation activist
- Posted: 03/31/09 | Recorded at euroGel '06
- 2 comments
Cars drove dangerously fast on Ted's residential street in Oxford, England - until he began installing activist art on the street. It brought the community together (even the mayor got on board), slowed the traffic, and improved the experience for everyone involved.
See also Ted's bio and Road Witch Trial.
- John Williams
- Founder, Frog's Leap winery
- Posted: 02/24/09 | Recorded at Gel 2007
Frog's Leap creates outstanding wines - but that's just the beginning. For almost 30 years, John Williams has built an organization that creates good outcomes for customers, employees, and the earth. (Frog's Leap was organic from the beginning, well before it became trendy.) Case study in "creating good" in many ways simultaneously.
See also:
• Video of Garrett Oliver, Brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery (from Gel 2008)
• In Napa, Some Wineries Choose the Old Route (NYTimes Aug '08)
- ES
- Sister, The Order of St. Helena
- Posted: 02/10/09 | Recorded at Gel 2007
- 3 comments
Sister Ellen Stephen, or ES as she's also known, talks about "food and spirit" from her perspective as an Anglican nun. Her wide-ranging exploration of community (also shown in her books Vessel of Peace and Together and Apart) make this a talk well worth watching.
- Ji Lee
- Founder, The Bubble Project
- Posted: 01/29/09 | Recorded at Gel 2006
- 5 comments
(With subtitles now!.. -mh) Not long ago in New York City, cartoon "thought bubbles" began appearing on print advertisements in the subway. Interested passersby wrote in text, beginning a dialogue about the ad, its message, the city, American culture, and with each other. Ji Lee's low-tech, decentralized Bubble Project needed no instructions, no moving parts, no planning, and almost no investment - and yet it yielded a rich set of commentary from and about the people of New York (and now other cities, as the project has spread to four other cities). A brilliant example of good experience in the city.
See also the Good Experience interview of Ji Lee from 2006.
- Bobby C. Martin Jr.
- Design Director, Jazz at Lincoln Center
- Posted: 01/13/09 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 2 comments
New York City's famous Abyssinian Baptist Church is central to this design case study by Bobby Martin. In it, he tells how the rebranding effort he led for the church (he's also worked at Ogilvy + Mather) expanded to involve the surrounding community in Harlem. An example of how design can lead to change.
- Marie Lorenz
- Sculptor, boat builder, Tide and Current Taxi
- Posted: 12/16/08 | Recorded at Gel 2007
- 1 comment
Marie runs the Tide and Current Taxi, which takes passengers on a boat (that she hand-built) on voyages on New York City's East River ... with no planned destination. Her work touches on design, art, and community, which helped make it one of the most popular presentations at Gel '07.
See also the Tide and Current Taxi website.
- Geoffrey Canada
- President, Harlem Children's Zone
- Posted: 12/09/08 | Recorded at Gel 2006
- 2 comments
In one of the all-time most popular Gel talks, Geoffrey Canada describes how his nonprofit, the Harlem Children's Zone, works to help young people in inner-city Harlem. Canada issues a sober indictment of failing schools, then describes the solution he has created.
Canada was recently profiled in the book Whatever It Takes, on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and two years ago on 60 Minutes. If you don't know about Geoffrey Canada, you should. This video is a good place to start.
