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The Art Center College of Design in partnership with ESADE Business School is presenting on March 7 in Palau de la Música in Barcelona a global event featuring notable creative leaders and influential media discussing issues of critical importance to society.

The Art Center Global Dialogues: Disruptive Thinking is a series of on-stage conversations with internationally renowned thinkers in many fields whose “disruptive” ideas and actions challenge convention, break current paradigms, and inspire positive changes in the larger world. Unlike traditional conferences, the Art Center Global Dialogues will pair these speakers with influential media figures—including highly regarded editors, publishers, and reporters—in vital exchanges that encourage the development of new ideas.

The Dialogues will focus on four areas particularly relevant to society today:

• Urbanism and architecture
• Communications and media
• Transportation
• Economic and social development

The Art Center Global Dialogues: Disruptive Thinking is open to the public, and will spur a larger dialogue on current and future issues of concern to all of society. The international audience will include scientists, architects, designers, artists, entrepreneurs, institutional and business executives, and all those looking to be a part of this public forum, sharing their experience and questions.

Distinguished international journalist Richard Addis serves as the event’s Guest Program Director and Moderator. An international lineup of radical thinkers and provocateurs, all disruptive thinkers alike, will explore the six influential areas of our daily lives. Moderators and speakers to date include:

• Climate Change: Harry Eyres (columnist, poet, writer, and naturalist) will discuss one of the most powerful disruptive phenomena of our age with such experts as Sara Wheeler (biographer, traveler, and expert on the Artic and Antarctica).

• Geopolitics: Richard Addis (newspaper editor, designer, and writer) will explore whether political ideas provide solutions with Ron Haviv (award-winning photojournalist and co-founder of VII Photo Agency), Bernard Tabaire (Ugandan newspaper editor currently on bail for sedition) and Ram (Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu).

• Business: Lynda Sale (Partner, Sale Owen, marketing consultant, and artist) will discuss with Blaise Agüera y Arcas (software designer at Microsoft Live labs) and others whether business can be redesigned to reflect its deeper reality as one of the most disruptive, free and creative forces of the modern world.

• Science: Robert Matthews (academic, writer, and journalist) will be joined by David Hughes (astronomer, professor, and researcher), David Orrell (systems biologist and mathematician), and Fotini Markopoulou-Kalamara (theoretical physicist) as they explore how science is running into the ultimate disruption – the unknown – and what new ideas will bridge the gaps in our understanding of life, the Earth and the cosmos.

• Belief: Bigna Pfenninger (founding editor, The Drawbridge, a quarterly literary project) will lead a discussion with Charles Pasternak (academic, scientist, and author) and Joann Fletcher (academic and archeologist) that questions what happens when our deepest beliefs are overturned.

• Design: Stephan Bayley (author, cultural critic, and founder of the Design Museum) will discuss major disruptions that could be on the horizon in architecture, planning and industrial design and how they will improve our lives with Thom Mayne (Pritzker Prize-winning architect, currently building the tallest building in Europe), Peter Head (Director of Arup and head of Planning and Integrated Urbanism) and Chris Lefteri (materials expert and product designer).

Richard Addis and other Dialogues participants have initiated early conversations on a blog developed specifically for the Dialogues (blog.globaldialogues.eu). Those interested in sharing their own perspectives on these critical issues are encouraged to take part in the Dialogues and post their comments on the blog.

The event is limited to 500 seats. You can register to attend the event here.

Art Center College of Design
Since its founding in 1930, Art Center College of Design has been a global leader in art and design education. Located in Pasadena, California, Art Center offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in all visual disciplines, and public programs for all ages and levels of experience. Named the #1 U.S. industrial design school by Design Intelligence, Art Center has exerted a profound impact on society and culture. Art Center alumni hold the top designer positions at BMW, SEAT, Audi, and Nissan, and are internationally prominent in industrial design, communication design, film and photography, and media design as well. With its long-standing service to the United Nations and other nonprofit agencies, Art Center is also the first design school to receive Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status.

The Art Center-Barcelona Project, initiated at the invitation of the Barcelona and Catalonia governments, revitalizes Art Center’s long-standing European presence and makes Barcelona—with its peerless design history and dynamism—the focal point for a series of highly innovative programs in advanced design education and research. In partnership with the renowned ESADE Business School, the Project will include executive education courses for designers and corporate managers, as well as R&D industry collaborations, postgraduate training, and faculty exchanges. In addition, the Project will produce a series of public forums on the larger role of design and innovation, beginning with the Art Center Global Dialogues in March 2008.

ESADE
Founded in 1958, ESADE is a leader in two areas: the ESADE Business School and the ESADE University Faculties. Ranked the #1 business school by The Wall Street Journal for the past two years, ESADE has campuses in Barcelona, Madrid, and Buenos Aires, and collaborates with over 100 universities and business schools worldwide. Each year, more than 6,000 students participate in ESADE’s Executive Education and MBA programs, as well as undergraduate, postgraduate, and Ph.D. programs in law and business administration. With its network of 28,000 alumni occupying positions of responsibility in enterprises around the globe, and through its historical links with the corporate world and society, ESADE is a lively platform for innovation, debate, and social involvement.

Today my mobilist carnival #96 edit got a mention on the popular and award-winning web site Worldchanging.com (thanks Emily!).

WorldChanging covers global innovative solutions, ideas and inventions emerging today for building a sustainable, livable, prosperous future. From consumer consciousness to a new vision for industry; non-toxic homes to refugee shelters; microfinance to effective philanthropy; socially responsible investing to starting a green business; citizen media to human rights; ecological economics to climate change; it’s a really great resource! Bruce Sterling calls it “The most important web site on the planet.”

This summer I started reading the book Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, brought together by Alex Steffen, co-founder of Worldchanging.com. FYI: It’s a big hardcover book - not a book you want to take while travelling, but it’s great having it at home for evening and weekend book reading and great as a resource for your children. Here’s what Al Gore says about the book (he wrote the foreword)

“To build that future, we need a generation of everyday heroes, people who – whatever their walks of life – have the courage to think in fresh ways and to act to meet this planetary crisis head-on. This book belongs in the library of every person who aspires to be part of that generation.”

The Worldchanging book contains over 600 pages, divided into 7 sections which include a vast range of topics. The book is packed with the information, resources, reviews, and ideas that give readers the tools they need to make a difference.

What are you waiting for?

For anyone interested in Dopplr and who didn’t had the chance to try it out, here’s an interesting presentation from Matt Jones he presented at Reboot 9.0.

Dopplr also launched a blog.

Fabien invited me yesterday to Dopplr. Dopplr is an online service for frequent travellers. It was created by an international team of world travellers as a tool for their own use, then decided to open it their global friends. The Dopplr “beta” service is open by invitation only.

How does Dopplr work? It lets you share your future travel plans with a group of trusted fellow travellers whom you have chosen. It also reminds you of friends and colleagues who live in the cities you’re planning to visit. You can use the service with your personal computer and mobile phone.

What is interesting here is the future location-awareness. Unlike past and real-time mutual location-awareness, it’s impossible to capture future locations. This makes a lot of sense to me with quite some travelling ahead this year. Especially for the conferences I’m attending, it’s always good to know who’s around and in town. I configured it for my mobile too, so I’m really curious how the service is going to work when travelling.

On November 16, 2006, IBDNetwork will host its sixth one-day Under the Radar event, which will feature 32 emerging startups in the mobile sector. Under the Radar will take place at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, CA.

You’ll see a collection of companies in areas such as mobile content/video; sms and messaging; location/presence; voice services; marketing and advertising services; and a host of enabling technologies. It’s always a steller line-up of stealth companies and certainly a gathering of leading industry insiders and top-tier press/bloggers, a great chance to learn about the future of mobility- it’s challenges and opportunities from consumer adoption to monetization of services. Other participants include CNET-Fox Interactive-Google-Microsoft-Motorola-MTV-Qualcomm-Orange-Yahoo! and more.

I’m going to the conference, together with Ignacio Mondine, who will present his company Daem Interactive at the conference. It’s going to be very interesting to see and meet all those startups innovating wthin the mobility area; I’m especially interested in the real innovative companies and how they deploy their market strategy in function from different markets such as US and Europe.

Companies currently confirmed are:

4info | Admob | BubbleMotion | CascadaMobile | ComVu | Daem Interactive | EQO | Flurry | GreyStripe | Juice Wireless | Loopt | MobiFusion | Mobileplay | Mobo | MotionDSP | Nexage | Ontela | PayWi | Pinger | Pixpulse | Pixsense | Plusmo | Rocketalk | Renzoo | ScanR | Sharpcast | TinyPictures | Veeker | Voxlib | Winksite

I haven’t seen such a bunch of startups working in mobile together for a while… How about you?

Now here come the goodies for my blog readers:

m-trends.org readers can submit the best “under the radar” mobility company not already on the currently confirmed company list (see above); in other words you can digg one of your favourite mobile startups into the conference! – the winner will get a ticket to the conference ($495 value) and will get mentioned on the “under the radar” blog, as well as a “profile” post on the winning company as well.

Debbie Landa, CEO and Founder of IBDNetwork (the organizers of the conference) will judge herself the best submission done here at m-trends.org. All you need to do is send me an email (click my name in the sidebar) with subject “Under The Radar” and mention the startup you think should be present at the conference. Deadline for contest entries is Wednesday November 8 at midnight (CET) - which will give the winner a week of lead time to make travel arrangements.

And for those who don’t win or participate to the contest, m-trends.org readers receive the discounted price of $425 (save $70) by registering here (just mention m-trends.org).

Oh btw: anyone who would like to meet me while in SF or Bay Area between November 15-21, drop me a line too