The health of the American school system is undeniably waning. Public school districts across the country suffer from overpopulated classrooms, outdated teaching methods, and a lack of access to resources. This month, three teachers have set out on a journey (in the most literal sense) to observe, report, and put into use the most effective, progressive teaching methods being used around they country. It’s this type of initiative that is going to be necessary to change the face of American education, and educators around the globe should tune in to the Odyssey Initiative to hear what these three have to share.

How did the three of you meet, and how did you first start discussing the idea for The Odyssey Initiative?

Todd: Michelle and I taught in the same classroom for three years at a progressive public school in Brooklyn, NY. During that time, we created a consortium for progressive educators across New York City to share best practices from our classroom. Brooke joined the school a year ago and we quickly found that our core beliefs and philosophies about education aligned. Her wealth of knowledge and experience in teaching the lower elementary grades brought a new dynamic to our team.

Congratulations on your September 6th launch! From what I understand, the mission of The Odyssey Initiative is to travel to all fifty states to meet teachers and observe classrooms in order to gather vital information about how best to improve American education. And then, at the very end of it, you’ll be creating a brand new school in Brooklyn. Can you give me some details about what your Odyssey will entail, as well as how you plan to present your information interactively online?

Todd: We have surveyed educational experts (professors, consultants, writers, and practitioners), asking them what great schools we should visit and for what particular reasons. In addition to using our own philosophical beliefs, we have looked at observation protocols to help us think through which details we are looking for.

During our visits, we sit down with school leaders for in-depth conversations about the history and structure of the school. We observe two lessons and interview the teachers to discuss details about the lesson, including how it was planned, how it fit into the scope and sequence of the school year, and how the teacher taught it.

After our school visits, we discuss the instructional practices and school practices that stood out to each of us and debrief on what we might want to put in action in our new school in Brooklyn. We then make a video to capture the culture and practices that we think stand out. Our daily blogs, pictures, and videos from each school will be displayed on our website in a timeline format. If you click on a state, the content from that state will dynamically appear and you can then scroll up and down to see more of our Odyssey in chronological order.

We are also interviewing different leaders in the industry, including superintendents, academics, authors, and journalists. Those interviews will be posted on our website.

It sounds fantastic, almost too good to be true. How is this project being funded, including the future school in Brooklyn?

Todd: In December, we received an angel investment of $25,000 from a childhood friend. This summer, we completed a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised over $82,000 from 462 backers from around the world. We received a range of pledges — $5 from educators, all the way up to $10,000 from a corporate lawyer. This money will fund our research through November. For us to make it from there to anywhere else, we need access to a broader base of funders.

Funding for the school will come from a few different sources. If our application is approved, we will receive a start-up grant and will require additional funding to pay for the team’s planning year. When the school opens, our expenses will be covered by state funding based on the per-pupil expenditure for New York City. We want to prove that success can be achieved on a New York City public school budget.

Was there a turning point for each of you — a personal event — that made you want to embark on this journey — where you saw the necessity for the type of action the three of you are taking now?

Todd: I feel like we are well versed in what is wrong with education and think the country is ready to learn more about what is already working in the host of successful schools and classrooms across America.

Brooke: I think teachers are always looking to strengthen their craft, and that teachers deserve greater acknowledgement for their work. Our project is going to help me become a better educator as well as shine a light on exemplary teaching that is already happening across the country.

Michelle: The media’s portrayal of teachers and our education system over the past few years has painted an inaccurate picture of the majority of educators in America. I felt it was imperative for the public to have a place to find out the thoughtful planning, teaching, and reflection that teachers across our country do on a daily basis to better serve their students in a range of different school environments.

What do you believe, specifically, will influence positive change in education and educators in this country?

Todd: It is our hope that we will be able to influence positive change in education by positioning ourselves as messengers who are sharing examples of successful practices in schools across the country. We are dedicating our year not only to our own professional development, but also to create a free resource for teachers around the world to use. We know that many schools do not have the budget for outside professional development, and the information on our site can be used within schools for no fee.

As we begin to think about the structures in our own school, we are keeping in mind that we want to model the practices we believe will lead to positive change in education and the teaching profession. We believe in dedicating resources to professional development and creating a community of learning with our school staff. We also feel that teachers need to move away from rote memorization. It needs to stop being okay to teach this way, and focus more on exploration, problem solving, and authentic learning. Our vision is that staff and students will be creative people who have the ability to innovate.

We also believe education would change for the better if schools were funded more equally across our nation. If children living in underserved communities received the same opportunities, funding, resources, and high-quality teaching staff that children living in affluent communities often receive, we would move towards a more equitable education system.

In its quest to inspire and educate students, The Odyssey Project takes lessons from the best teachers across the country

You mention in your video that each school around the country is unique in its community values and environment. If I were to ask you now, at the beginning of your journey, what types of values you think your future Brooklyn school will work to instill in students, what would you say?

Todd: We want our future graduates be good people. We want our kids to take responsibility and pride in their school, local, and world community and have a strong sense of social justice. We also want them to exercise critical thinking flexibly and be able to come up with multiple ways of reaching a solution to a problem or issue. We hope to help them see that confusion, being challenged, and making mistakes are all part of the learning process, and that not knowing the answer to a question is okay. We want them to be problem solvers who can continue working on something even if they are unsure of what they will discover.

The Odyssey Initiative seems to be following the lead of universities across the country (and now the world) that are offering online classes or databases of knowledge, free to everyone. How do you think the relationship the younger generation has with information is going to affect teaching strategies?

Todd: We use information from the web for a variety of things in our daily lives and realize that children and teenagers are learning to use new technologies from a younger age. We can predict that this will continue to increase over time.

Advances in technology allow us to bring others into classrooms across the country. With photos, our blog posts, and video footage of classroom instruction, we can work to break down the walls that often isolate teachers.

We believe that integrating technology into teaching practices should be used purposefully rather than being thrown into a lesson in efforts to use more of it. We also believe that teachers must receive professional development regarding how to best incorporate technology into the classroom in order to best support and engage their students.

Can you please each describe a teacher who had a significant impact on your life, and how they were able to do so?

Todd: My sophomore history teacher, Cosimo Favalaro, was the first person who successfully taught me to look at history through a non-Western lens.

Brooke: Mary Ann Thompson, my AP English teacher, didn’t focus on the surface-level things that many teachers focus on. We didn’t have assigned seats; we sat in a circle and talked deeply about books. She had high expectations for all of her students and challenged us to think deeply about what we read. Even though I’ve always been an avid reader, I see my time in her class as my awakening to being a strong and critical reader.

Michelle: Naming just one is incredibly difficult. Mr. John Shankweiler, my high school choral and acting teacher, was a mentor and support to me throughout high school. In our advanced studio theater class, he trusted us fully, and facilitated our production of the plays and musicals of our choosing while giving us the space to work independently. He let us fail and learn from our own mistakes rather than step in and save us when we hadn’t put enough time into our productions. He sacrificed his own afternoons and nights after school to be there for rehearsals and performances, and helped his students to see that our success in singing a song or putting on a musical hinged on working together.

And similarly, can you detail an effective, innovative teaching strategy you’ve witnessed — perhaps something that incorporates new technology?

Todd: There are a number of things we have seen so far. What has stood out the most for me has been Innovations Public Charter School‘s use of the 11 Dimensions of Depth and Complexity across the grades to not only discuss the process of investigation and analysis of social studies content, but also to give students of all ages a common vocabulary when making something abstract more concrete.

What subjects do you each teach? And what grade, typically?

Todd: Brooke taught kindergarten for nine years and then taught one year of first grade. Michelle taught third through fifth grade for the past five years. I’ve taught third and fifth grade for the past four years.

I speak for the whole Daily BR!NK team when I say that we wish you the best of luck on your journey. What are you each the most nervous or anxious about in the months to come?

Todd: Securing the funding to see this research project through to the end is our biggest concern. Also, we are nervous about completing all of the tasks that are needed to reach this project’s full potential. We want to ensure that our website is a tool that educators find helpful. We know that we will need to adapt along the way in order to make that happen.

How can our readers contribute to your success, and how can you contribute to theirs?

Todd: Ways your readers can contribute to our success: donate what they can, recommend a school that they think we should visit, introduce us to possible corporate partners like airlines, hotels, and car rental companies. We have also been inspired by the number of people who have volunteered to help us. People can host an informational event when we are in their area for us to share our findings. We are also open to new ideas. If you think you have a way to help us, shoot us an email.

Our advice for people who want to do what we are doing is: do not do this if you are not a teacher. The goals of our project would be altered if we had no education background. Be prepared to sacrifice traveling comfortably. In order to make this Odyssey work, we are staying at friends’ homes, paying for affordable hotels outside of the city we are visiting, and waking up early to promptly arrive at schools. This means that our writing often gets done on planes, on weekends, or late at night.

Think through your daily schedule from wake up to lights-out. There will be a lot of work to do, and you will want to budget time to complete all tasks. Be prepared for setbacks. They are bound to happen, but don’t let a setback slow you down.

The products at Cleveland CycleWerks seem too good to be true. They’re affordable (around $3,000 for most models), classically styled with an eye towards customization, get great gas-mileage, and include modern components. The man behind the company has an equally unbelievable story. Shortly after being laid-off from his full-time job as a designer, CEO Scott Colosimo scrapped the concept of working for someone else and decided to take a shot at his dream: manufacturing motorcycles. Nearly three years, and thousands of bikes later, Scott’s story is a testament to perseverance and the pursuit of excellence.

Cleveland CycleWerks has become pretty well known, but it’s taken a while for the motorcycle scene in America to warm up to the idea of an affordable, small displacement motorcycle. What’s wrong with the motorcycle industry in the USA that a company like yours is just seeing the light of day?

I don’t necessarily think it’s a question of what’s wrong, but rather, what are people looking for and desiring, and where is there an unmet need? For me, looking around in 2007, no one was buying new bikes, but in Cleveland everyone was buying old, small displacement bikes from the junkyard. People were happy to be riding around on old, worn-out bikes; people just wanted to ride a cool-looking bike. But unless you had the ability to fix up a really old bike, there were really no options brand new. There was a clear market, and coming from a design background, I thought, “There’s got to be a way.” I wanted to make a bike that people could be proud of.

In addition to being a CEO, you’re also a teacher at the Cleveland Institute of Art. What got you into teaching?

It just comes kind of easy to me. I guess it’s a little selfish — being around students inspires me and keeps me creative. I think students have more creative ideas in a day than some entire organizations have in years. So maybe it’s self-interest to keep myself fresh.

How does teaching influence the way you run your business?

It influences it quite a bit; the only reason I was able to start my business was because I went to art school. I didn’t go to business school. I didn’t have a formal education. Everything I learned was about creating solutions to problems or coming at something in a different way. The most important thing in art school is creativity and honing your skill, and if you think about drawing, a lot of people say art is bullshit or don’t take it seriously, but in reality, you really have to become a master to articulate a pen. The dedication to the craft — I think it actually translates really well to running a business because there’s long-term dedication but also creativity in drawing up these bikes. For me, I’m always looking for creative solutions or solutions that other people may say are crazy, because starting a motorcycle company almost straight from college and after being laid off is kind of crazy, right?

Scott found inspiration and an outlet for his creativity at CIA

Actually, I’m a recent graduate myself, and I think it’s been really challenging for this generation to get it out of their heads that there’s a particular path you’re supposed to take. I think previous generations have had it laid out — you go to college, get your degree, and start working from the bottom up in your respective industry. I’ve found that, especially in the creative industry, that’s not a reality; those people are clinging to those jobs for dear life. It’s a joke in the photography industry that you don’t get a job in a position you actually want unless someone croaks.

I really do think we are the generation of the unemployed, the overeducated, the over-ambitious. When I graduated, I thought, “These corporations must really understand what it means; they have their shit together,” and I quickly realized that many of the people running these corporations are more incompetent than the majority of the people working there –they just had more degrees.

And basically from the time I graduated, I was just trying not to get fired, and that’s a horrible way to live. Especially being a creative person. I had a full-time job as a designer, and I had never been more miserable in my life. There were times I would call my friend on the way to work. We’d call each other every morning and joke about the ways we were going to kill ourselves on the way to work. Kind of jokingly, but we hated going into work so bad. You’re a creative person, and every day you had to be creative from nine in the morning until five at night and you had to act like you loved everyone you worked with. You had to go to meetings with ten people who weren’t creative — about your drawings — when they couldn’t even understand the drawing and didn’t care about it. It was really frustrating.

The most creative time I’ve ever had in my life were the five years I was at CIA. Going from that environment, and everyone telling me how great life after college was going to be, and how great it would be to have an awesome design job — the reality is that two weeks after I got a job they fired, like, 10,000 people. So from the very start of my career after college, I was worried about getting laid off. I was launched into the business world, and then a year later, they fired nearly 30,000 people and shut down three factories; I mean, it was just constant. Everyone was worried about losing their job; it was a horrible work environment.

For our generation in the US — this whole idea of making your way up the ladder in a company — I think it’s damn near impossible to do that, because your boss might only be there one year, and the company might only be there two years; your whole department might get outsourced. It’s constant, and this is what we’re faced with every day. It’s horrible.

Absolutely. So what advice are you giving your students right now?

The most sincere advice I can offer someone just graduating is don’t fall into “the trap.” Which is this: spending your way into relying on a job. Here’s an example: you graduate college, you buy a new car — mistake. You graduate college and you look to buy a house — mistake. The best thing you can do for yourself is have financial freedom to be allowed to do whatever you want.

And don’t be ashamed to follow your dream. If that dream requires you to not have a car, or to live in your parent’s basement, or whatever it is — you have to look at your long-term goals. For me, my long-term goal was to never work for anyone again. And who knows, my company’s young, maybe I’ll have to go work for someone again. But financial independence, and not falling into the trap of the bullshit American Dream, that’s what allowed me to start CCW. If I got fired with $150,000 dollars in debt because I owned some expensive car, CCW would’ve never happened. I think that’s what happened to a lot of my colleagues. You get into the car industry, and you’re buying really nice cars and swanky places, then all of a sudden you’re fired, and you need to find a new job right away, like, “Holy shit, I’ve got all this debt.” The lie of the American Dream, the “more is better,” is a trap. That trap will really prevent you from doing what you want to do.

You actually interact with fans a lot on social media. You have a very active role, and I don’t see a lot of CEOs putting themselves out into the world like that. How does your personality play into the brand of the company?

It’s funny; it’s not something we anticipated. As a small company, we don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on advertising, so we put in the time ourselves to reach out to people. If nothing else, I think people just appreciate authentic interaction.

There’s a lot of different things I could be doing, that my partners and employees could be doing, that are a lot easier. Starting a motorcycle company is not easy; it’s one of the most daunting things we could’ve chosen to do. So you really have to love what you’re doing. Everyone I’ve hired, everyone who’s involved with the company, genuinely enjoys what they’re doing. I remember obsessing over motorcycles when I was five years old. You know, motorcycles aren’t toasters — I can’t remember what kind of toaster I have in my kitchen, but I remember every motorcycle I’ve ever owned and almost every motorcycle I’ve ever ridden. And I would say the majority of people who ride motorcycles are the same way. It’s a passion purchase; it’s something people love doing. I like going to events and meeting people who own our bikes and hearing their stories. We’re a company that loves what we do, and maybe people just enjoy seeing that a little bit.

Cleveland CycleWerks melds style, affordability, and passion

On that note, how can Daily BR!NK readers contribute to your success?

I’m not going to ask anyone to go out there and buy our products, but just keep us on your radar. If you think what we’re doing is worthwhile, keep an open mind and see where we’re going in the future. I think people who are into bikes will be surprised. And if you think what we’re doing is cool, just spread the word.

You think you know grocery stores: fluorescent lights, chilly aisles of freezer cases, and nearly tasteless produce from around the globe. in.gredients, a new bulk and retail food store opening in Austin, TX, is setting out to change the way Americans shop for and eat their food. Why buy your beer in new bottles when the bottles from last week’s party are languishing in the recycling bin? Why truck in kale from California when it can be grown in the backyard of your neighbor? Our staff writer Meggie O’Dell sat down with Christian Lane, one of the co-founders of in.gredients, to discuss the store’s genesis, volunteer base, green ethics, and more.

Thanks so much for sitting down to talk with me today. I find the whole concept of in.gredients totally fascinating. Whose brainchild was it, and how did it come to be?

I think we’ve had notions of something like this for a while, maybe since our college days. My brother Joseph and I had been wanting to get more into sustainability, as far as business and business models, and we were just hanging out, having a couple of beers and talking about beer. Then we thought to ourselves that a really simple, easy business would be one where we have a bunch of beers on tap, a bunch of wine on tap, and all you do is bring in your growler or your wine bottle and we refill it.

That was very simple, very easy to start, very little capital, but we decided we’d rather have a full offering and actually start thinking about food, and we decided to start exploring the dispensing mechanisms that are available. You know, there’s a whole lot of them already, everything from bulk grains and rice and spices and all that to beer — you know, the beer enthusiasts love the kegs of beer. It seems like there’s a lot of popularity out in California around wine out of a keg, too, so we just started thinking through those things and thinking, yeah, this might be pretty cool. So we kind of increased the scope of our original idea and started just thinking through a business plan.

In October of 2010, Joseph spent a lot more time focused on a business plan and also formulating and putting in some projections based on what we could find and research. And we kind of kept pushing forward and started building out a website and increasing content. Then, in June of 2011, we hit this go or no-go decision. So we decided to do it, and we decided that as part of that we would do an Indiegogo campaign and use social networks, use our blog, and really be very Internet-intense about it, really try to pull in the online community.

So we had a really successful Indiegogo campaign, raised some money there, and it provided a really good kind of test market. We didn’t do any focus groups, and we just kind of used the Web to get feedback. That’s got its downsides, but it’s got a lot of upsides.

The idea kind of snowballed, and people have been really supportive and excited through it. It can be perceived as a long process, but we’re really close to opening now — we’re on the edge.

[note: in.gredients is now open. Find it at 2610 Manor Road, Austin, TX 78722]

So exciting! It must be great getting to see that initial idea finally come to fruition.

Yeah — a lot of our effort is in trying to make things very repeatable, so we’ve not just spent time finding a vendor that does something, but trying to build systems and planning for success as much as we can so that if and when this store does really well, we can hopefully scale [our process to the new stores]. At the end of the day, we won’t know if we can do more than one store. We hope to, so we always want to plan for success so that in the event that it is a hit, we can scale it and grow it.

As you mentioned, a lot of supermarkets have bulk food sales — Whole Foods, another Austin-grown store, comes to mind. How is what in.gredients is doing different?

Well, I think a lot of grocery store or natural food stores had kind of started the way we are, but in their goals of finding organic products and other types of stuff, they started shipping stuff from, like, everywhere. And that’s great, but we’re kind of a greenfield-type situation, where we’re making a pretty strong commitment to limiting packaging and buying as local as possible, and we’re not invested in this whole wide array of products that you’re going to find in larger grocery stores. We’re trying to focus on a subset of all those things and keeping that at the core of what we offer.

in.gredients is zero-waste, package-free, and organic — helping consumers live (and eat) responsibly

Your commitment to being “package-free” brings to mind all sorts of health and practicality considerations. How do you plan to avoid problems in those arenas? What steps are you going to take, or do you not see it as much of a problem?

We’re going to follow the same principles and best practices that restaurants and other grocery stores follow. A lot of these dispensing mechanisms already exist: you can go to a restaurant right now and get food out of a salad bar, or to a grocery store and get food out of an olive bar. All these things really exist; they’re just not all in one place and focused on local and package-free.

There are some products where, by health code, we can’t offer them package-free. Those are potentially hazardous foods — some of the dairy products and things that we just can’t. But we think of our business as a cause-based business, and you don’t fulfill your destination the day you open — you don’t fulfill it within a year or two. So our goal is to reduce packaging in all those areas, as well, over time, and to do so we have to grow to a certain size so we have more economies of scale and maybe more purchasing power. Maybe we can convince vendors to do more returned bottle-type systems like we used to do back in the day. And that goes back to: if we’ve got the bargaining power and the community behind us, we can do this.

I think people also come to the realization of the whole “inconvenient truth” thing — the convenience of discarding things has some pretty inconvenient consequences. Although it’s so easy to just toss something out — “Oh, that was convenient!” — that’s only true until it snowballs into a big problem, which is the path that we’re trying to get away from.

Speaking of discarding waste, we all learned “reduce, reuse, recycle” in school. Can you talk about the concept of “precycling” and how it relates to in.gredients?

Precycling is really a prioritization of “reduce” and “reuse” over “recycle.” The three arrows [in the recycling symbol] that we consider recycling are really “reduce, reuse, and THEN recycle.” Precycling prevents the opportunities for waste entering the home or business in the first place, so we’re emphasizing that, and encouraging people to bring containers. To a large extent, we’re trying to provide solutions. A lot of what we’re doing is just us thinking, “What can I do to reduce waste? What can I do not to have to recycle so much?” Because as good as recycling is, it’s got its own energy costs and those sorts of things. By no means are we against recycling, but there are a lot of things that have far more utility than we give them credit for.

Most of the grocery stores we visit are owned by large conglomerates like Supervalu and Kroger. What challenges have you faced going into this as a solo venture?

It’s like any business — there’s going to be the Big Five or the Big Ten, whether it’s in consulting or groceries or whatever. But there’s a lot of room in any industry, I think, for the little guys. We’re just picking up crumbs in terms of revenue, but those crumbs can be fairly good-sized and be enough to sustain a business — that’s what we’re hoping for. Of course, in business, like in anything, it’s risky, but we think what we’re doing is pretty cool, and we’re having fun doing it.

Writers like Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan talk about how what we put on our plates is one of the most politically potent decisions we can make every day. Do you agree, and, if so, what food politics does in.gredients promote?

You know, we can go buy a bucket of chicken or whatever for nothing — for less than it really costs us as a society, for less than it costs some animal’s sacrifice, for the cost of torture. Right now there’s this whole organic piece, there are a lot of farmers who are following organic practices and sustainable production practices, but they can’t afford the organic label. Or the fact that so much of our food is being subsidized, and what we’re really eating is corn — all that has to do with public policy. So absolutely, what we’re doing in our purchases of food and other things is very much a political thing.

We’ve been paying attention over the past five or six years to the things that are going on, with food activists like Michael Pollan and Alice Waters, and collaborative consumption with Rachel Botsman — what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine. There’s a lot of that. What we’re doing is a collaborative thing — we do have to work with our consumer base, our customers, our friends, and our neighbors to say, “Hey, bring your container — we’ve got a little technology to help you measure the tare weight.”

I think there’s a lot of things going on in food politics, in food justice, the democratization of information — there’s a lot of cool movements going on right now that we’re happy to be part of, and I think it’s a pretty exciting time.

Speaking of grassroots food movements, CSA boxes and farmers’ markets are becoming more and more standard nationwide. Is in.gredients part of this movement, or do you view its mission differently?

Yes — part of, alongside, in cooperation with — all those things. We had plans on being more of a CSA pickup for quite a while. I think logistically that has its challenges, and we’ll see how we can overcome those. We’re also actively engaged with Urban Patchwork. Urban Patchwork is a great organization here in Austin. It’s a network of people’s houses and properties, edible landscapes collectively being a farm. We’re part of the Cherrywood Farm, and our property out front has a garden, and all that produce goes to the CSA, and our hope is that whatever excess of produce they grow, we’ll actually sell at the store. We hope to collaborate more than anything with farmers — small farms, organic farmers, CSAs, the lot.

One difficulty with the locavore and organic movements is that there are those who claim that we couldn’t keep people fed if we only depended on locally produced or organic foodstuffs, so they will remain the purview of the wealthy. Is that true? If so, how can we change that model?

As long as non-organic and GMOs and big corn producers are subsidized, it’s going to be hard. I mean, if I’m down to my last dollar and cent, it’s hard for me to say that I’m going to go get that product that’s on the shelf ten times more expensive or twice as expensive — even a fraction more expensive. But the reality is that you’re talking about subsidized items versus non-subsidized things. There’s a lot of arguments and a lot of research being done by folks a lot smarter than me who say that, yeah, we can feed the world with organic practices. It’s just that it’s hard to compete with the industrialized food manufacturing system. And the reality is, we’re eating rebranded, reconstituted corn — it’s just too cheap.

You’ve already incorporated community into in.gredients through your Indiegogo campaign and volunteers earning credits for when the store eventually opens. Is a radical departure from standard grocery shopping the kind of venture that requires a certain kind of community — is this an Austin or LA or New York kind of thing? Or do you think stores like in.gredients could change communities in which they’re built?

Well, you know, the community piece has been very important to us because it’s a collaborative thing. There is a community of people who really care about the food that they’re eating, really care about farmers — for us, the volunteer thing was really, really humbling. When our Indiegogo campaign launched, people came to us saying that they wanted to help. And we were, like, “Really? We’re not a non-profit, we’re not a co-op…” And they’d say, “Yeah, we know. We want to help.” So we sort of said, “Okay, cool — I guess we’ve got volunteers.”

Like I said, we try to plan for success, so we try to leverage technology to help us. We’ve created a form online to help manage the data for the hundreds of volunteers we have — and we don’t have enough hours to accommodate everyone who wants to be involved. We try to mobilize and encourage them to volunteer with whatever — it doesn’t have to be with us, and we try to incentivize them. They can build up credits to get stuff at the store — because this community is what we’re all about.

Community-wise, we do have a lot of other stuff going on. Shayla works with the schools in the area, teaching them about school gardens and stuff, and I already covered our involvement with Urban Patchwork. Our goal is to be different from anything else, grocery-wise, and we are. This is way different.

The in.gredients team believes in community and collaboration. Image by Patrick Lane Photography

For those of us far from Austin, what small changes can we make in our lives to move toward sustainability?

It’s a big change, but it’s a small change. When I say that, I mean just to be more intentional with what you’re doing. Whether you intend it or not, your actions have consequences, so I would encourage people to live a little more conscientiously, and have greater thought and consciousness about what’s going on and how their lives affect everything around them. Not to sound all New Age, but just doing that will trigger us to think about everything, starting with waste. It will open up your mind to possibilities and your eyes to the problems around you, and then it will open doors into more changes you can work on.

Also, I’m working on this: cook your own meals. Cook at home. You’ll save money because in the life cycle of any given product, in the value-added chain, [by eating out,] you outsource everything. You’ve outsourced cooking the food, and you’ve given up control over what goes into it. You don’t know what you’re eating — probably a lot of salt and sodium, a lot of preservatives, a lot of junk. You’re creating a lot of waste, because all that stuff has to be packaged, shipped, and transported. We’re in the United States — we have an abundance of food all around us, even in places like Chicago. Despite the winters, urban areas like Chicago have great things going on with vertical farms — there’s great stuff going on all over the place. Christopher, our partner, he’s a forager — he goes so far as to get stuff down the street that you don’t even know is there. I think cooking at home is huge — with you, your partner, your children, it strengthens those bonds and communities at large.

We’re all very anxious for in.gredients to succeed and expand, but in the meantime, what can Daily BR!NK readers do to help you toward your goals?

Tell your friends and family in Austin! I think there are things we can all do with movements like this — just get involved. Participate. Just engage.

“How do you get more butts onto bikes?” For the better part of twenty years, Josh Hon has been committed to answering this seemingly simple question through his work as the VP of Marketing and Sales at his father’s company, Dahon, the world’s largest foldable bicycle manufacturer, and most recently with his new venture, Tern. On a mission to change the way the world thinks about urban transportation, Josh and his globally diverse team of cycling enthusiasts began to reimagine how foldable bikes could fit seamlessly into a future where multimodal transportation reigns supreme. Sprinting forward, Tern has already garnered a handful of international design awards in their first year out and is quickly building a following in cities like New York, Berlin, Tokyo, and Taipei. We caught up with Josh shortly after the company celebrated their first anniversary to pick his brain on the future of sustainable transportation.

First off, I hear that some birthday wishes are in order. How does it feel to be the proud parent of a one-year-old company?

Well, it’s pretty exciting. The whole team has been in sprint mode, so now I think we can all kind of take a deep breath, look, and go, “Okay, well, what did we do in the last year?” And when we look back, we’re kind of amazed at what we did. Everybody’s excited. I think everybody knows it was the right direction to go in.

What’s in store for Tern next?

We’re pretty excited because there are a lot of things that we had to cut corners on to get stuff done on time in the first year. Now, in year two, we’re able to really dig in and work on small details.

Actually, we had a product meeting today about this little rubber plug that’s designed for a small hole on our frame joint. This really tiny rubber piece is going to make a lot of our dealers and distributors really happy because it keeps water out; it keeps dirt out; it looks better; and if there are any scratches in that area, it covers them up. Little things like that are things that actually make people really happy — just doing the little details. So yes, we’re kind of excited for what we have for year two.

Tern Bicycles: innovative, stylish, foldable

Now with you being the founder of a bicycle company, I feel I have to ask: How do you get to work?

Well, I drive my Hummer 400 yards to work.

Now, seriously [laughs]. Well, actually, I live across the street from our office, so I walk to work.

How about the rest of your staff?

We’re pretty big on encouraging our staff to ride to work, and if people in the company commit to riding to work, we give them a free bicycle.

A cool twist to the program is that you can commit for a number of days per week. So you can ride one day a week or you can commit all five, and we have bikes that are level 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively. The more days you commit to, the more expensive a bike you can choose; so if you ride every day to work, you can choose our US $3500 bike.

There’s kind of a little loophole, unfortunately. There’s a guy who only lives about 400 yards away, so he rides everyday and he has a $2,000 dollar bike doing a 400 yard commute [laughs].

Foldable bikes have been around for a while and are gaining popularity in space constrained countries like England and Japan. What is Tern doing differently to disrupt this category?

Well, I think we’re not really here to disrupt the category and I think we’re not even really aiming at the folding bike category. The space that we’re looking at is people using bicycles for transportation.

In the US, a lot of the market has been recreational. It’s either mountain bikes or road bikes or bikes for kids to ride on weekends, and a lot less “Day in, day out, I’m riding to work.” So I think what we’re really focusing on is how do you make a bike that’s going to be suitable for riding day in, day out to get your errands done, to go to the supermarket, — these things.

I would say kind of the model that we are looking at as an ideal future is Holland. A huge number of their short trips are all done by bike. Longer trips are done by rail or bus, and there’s a ton of people using folding bikes. Then it’s only really intercity stuff or times where you need to be dressed in a suit when you use a car.

So that is kind of what we’re looking at. We’re just trying to figure out how we get more people living that lifestyle, rather than getting in a car, driving 800 yards to the post office, and then driving back.

How to fold a Tern bike

What will it take to convince more consumers to start choosing convertible bicycles in the US?

I think you’re obviously not going to change the US consumer overnight.

We believe the future of transport is multimodal. We’re not a bunch of hippies walking around barefoot and going, “Cars are evil.” Most of us have cars, but we try and figure out how to use cars a little bit less and more for longer journeys and use bikes for shorter journeys.

With lines like “Forum: Like ancient Rome, but with trolls” sprinkled through your website, I think I developed a little bit of a crush on your brand. Is this cheeky copy reflective of the overall personality of your team?

Well, I’ll tell you about the guy who wrote it. He’s one of our graphic designers and he normally doesn’t talk much. He’s a super quiet guy.

One day, he complained about some of our copywriting. I don’t remember at what point, but we were like, “Well, then do you want to give us a hand?” And he goes, “Okay.” The stuff that he pulls off is pretty ridiculously good, and we loved the tone, so we’ve continued with it.

If you could take anyone in the world on a bike ride, who would it be?

Well, we’re pretty big Apple fans over here, and I think that it would be pretty interesting to pick Tim Cook’s brain. I hear Tim is a cyclist and I find the supply chain job that he’s done with Apple mind-boggling.

Finally, how can Daily BR!NK readers contribute to Tern’s success?

We would encourage Daily BR!NK readers to take a look at cycling for short trips or even longer trips in a multimodal combination. I think they’ll find that they’ll feel a lot better because they’re getting exercise and reducing their carbon footprint. And of course, I would say, “Take a look at our bikes because we think our bikes are pretty good.”

Publications like Flavorwire, The Rumpus, and The Millions have all identified Lauren Cerand as a need-to-know freelance literary publicist, citing both her taste in books and her ability to pick successes without sacrificing this great taste. At 33, Lauren says she’s just learning how to say “no” and master the art of living in New York City like a teenager. Here she sits down with Daily BR!NK writer Lauren Rigney over a plate of homemade scones to share advice on life, work, and how to throw an epic dinner party.

How do you come across new projects and choose what you want to take on?

All my work comes from referrals. My clients have to be extremely motivated, and so the first step in that motivation is that they have to seek me out. The second thing is, I choose the projects that I think I can make the biggest impact on.

Would you describe yourself as a one-woman show?

In a way it’s like I can easily employ two people just to do my scheduling, but then I would have to lower my standards in order to cover the bills. I like to work alone.

When you first moved to New York, how did you meet people and make your connections?

Well, when I first graduated, I moved back to Maryland and I moved back with my dad in the suburbs. I had no friends. I would drink a bottle of wine and talk to my dog.

That’s too funny.

One night I was watching Bridget Jones’s Diary, and I was like, “This woman is such an idiot. If she can have friends, I can have friends.” And she has this horrible dinner party that she just botches. And I was just like, “I’m going to have a party and it’s going to be the best party.”

So I made a list of everyone I wanted to be friends with — most of whom I had never even met. I hired my sister and her friends to serve drinks and food. And I spent an entire week’s wages on Calla lilies flown in from South America. It was amazing. And after that I had a million friends and I got invited everywhere.

And then you moved to New York…

It’s really hard to come here — they make it really hard and daunting. But then once you move here you can live like a teenager. You can have a roommate until you’re 40. You can take a cab home at night because you got too drunk. You can always find a new bar. You don’t ever really have to grow up here.

I’m 33 now, and people start talking about leaving New York. I just think, “But who’s going to deliver your groceries?”

Was there a turning point in your career?

It takes about five years to make money off of freelancing. It takes five years to not wonder how you’re going to pay your rent. You have to say, “I’m doing this with my life because this is what I want to do with my life.”

Lauren Cerand speaks on inspiration and the publishing industry at BookExpo America 2009

This is a vague question. You said you’re 33; how do you think your perspective is different now from ten years ago?

Your sense of time changes so much. I would say that ten years later I have developed the kind of inner sensibility that allows me to be my own guide in this world.

The best thing about your thirties is that you’re able to say “No.” It’s like being two again. So someone will ask you out to drinks and you’re like, “No.” In your thirties, you realize that you can and will and are absolutely going to die, but life becomes a little bit more beautiful because you know that. In your twenties, there’s always someone you can lean on. In your thirties, you realize that person is yourself.

If you could speak to your 23-year-old self and tell her a little nugget of wisdom, what would you say?

I would say to her, “You don’t have to be so hard on yourself. You don’t have to do anything.”

Could you walk me through your ideal dinner party?

If you’re the host, I always say to people, “Drinks at 7, dinner at 8.” The thing is, you’re always going to be cooking right up to the moment before you sit down, so you have to take that pressure off yourself. It’s not about the food — it’s about the people and the spirit of the gathering. I usually have one drink I’m making and I make a big pitcher of it. I’ve seen good people fall prey to their own ambitions and try to make too many things.

So once you’ve done that, it’s really about who’s coming. I always encourage people to invite the people you want to get to know better.

What can the Daily BR!NK community do to support you?

Use your influence to give someone an opportunity today, because I don’t really need anything.

You might have noticed that, throughout this special auto-themed week, we’ve featured quite a few academics: professors, researchers, scientists… The reason for that, simply being, is that the greatest innovations in the transportation industry have indeed started in a lab. A team of MIT scientists (led by Anthony Siskey and composed of Christopher Brigham, Claudia Gai, and Jingnan Lu) might have made one of the most exciting discoveries yet regarding energy independence, by convincing a soil bacterium — one of the smallest and most abundant microbes in the soil — to turn carbon into gasoline. That’s right: the fuel for your car could soon come from a simple soil bacteria called Ralstonia eutropha.

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Oh, and if you’re an innovator and think you’ve got an idea — like Chris’s and Jignan’s — that will change the world, check out NissanInnovationGarage.com; they’re providing two outstanding innovators with $50,000 to jumpstart their ideas. (Plus a new Altima. Plus a Kickstarter campaign.) It could be you, so don’t hesitate! You might be our next BR!NKer.

First off, congratulations on the publication of your article in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology. How has the reception been?

CB: Very, very good. I’m a little surprised, to be quite honest! I think it goes to show that biofuels should not be underestimated.

Before going deeper inside your current research, what is the ultimate goal you and your team are trying to accomplish within the world of transportation?

CB: We want to make biofuels. Something that will take the place of and/or augment the petroleum-based fuels that we’re using now, and to do so as inexpensively as possible.

And specifically?

CB: We want to look at an inexpensive carbon stream with which to produce our biofuels using our biocatalyst, which is the Ralstonia eutropha bacterium. Luckily, it is a soil bacteria that can use all sorts of different carbon compounds as food, including carbon dioxide. All you really need to do is concentrate CO2 from a steel plant, coal fire plant, or any of these inexpensive sources of carbon. From there, we can grow the cell autotrophically in the presence of carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen — and produce isobutanol, which is our biofuel of choice currently.

Ralstonia eutropha bacteria are being used to produce biofuel. Image courtesy of Christopher Brigham

Are there other sources of carbon that can be used?

CB: You can get carbon from a variety of sources. Obviously, sugars come from things like carrots, beets, or other food products, such as sugar cane. You can use lipids, like fatty acids, from plants (such as seeds) or animals.

And a lot of this is waste, right?

CB: Waste, a lot of waste. And chemistry that we make from petroleum or other sources. All will contain carbon.

Jingnan, what is the process in obtaining isobutanol? How are you able to get it out of the cell?

JL: Ralstonia, as a bacterium, can secrete this isobutanol that is made intracellularly. We don’t actually need to break the cell or destroy the cell wall to obtain the isobutanol. This actually makes the isobutanol process much easier, because it will just naturally secrete it into the surrounding media and it can then be extracted out.

CB: Think of the cell as a body. It’s ejecting from the body of the cell.

So it’s an organic process; it’s doing this of its own accord, and you’re able to harness this natural reaction?

CB: Exactly.

Which means you didn’t have to use any sort of transport system?

CB: Correct.

Do you think it will be possible — and I’m clearly trying to look into the future here — do you think it will ever be possible to turn carbon dioxide into fuel?

CB: Yes, we believe that is possible.

You’ve been funded by the US Department of Energy. Do you believe that the government is now putting a lot of resources into gasoline stand-ins?

CB: Yes. Currently there is a lot of interest in that. And I think that places like the Navy, other armed services, are interested in what’s going on. I think, especially, that the Secretary of the Navy’s been very forward-thinking in terms of biofuels and operation of their vehicles and vessels.

What are some of the next steps you plan to accomplish in the next year?

JL: First, we want to make this process more efficient. That’s an immediate goal. And then, secondly, it’s to be able to use the waste carbon and scale up this process — to take large amounts of carbon dioxide and make it into large quantities of isobutanol.

CB: Right now, we’re making grams of isobutanol, but we really want to be making kilograms. We can also envision waste streams to biofuel. Not just carbon dioxide, though it should play a role in it. Hopefully, by providing that inexpensive carbon that we need. The removal of isobutanol from the culture, we’re part of the way there, if not most of the way there. We’re hopeful. We’re cautiously hopeful on the project.

Is the end goal, at least in the first stage, to have a substitute or something that works with fuel?

CB: That’s what’s going on with ethanol right now — they say it’s an additive. I think a realistic short-term goal is using isobutanol as a fuel additive. Certainly, I know they run race cars in the American Le Mans Series on 100% isobutanol. I think that’s produced by yeast. But the infrastructure’s already there for us. I think isobutanol can end up being a good drop-in fuel, meaning we don’t have to tweak anything in terms of the vehicle, the distribution system.

It will be interesting to see how private companies react to this advancement. I’m guessing there might be some very happy people, and some people who won’t be as pleased, right?

CB: Probably. We’ll have to see how that shakes down. I know that petroleum companies like BP — I mean, dare I say that after what happened recently — they’re interested in the biofuel space as well. Whether their interest is genuine or not, I can’t speak to. But at least they’re casting an eye in that direction.

Jingnan, you’re currently a graduate student at MIT. What are you studying, specifically?

JL: This is actually part of my thesis work. In the past, I was actually a chemistry graduate student, but I got so interested in this project that I joined this lab (in the department of biology).

What kind of car do you both drive?

CB: I drive a hybrid.

That doesn’t surprise me! [laughter]

JL: My mom bought my car [laughs], but if I had a choice I would go with a hybrid, as well.

What would you like people to take out of your research, and this interview?

CB: More awareness that there are alternative methods that we can employ to achieve a common goal. Everyone wants to drive their cars. There are many ways we can become independent in terms of fuel and save money at the same time. One of the main things I want to get across is that this is all happening as a result of academic research. People need to realize the importance of academic scientific research and the amazing things that can come out of it. Understanding this goes a long way to the next innovators. The academics of today are the innovators of tomorrow.

Share your everyday innovation and you could win a $50,000 grant and the most innovative Nissan Altima ever. We’ll even unleash the winning ideas on Kickstarter. After that, anything can happen. Get started by entering your idea now at NissanInnovationGarage.com

Chris Gerdes is passionate about what he does, and what he does will knock your socks off. As the Director of the Center of Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS), he spends a good chunk of his time around race cars… race cars with no one at the wheel. Yes, you heard us right. Gerdes’ research centers on autonomous vehicles — unmanned machines that drive themselves. The goal? To create safer, forward-thinking automobiles that will change the way we think about transportation. Take a look at some of the videos; we think he’s well on his way to meeting that goal.

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Oh, and if you’re an innovator and think you’ve got an idea — like Chris’s — that will change the world, check out NissanInnovationGarage.com; they’re providing two outstanding innovators with $50,000 to jumpstart their ideas. (Plus a new Altima. Plus a Kickstarter campaign.) It could be you, so don’t hesitate! You might be our next BR!NKer.

First of all, can you explain to me how autonomous cars — like Google’s self-driving car and the cars you’re currently creating — work? I’m ashamed to say that I don’t know!

Self-driving cars basically need three things — sensors for understanding their surroundings, algorithms for deciding what actions to take based on the sensor measurements, and actuators that can steer, brake, and drive the car to perform those actions. The number and type of sensors used vary according to the driving task. With Shelley, our autonomous Audi TTS that we use for racing, a lot of our focus is on the car’s motion itself. Our primary sensor suite is a combination of a two-antenna differential GPS system, accelerometers, and gyroscopes that tell us exactly what the car is doing. We can identify its location on the track to within a couple of centimeters and measure how much the tires are slipping relative to the road, which tells us how much of the tire’s capabilities we are using. Cars designed to operate in traffic use additional systems like radar and scanning lasers to map out the location of obstacles in the world.

With all of this information available, the next step is to decide what to do with it. That’s really the heart of the research in this field — developing rules or algorithms that can process all of the sensor data and translate it into a desired path and actuator commands for the car. There are a lot of different approaches to this and our lab focuses on using as much information about the underlying physics as possible. This enables us to quickly port solutions to different cars and handle changing conditions easily.

Finally, there is the need for actuators that can control the vehicle. With modern cars, this is by far the easiest part, since most come from the factory with the ability to do these things. Virtually all new cars have electronic throttle and brake control and can accelerate and decelerate in response to computer commands; cars with electric power steering can also steer themselves based on a simple message sent to the steering control unit.

Shelley, the self-driving Audi TTS

I would describe what you’re doing, in layman’s terms, as “building driverless race cars.” What is the goal of your current research with the Center for Automotive Research (CARS) at Stanford? (Besides creating something really, really cool.) It looks like there are two facets: instrumenting the cars, and instrumenting race car drivers themselves.

At the end of the day, our goal is to develop innovations that can lead to safer cars on the road. When you look at conditions where accidents — and particularly fatal accidents — occur, a lot of times you find the car stretched to the limits of what it can do. The car spins due to a lack of grip on any icy road or slides off the road because it was going too fast to make a turn. These are the same sort of situations that race car drivers handle every second they are on the track.

Working with professional race car drivers, you quickly realize how good humans can be at taking the car to its absolute physical limits. There simply isn’t that much room for improvement in the lap times they produce. We want to understand how they are doing this by measuring their actions on the track and even their brain waves as they are driving. This tells us which of their skills come from making good decisions and which are reflexes built up over years.

We are also trying to encode some of their tremendous abilities in robotic cars by developing algorithms that can achieve the same performance as humans on the track. The objective isn’t to create robotic racing, but to study racing as a way of getting insight into obstacle avoidance and other challenges the car sees in everyday driving. Since most of us in the group love to drive, we’re not sure whether the best solution is for the driver to simply be a passenger in an autonomous car or whether a better balance exists. Given the wonderful power of the human brain and how well an engaged human driver performs, it seems a great loss to disconnect people entirely. Finding a way for the driver and machine to work cooperatively in accident situations is a major research challenge for us.

When BR!NK first contacted you for this interview, you mentioned you had to be up early the next morning to be on the track. What is an average workday like for you? I’m imagining engineers sitting with computers on the side of the track, with an occasional explosion occurring in the background.

Well, we certainly go to great lengths to minimize the number of explosions involved with our testing, although revving engines and screeching tires are very common. Your image of engineers sitting with computers by the side of the track is spot on, though. There’s a lot of time looking at data, punctuated by moments of intense drama during the actual testing.

When we are instrumenting human drivers during a race, there is a flurry of activity in the paddock right before the car heads to the pits. We have just a few minutes usually to check out all of the sensors, wire up the driver, and get the cameras going before the race begins. After that, we get to be spectators for a while and cheer on our drivers (while occasionally counting the number of antennas on the roof to make sure it hasn’t changed).

When we run Shelley, our autonomous car, we go through a countdown procedure to make sure all systems are working and our spotters around the track are in radio contact and able to stop the car in the event of an emergency. We then send the car out to lap, collectively holding our breath that everything goes as planned. When the car returns to the pits, there is a moment of celebration (particularly when our lap time drops), and then it is back to the computers to come up with the next thing to try.

I spend far more days on campus than I do on the track, so track days aren’t really typical. On campus, I really enjoy teaching, particularly when students get those “aha!” moments understanding how things work. Lectures are fun, but laboratory experiences such as dissecting a transmission or racing around the go kart track are even better. Other days, the administrative tasks really pile up, and I dream of ducking out the window of my office like Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade and heading off to the track.

Shelley in action. No explosions, but plenty of screeching tires.

You mention in your TEDx talk that the autonomous race car can operate equally well in all weather conditions — sunshine, wind, and rain. As I driver, I know I have to change my driving depending on external factors — how can an autonomous car do that?

Adapting to changing conditions is extremely important. The car is connected to the road through the friction in four little patches about the size of your hand. When these patches get wet or icy, the available friction there drops, placing severe limits on how fast the car can corner or brake. Like the best race car drivers, our autonomous car must keep looking several turns ahead, calculating how fast it can take each turn and then figuring out the right point to brake. The correct speed and brake point depend on the friction available, so the car needs to be able to estimate this. Race car drivers get a lot of this information by feeling the road through the steering wheel. We’ve developed similar techniques in the lab to calculate the friction, and hence the car’s limits, by using measurements from the electric power steering system. The best part is that we can sense the limits of the tires when we are only halfway to them, giving us plenty of time to make corrections.

Chris Gerdes: The future race car — 150 mph and no driver

You have both a PhD in mechanical engineering and a passion for racing, so it seems like you’ve ended up in the right place. How did you come to do what you’re doing now? Can you give me a bit of your backstory?

In my undergraduate engineering classes at UPenn, I was fascinated by dynamics and control — the idea that you could describe how something moves mathematically and then calculate how to make it move differently. Wanting to learn more, I got a teaching fellowship to stay for my Masters and discovered in the process that I loved teaching even more than dynamics. I applied to PhD programs and got a call one evening from Prof. Karl Hedrick at Berkeley, who said he was looking for a “kick the tires sort of guy” for a project on automated highways. Head to California and get a PhD working with cars? Perfect.

Berkeley was fantastic for me. I minored in math to boost those skills and worked on algorithms for allowing cars to drive safely about two meters away from each other on the highway. To find a good test site, we had to head to San Diego, giving me my first taste of field testing. The project went very well and we pulled off the experiments successfully, but since I had never worked in industry, I was left wondering if what I knew applied to that elusive “real world”.

So I took a job with Daimler-Benz, the parent company of Mercedes and Freightliner heavy trucks, which took me to Germany and Portland, Oregon. I developed models of heavy trucks that could be used to test safety and performance early in the design process and helped engineers diagnose a number of strange dynamic problems. We got to work with everything from school buses to airport rescue vehicles, in simulation and on the track. I loved the work but missed the teaching that had motivated me to get the PhD in the first place.

One day a friend encouraged me to apply for a faculty opening at his university. Since I loved my job and had nothing to lose, I sat down one weekend and wrote a description of what I would do if I could do anything. I sent this off to a few universities (without much regard for exactly what the advertisements said they wanted) and Stanford took me up on the offer. I’ve been here since 1998 and feel I still learn new things from my students and faculty colleagues every day.

Out of curiosity… many individuals involved in racing are professed adrenaline junkies. Are you?

I actually associate racing more with intense focus than I do with adrenaline. I generally find myself pretty calm behind the wheel, but also totally present in the moment. The rest of the world fades away and it is just me, feeling the limits of the car or kart as I guide it around the track, trying to figure out the best way to take the position from the person in front of me. For me, the total engagement associated with racing is a way to enter the flow state. That’s pretty addictive even without the adrenaline.

What’s one problem you’re currently experiencing or an issue you’ve had to overcome during your research?

Probably the greatest challenge for us is keeping everybody on the same page. We work very closely with automotive companies, since we want our work to influence future generations of cars. Our greatest results seem to come when we get the students in our lab together with researchers in industry to develop new solutions to important problems. That’s a challenge, though, since everyone involved has different goals — universities want to generate new knowledge and publications, students are engaged in the work as part of their education, and companies are hoping to use the results as a springboard for future products. Sometimes it seems that it is harder to figure out what stickers need to go on the car than it is to do the actual research. We are fortunate that we have several industry partners with whom we have worked for years that are committed to working through these differences with us.

It seems that the future of the autonomous car is finally here, or on the cusp of here. Make a prediction for 2040. What can the next generation expect from the auto industry?

I think that by today’s standards, the cars of 2040 will look shockingly lightweight. With the ability to actively avoid accidents, either autonomously or in cooperation with the driver, car crashes will become extremely rare events. Since there is no longer a need to move all of that steel around, cars will use only a small fraction of the energy consumed today. And they will make good use of that energy — with such light weight, acceleration and handling will be excellent!

Where could I find you on a non-work day? Or rather, what inspires you — day-to-day — besides your career?

If I’m not working, I am usually hanging out with my wife, our two boys, and Sheila the Australian Shepherd. You’ll find us throwing Frisbees for the dog, out on a hike, doing projects with Cub Scouts, or continuing on our quest for the ultimate surround sound experience for family movie night.

Finally, do you have any advice for our readers? Are you looking for anything in particular right now?

In terms of advice…

I always ask my students, “Is this the coolest thing that we could be doing?” Life is short, and I think that as researchers, it is important that we are always very intentional about the problems we choose to work on.

In terms of what I am looking for…

Like anyone who races, I am always looking for ways to shave a few tenths off of our lap times!

Share your everyday innovation and you could win a $50,000 grant and the most innovative Nissan Altima ever. We’ll even unleash the winning ideas on Kickstarter. After that, anything can happen. Get started by entering your idea now at NissanInnovationGarage.com

If you’ve ever had to purchase a car, then you know that your options are limitless: regular or hybrid, compact or full-size, convertible, SUV, minivan… Unfortunately, wheelchair-bound individuals do not have the luxury of choosing an auto because there is simply no market catered directly to them. Stacy Zoern, an author-turned-attorney-turned-entrepreneur, was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy when she was two. While Stacy quickly knew that spending her life in a wheelchair was never going to stop her from achieving her dreams, she found herself limited by a lack of proper (and affordable) vehicles. That’s when she decided to bring one to the market herself.

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Oh, and if you’re an innovator and think you’ve got an idea — like Stacy’s — that will change the world, check out NissanInnovationGarage.com; they’re providing two outstanding innovators with $50,000 to jumpstart their ideas. (Plus a new Altima. Plus a Kickstarter campaign.) It could be you, so don’t hesitate! You might be our next BR!NKer.

First off, I have to admit that, as someone who knew nothing about transportation for wheelchair users, I was blown away by how little had been done so far.

I know! There are 3.3 million wheelchair users in America, and no simple way for them to drive a car.

How did you do it?

When I was 19, I started driving a modified van to accommodate my wheelchair. The van cost $30,000, and the modifications cost about $50,000. I was paying an outrageous amount of money and never even felt safe on the freeway going 70 mph. Eventually, my solution after graduating from law school was to find a job downtown and live there so as to make things more convenient. This came with its own set of limitations: I was basically stuck in a ten-block radius, got bored, and would be limited by things like rain.

Which is terrible, especially considering how great of a city Austin is.

Exactly! So I looked around and came across this organization in Budapest, Hungary, that had created a car called the Kenguru which was designed to be operated by a wheelchair driver. It was electric, went 25 mph, could be driven for 60 miles, and they had just finished developing it.

The latest incarnation of the Kenguru

Were you approaching them as a consumer or as a potential business partner?

Initially, definitely as a consumer. Unfortunately, around that time, the economy crashed, and they could not get the bank loan needed to further manufacture it. I decided to bring the company over to the United States and incorporated Community Cars in mid-2010.

Let’s get technical. How does the Kenguru work, exactly?

It’s very simple: you first push a button in order to activate the raising of the hatchback and the lowering of the ramp, which allows you to roll in your wheelchair. Then, once you’re inside, everything is operated with a handlebar. It’s 100% electric and battery operated. It has a range of 60 miles and a top speed of 25 mph. New models are planned every year for the next four years. The two main innovations we are looking at are the ability to add another seat and being able to control the car with a joystick so people like me can drive!

The Kenguru in action

So you’ve never driven it?

Never! [laughs] The Kenguru has handlebars, which I can’t control since I have limited upper body strength. Having a joystick or a steering wheel would make all the difference. Also, I can’t even fit my wheelchair inside the Kenguru right now! Ask me again in two years.

In addition to the second model, what are some hopes for the future?

I’d eventually like to also have a separate 501(c)(3) that will assist people in purchasing mobility devices. I don’t ever want mobility to be a barrier.

Now I have to ask: did you have any interest in the auto industry prior to doing this?

Not at all! [laughs] I had done many things before getting involved with Community Cars: I even wrote a memoir called “I Like to Run Too” when I was twenty, which took me six years to get published and talks about my disability. With the Kenguru, I just saw an opportunity to solve a problem that had been limiting me — and millions of other people — in my professional and social life.

How can our readers contribute to your success?

Two important ways to help. First, we are currently crowdfunding on RocketHub to build a Kenguru that includes a joystick and can fit a power wheelchair. There are 10 days left, and any amount helps. Second, spread the word if you happen to know any investors or contacts that might be interested in the Kenguru. You know, every time an article comes out about our work, we get emails from individuals all over the world asking for availability. I just hope that we are able to provide them with the vehicle that they need.

Share your everyday innovation and you could win a $50,000 grant and the most innovative Nissan Altima ever. We’ll even unleash the winning ideas on Kickstarter. After that, anything can happen. Get started by entering your idea now at NissanInnovationGarage.com

The electric vehicle already exists, so let’s think a little bigger. Would it be possible for an electric vehicle to charge as it’s driving? In other words, would it be possible for an electric vehicle to have no need for a battery on board? Takashi Ohira and seven researchers at the Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan think so. In fact, their research (only twenty months in) has already proven this fantasy will soon become a reality for the auto industry. Their idea relies on transmitting an electric current to the tires from a charging system placed under the road, and it’s going to redefine everything we previously thought possible.

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Oh, and if you’re an innovator and think you’ve got an idea — like Takashi’s — that will change the world, check out NissanInnovationGarage.com; they’re providing two outstanding innovators with $50,000 to jumpstart their ideas. (Plus a new Altima. Plus a Kickstarter campaign.) It could be you, so don’t hesitate! You might be our next BR!NKer.

The next phase of research for the development of the electric car is finding a way for the vehicle to charge while driving. That seems to be exactly what you’re doing with the Electric Vehicle on Electrified Roadway (EVER) project. What is the goal of your research?

The goal of our research is to make a four-seater EV run without battery on-board.

The success you’ve had already is exciting. Can you explain what you’ve accomplished? And how were you able to produce more power than others who had used your same technique before?

We have accomplished the world’s first experiment on transmitting electric current through wheels, even rubber tires. Nobody on earth has used the same technique before.

What are the implications of this discovery? What does it mean for the future of this research and for electric cars?

The accomplishment implies that EVs can be powered while they are running. This is analogous to electric trams or trains. It means a drastic extension of an EV’s cruising range.

I read that the power transfer you’ve created would have to be scaled 100 times to power an actual engine. What is the next step towards harnessing this amount of power? And what is the next hurdle to overcome?

Exactly, it has to. The next step is to prototype a high-power generator and rectifier to confirm how the system performs in scaling. The next hurdle depends on what is found in the high-power experiment.

Can you tell me a bit about your background? What prompted you to pursue the career you have now?

In my childhood, I felt vehicles were consuming much more energy than essentially necessary. Every time I saw a tank truck carrying gasoline to a gas station, I thought that these trucks consume such a large amount of gasoline to drive themselves — heavier than their payloads.

Is there something about your work that really makes you excited? Perhaps contributing to the progression of technology, or the promise of positive environmental impact?

Yes, there is. More than 200,000,000 tons of CO2 are currently expelled a year from vehicles only in Japan, for instance. We have a dream to replace all the gasoline engines with EVs, and save our planet from an irreparable crisis.

Where do you think the automotive industry will be in 2040? Can you make a guess at the type of innovation that will occur, and what it will look like for drivers everywhere?

We never make plans that far ahead. We have to make our dream come true in five to ten years.

If there was one other worldwide problem (technological or otherwise) that you would like to try to fix in the future, what would it be?

We are concentrating all our energy into the current project.

Is there anything you would like to tell our readers?

Imagine there is no CO2 exhaust. Imagine there is no NOx. No global warming, either. Imagine all the vehicles, running in serenity. You may say I am a dreamer. But I am not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. The world will be green.

Share your everyday innovation and you could win a $50,000 grant and the most innovative Nissan Altima ever. We’ll even unleash the winning ideas on Kickstarter. After that, anything can happen. Get started by entering your idea now at NissanInnovationGarage.com

This is our first interview during our special, Nissan-fueled Auto Innovation Week at Daily BR!NK, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to start off with Jessica Scorpio. Founder and Director of Marketing of Getaround, Jessica has created more than just a brilliantly-executed car sharing company; she’s sparked a paradigm shift in the world of transportation. The idea is simple: you only use your car for a small chunk of the day, so why not rent it out when you don’t need it? Getaround has created an extensive peer-to-peer network that will make you think twice about the ease (and future) of shared transportation.

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Oh, and if you’re an innovator and think you’ve got an idea — like Jessica’s — that will change the world, check out NissanInnovationGarage.com; they’re providing two outstanding innovators with $50,000 to jumpstart their ideas. (Plus a new Altima. Plus a Kickstarter campaign.) It could be you, so don’t hesitate! You might be our next BR!NKer.

Getaround was conceived during your time at Singularity University, which might be the most convincing argument I’ve ever heard for attending graduate school! What various elements triggered the idea for a car renting program?

Three years ago at Singularity University, we were challenged by Larry Page to solve a problem that would positively impact one billion people in the next ten years. Looking at the future of transportation, we realized our current model is unsustainable.

There are currently one billion cars in the world, each one sitting idle 22 hours every day. We decided to focus all of our efforts to solve the problem we call “car overpopulation.” Instead of adding more cars to our streets, we decided to maximize the cars already available — Getaround was born.

Let’s get a couple of technical questions out of the way. What are my options to enable someone to access my car? Also, are there any restrictions in terms of car models?

Getaround offers two convenient ways for owners to grant access to their car. These choices give owners control over who drives their car and when, while ensuring renters have a great experience each time they rent.

The first option is through the in-house built Getaround Carkit — a small piece of technology that allows renters to easily unlock a car using their smartphone. The Carkit is equipped with GPS technology, usage tracking features, and advanced security protection — making car sharing easy and safe for owners and renters. Once a rental is accepted, renters can locate and unlock their car from the Getaround iPhone app. The Carkit works with most cars.

Getaround’s innovative and interactive Carkit allows users to unlock their rides via smartphone

Alternatively, owners can meet renters in person to hand off the keys. Most owners start sharing on Getaround with this method, as they enjoy meeting the renters.

The inevitable insurance question: How does the Getaround insurance affect your own car insurance, and how does the Getaround insurance work?

Getaround owners and renters are insured by Getaround’s insurance agency, Berkshire Hathaway. From day one, we’ve taken insurance very seriously, because we want to make sure both our owners and renters feel protected. While the average U.S. driver has $100,000 in insurance, Getaround offers $1 million for owners and renters.

We have also worked to pass laws in several states clarifying the implications of car sharing on personal insurance policies. The legislation makes it clear that, when a car owner is participating in peer-to-peer car sharing, their personal insurance will never be affected.

It seems like companies like Getaround (and now Getaway) or Airbnb are generating paradigm shifts in society. In addition to convenience, is there a vision and a philosophy that is associated with your company?

Absolutely. Getaround’s mission is to empower people everywhere to car share — ultimately reducing the number of cars on the planet.

We’re excited about the recent rise of the Sharing Economy — people are clearly starting to think differently about the things they own and how to effectively access the goods and services around them.

In the early days of Getaround, did you find yourself and your team having a lot of convincing to do for skeptical individuals? What would you tell them, and how did you go about getting those first hundred cars onto the site?

One of the things I love about Getaround is the “aha” moment people have when we explain the concept. Before we even launched, we worked for over a year securing insurance and passing legislation to make sure our users felt safe using the service.

When we officially launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2011, the response was overwhelming. We received 1,600 car sign-ups in the 24 hours after our first presentation. Today, we have over 10,000 cars owners signed up across the country.

Jessica presents at TechCrunch Disrupt

This special themed week at Daily BR!NK is all about individuals revolutionizing the auto industry in their own ways. How cognizant were you of the industry prior to working in it, and what do you think will be the biggest change in upcoming years in terms of transportation?

Before launching Getaround, I had never worked in the transportation industry, but having never owned a car, I was very familiar with the challenges surrounding personal mobility.

Being a part of this industry today is incredibly exciting. The space is changing every day and, as an industry, we’re on the verge of some huge innovations — connected cars, autonomous vehicles, and real-time ride sharing, just to name a few.

Personally, I think our biggest challenge in the upcoming years will be shifting people’s attitudes about car ownership and personal mobility. The old mentality of “one car, one driver” is changing, but it won’t happen overnight.

You recently announced a $13.9 million Series A funding. What are you and your team intending on using the funds for?

With this funding, we’re going to be working on expanding into new markets across the nation, forging key partnerships to drive adoption, and continuing to develop and improve our product and technology.

Your favorite type of car to drive?

Tesla Roadster or BMW 3 Series (stick shift).

Your go-to song to drive to?

“I Get Around,” by The Beach Boys.

Second-to-last question. San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, and Austin. Which cities can we look forward to seeing Getaround expand to next?

We do have plans to expand very soon — stay tuned!

How can our readers help you, and how can you help them?

Sign up to share your car! Not only will you earn some extra money, but you’ll help people in your neighborhood who don’t own cars but need one from time to time. If you don’t own a car, check out the cars near you for rent on Getaround. If you’re interested in joining the team, we’re also hiring! Apply at jobs.getaround.com.

Share your everyday innovation and you could win a $50,000 grant and the most innovative Nissan Altima ever. We’ll even unleash the winning ideas on Kickstarter. After that, anything can happen. Get started by entering your idea now at NissanInnovationGarage.com

Robots aren’t just for science fiction anymore — they build our cars, vacuum our floors, and even help surgeons operate. They also fight our wars: unmanned military drones have proven to be one of the most controversial elements of recent U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But can robots learn to understand, not just follow, orders? MIT researchers Yale Song and David Demirdjian think so. They’re developing software that will help robotic aircraft recognize the hand and arm signals of landing crews, enabling them to land planes on moving targets without a pilot.

So, first off, I want to say that your project sounds pretty amazingly space-age: robots, drones… can you explain the basic way your software works and what it does?

David: Our system is built to recognize specific arm and hand gestures. The particular application we developed allows a flight director to control a drone using hand signals and safely guide it through the tarmac. The gesture recognition software is divided into two modules. The first module detects the user, fitting a human model to the 3-dimensional input. The second module recognizes gestures by analyzing the shape and movements of the human model.

Some people might not be familiar with unmanned drones as part of military strategy. What are the unmanned drones used for, and what advantages do they have over piloted planes?

David: Unmanned drones have become a critical asset in modern warfare. They are generally used to fly over hostile areas to collect data using video and infrared cameras, and radar. For instance, the data is used by military operators to localize and identify the enemy’s activity. The fact drones are unmanned saves lives. Before drones were introduced, reconnaissance missions were given to actual pilots, unfortunately resulting in occasional casualties. Drones are also much cheaper to make and operate than piloted aircraft.

How did this project get started? Were you approached by the military, or was this just something you thought would be cool and the brass agreed?

Yale: The project is funded by the Office of Naval Research.

David: I have always been fascinated with creating ways for humans to interact with machines. I have built human-tracking and gesture-based human-machine interaction systems for over 10 years now. When Yale told me about this opportunity, I jumped on the chance to collaborate with him and Professor Davis.

A lot of our readers are probably familiar with the X-Box 360′s similar movement-recognition system. How is this different?

Yale: The X-Box 360 system performs full body tracking, but not gesture recognition. An easy analogy: it knows you are waving your arm left and right, but it doesn’t know you are saying goodbye. Also, the X-Box 360 system does not estimate hand shapes, so it cannot distinguish thumb up and down.

How do you test the accuracy of the software? What have the test results been?
 

Yale: Me and my colleagues at MIT went to the naval training station down in Pensacola, Florida, to learn the aircraft-handling gestures in a realistic setting. After coming back to MIT, we recruited 20 people in the institution and taught them how to perform the gestures, accounting the real world factors such as fatigue effect and abbreviation. Each person performed each of the 24 gestures 20 times, giving us 400 sample points per gesture. To test the accuracy of our system, we split the entire dataset so that the test split contains data samples from the first five volunteers, the validation split contains the next five volunteers, and the remaining ten volunteers for the training split. To date, the recognition accuracy on the test split was 75.37%; for the validation split it was 86.35%.

How will you improve on the system before it gets put into use?

David: Before it gets deployed, the system performance would have to be improved to guarantee its safe use. Since the drone movements on the tarmac are driven by recognized gestures, it is crucial that our system be near error-free. In addition to technological improvements to human tracking and gesture recognition algorithms, a complete system would require the development of autonomous navigation. This would provide enough safeguards for the deployment of our system in areas where soldiers are present.

Yale: Using contextual information could help improving the accuracy significantly. Also, to ensure that the interaction is natural, we need an appropriate feedback mechanism from the system to humans in order. For example, the system should could say to deck handlers, “I didn’t get it, could you do it again?” in a natural way.

What do you think could be some other applications for the software? Will it have civilian as well as military utility?

David: The applications for technology like ours are endless and span everything from military to civilian use. Gestures and speech are central to human communication and therefore create a natural way to communicate with computer systems. Interfaces based on gestures and speech seem to be the best choice because they are intuitive and could be used across different systems. “Living room” devices such as video gaming consoles and TVs have already integrated this technology. The next step is the ubiquitous home interface. Imagine pointing at any device in your house and activating it using spoken commands; lights, heater, blinds, stove, etc.

I’m sure you must have done a lot of work in programming and robotics up to now — can you talk about some of your other projects? What else are you working on now…if it’s not Top Secret!

Yale: My work concentrates on probabilistic modeling of multimodal human behavior. When humans communicate with each other, we make use of all sorts of modality — facial expression, speech, arm and hand gestures, etc. My goal is to build robust and efficient computational models that could understand complex human behavior in a probabilistic setting.

David: As project leader at Vecna Technologies, a Cambridge-based company, I am in charge of DoD projects that develop computer vision and artificial intelligence technology for robotic platforms.

What can Daily BR!NK readers do to support you and your projects?

David: Creative ideas and feedback are always welcome.

So often it is big corporations that are the enemy when it comes to solving problems for our communities. The telecommunications company Roshan, however, has demonstrated through its work in Afghanistan that for-profit businesses can make massive improvements in everything from the country’s technological infrastructure to a rurally-based woman’s daily life. The leading cellular service provider in Afghanistan, Roshan provides thousands of jobs to Afghan citizens and reinvests its profits back into the country, investing hundreds of millions of dollars since 2003. I chatted with Shainoor Khoja, who is the managing director of Roshan’s non-profit, community-focused component. Thanks in part to her leadership, Roshan has served millions of meals to displaced populations in Afghanistan; provided scholarships and job training to thousands of citizens; constructed schools, wells, and playgrounds; built up the healthcare system; and made mobile phones, laptops, e-banking, and e-learning available to as many people as possible.

Could you start by talking about how your husband, Karim Khoja—founder and CEO of Roshan—started this business in Afghanistan?

Mr. Khoja has been working for over 25 years in telecoms around the world. He is also a follower of His Highness the Aga Khan, who set up an international agency called the Aga Khan Development Network—that’s a non-religious, non-denominational organization that basically works to fight poverty in 33 of the world’s worst areas. AKFED, one of His Highness’ organizations, asked Mr. Khoja to come and help in Afghanistan as the Taliban was falling and they were committed 75 million dollars to the reconstruction process.

Karim went out to help President Karzai’s government and the Minister of Communications at the time to understand what telecommunications was and how to put out a tender. Having done that process, he realized the impact telecommunications could have. He set himself aside from the project so that he could then apply for the Telecoms License for the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, which invests in for-profit endeavors in fragile infrastructures with the purpose of building jobs, capacity, profits, and tax revenue, therefore making a country self-sufficient.

So how did you come on board into the position you have now?

When he first started out, you have to remember, Afghanistan had been at war for over twenty-three years, and there was very little infrastructure—very few hospitals, doctors, nurses. The education system had been interrupted, so there were no young people qualified to do the jobs he needed in the early stages and he had to recruit from overseas. We had issues when people came because they’d trip and twist their ankle or break their elbow and we would have to airlift them out of the country because there was no healthcare available.

My personal background is in healthcare, and I have set up various clinics in various parts of the world, so he asked me if I would come and set up a clinic, which I did in the summer months while the kids were on vacation, and then never left. Eight years on, I’m still there!

So I did the clinic and that began to provide medical care for expatriates and our local employees. Then gradually I got drawn into the issues of women and the local community and was asked to set up the corporate Social Responsibility Department, which now basically deals with women, children, and communities, using technology to improve their quality of life.

I know that you’ve done a lot of different work through this position. Could you tell me about one thing they you’ve been working on currently or recently that you’re most excited about right now?

Oh, there’s lots that we’re very excited about! The biggest thing in the early days was voice — the ability for people to speak was incredible. But what has happened over the last eight years is that we have realized that this little gadget, a mobile phone, can suddenly be your doctor, your teacher, your bank. And it’s those applications that we’ve deployed that are so very exciting.

I think the biggest thing is the impact of mobile banking; the ability to bank a two- or three-dollar individual who is rurally-based is incredible because it allows them access to all the banking products and services that we have. It also eliminates corruption, which helps build the basis for a civil society.

So to give you a specific example of that… in a very, very dangerous area of Afghanistan we started paying police officers using the mobile phone. The first month, these 250 police officers complained that they didn’t get their money, and we realized they couldn’t read, and so couldn’t read the text that told them they’d been paid. We put in a voice system that informed them they had been paid and the subsequent month they all phoned to thank us for a 30% pay raise; before, the cash went to the commander and then the lieutenant and whoever took their cut, and the person at the bottom, the poor police officer, got $50 or $60 of pay that was $150.

All of a sudden they realized what they were getting paid and they valued that, and so now they aren’t going AWOL, they aren’t switching sides, they’re doing their jobs and are happy to do them. Paying salaries using the mobile phone has been phenomenal because it’s secure, safe, transparent, and will provide in the long run the basis for a tax at a source-based system that would make the country self-sufficient.

It seems like Roshan picks up new projects as it goes… like you identify a problem and then start working on that. How do you identify problems? What steps do you take to figure out what to do?

Very early on when the strategy was set, we knew there were so many problems in Afghanistan that we couldn’t do everything. We said we’d look at problems that the community was facing and then evaluate which problems we could tackle with our expertise: business expertise and tech expertise.

For instance, 97% of the population is unbanked, and there’s only seventeen banks and 38-40 ATMs. In a country where 75% of the population is rurally-based and makes less than $2 a day, you can quickly see that the mobile phone and your expertise in technology can help get those people banked and leading better lives. So that’s really how we identify that.

Education is a problem, especially printing books, as textbooks are 19th century here. The population is 50% under the age of 20 years old, so they’re into the notebook era. That means we need to be progressive and think about how to leapfrog old methodologies, so e-learning came out of this thinking.

Ultimately I don’t think that we’re brilliant people, and it’s not that we have tons of money to waste, but the company’s leadership is very open to innovation and if you can come up with a solid idea, they are quite happy to let you have a go.

Have you felt like there have been any obstacles because you and Mr. Khoja are not Afghanis?

Of course we’re different, and we’re thought of as foreign generally. However, right from the beginning, Roshan as a company has always gone to the people. It’s the people’s company; the people named it, and it’s been a partnership with the people in terms of our dealers, our sales agents, and the jobs that we’ve created. So we’ve very much identified ourselves with the people, for the people.

I think that’s helped us more than other companies who have come in and sort of held on to their external identities. We have not. We have lived like the Afghans live, so we don’t drive around in 4-by-4’s, we drive the same cars as our local Afghan people drive. But there are elements of the country that are not fond of us and don’t see our wins as wins, and so we have to be conscious of that.

Roshan has challenged some basic business norms in Afghanistan by not negotiating with kidnappers, having zero tolerance for corruption, and hiring women. These all seem like good things to me, but I’m wondering if there’s a line between what you’re willing to change about Afghanistan and what you don’t want to intrude upon.

Yeah. That’s a good question. We are all for women’s engagement and building women’s capacity and helping the community. We are not here to challenge religious beliefs, or cultural beliefs that are strong. We will not challenge or support issues around the proliferation of AIDS, we will not get involved in anything that is religiously inflammatory, we won’t take sides on different factions of the Muslim faith, the international community, or the local community. We tend to focus much more on areas where we can build capacity and build the country, and build the intellect within so that they themselves so that they themselves can affect the changes that they see as appropriate.

Do you think the model Roshan has embodied, this non-profit and for-profit combination, is viable for other businesses? Do you think this is a model that should be replicated?

Well, I think that the Roshan model is exemplary of the way business should be done. Let me explain why: Roshan has earned world-renowned status because it is operating profitably and so impactfully in a very difficult country. But it’s happening in other places too, so it’s really the principles and premise with which you do your business. Of course, commercially the investment has to be profitable in order for you to be there, otherwise there’s no basis for you to be there. The rest of it is how you do the business, and that’s where it’s really critical.

That’s where you build capacity, where you use local shopkeepers and dealers, where you train people to do basic jobs; it’s a lot of investment beyond dollar investment, in terms of time, teaching, training, patience, all those things. But we believe that all those things lead to a stronger and better business.

How can Daily BR!NK readers contribute to your success?

I think the Daily BR!NKers can do a lot to help. The biggest thing is to spread the word. There are a lot of myths about Afghanistan that are not entirely correct, so share this story, share the positive impacts, and engage in discussion around that in the hope that you can influence the way international aid is dispensed. Hopefully the aid that comes through taxpayers like yourselves and your parents will actually be a capacity-building and enabling aid and not a dependency aid. I think that’s what we’d ask; the more people that know about the way things are happening and how they can happen, the more it can change mindsets. That’s what this is about.

Trenton Waterson assures me that, after spending the first 18 years of life on a farm, giving up was never an option. This go-getter-from-birth has climbed steadily up the ladder-rungs of film production, not because he “knew the right people” or got a “lucky break” – phenomena too often used to explain success in the entertainment industry — but because he put in the time, the passion, and the hard work. Now a Creative Executive at Marvel Studios, it’s clear that all of this effort has been worth it. Waterson takes a break from the bustle of the Iron Man set to tells us about what sparked his desire to embark on the uncertain journey that is filmmaking, which films inspire him, and when he decided to stop identifying as an aspiring producer and become one.

I thought we’d begin with a little bit about your background; you were born in California?

I was. Fourth generation on a farm… which I think has a lot to do with the feeling that nothing’s ever done. I spent 19 years just working on the farm. We had cows at one point, we bred Labrador Retrievers, we grew corn and alfalfa hay, my dad ran his own business. I really loved it, but I definitely had a passion to, you know, live in a city.

I’ll never forget when I had my real first apartment and just felt like I was on a movie set, walking down the halls of the apartment just because that’s “city,” you know?

On your IMDB page, the only thing it says in your bio is that you had two open-heart surgeries before you were ten.

As a baby I was born with a paracardial sack that was too small and was trapping fluid in my heart and I was failing. So at ten months old, I flew to San Francisco and the doctors basically took off the sack and cut open my sternum bone, and back in 1984 medicine they sealed it up with wires. Then, when I was ten, I was running around and the wires busted; some of them were hitting against my lungs, so they had to take me back and remove all the wires.

Did you grow up watching a lot of films? What made you really want to go into the film industry?

Well, first of all, I love movies. Like reading a book, all of a sudden I’m just in this other world, experiencing something new. Or I’m time traveling with Michael J. Fox, or I’m Home Alone at Christmas time. Movies were just so cool. I also have this extremely large sense of nostalgia. I love all the old Disney movies, those weird adventure ones, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I realized what gave me more pleasure than just watching a movie was watching a movie and then taking someone else with me. I enjoyed that person’s reaction, influencing people and making them laugh. So that’s really what it became about. And even today there’s no greater reward than going to the theaters to see a film like The Avengers and sitting there quietly while these audiences laugh or clap.

It’s really cool that you can be a part of the creation of that experience for someone else. Are there any genres of film that you gravitate towards?

I’ll list off a few of my favorites: Meet Joe Black, Great Expectations (the one with Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke), Magnolia was a crazy favorite of mine, House of Sand and Fog. 

Basically, I love movies that don’t need to be complicated in their plot but are just so rich and focused on a character. Like American Beauty, you’re with Annette Benning and she’s in her car and completely seething one minute and then crying the next. I love movies that are very vulnerable and real about the experiences we go through and our emotions. And by all means, movies like Iron Man 3 that I’m currently working on, these are great adventure blockbusters, but I aim to narrow my future work down to more character-driven, intimate and raw films.

I watched your reel earlier today and from what I saw, those seemed to be very heartfelt movies. How did you start working on those?

After spending five years working my way up the ladders of physical production, I had really admired the line-producers and production managers who do budget and coordinate. I got my start there, but then I eventually realized that I’m more into the themes, the style, the visions.

To be very honest with you, I no longer wanted to say, “Hi, my name is Trenton. I’m an assistant to a producer but I hope to produce.” I wanted to say, “Hi, my name is Trenton, and I’m a producer, but I currently also assist a producer.” That was really important. So, in 2011, I flew home from on-location with Thor one weekend to help my buddies who were doing a pilot TV pitch. I came in to help on set and quickly became one of the producers. That’s how I met the director/writer of my first short film, and then the film after that, and so on.

Would that be the advice you would give you someone who was trying to break into the film industry… just to go for it and actually start working on projects?

Absolutely. The best advice that I got was when someone said, “You want to be a producer? Write it on a piece of paper and stick it to the door and start making movies.” Does it require experience to make a $200 million movie? Yes it does. But you can start small. You can make a one-page, one-minute thing and that’s a movie. I think that what’s been amazing over the past ten years is if you think about it, you can take your iPhone, you can direct something, shoot it. You can upload it to iMovie and edit it, and you can put it on YouTube or Vimeo and that’s your distribution.

What’s your role on Iron Man 3 that you’re currently working on?

My prior job on The Avengers, I was assistant to the Executive Producer, but now I’m a Creative Executive.

What’s hard to explain about the Creative Exec role is that it’s so different at Marvel, in a good way, than at other studios because Marvel is so tied in with the comics, and the toys, and the merchandise, and Comicon. There’s this Marvel Universe that all the movies tie into. Part of [my job] is script revisions and keeping the script pages up-to-date. But I love it when I find myself on the phone with Creative Executives from Marvel’s other films, and we’re comparing notes about elements of our scripts — making sure they are honoring the overall Marvel Universe and timeline, keeping each other honest in that way.

How can Daily BR!NK and its readers contribute to your success?

Well, if there’s any writing you’re going to do about the kind of movies I’m looking for, and if someone has watched those movies and has a great script, by all means… I am ready to read it.

The way we interact with food shapes all parts of our lives — our health, our cultural experiences, our communities, our economies, and our social ideologies. And when there are cracks in the food system, not one of these spheres goes unaffected. The Fair Food Network, a Detroit-based organization, is at the very forefront of the fight for the accessibility of sustainable, healthy food products, particularly in communities that are currently under-served. We spoke with President and CEO, Oran Hesterman, who detailed the organization’s many initiatives to combat a very broken food system. The good news, as you’ll read, is that the effort has begun to pay off.

You run the Fair Food Network. How did you get involved in food deserts and fixing this problem?

At age 36, I found myself in the hospital with a huge flare up of Crohn’s disease. My digestive system stopped functioning. The doctors were pumping me full of prednisone and saying their only option would be surgery to remove my colon. The doctors told me that before deciding on surgery, they wanted me to eat a meal to see what happened, and in comes the dinner tray, on which is roast beef, a pile of mashed potatoes, and a big piece of cake. I said to myself, “This is not what I need to be eating.”

I called a friend and asked her if she could save my life by bringing me some brown rice, steamed greens, and tofu. I firmly believe that because of what I ate and how I continue to eat, I didn’t have to get surgery, and my colon is now healthy.

I’m fortunate that I knew what I needed to get healthy and how to get access to it. And then I thought about everyone who doesn’t. It shifted my professional perspective as well as my personal perspective. It added a deeper direction to my work around food systems and equity.

Back in 2008, when Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was discovered, it wiped out the funding for the Fair Food Foundation. Tell me about how the Fair Food Network came to be out of this unexpected turn of events. How difficult was it to start over, and why did you choose to do so?

I was working at the Kellogg Foundation and leading their work in sustainable farming. I was then asked to consider leaving Kellogg to start the Fair Food Foundation, which was a private foundation started and funded by private donors. After hiring staff and putting together our funding strategies, I learned the hard way that these donors had all their philanthropic dollars invested with Bernie Madoff.

The call from the donors came on my birthday, at six in the evening. When they told me, I thought, “Who’s Bernie?” That evening, instead of doing anything else, I started watching MSNBC to see what this was all about, and when I went to bed that night, I knew the project was done. I decided that two things would be my next calling, and those were to start the Fair Food Network and to write the book Fair Food.

Tell me about the book, Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All.

There is a need for a more national conversation about the solutions to a food system that is broken and not serving many of us. The problems and challenges have been well documented by writers, journalists, chefs, movie directors. But we are missing the next step, which is, “What do we do about it?”

I’ve been involved with many fair food “solutionaries” over my career. I wanted to lift up the solutions that are actually working, to lay out the framework of what a fair food system would be like — a system that would work for our environment, our community, our economy, and, most importantly, I wanted to answer the question, “What can I do?”

The book trailer for Fair Food

What are these solutions?

It’s really important for people to start where they are. Get engaged in the national Farm to School Network. About eight years ago, there were only four of these programs; now there are 10,000 across the country. If a young person is interested in getting involved in this work, they can work for FoodCorps. Instead of doing the Peace Corps and helping people with issues in other countries, you can join this program to work with food system organizations in low-income neighborhoods.

At FFN, we created a program called Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB): If you spend your food stamp dollars at participating farmers’ markets, we will double the amount you spend up to $20 per market visit. We are currently running this program in Michigan and starting to get inquiries about implementing it across the country.

We are also pairing the program in Michigan with policy discussions in DC. The 2012 Farm Bill as passed by the Senate Ag Committee includes $100 million to incentivize these types of programs. According to a poll conducted by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, we’ve learned that 80% of people who are participating in this program are eating more fruits and vegetables. Farmers say they are making more money because of this program. With the sheer amount of money being provided by the government in food assistance (more than $70 billion in 2012), it’s a huge opportunity to use that money wisely to get low-income families to eat healthier and support our local farmers.

The Double Up Food Bucks program promotes the use of food stamp dollars at local farmers’ markets

Fair Food Network is a national organization, but it seems to be particularly focused on Detroit. What is the situation in Detroit?

I really believe that the best work we can do as a non-profit is to demonstrate effective change on the ground in the community and then lift up what works through public policy.

There’s no more important place to demonstrate positive change than in the struggling post-industrial city of Detroit. It has so much potential right now as it is working to really reinvent itself, and part of that is to create a more local, sustainable food system. It is the single city with the most available land within the city limits. There is more active community gardening in Detroit than any other city in America.

If it can work in Detroit, it can work anywhere. Together, FFN and a whole network of organizations are demonstrating that it’s really possible to create shifts in the food system in the city that’s really the poster child for what’s wrong with post-industrial America.

What are some results that you’ve personally seen from the work your organization does? Do you have a particular story that stands out for you?

I’m just reviewing a paper I’m writing, and I’ve just re-read something Wendy K. Essenberg, a single mother on food stamps, sent — an unsolicited email that says thank you for the Double Up Food Bucks program:

“Thank you so much for [the Double Up Food Bucks] program. I am a newly single mom and have been struggling along since the divorce. I am working hard, have gone to school and am still looking for a job. I have had so much fun taking my girls to the [farmers’] market with me this summer to let them pick out fruits and veggies. I have been teaching them how to steam and sauté. I showed them how to make freezer jam. I taught them how to freeze fruits and veggies so that we can enjoy them in the winter. Because of the Double Up program I am able to give my girls some food now and put some in the freezer for this winter. That is something I would not have been able to do without this program.”

When all is said and done, I’m proud that 40,000 people used that program this year. Almost 12,000 of them were first timers at a farmers’ market. I’m proud that more than 40 funders and foundations are working with us. I’m proud that the Farm Bill is moving through Congress, but at the end of the day, it’s the emails from Wendy and others like her that make me get up and come to work.

There are a lot of issues to champion in the world today. Why do you think food equality and access is one that America needs to pay attention to?

What if we don’t [pay attention]? Our most basic relationship with the earth is with the food we eat. We are not separate from the earth’s ecosystem. Our flesh and blood is made out of the food it provides us. If we do not figure out a more sustainable food system for the future, as a species, we’re going to be in deep trouble.

The results will be that our healthcare costs start coming down dramatically, and we can balance a federal budget rather than build up huge future deficits because we’re healthy. Every time we create more local spending on locally-processed food, we are creating more local jobs. We can make positive changes in our society by shifting to a more sustainable and equitable food system.

A clichéd question, but where do you see Fair Food Network in five to ten years, and where do you see the United States in terms of this Fair Food movement?

Having followed this movement over my whole career and watched it over 40 years, I think back to 10 or 20 years ago, and it was a pretty lonely place. Now everywhere you look, you see coverage of food and agriculture and its impact on us, and I think this is going to keep building. We are going to see even more of a demand for local and sustainable food, fulfilled by a whole cadre of new farmers and young people who will create new restaurants and delivery programs for locally-grown food. We’re going to see an explosion in this field, and it’s going to be terrifically fun to watch.

How can Daily BR!NK readers contribute to your success?

1. Go to our website at www.fairfoodnetwork.org and sign up to receive our updates on important policy initiatives, so that you can take an active part in having your voice heard along with many others.

2. If you work with an organization trying to make a positive difference toward a fair food future, sign up on the fair food list, also on our website.

3. Read my book, Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All, to see how you can take action to make a difference in your home, community, and nation.

4. If you have connections to the donor/philanthropic community, urge them to support organizations working to create a fair food future.

A British native, James Andrews has been a refreshing voice in American architecture, participating in projects like Haven for Hope, a homeless shelter in San Antonio meant to shift the societal paradigm surrounding homelessness, and the U.S. Green Building Council, an organization meant to educate and empower citizens to choose sustainable building options. He was lucky to find a firm that aligns with his values and priorities while encouraging his professional growth; Overland Partners has been the foundation for James’ recent projects.

You are described as having a passion for serving the community and believing in environmental, economic, and cultural challenges as opportunities for ingenuity. Where does the inspiration for your passion and beliefs come from?

Growing up in the National Park in West Wales and having a father as an architect, I quickly learned that we need to look after the environment to prosper. The county in which I lived relied on its natural beauty for its economy. Everything that was built or modified needed to be very respectful of the natural architecture and the local craftsmanship and really utilize materials and products that were harvested or built locally to be sure that the economy itself was sustainable. That didn’t necessarily mean that we couldn’t innovate, especially when we had very challenging problems — environmental contamination or even natural disasters.

From an early age I was encouraged to try to solve problems in a built environment, and I’ve found that very intriguing over the last twenty-plus years. Using architecture as an outlet for problem solving, you have the opportunity to look at the whole project, not necessarily just the final building itself.

What brought you to Overland, a firm that promises to “model how we should live and influence the world through the practice of architecture”?

It was a really a wonderful gift to find Overland — a place that has such a profound outlook on their business and such core values that precede style or architectural types. I believe they are almost eternal in their approach to what they do.

[For me] it wasn’t about a firm that did cool residential or a firm that built certain types of buildings. It was about a firm that really wanted to influence the world, that really wanted to problem-solve and was very passionate about sustainability. It wasn’t just about sustainability — it was about looking at things like beauty, which is one of our design philosophies that is not always a fashionable thing to talk about. As an architect, when you exclude beauty or systems or sustainability or contextualism — as soon as you exclude one of those items, I don’t think that the whole picture is as compelling or long-lasting. Overland really wants to create places where we work that we really find inspiring, places where we live where there is community. That was something that I found absolutely compelling, and nine years later, here I am still.

Beauty and sustainability at Haven for Hope

Haven for Hope has been referred to as the “new national model for homeless shelters.” What is so unique about it?

The most significant thing about Haven for Hope is that it is really a wonderful collaboration between public and private sectors. Mr. Bill Greehey, a wonderful leader who had a vision to solve the problem of homelessness in San Antonio, contacted the Mayor and said, “This is something we need to do.” He set about creating a team of advocates and people who were researching the problems, visiting the homeless shelters, and gathering the support of local not-for-profits and city organizations.

Then we were brought on board. We worked very closely with the programming consultant and the executive director and actually had a whole series of interviews with the organizations that were going to be involved in the operation of Haven for Hope to understand their aspirations and their needs. To me, the public-private collaboration, which we hadn’t seen at many of the shelters that we’d been to, was the most unique aspect of Haven for Hope.

And how is the structure unique, sustainability-wise?

To start with, the whole area of the site was really a redundant portion of the city. It was an incredibly challenging and disconnected piece of the city. We felt it was very important to look at how the site itself could knit portions of the city together. We looked at what services we could provide that could be used by the surrounding communities. Our goal was to figure out how to encourage the community to come in and share the facility. The initial site planning was the most critical from a sustainable perspective.

The design of the Haven for Hope campus

The Bridge Homeless Assistance Center in Dallas

What fruits have you seen from those projects for the community?

The wonderful thing about these projects is that there’s lots of statistics. The success is not as easy to measure with many of our projects. In Dallas, some of the statistics are pretty incredible. At the second year The Bridge in Dallas was open there was a report that downtown crime had dropped over twenty percent. The police could not figure out anything that had changed other than that the homeless shelter was operating and able to accommodate people that otherwise may be committing petty crimes or misdemeanors. Those issues were no longer there, so the police were able to focus on other crimes and not have to spend their time dealing with the mentally handicapped or inebriated population of the downtown area. Instead, there was somewhere that they could go to be directed and taken care of, where they could have help and opportunities — Bridge changed their lives. The other statistics include over 2.5 million meals served, more than 1,400 people placed in housing, and over 900 jobs secured for the homeless. Some of these issues can be small; some can be life-changing. Those statistics have been very rewarding and encouraging.

You’ve been involved with the U.S. Green Building Council as a founding leader. How has the USGBC influenced the cities you build in?

Since joining Overland, I was encouraged to participate in the founding of the local USGBC Chapter. Since then, I’ve held various positions in supporting the organization grow; a couple of years ago I was the chairman of the organization. What we are looking to do is help educate people in central Texas on the benefits and costs of green building — it doesn’t necessarily have to cost more money. We’ve encouraged people to look and the cost in use over the lifespan of the project and to consider how it would truly impact the environment. We worked with various organizations including the City of San Antonio and the City of Austin as well as private sector developers to encourage them to “think green.” We give them tools and materials to do that. We believe it is very important to not just advocate, but to be able to support organizations with information that could help them make important decisions on building green.

How can Daily BR!NK contribute the your success and the success of Overland Partners?

Encourage people to think a little differently about how architects work; their training encourages them to think creatively, deeply, and holistically about problems. Engage them in problem-solving activities that your businesses or organizations may be having.

As Her Majesty Klum likes to declare: “In fashion, one day you’re in and one day you’re out.” The fact that the industry is fiercely competitive and famously unpredictable does not prevent hundreds of talented young designers from creating collections each season in an attempt to charm us on the runway. Within the last few years, such designers as Joseph Altuzarra, Jason Wu, and Kate and Laura Mulleavy have emerged, succeeded, and left the space open for the “next big thing.” It was only two years ago that husbands Fyodor Podgorny and Golan Frydman created the aptly named brand Fyodor Golan and shook the world of fashion with their avant-garde clothing, each piece a colorful and exciting feast for a notoriously jaded audience. And since they won the coveted London-based emerging talent prize Fashion Fringe in 2011 and have received seals of approval from Lady Gaga as well as comparisons to the late Alexander McQueen, one thing can be sure: you won’t be saying “Auf Wiedersehen” to these two anytime soon.

Even though you are both designers, you seem to have a formidable business-oriented mindset. What are both of your backgrounds?

Thank you. We try to find the fine line between creativity and business. Golan used to be Assistant Production Manager at Richard Nicoll and then in textile design at McQueen, and Fyodor used to work at Issey Miyake, where he had the chance to go to Japan and see with his own eyes the technology they use with a business point of view. We think in this industry every part, including the business, has to be thought creatively, and we try to combine both of our minds when it comes to design and business decisions. You have to create your own business composition.

What triggered the creation of Fyodor Golan? Since you used your own funding, you must have truly believed from the start that you could bring something fresh to the fashion world.

Both of us knew for a long time that we would be doing it when the time was right. One has to believe in oneself and push his own limits. When we met we still worked separately, organically merging into one — FYODOR GOLAN. That is one of the reasons we chose our first names. We bring our own feelings and tensions between ourselves and our differences.

You launched extremely recently (2010) and yet have already worked with McQueen as well as some of the world’s biggest pop stars. How did you go about promoting Fyodor Golan and building these relationships?

Networking and strategy. We work with amazing people like the TRACE PR family and all the supporters, from Fashion Fringe to friends that believe in our brand. We don’t like bullshitting; it has to be true.

When London Fashion Week ended, you were the talk of the town. Tell us about your collection and the inspiration behind two of your pieces.

We like to combine unexpected inspirations in our work. This season we looked at the last Russian Czars, the Romanov family and the myth surrounding Anastasia’s survival of the family massacre by the revolution army. We combined that with insects that metamorphose in order to protect themselves and evolve. As an example, a full red look has Russian peasant style braiding on the top and hand-stitched basket-style weaving on the skirt. Braids on the top feel as if they are growing on top of the skin in bug-like shapes. There is a warrior feel for the protection, but at the same time it’s fragile and sensitive; it’s almost exposed to a viewer.

Fyodor Golan’s delicate and powerful red look. Photo credit: catwalking.com, source

And the first look. We worked for the first time with tailoring and wanted to cut fabric to create an insect feel in the cut. We created jacquards that actually are close-ups of the real bug shells.

Fyodor Golan’s first look at London Fashion Week. Photo credit: catwalking.com, source

Why did you choose to have a fully green, glittery model go down the catwalk?

It was fun. It was spur-of-the-moment and it felt right with the concept. It’s about metamorphosing our woman, and that was something in between human and inhuman, but still elegant and unexpected.

Fyodor Golan’s very green, very glittery model. Photo credit: catwalking.com, source

The color palettes, the texture, the craftsmanship, the distinct silhouettes… Our team loves this year’s collection. What type of client are you designing for?

Thank you. Our woman is expressive, sexual, and sensitive. She wants to love and be loved, but she is not afraid to show her energy and strive. She is an international woman.

Many have already compared your work to that of the great Alexander McQueen. How do you respond to this?

We think people like to put designers into boxes in the beginning of their careers. It’s an honor to be compared to McQueen because we know how much work and effort it takes to create, and that’s how we work.

Daily BR!NK is all about individuals who are revolutionizing their respective fields. What are your hopes and aspirations for Fyodor Golan in 2012 (as well as long-term)?

We are striving for FYODOR GOLAN MAISON. All under one roof — boutique, studio, et cetera. Definitely challenging ourselves somehow. We just launched our website, and we are looking forward to working closely with Centre of Fashion Enterprise.

Here are a series of quick questions — just one sentence answers, please! First, Fyodor is from Latvia. Golan is from Israel. Which language do you speak together?

English; Golan sometimes mumbles some Russian words.

Your biggest inspiration?

Fyodor: LaChapelle and Almodóvar (David and Pedro).
Golan: Pink Floyd and Nature.

The piece you are the proudest of?

The finale gown, because it almost did not appear on the catwalk.

Fyodor Golan’s stunning finale look at London Fashion Week. Photo credit: catwalking.com, source

The celebrity you would most like to dress?

You don’t have to be a celebrity to wear our clothes!

Thank you! How can Daily BR!NK readers contribute to your success?

They will find their way. The eager ones always do.

Shawn Bercuson spent a good portion of his professional career helping develop and lift companies like Groupon off the ground. But it was on a ski trip with his father to Park City, Utah, during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival — when the mountains are nearly empty — that he ended up meeting with some people in the movie business who, at the time, were running in circles trying to find a way to monetize the digital distribution of films. This is when Prescreen was born, an online streaming platform aiming to redefine how films are distributed and improve the consumer experience by actually taking the time to learn what people want to watch.

By the time you began developing Prescreen, streaming giants like Netflix and Hulu were already well-established. What angle did you see into the online movie distribution market?

When we started Groupon, there was Coupons.com, Restaurant.com, CouponCabin, you name it. Groupon didn’t invent the coupon, but presented coupons in such a way that was easy to consume and even easier to share. What we did was create conversations around coupons every day. So for the consumer, there are plenty of places you can go online and get coupons. It’s a pull experience rather than a push experience. And it’s the same thing with movies. There’s Amazon, Netflix, and iTunes. And they kind of have this nuclear arms race with how many movies they can get or how many pieces of content they can gather. Well, for the consumer, it’s very difficult to actually sift through all that stuff and find something that’s relevant to you. They understand there’s a problem; they just don’t know how to fix it. Where I realized these companies like Netflix were lacking was in two things: number one, promotion, and number two, analytics. So Prescreen is a marketing and promotion site for content, but really it’s a real-time analytics platform. So we can collect all this data and help content owners put movies in front of the right people.

Prescreen sort of taps into that “word of mouth” aesthetic that has made countless cult hits. Is it a goal to create a measurable market for that?

Yeah, but we’re actually not going after cult films. There are a lot of really good films with big name stars that don’t find a home. They come and go and never find a home. We have those sort of underground films there because we want to appeal to a mass audience. But we’re pretty agnostic toward what content is. We consider what we do not just independent film, or film. To us, it’s long-form content. So as YouTube is for short-form content, Hulu is for medium-form content, we’re long-form, meaning it could be a stand-up comedy show, it could be a concert, it could be a film. Really, the consumer doesn’t care. What the consumer cares about is that it is going to take an hour and a half of their night. It’s not just niche stuff. We’re casting a wide net.

Prescreen curates a wide variety of long-form content on an easy-to-use, interactive platform

We’re actually doing the same thing Spotify does for music on Facebook, but for movies. So on Prescreen, the moment you watch a trailer it automatically posts on your newsfeed. In September, Facebook basically spelled out what they were trying to do, and that’s become an entertainment platform. And they said there are three global verbs they’re giving preferred treatment: Watch, Read, and Listen. You’ve probably seen Listen with Spotify, and Read with Yahoo! Reader or the Washington Post Social Reader that all pop up in your newsfeed. But you probably haven’t seen Watch. And no one has really gone after that. We’re actually one of Facebook’s first partners to do Watch.

How do you land your content?

We work with filmmakers, distributors, and producers, very early on in the life cycle. Right now, when they finish a movie they have to go to film festivals, they have financers and sales agents. We’re trying to make that process a lot more efficient. Being able to have that data so they can go to a studio and say, “Look, for every dollar you put in, you’ll get three back.” That’s sort of our secret sauce.

Can you talk about the experience of starting something like this from the ground up? What was the most difficult thing about putting this all together?

Coming up with the idea is the easy part. But all of the unforeseen things you think you have nailed aren’t. Once you get beyond that initial phase, there are a whole bunch of external factors, anything from the economy putting pressure on your financing, to somebody on your team getting sick. And all of a sudden, your small team is distracted, and that can really hurt. For Prescreen, we had this unbelievable designer initially. And about three months in he gets engaged. But like three days later, his fiancée, who was in medical school, ended up getting transferred to Denver. So we’re three months in and already without our designer. Luckily, we were able to find a great replacement, but for about a month there we were really scrambling. We got lucky, but that’s tough.

What sort of response has Prescreen gotten so far?

So far, so good. We haven’t really done much marketing, except for the social stuff. All of our growth has essentially been organic. We’ve gone from about 10,000 subscribers to about close to 80,000 subscribers within a few months. But more importantly, we’re seeing our daily and monthly actives continuing to increase on a daily basis. We’re getting a bunch of signups every day. It’s really, really encouraging. And people who are discovering these movies are now watching them seriously. Of the people we consider active, we’ve had 25 percent of them already buy a movie, and 15 percent of them already buy again. We’ve only been around a short time, but we’re starting to see all the right behaviors.

This sort of platform is increasingly jumping out of web browsers and onto mobile and television devices. Is that in the future for Prescreen?

We’re working on that right now. It’s extremely important for us to be ubiquitous in terms of platforms. Wherever you want to watch a movie, that’s where we want to be. But we’re already on Google TV, which is already a browser-enabled device. And we actually think the world is going in that direction. Netflix, right now, is on like 170 platforms or something — iPads, Xbox 360, et cetera. But we think there’s going to be a consolidation of that in the future. And the way that’ll happen is that it’s all going to be browser-based. So I go online and decide I want to watch something, then I add it to my queue and it’s on my TV when I get home. So with GoogleTV, for example, you can do that.

How can Daily BR!NK readers contribute to your success?

The easiest thing to do is to sign on and give us feedback. We’re still in growth mode and practice what we preach. We’re continually changing and always love great constructive feedback.

The camera slowly zooms in on a dark hallway as the warbled sounds of a broken record and the tapping of keys fill the background. The camera reveals a man hunched over a computer, hacking into your personal information on a site you thought was a safehouse: Facebook. You want to exit this app, but it’s too late — the man is already on his way… If this doesn’t ring a bell, then you clearly aren’t familiar with Take This Lollipop, the internet viral video which links to your Facebook account and cleverly showcases the future of interactive online media… and how terrifying it can be when we publicize our personal information in online forums. What Jason Zada has done with Take This Lollipop highlights how one’s information can be hacked and twisted into a horrifying reality, made all the more personal because this app showcases you personally as the victim. Wanna try it? Don’t worry about spam, Facebook only needs access to your account to engage you in this brilliant interactive experience. After all, who doesn’t want to star in their own thriller?

So, you were at a conference with Creativity Magazine about www.takethislollipop.com, and the viral response to your work was incredibly exciting with 113,325,008 likes on Facebook and counting. After experiencing Take This Lollipop, my first question was: Why did he make this? Is it a promotion for a short film? A spec ad? A teaser for a feature? Possibly a public service announcement warning Facebookers of personal security dangers? And how long did it take to develop and produce this interactive experience?

It was all about the idea. We executed the project on a very low budget and are thankful for all the favors which supported the film. You see, I come from the ad agency side of things. I started my own agency about eight years ago, Evolution Bureau, and something that I had missed while working in the corporate world was, when you come up with a great idea, just execute it! So with this project, from the initial idea to the final execution it was about a month. And when it went viral… it was great.

Wow! That’s wonderful. The subject matter was disturbing to many of us; it seemed like an idea that you probably couldn’t stop thinking about until it was done, no?

Yes, it was definitely a weird obsession for a short period of time. I work with a lot of big teams, but what was great about this was that I got to work closely with Jason Nickel, the developer, and every day we tried a new creative approach with our small team. I mean, sometimes we went into shooting not knowing what we were gonna do because how we were going to do it was still in development. It was kinda cool going into it with the knowledge of, “there will be stuff on his monitor, but we don’t know what yet because of Facebook’s rules.” This was one of those labor of love projects, where I shared the script with some people and they were like, “Yes, I definitely want to be a part of this.” We shot it at an old hospital in Los Angeles that had been closed down for thirty years.

Do you dare?

I am a fan of the horror genre and Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, so I was wondering if October 31st was your deadline. Was it important to you to finish before Halloween?

Yeah, well, I really just wanted to scare the crap out of people. I believe it’s really important that people either love or hate what you do. As long as they have a really strong emotional response, that’s a good thing. I love the viral response that this piece had: I was kind of patrolling YouTube, looking at all these people’s reaction videos.

Yes, what an interesting perspective to take as a director. With modern technology, you have the ability to watch your viewers watch the film, if they are so inclined to record themselves and post it. How cool!

What’s weird is that when I first sent it around to a couple friends to see if it was creepy, I knew early on that it was something pretty powerful. And when I saw all these kids who taped themselves watching it and how freaked out they were, it definitely had this weird The Ring effect or Blair Witch vibe.

When I watched it, I felt my most visceral reaction hit when your lead actor, Bill Oberst, breaks the fourth wall and addresses the viewer directly. It gave me chills.

Bill Oberst is perfectly eerie as a Facebook stalker… who’s coming for you, next.

That shot was so important to me because I think that when he is looking at your Facebook and then he looks at you… it’s that “Oh shit, what have I done” moment. What’s interesting is that a lot of what has surfaced because of this film is about the future of entertainment and how engaging it is going to be. It’s lead me down a really interesting path.

Exactly. Where is entertainment going? In the narrative or interactive sense? This project seems like a mixture of the two…

Entertainment is moving towards being a personalized, on-demand experience, no matter if you’re watching television, computer, cell phone, you know? And the fact that places like Facebook have all of this information about you… if you think about it from a non-creepy perspective and consider how that information could enhance the entertainment we already watch, it’s amazing! I think that people aren’t going to want to constantly see themselves in everything they do. But there is this interesting idea about having stuff from your life sort of integrated into some of the entertainment you watch, if you want to.

That sounds fun! What piqued your interest in gaming and interactive entertainment?

I got into programming at a young age with a choose-your-own-adventure game called Basic. It was a simple story, like you walk into a large cavern and there’s a huge rock in front of you, so you have the ability to pick up a sword or you can go and move the rock. From a really early age I was thinking out these simple text adventures, and it taught me how to tell a story.

It amazes me what we can trace back to our childhood. Children will always be able to out-dream the world. As a filmmaker, I believe it is important to tap into the fearless optimism and fueled adventure of one’s youth and use it as a resource. All you have is your story, right?

Yes, at the end of the day I am just a storyteller, and I like to tell stories in different types of mediums. I love interactive media because in so many of my directing pieces I am able to give the viewer choices, and depending on what they choose, they create their own path and live out their own story.

The sound design was incredible; can you tell us about that process?

These guys were so great to work with! The sound team, Future Perfect, and the Little Ears division were exciting creative partners. Thanks to them, we never had to compromise in the sound department.

How can Daily BR!NK contribute to your success?

As a Creative, I am always looking for people with interesting ideas. I will never close myself off to innovation. I think what the world needs more of is dreamers.

Khang Le is the CEO and Creative Director of Adhesive Games, a company whose first project is turning a lot of heads in the gaming community. The game is called “Hawken,” and apart from being a sci-fi first-person shooter with great visuals and creative gameplay, it’s also operating under a free-to-play model that is relatively unusual in the U.S. Khang told us how this system works, which company is looking to make Hawken into a film, and gave us a bit of insight into the game itself.
 

What is “Hawken”?

Hawken is basically an FPS (first-person shooter) mech combat game. It’s an online free-to-play game.

What is the storyline of Hawken?

Well, it was originally a multiplayer. We recently developed the story around the world. So the game takes place on a planet called Illal. It was a colonized planet brought to the brink of destruction by the technology of man. Now there is also a threat of a virus. It’s sort of like a crystallized virus growing across the planet and taking over all the natural resources, organic and inorganic, which makes resources even less available. So now the remaining population is fighting over whatever is left to survive. The war is waging between two main corporations — Sentium and Prosk.

Hawken story teaser

Basically beyond that it’s just shooting each other, right?

Yeah, it’s a multiplayer game only. Most of the fiction the players will get is from the cinematics, the graphic novel, and the prose novel.

What is your involvement in the project?

So, I was one of the founders and creative vision behind Hawken. That’s my role. My main role now is to make sure it looks and plays well and to manage the Adhesive team. We have two studios now. One in Seattle, which deals more with customer service and the publishing side of it. And our Adhesive team is just game developer-only. So I’m the CEO and creative director of Adhesive.

How long have you and your team been working on the game?

It’s been quite a while! June of 2010. We started as a small team and still are a small size. Big teams can have as many as 30 to 100.

You started out without funding, right?

Yeah. Started out with a crew of five who came from Project Offset, which was a fantasy FPS. Offset made pretty big waves in the industry, too. And we were eventually acquired by Intel, but then they had a change of business plan. So then we were done with that contract. After that, whatever money we made on that deal we poured into this project. We probably would only survive maybe a year without pay. So luckily, after nine months of working on it, we released our first video and got a lot of opportunities from that. Just a couple days after posting we got tons of offers. Six months after that we narrowed it down to what it was we wanted to do.

Where did the idea come from? What are your inspirations?

So, I have always a big fan of mech games. I have wanted to do a purely mech game for a while now. When we finished at Intel, we had a choice to go separate ways and get jobs, or we could stick it out and work on another indie thing. And looking at the team at that time, we had one programmer, one animator, and two 3D artists. So we weren’t going to attempt doing single-player. Single-player requires a lot more work. At the same time, with only one animator, we didn’t want to do anything with characters. It would just be too much work for one animator. So we were left with something robotic and sci-fi for environment. The big thing when you work on these games is the environment — how long it takes. Sci-fi is a lot faster to build than fantasy. So we had all of those restrictions, and working around that, combined with our passion for mech games, was how we got the idea. It wasn’t some idea out of the blue sky. We just sat down and said, “Hmm, this seems like the only option we can do.” We also wanted to find a niche that we could stand out in. We looked at the market and the mech genre was one we hadn’t seen in a while.

The cinematic trailer for Hawken showcases its stunning visuals and high-tech mech combat

Can you describe the business model of Hawken and why it is different from other games?

The free-to-play model came about in Asia. During the time we started the project, free-to-play was already big in Asia, but it was barely starting in the US. People were skeptical of it. It had a bad stigma of being called “pay to win.” So we were initially planning to make only a downloadable title for consoles. But after talking to investors and looking at the market, it actually fit our indie team very well. With free-to-play, you can launch small and grow it slowly. It’s not like a one-time shipment deal where you make a product and hand it to the consumer. It keeps growing. Audiences tend to download a multiplayer game and move on after a couple of months when a new title comes out, but with free-to-play games people can stick around more often and we can see a lot more volume.

So the way you make money then is people buying things in the game with real money?

Yeah, people buy upgrades, armor, new levels, new content, things like that. As a mech game you can customize it kind of like a car. So there’s a lot of opportunity to change or swap or upgrade. We want to make sure the game is not “pay to win,” so things that can be bought can also be earned through playing.

When will it be released?

Open Beta starts 12/12/12.

Hawken gameplay footage

Can you talk more about the other forms of Hawken you mentioned earlier?

DJ2 Entertainment got the rights to Hawken and is shopping around Hollywood to find the right producer. Lots of people are interested in it. There is also a graphic novel coming out from Archaia comics. That should really help bring the player into the world of Hawken. There’s also a prose novel in progress right now. There’s also talk of doing some anime. It’s pretty awesome and kind of overwhelming. We’re just trying to get the game done at this point.

What is your dream for Hawken? Or have you achieved it already?

It is already a bigger dream than it started as. Originally, we planned to make a fun mech game that was profitable for six people. With the new funding, our development team is now fourteen people. I guess the plan is to keep polishing it and expanding on the world of Hawken. I’m really enjoying working with our passionate team to make Hawken a truly AAA quality F2P game that we can all be proud of.

Hawken is growing a lot from its humble beginnings; will there ever be a point where you can say, “We’re done”?

Free-to-play is like a service and not really like a packaged good title. Once we launch, we will continually support it as long as people are around to play it. Internally, we may move on to other things to keep us feeling creative. So we’ll see how it goes. Four or five years from now it might not be something I even recognize. We’re constantly changing the game in development as we see how the audience is reacting to it.

What can the Daily BR!NK do for you?

Sign up for the beta and start playing on 12.12.12. Check out playhawken.com.

Have you every felt like the cash that you pour (or maybe, trickle) into charity is entering a broken system? Becky Straw, Jody Landers, and friends are trying to change the way we give by supplying entrepreneurs with venture capital to 1.) fix a broken system and, 2.) become a part of the end of poverty. The Adventure (add-venture) Project focuses on the environment, water, hunger, and health — providing an opportunity for people to get involved based on their interest and passion. Becky and Jody are constantly growing their tribe of people attempting to add venture into Social Enterprises that affect billions of people living below the poverty line.

Tell me the beginning of the story. How did the dynamic duo, yourself and Jody Landers, meet and decide to “change how we give”?

We met in Liberia, West Africa — kind of a funny place to meet for two women from the States! Jody had spent years in Iowa growing as a mom; she was engaged just after high school and had her first kid at nineteen.

I was just browsing her website. Such a beautiful family!

I know, adorable! She and her husband had this epiphany when they had their ten-year anniversary. They were planning on going to Hawaii because they had never taken a proper honeymoon, but decided to instead use that money to adopt a pair of twins from Sierra Leone — Zeke and Kora. They were in need of a family and had been given up because their mother died in childbirth due to lack of access to proper medical care. Obviously, going to Sierra Leone after living a very comfortable Midwestern life was a very eye-opening experience. They said, “Okay — we need to make our family more worldly and globally-conscious.”

She’s a very popular blogger and used that passion to raise money with friends around her kitchen table for water projects through charity: water, which was the organization where I was working at the time. I was managing all of the projects, spending 30 percent of my time in the field in Africa, Haiti, and India. I met her in Liberia and showed her all of the water projects that she had helped to support. We stayed in touch and talked a lot about the most effective ways to end poverty and how to change the way people give.

We found that there wasn’t an organization out there dedicated to channeling ordinary Americans’ small gifts into social enterprise and to job-creation activities that impact local economies. I had met amazing entrepreneurs as I was funding water projects and wanted to amplify their impact by raising awareness for what they were doing.

Currently The Adventure Project partners with International Lifeline Fund, Water For People, KickStart, and Living Goods. Do you choose one organization per cause — environment, water, hunger, and health?

Right now, we are focused on one organization per cause. Hopefully as we grow we will diversify that portfolio. Each of those organizations and their products, low-cost technologies such as the stove, could potentially impact a billion people living at the bottom of the pyramid.

So many organizations deserve more support. How do you choose the organizations that The Adventure Project supports?

We are definitely looking for impact. We ask ourselves if their technology has the opportunity to impact the broadest range of people. We are also looking for robust organizations that have sound organizational activities and are positioned to scale.

Can you give us a short description of each Social Enterprise and tell us why you’ve chosen it for The Adventure Project?

Lifeline Fund is implementing a fuel-efficient stove program in Port au Prince, Haiti. The number one cause of death in children isn’t AIDS or hunger or water: it’s actually respiratory illness, usually developed when a mother is cooking and her baby is strapped to her back or nearby. The baby breathes in the toxic smoke, which can cause pneumonia. A fuel-efficient stove drastically reduces the emissions of toxic smoke, which is good for health as well as the environment. It reduces carbon emissions as well as deforestation. In Haiti, about 95 percent of forests have been deforested, which raises the price of charcoal. Many poor families that live on less than two dollars a day are now spending 40 percent of their income just on charcoal to cook with. The stove cuts the amount of charcoal used in half.

The Adventure Project partners with Lifeline Fund to provide Haitian families with fuel-efficient stoves

Water For People is currently doing something very entrepreneurial and innovative. One-third of all wells are broken in Africa, India, and most developing countries. Wells often break within the first two years because there are no trained mechanics, spare parts, or tools to maintain them. Water For People is providing local people the tools, training, and resources to become well mechanics. Commonly, a really inexpensive part causes wells to break. If those wells are maintained, it will prevent major breakdowns.

Our hunger campaign with KickStart provides irrigation pumps for rural farmers in Kenya. The majority of Sub-Saharan Africans who are poor are subsistence farmers. 75 percent of those farmers don’t have enough food to feed their families — obviously that’s a production issue. These irrigation pumps increase the crop yield by 1,000 percent in one season. You’re literally giving people the ability to grow more crops, so they can not only feed their families, but also sell the excess in local markets.

And then send their children to school?

Absolutely! We’ve met families that now have a motorcycle, have their kids in private tutoring, and are using their transportation to export to the UK twice per week. Its really remarkable what people can do when they have access to the appropriate technology.

And health?

In the rural communities that Living Goods serves, children often die of preventable illnesses. They don’t have access to basic preventative medicines. Living Goods elects one woman per village, approximately 700 people total. If those women pass a health test and receive the needed training, they become health care promoters. They sell health care products to their community and provide maternal health care. Most of them are women leaders who have had several children, are experienced, and are trusted in the village. In Africa, drugs are often marked up by 350 percent compared to what the market rate should be, because of access. Living Goods has created a supply chain to make the drugs affordable. Since they are buying them in bulk and distributing, they are able to keep the costs down.

Before The Adventure Project, you were a part of charity: water. How is Water For People different?

Yes, I funded both. Water For People and charity: water have always had a great relationship. Water For People focuses on entrepreneurial efforts to end poverty. There will always be issues with access to water. There is a misconception that once you drill the well, it’s going to be there for at least twenty years, which is not accurate. I just wanted to provide a different perspective. The focus is on entrepreneurs and creating dignity: “teaching someone to fish.” Projects will be more sustainable if you’re supporting local economies and providing tools and training.

You were recently a part of a huge fundraising campaign for World Water Day. How many well mechanics will you be able to train?

Oh my gosh. That was crazy! I’m still recovering. We put out the challenge to raise $25,000 for well mechanics in 24 hours. Every $550 would give the tools, training, and stipend to employ one mechanic. The Prem Rawat Foundation proposed to double that $25,000. We used our collective voices on World Water Day, and both organizations passed the mark around 11:00 p.m. That was phenomenal. $50,000 went into the program, and I think we’re at $66,135 this morning. That’s 120 mechanics to implement Water For People’s well mechanics program in rural India.

The Adventure Project’s promotional video for World Water Day 2012

Sounds like things are going well for The Adventure Project! How can Daily BR!NK contribute to your success?

Really getting people to join our email list to learn more about us and find out how they can get involved. We want to channel venture from people that are passionate about social issues, whether it be water, hunger, the environment, or health. There are four ways that people can get plugged in and really learn more about these issues. That would make me very happy — and, of course, donate to the causes!