Following close on the heels of Fortune's Brainstorm, Aspen Institute's second annual IdeasFestival kicks off tonight with a plenary session entitled "Ideas that Change the World," an echo of the theme of February's TED2006 in Monterey, California.
Although occupying many of the same Aspen Institute venues as last week's Brainstorm, and sharing marquee speakers like former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, IdeasFestival takes a broader and a more political and cultural tilt, with former President Clinton, George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove as well as the likes of film director Sydney Pollack and TV producer Norman Lear taking the stage.
The seven-day event, which earned our 2005 Rookie of the Year Conference award last year, was preceded (like many previous days here) by heavy downpours and earthshaking bolts of lightening, as if the Olympic gods were heralding the arrival of myriad luminaries at Aspen Meadows.
The kickoff included a performance by Anna Deavere Smith, who has been a MacArthur Fellow and was recently named the first Aspen Institute Harman-Eisner Artist in Residence, as well as Architects for Humanity founder Cameron Sinclair and Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of the global nonprofit venture fund Acumen. All three have bean presenters at TED.
Lawrence Krauss, the Case Western Reserve University professor of physics and astronomy, also wowed the sold-out crowd with a quick romp through the vaguaries of string theory and the properties of 'empty space' in outer space, as he had done at greater length at the PUSH conference in Minneapolis last month.
Recent Comments