at the 2010 OpenVideo Conference, held at the Fashion Insti- tute of Technology in Manhattan, during a talk by Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist at Kansas State Universitywho studies how media shapes culture and social change. As one antidote toWorldSuck,Wesch presented the work of Shawn Ahmed, who dropped out of a graduate programin sociology to travel to Bangladesh, where he wanted to make an imme- diate difference in the lives of the poor. Through videos he posts on YouTube, writings and links on his own website (www .uncultured.com), and updates to Twitter, where he has 250,000 followers, Ahmed is raising money to fund education, water, health, and other humanitarian projects. Ahmed’s work is interesting in it own right, but combined
with other presentations atOpenVideo—including video proj- ects that support grassroots development in India and document human-rights abuses in the far corners of the world—it illus- trates a larger conference trend. Meetings have always been a place where individuals come together to talk about problems and solutions. But in recent years, there has been an explosion of conferences that pitch a very large tent and use collabora- tive problem-solving approaches to address global challenges. In a very real sense, they’re trying to save the world.
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These big-tent, big-idea meetings are found all over the cul-
tural and political landscape. President Bill Clinton founded the ClintonGlobal Initiative in 2005 to bringworld leaders together into working groups to address specific challenges, such as strengthening world markets and increasing access to tech- nology. Last September, publisher Tina Brown’s Daily Beast website convened a “Reboot America” summit inNewOrleans that focused on cutting through the economic gloom and get- ting America back to work; presenters included former Afghanistan forces commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal and
In recent years, there has been an explosion of conferences that pitch a very large tent and use collaborative problem- solving approaches to address global challenges.