Day #2 of the Presidents Conference

October 22 2009
Sorry this post is overdue; this about the rest of the President's Conference that happened last week.
So we were invited to the Opening Gala, and there was a tremendous desire to return the next two days, to take advantage of this opportunity, so after some calls were made it turned out we were allowed to go back.
The structure and schedule of the conference for the next couple days were as follows; for both Wednesday and Thursday there was an opening panel in the morning on something (Thursday for example was about the Global Economic crisis) then there was a variety of panels that you could choose from to attend, then a lunch break, then a lunch break, then more panels, and so on and so forth. The last event of each evening was another big panel, and always had some fantastic speakers.
So, Wednesday
We weren't aware that we could attend the conference until after the morning opening panel was already over, so we went over to the conference for the mid morning panels. I went to one entitled Does the Environmental Crisis Threaten Our Future? There were four speaker there plus the moderator, none of them were incredibly famous, but I'll let you know who each of them were anyways.
Moderator: Israel Klabin, President of the Brazilian Foundation for Sustainable Development. He didn't really say much, just introduced the next speaker, and made sure that each person followed their allotted time amount.
Israel Aumann- Professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem- Nobel Prize Laureate for Economics in 2005. This man was the best speaker at this panel, he told this story about how garbage is treated in Switzerland. How in order to throw out trash you were required to use these blue bags you could purchase for 5 Swiss Franks (i don't know what the equivalent is) and then the bags had to be deposited in special receptacles in town. The thing was, there was not limit to how many bags you could by, but by charging people for them, it created a theme where there was an overall reduction in the amount of waste being thrown out, and a trend in less packaged good being purchased (thus having less to throw out). Thus manufacturers began to produce their products with packaging.
This guy also kept referring to himself in the third person, and talked a lot about incentives and the need to give people something to work towards if we want a change in how we live, and how we interact with the environment.

Israel Aumann

Miriam Haran- PhD, Former Director General, Israel Ministry of the Environment. She spoke about what really needs to be done to not entirely kill the environment. She said that while doing what we can to reduce our carbon footprint is great and all, it isn't the entire answer. Also, she pointed out how limited the world is on resources, mainly water, and how the population is growing at a rate that will not be able to be sustained on the water supply currently.
Raffaele Tognacca- Chairman of ERG Power and Gas (ERG is an Italian Oil Company)- He didn't say that much that was that exciting, or that was that relevant to the panel (in my opinion).
Bob Watson- Chairman and CEO of EcoTech which is a Sustainable Living Company, and he pioneered the green movement (he also spoke at a panel I attended the following day). He spoke about how human's do not need to "save the planet". We need to save our species. He said that species come and go, and it is somewhat a test of natural selection. That if we can't figure out how to exist on the planet in conjunction with it, then we will simply join the ranks of the extinct. He said that the biggest problem and the first thing that needs to be done is to change the way people think.
Overall this panel was pretty interesting- Although nothing here was groundbreaking and there were no facts or statistics presented that I wasn't already aware of, it was still interesting, and the issue was impressed upon me more, that something needs to be done to change the way we live, and how our resources are used. Plus Israel Aumann was an absolutely fascinating person to listen to.

Panel #2 On Wednesday
Later that day I went to panel entitled Culture, The Arts and Tomorrow's Inspiration. The general idea of this panel was to understand how globalization and the new age of technology is affecting the arts.
Moderator- Ruth HaCohen Pinchover - Professor at Hebrew University. Again, she really didn't say much, just introduced each speaker.
Claude Lanzman- Producer of SHOAH (Holocaust Film from 1985)- He was a little hard to engage with, and listen to, because he had a very heavy french accent and spoke in a monotone. But what I did get from him is "the unavoidable never happens the unforeseen always". Although I don't know what the context was when he said this.
Chari Pere- Founder of "The Unmasked Comics Project" which is a comic venture that portrays social issues through comics. For example her co-author and illustrator of the comics distributed one at the panel called "The Green Prince" which is a about the Electric Car. She also has another well known comic that deals with the issue of a Jewish woman getting divorce papers. She talked about how classic movies and stories are no longer interesting to the younger generation and how visual arts are the still the strongest way to spread a message, but some areas of visual art are getting lost. Other than that, she talked a lot about how her work is combating social issues, and trying to get the young generation interested and active. She was a very engaging speaker and begun her speech by saying "The world wright now is too lazy, we all are on our Blackberries and I phones instead of reading a book or going out and doing something."
Gille Rozier- Founder of Yiddish Newspaper. He talked about the blogging phenomenon and how different writing a blog is as opposed to writing a book. He also talked about how mass publishing companies are essentially taking over the world, and controlling what we read, and putting small bookstores that sell "truly great literature" out of business.
James Snyder- Past Deputy Director of MoMa, current director of the Israeli Museum. What he said pretty much only related to museums, he talked about how some museums were spoiled in terms of what types of exhibits and artists they had access to. He also talked about how MoMa focuses on Modernism and looking forward while the Israeli museum focuses on both the past, the present and the future. Nothing he said seemed to relate that much to anything else he said, nor did he really relate entirely to the whole globalization issue. Nonetheless he was a good speaker.
Italy Talgam- Classical Musician. Spoke pretty much about how Goggle is taking over the world. It was unclear as to whether or not he believed this was a bad thing. He also talked about a lot of art is being represented over the internet. From images of paintings in a Madrid Art Museum being put up on Google to auditions for joining the Philharmonic were held over YouTube. He said that in order to determine who and what will survive in the growing age of technology its imperative that connections be made from people to people, and that everything isn't just left up to cyberspace.
Michael Arad- Architect working on the Ground Zero project. He talked mainly about architecture and made the point that the most impressive archeological structure occur under the most oppressive regimes (citing Russia). He pretty much talked about how architecture was the last true form of art, and how architects are true artists.
Overall this panel was incredibly interesting. It wasn't one that was designed to necessarily teach you something, or to inspire you to go out and doing something to change the world, but it was really interesting to listen to everyone talk about their various forms of art, and what their opinions were. My favorite person was the cartoonist.
This panel was very interesting