The Feast Conference was held at the Times Center in NYC on Thursday, Oct. 1st. from 9AM until 5PM. It was like a mini “TED” conference with 12 speakers each speaking for @20 minutes and some short films in between. We were served a lovely lunch and had breaks for networking.

Of all the amazing projects and people who spoke, a few in particular sparked my fancy.

Uffe Elbaek is the founder and now special advisor to Kaospilots, an International School of New Business Design & Social Innovation. He told a story about organizing a rock concert in October of 1989 in Copenhagen and Moscow. With only one year to organize, his team was able to overcome all of the obstacles presented by the Soviet Union. Early in Oct 1989 after the concert’s success, a news camera asked him how long he thought it would take to create change in the USSR. His response at the time was “15-20 years”. 3 weeks later, the Berlin Wall came down. I wanted to shout out hooray!! An amazing time. He helped me see that seismic change can happen more quickly than we expect.

Another particularly interesting speaker was Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA. He said Slow Food is rolling out more increased awareness and advocacy of local and sustainable food practices, in particular, food programs in schools. He pointed to the fact that a lot of our health care issues are nutrition related; diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses connected to diets high in processed and industrially produced food.

William Drenttel spoke about design as an essential component in creating a sustainable world. He is currently teaching at the Yale School of Management and heads the Winterhouse Institute. He mentions a quote by Allan Chochinov from his manifesto on sustainable design, “We (designers) think that we’re in the artifact business, but we’re not; we’re in the consequence business.”
Drenttel stresses the need for designers to understand and design systems, a position my teacher Michael Singer ingrained in me 25 years ago in graduate school. ART school, BTW.

Brian Bordainick in some ways had the most inspiring story of the day. The producers saved him for last and I know why. He went to New Orleans when he was 23 years old to help after hurricane Katrina. No idea what to do, but just wanting to be part of the solution. He ended up the head of the athletic program at Carver High School in the 9th ward and catalyzed a  $1,000,000. and counting capitol campaign to build a new athletic facility in this most hard hit area of post-hurricane Katrina. Brian’s energy and ability to see this project through is infectious!

All of the speakers at Feast are working on amazing projects. I was delighted to be able to participate with special thanks to my sponsor, Andrea Bakacs.

I signed up today for next year. Will you join me?  Feast2010

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