Back To Work

We headed back to work last night with filming the "Fireside Chat" with Unreasonable Mentor and Time Magazine Hero of the Planet, Hunter Lovins.  She is quite the inspiring lady, and her latest book is called, "The Way Out: Kickstarting Capitalism to Save our Economic Ass."  She's most known for her book about solving climate change called, "Natural Capitalism."  Her pitch is that we need to use capitalism to solve the climate crisis, and make sustainable living affordable and profitable.  If it's all a hoax...we'll make money.  If climate change is real, we'll save the planet and make money.

I would highly recommend looking her up and reading about her life's story.  I won't even attempt to summarize her talk, but you can look forward to seeing it through Unreasonable Channels like Unreasonable.is.  I know we have to have these deliverables done by the time we reach Spain, but I'm not sure how soon they will see the light of the internet.  Anyway...

At the end of the live interview conducted by Daniel Epstein, they opened it up to the room for questions, and one student raised his hand and said, "I'm an acting major, and I now feel completely useless after hearing what you've done in this world with your life.  Do you have any advice for people who are in the arts?"

Hunter looked out to the crowd and asked people to raise their hands if they could name 10 scientists and what they are known for.  A few people raised their hands.  She then asked, how many of you can name 10 actors?  The room shot up their hands.

She reminded him that the arts and media are the cultural influencers to our society and without them, the information that needs to reach the masses would never be able to move enough people to action.

"My advice?" She said, "be a good one."

I was totally struck by the interaction because I was nodding along with the student as he said that he felt inadequate in taking up space in this world as an artist, but with Hunter's response, I felt confident in my role.

Meeting these movers and shakers in the entrepreneurial world has been exciting, but also intimidating. It has made me question the role I've chosen, but without the me's in the world, no one would know that any of this was happening.  A person born without eyeballs wouldn't know that someone else has found a non-obtrusive way for them to see.

Directors like our friend Jeff Orlowski, who currently has national distribution for his film, Chasing Ice,  are a prime example of how doing what you do best is all a part of our world's global issues.  He's a part of the movement to help people understand that climate change is a real issue that we need to do something about.  He's not coming up with the solutions, but his film is helping with the biggest boundary the issue faces right now: the skeptics.

One of the Unreasonable Learning Partners from Nike told a story of how HP and Microsoft put resources toward sending IT people down to Haiti after the earthquake.  You might ask, "what the heck would geeks be helpful with after an earthquake?"  Instead of throwing money at the problem, they sent people down to assist all of the aid workers in setting up their bases.  Since it was a disaster area, new networks and hubs needed to be set up so that they could all communicate, and these technology companies saw a way that they could assist with what they do best.

Hunter has many other speaking engagements around the world, so she'll be getting off the ship in Hawaii, but it was an absolute pleasure to be around and get to film her as she spoke with students and the entrepreneurs in the Unreasonable program on the ship.

We'll be picking up a new round of learning partners and a couple more mentors in Hawaii, though, so the fun does not stop.

We get to port in Hilo, Hawaii tomorrow morning around 8:00am, but the film crew is getting up for a sunrise timelapse and some footage of pulling into our first port.  It'll be the first land we've seen in 6 days, so I'm sure everyone on the ship will be up and ready to welcome the sight of the island.

To see some of the photos and (soon) videos that we're assisting the SAS communications team with, don't forget to check out the News from the Helm section on the Semesteratsea.org website.  Matt's jib will have a shot in the student embarkation/bon voyage video that should be going up tomorrow.

Aloha!