Technology, Entertainment, Design: Talks speed innovation

Date: 20 Oct 2012 | posted in: Media Coverage, Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal, October 20, 2012

LEWISTON — “I put a lot of my making-the-world-better energy into becoming a better consumer,” said Stacy Mitchell, a researcher and writer at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which challenges corporate consolidation of the economy. “(But) what we really need to do is change the underlying policies that affect the marketplace.”

Eric Agren of Lewiston talks about how people told him that he was “crazy” when he first proposed putting an upscale restaurant on Lisbon Street. Agren was a “surprise” speaker during Saturday’s event.

“When you decide to let sustainability permeate your life, you start to have all sorts of conversations,” said Seth Silverton, founder and director of The Wood Chop School, which teaches sustainability in Lincolnville.

“We are the youth of today,” said Anjali Appadurai, an activist and senior at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, “born at the dawn of globalization, recipients of its gifts and witnesses to its mistakes.”

The presenters at Saturday’s TEDxDirigo conference spoke on topics ranging from environmental and economic issues (the welfare of Maine’s river ecosystems) to the personal (dealing with family and community relationships). But all 16 speeches and performances that took place throughout the day in Bates College’s Olin Arts Center converged around the notion of “villages.”

“We wanted to explore human beings living together, historically and currently, between an age when we not only have reality, but we have virtual reality and virtual identities,” said Adam Burk, executive director and curator of TEDxDirigo. “It’s also an homage to the quintessential New England experience and how we experience community here in Maine.”

Read the full story here.

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