Thursday-Friday, April 19-20, 2007
The Equitable Theater (7th at 51st/52nd)
New York City
• Recap: photos and attendee comments
• Who came: attendee list
• Schedule
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Robert Fox at Gel 2007
(Interested in Gel? Join us for Gel 2009 in NYC and get Gel updates via e-mail)
Restaurateur
Author of
Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business
...and making special appearances...
On Thursday, April 19, 2007, Gel ran twenty tours, workshops, and seminars offering experiences all over New York City. Choices were assigned to attendees by ticket-purchase date. (The earlier attendees bought their tickets, the more likely they got their first choice of event.)
Tour the museum's newly opened Hall of Human Origins and see the most comprehensive evidence of human evolution ever assembled. Attendees also get an exclusive tour of the Discovery Room, an interactive learning space that embodies environmental design and learning theory.
Gel host Mark Hurst will give a presentation on "bit literacy," the subject of his new book by the same name. Attendees will get an overview of the skills in managing e-mail, todos, and other bitstreams. The aim of bit literacy is to make you more productive, with less stress, in the digital age. (All Gel 2007 attendees will get a copy of the book on Friday at Gel, but feel free to check out the book at bitliteracy.com.)
Douglas Quin will lead you on a listening experience in Central Park to explore the park's sonic spaces and acoustically distinct places, and discover the balance of natural and urban rhythms, sound textures and voices that are part of this unique environment and soundscape. Participants will be given a map of the park and invited to create sound maps, journals, or "scores" of their walk--translating the sound world into their own words and images.
Explore Manhattan's contemporary art district in Chelsea with Parsons School of Design art history professor Claudia Calirman. The tour includes established galleries and cutting-edge spaces featuring the work of emerging artists.
This half-day workshop, facilitated by Phillip and Andrea Spencer-Linzie, is based on the "community building" process developed by M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled. Participants practice ways of being together that create the possibility for authentic connection. Please bring a small object that is meaningful to you and, if you desire, any small percussion instrument.
Andy Feldman, senior consultant from Creative Good, will conduct a seminar on customer experience and how the holistic discipline is to business in the 21st century what advertising was in the 20th century. The seminar will include live usability testing of selected websites with conversations around catalogs, retail and other channels. You will leave the seminar with a clear understanding of how you can go about improving your business or organization by understanding the key unmet needs of customers.
Rachel Shechtman, Founder and CEO of Cube Ventures will take attendees to three retail environments in Manhattan's varied neighborhoods, exploring how brands are moving above and beyond product differentiation and creating unique, engaging experiences. You will listen, taste, touch and move your way through these experiences; each will feature the store's founder speaking and touring the attendees around the space.
Phil Mirvis, organizational psychologist, and Roosevelt Finlayson and Michael Diggiss, co-developers of the Festival in the Workplace, will show how to develop a new organizational culture that ignites the creative spirit and helps people find more meaning and joy in their work. Learn the ins-and-outs of creative potential through shared performance art by exploring what's behind the Junkanoo Masquerade of the Bahamas, the Trinidad and Brazil carnivals, and the New Orleans Mardi Gras.
Glowlab, a Brooklyn-based art and technology lab, presents an afternoon of artist talks at their Williamsburg studio with a look at several public-space installations on the surrounding streets. See how and where these emerging artists create their next projects. Hosted by Glowlab founder and independent curator Christina Ray.
Cathy Salit, President and CEO of Performance of a Lifetime, will host an interactive, improvisational session where participants will learn some of the "tricks of the trade" of the improviser and performer - in service of creating a great experience for you, your team, and your customers. (No acting experience required.)
Learn to juggle from the masters of mirth, and lords of levity, the Flying Karamazov Brothers. In this session, you'll learn how to juggle three balls. If you can already do that, you can start working on clubs, four balls, or whatever else you may want to try!
Paul Shaw, a calligrapher and typographer working in New York City, will lead a three-hour walking tour of midtown Manhattan devoted to searching for examples (the good, the bad and the ugly) of lettering in the urban environment. The goal is to become more aware of the wide range of lettering that surrounds us; to realize that not all letters are type; and to discover how materials, techniques and context affect lettering. Open your eyes and see your surroundings in a fresh light. Experience serifs in the wild.
Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki lead The MIDI Scrapyard Challenge Workshop - an intensive workshop in which participants build simple electronic projects (both digital and analog inputs) out of found or discarded "junk" such as old electronics, clothing, furniture, outdated computer equipment, appliances, turntables, monitors, gadgets. Participants in this workshop not only experience how to to tinker with electronics, but are also encouraged to think about the design of open systems, platforms and tools that allow the user to put these to a new use.
Participants will tour highlights from the museum's Painting & Sculpture and Photography collection with two MoMA lecture guides.
What makes a public place good and what makes it fail? Shin-pei Tsay, who leads the sustainability and environments efforts for Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects New York will take you on a tour comparing Time Warner Center and Columbus Circle, and the Hell's Kitchen/Clinton community garden with its surrounding neighborhood, to explore these questions.
Have you experienced the true flavor of chocolate, the cacao bean? Join Sarah Endline, Mastermind and Chief Rioter of sweetriot, a new cacao venture based in NYC. Sarah will share some information on the background of cacao and speak about her design process for sweetriot's first line of products. You'll even take a quick cacao/chocolate tour in Soho. Sarah promises it will excite your tastebuds, stir your curiosity, and enlighten your intellect.
What makes sacred places so powerful? As a designer, how do these buildings or natural environments use light, space and form to influence us? This informal, non-religious and friendly tour led by Scott Berkun, software development team leader and software/web UI designer, will take you through some of NYC's most sacred places, providing opportunities to experience and discuss this powerful kind of design, with opportunities to compare the kinds of design work you do.
"Digital Dan" Dubno, creator of Gizmorama, will take you on a tour of the latest visualization technologies from robotics to other advances in hardware, software, and brainware.
Embark on a food tasting journey through an old Italian neighborhood with a guide from Foods of New York. During this tour you will taste a variety of food specialties that has secured Greenwich Village's reputation as being one of the greatest culinary and cultural centers of the world. Discover the secrets to having the ultimate food and cultural experience off the beaten path!
Erin McKean, lexicographer & editor of The New Oxford American Dictionary, 2e, will drill you on the basics of word creation, give you the "raw materials" for new words, and help you invent your own word to let loose into the English language. The maker of the "best new word" (as voted on by the participants) will win a new dictionary, and all the words created will be included in a special Gel minidictionary.
P.S. Thanks to Sam Brown, at explodingdog.com, for designing the Gel logo.
