INTRO
Venture capitalist
Brad Keywell
once told me Chicago needs to be more “noisy.” If that’s the case, Chicago Ideas Week, making its debut Monday, is his big brass band, a way to trumpet big-name speakers and innovative local companies.
Keywell, one of the founders of Groupon, intends for the ideas festival to be an annual event with provocative talks about technology, innovation and the arts, plus plenty of networking among attendees to get all those ideas percolating.
“I’m not proposing this hasn’t been done before,” Keywell said in the spring as he began to put together the mix of panel discussions and behind-the-scenes tours. “But I am proposing we can’t have enough of this stuff.”
Former President
Bill Clinton
and Mayor
Rahm Emanuel
are among the featured guests; many local business and arts luminaries will give presentations at events and concerts. All talks and tours, called “labs,” are open to the public and cost $15, though some have sold out. For tickets and more information, call 312-334-1751 or visit
chicagoideas.com
. Here, we spotlight a few big ideas and behind-the-scenes experiences that will be part of the inaugural festival.
GLOBAL IDEAS
By
*The Internet is the best diplomat
This summer, a few months after Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak
was overthrown, Reddit co-founder
Alexis Ohanian
flew to Cairo, courtesy of the U.S. State Department. His assignment was to mentor Egyptian entrepreneurs.
One startup he advised, Bey2ollak, is an iPhone app that allows users to report on and get Cairo traffic conditions, which Ohanian called “appalling.” (The government doesn’t provide real-time traffic data.) Another, Inkezny, searches for nearby hospitals, ranks them by quality and then, with the push of a button, puts a call through to the hospital to request an ambulance. (“There’s no real effective 911 system in Egypt,” Ohanian said.)
Ohanian, 28, said he found himself answering the same questions in Egypt that he would have been asked at UCLA or MIT, and in English too. “I’m convinced the best ideas will win on the Internet, as long as it’s a free Internet. … They don’t have to be served up with an American flag,” he said.
Hear Ohanian speak about global community development at noon Saturday at the DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Place.
*We need to stop yelling at each other
For five years,
Robert Rosenkranz
, the multimillionaire chief executive of Delphi Financial Group, has been hosting “Oxford-style” debates on policy issues in Manhattan auditoriums, followed by dinners with the debaters and a select group of guests.
“I just felt that public discourse in this country had practically disappeared,” said Rosenkranz, who worked for the RAND Corp. , a conservative-leaning think tank, in the 1960s. “I could barely go to a dinner party in New York and bring up a political or policy issue without the whole thing falling apart.”
Still, there’s plenty of sport in Rosenkranz’s debate series, Intelligence Squared U.S. (It’s named and modeled after a British program.)
The topics are provocative: “Grandma’s benefits imperil junior’s future.” Agree or disagree?
And a winner is crowned. Audience members vote for or against “the motion” before and after the debate. Both tallies are announced at the end. So the audience not only picks a victor but also learns how many people were swayed.
“It really gives a dramatic arc to the evening,” Rosenkranz said.
In the group’s first Chicago debate, PayPal co-founder
Peter Thiel
and
Charles Murray
of the American Enterprise Institute will argue that “too many kids go to college.” Former Northwestern University President
Henry Bienen
and
Vivek
Wadhwa
, who founded two software companies prior to joining academia, will oppose the motion.
6:45 p.m. Wednesday, Venue Six Ten at the Spertus Center, 610 S. Michigan Ave.
*Biochar revolutionizes fertilizer
Jason Aramburu
, 26, first heard about biochar while working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Ancient Amazonians, he learned, had worked charcoal into their fields to boost their crop yields, and research was being conducted on a modern-day version of the fertilizer, called biochar.
Thus far, science has shown that biochar has three important benefits. First, unlike traditional charcoal, which is made from wood and causes deforestation, biochar is made from agricultural waste that would otherwise be burned or thrown out. Two, because of its ability to hold water and nutrients, and thereby prevent runoff, it can increase crop yields even during drought. It’s believed to work best in depleted tropical soils. Three, by burning the waste using a specific method and at a temperature between 932 to 1112 degrees Fahrenheit , carbon is trapped in the biochar rather than released into the air. Carbon emissions cause global warming.
Through his for-profit company, Re:char, Aramburu, of Austin, Texas, is trying to bring the equipment needed to make biochar to the developing world. The team is working in Bungoma, Kenya, where Aramburu spoke to me by phone last week.
“The trick has been getting the equipment cheap enough and robust enough to withstand the heating conditions, while being affordable for the poorest farmers,” he said. “That’s the big key, and we’ve made a lot of strides in that respect.”
Re:char doesn’t sell biochar; it sells the kiln in which it’s baked. To build the kiln, Re:char buys used 55-gallon oil drums in Kenya but imports the manufacturing tools. In Bungoma, the company has set up a small manufacturing facility inside a shipping container. Aramburu said he can build the kilns for $20 to $30 and sell them for $40 to $50.
Aramburu is attending Chicago Ideas Week as a Bluhm/Helfand Social Innovation Fellow. Try finding him via Twitter @re_char.
CHICAGO EXPERIENCES
By
*Tour da’ mayor
Remember that scene in the film “The Last Emperor,” in which the former ruler was knocking around the palace like any other tourist? That isn’t quite what Mayor
Richard M. Daley
will be doing as he takes part in this behind-the-scenes tour of Millennium Park, but it’s still pretty cool. Want to see how the Crown Fountain works, or how the Bean (“Cloud Gate” by
Anish Kapoor
) came to be where it was? You’re in the right place. Included in the tour will be everything from looks at the Pritzker Pavilion, how the plan worked and ways it was funded to what/who supports the park. And Daley should know, right?
10 a.m. Monday
Millennium Park Welcome Center, 201 E. Randolph St.
*Blinded by science
Atoms are cool. As long as you believe that, you’ll have a great time at this backstage tour of Argonne National Labs. Big-screen TV nerds can marvel at the facility’s 16-foot-long display wall in the — get this — visualization laboratory. Argonne’s Advanced Photon Labs provide the brightest X-ray beams in the Western Hemisphere. There’s even a powertrain research facility that gives present and future cars the once-over in aspects including fuel consumption and economy and puts them on the dynamometer.
1:30 p.m. Thursday
Argonne National Labs, 9700 S. Cass Ave., Lemont
*Rock on
It can’t all be about big thoughts from big minds, so why not let some band geeks run amok entertain you. Mucca Pazza, for the unfamiliar, bills itself as a “punk marching band.” This is a pretty accurate description, not in the harsh, loud and fast sense, but rather in the freedom sense. This ensemble, whose size varies from performance to performance, might all be wearing band get-ups — or they might not. But they are a gem of an ensemble whose music can be big, loud and boisterous as befits a big marching band. It can also be delicate and almost klezmer-like.
7:30 p.m. Thursday
Park West, 322 W. Armitage Ave.
*Money, money, money
Here are two reasons you can giggle smugly at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s threat to leave the city: 1. The C is for Chicago; 2. Rolling up Wacker Drive in a Ferrari can’t be duplicated anywhere else. Voila. Empty threat. Which will make your VIP tour of the exchange building all the more delightful, as you contemplate this local institution and get behind the curtain. Ignore the desperate-looking folks with sweaty brows and take in the exquisite architecture of the Board of Trade building. And open trading is sure to captivate, as you try to figure out who’s taking a bath — or shopping for a new Ferrari.
8:30 a.m. Friday
Chicago Board of Trade, 141 W. Jackson Blvd.
*Creativity
Often, “Just shut up and do it” is the reaction when you hear that creative people are going to gather to talk about the creative process. But be an optimist and head for this talk featuring
Anna Shapiro
,
Joan Cusack
,
Matt Nathanson
(Saturday show at the Riviera),
Jeanne Marie Olson
and
Jason Salavon
. And in reality, an award-winning director, a famous Hollywood actress, a platinum-selling musician, a design consultant and an artist getting together with other folks to discuss where ideas come from, what they do with them and how, might provide some insight that can fill in some blanks at an upcoming performance.
10 a.m. Saturday
Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, 800 E. Grand. Ave
*Gallery walk
Is the West Loop gallery district what River North used to be? Good question, one that you’ll have a chance to ask during a West Loop gallery walk. More than a decade ago, a building at 835 W. Washington Blvd. became a nexus of sorts, anchored by two galleries: Thomas McCormick and (then) Vedanta Gallery, which has become
Kavi Gupta
Gallery. That was then. Now the West Loop district is a thriving area, housing everything from established spaces to scrabbling young ‘uns. Chicago Art Review will host this 90-minute guided tour.
3 p.m. Saturday
Chicago Art Review, 119 N. Peoria St.
*Orchestrate
We only see the end products of a symphony orchestra at the performance, but by that time the serious, really hard work is done. The piece is dialed in and, barring any last-minute glitches, ready to go. But this opportunity to get behind the scenes with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago is a special one. You can sit in on a rehearsal and watch a piece honed to its finished state. No, the Civic isn’t the Chicago Symphony, but the youth musicians in the ensemble are extraordinary and go through the same struggles to make greatness as their big symphony counterparts.
6:15 p.m. Sunday
Institute for Learning, Access and Training at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 220 S. Michigan Ave.
kmwilliams@tribune.com
