On this installment of the Phorecast podcast we meet Mr Richard Tofel, the general manager of ProPublica.org. Pro Publica is a non profit newsroom with one goal: to produce great investigative reporting.

Today, there is no escaping the headlines that newspapers are dying, advertising revenue has dried up and venerable newspapers are scrambling, downsizing or going web-only. Investigative journalism is expensive and often the first to go when times are tough. There is a flurry of discussion about new business models to save the industry be it micropayments or philanthropic ventures like ProPublica.org.

Pro Publica is funded by grants and works like this; the newsroom has a staff of around 30 top investigative reporters, they produce reporting and it is then given, not sold, to news outlets such as the New York Times, the LA Times, CNN and CBS 60 minutes. All the reporting is also available for free on the ProPublica.org site.

Mr Richard Tofel was formerly the assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal and he has authored several books including Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism (St. Martin’s, 2009)

Read more about Pro Publica at New York Times »
Read more about micropayments and journalism at New York Times »

Wars and natural disasters are just a few of the reasons why people, for generations, have had to relocate from their homes all over the globe. In the Northern part of Sweden the mining industry has continued to expand and an unfortunate side effect has presented itself in several cities, the ground is crumbling. The beautiful town of Gellivare is one of those cities.

City Move Interdesign is a unique global event designed to tackle this pressing issue. The project is a partnership between ICSID, the Swedish Industrial Design Foundation (SVID) and the community of Gellivare and it will begin to tackle the enormous challenges that moving an entire population entails for both the inhabitants and for the city itself.

Phorecast founder Tomas Seo has been handpicked to join forty international experts and innovators for this multi-disciplinary project. During a two week think tank, innovators from a vast spread of competencies, will work together towards solving issues such as how to address the needs of people when relocating from their homes, physical conditions when planning a new society, sustainable factors for a new society and much more.

The findings from the City Move Interdesign project will become part of a knowledge bank that can be used in Sweden but also serve as groundwork internationally, for example when relocating populations ravished by political unrest and natural disasters.

International architects, psychologists, artists, engineers are just some of the disciplines joining together in this effort. Designer Tomas Seo has through much of his career worked in multi-disciplinary projects and is a strong believer in this method of collaboration. He is looking forward to contributing to this knowledge bank that will hopefully be of service to both Gellivare, other cites in Sweden and the international community.

Phorecast is honored for the opportunity to interview Mr Randall Fielding. Mr Fielding is a world renowned architect and educator who has developed award winning schools all over the world. Randall is the co-founder of Fielding Nair International based in Minneapolis, one of the world’s most innovative educational design companies.

Mr Fielding has worked with schools in Minneapolis, Kazakhstan, Australia and Switzerland, to name just a few places, and his focus is on creative and interactive 21st century learning spaces. In this interview we talk to Mr Fielding about what the problems are with todays school system and environment and how we can engage and create innovative schools to prepare kids for the new requirements of the knowledge age. And we find out how Prince has been an interesting inspiration in this field!

Read more about The Master Classroom at Edutopia »

Radiolab has been called the most innovative show on radio by This American Life’s Ira Glass and very many listeners agree. Each week co-hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich choose a big topic of a scientific and philosophical nature and in a unique documentary style explore it through interviews, experiments and discussion. Jad, a music composer, adds a distinctive audio production style with sound illustrations and unique editing techniques.

We are honored to interview Jad Abumrad about the coming season of Radiolab, some behind the scenes of the shows production, the most difficult topics they have ever tackled and how pop culture portrays science and scientists today!

Listen to Radiolab »
Listen to Christina and Tomas talk more about pop culture at Voccine »

We congratulate Tomas here at Phorecast who was just named an Honorary LIfetime Member by The Swedish Association of Designers!

Tomas served as chairman of the association between 2005-2008. The Swedish Association of Designers (Sveriges Designer) is a trade organization for professional designers based in Sweden. During his years as chairman membership grew substantially and his contributions include working for multi-disciplinary thinking among designers and seeing new business opportunities in openness and cooperations.

Tomas is in excellent company, other Honorary Lifetime Members of The Swedish Association of Designers include Margareta van den Bosch, chief designer at H&M and Henrik Otto, senior Vice President of Global Design, Electrolux!

This week on the Phorecast podcast we meet Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner at Blue State Digital in Washington D.C.

Blue State Digital is an interactive consultancy specializing in online fund raising, advocacy, social networking, and constituency development programs. Blue State Digital is behind Presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama’s Internet campaign, Obama for America 2008. Their online tools have helped the campaign generate more than $300 million from over more than a million online donors. Blue State Digital built Senator Obama’s own social network MyBO which has 850,000 users and has organized 50,000 events.

The company’s other clients also include the Democratic National Committee, Senator Edward Kennedy, Senator John Kerry, the Save Darfur Coalition, Sundance Film Festival & Institute and London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s campaign.

Thomas Gensemer managed The Accelerator Group before leading the online communications for General Wesley Clark’s Presidential campaign in  2004. He joined Blue State Digital in 2005.

Read more about Blue State Digital in Business Week »

At Phorecast we specialize in finding and customizing multidisciplinary teams of innovators and experts into sessions working for your organizations future. We are always looking for the most interesting innovators and we wanted to share some of the people that have really inspired us with their ideas and creativity. The Phorecast podcast enables us do just that! Thanks for listening and we would love to hear your comments, questions and innovative ideas.

In this installment of the Phorecast podcast we focus on smart textiles and we are honored to interview Suzanne Lee. Ms. Lee is the Senior Research Fellow at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, she is a fashion consultant and the author of the book Fashioning the Future, tomorrow’s wardrobe. Her expertise lies in creative applications of new technologies to design and innovative directions for fashion. One of Ms. Lee’s research projects is clothing grown from bacterial-cellulose, to produce a range of Cellulose Couture.

In the interview we also discuss wearable technology and innovations in smart textiles in regards to military and medical applications as well as “the emotional wardrobe”.
Ms. Lee also gives her thoughts on if and how haute couture is embracing smart textiles and what we may soon be seeing on the fashion runways of the future.

See more examples of Suzanne Lee’s cellulose fashion »

At Phorecast we specialize in finding and customizing multidisciplinary teams of innovators and experts into sessions working for your organizations future. We are always looking for the most interesting innovators and we wanted to share some of the people that have really inspired us with their ideas and creativity. The Phorecast podcast enables us do just that! Thanks for listening and we would love to hear your comments, questions and innovative ideas.

Tomas Seo and Christina Jeurling of Phorecast are heading to Berlin on August 13th to speak at and lead The 5th screen think tank at the IDZ International Design Center. The think tank is organized by the Hamburg based trend research company Trendone and will be exploring the future evolution of the screen and the innovations of the future. First there was Cinema-TV-PC/Web-Mobile-  what is the screen of tomorrow? What is the 5th screen?

The list of keynote speakers is an impressive list of international innovators presenting their new technology and business models. On the topic of Augmented Reality we will hear from Arun Chhabra of Texas Instruments. Reinhard Rubow, the Director of Retina Implant AG Reutlingen will introduce his eye chip and talk about artificial vision. Other presentations will include Philips Gerrit Willem Prins on wearable technology and talks on the Enduring Community.

Phorecast will hold a presentation entitled The Screen Savers where we will talk about the benefits of multidisciplinary teams and conclusions on how to succeed when introducing the next generation of screen technology to the mainstream public. Phorecast’s Tomas Seo will then lead the think tank portion of the event where all the speakers and attendants will take part.

We are looking forward to this interesting event!

On this installment of the Phorecast podcast we are honored to interview Mr. Roger Martin. Mr. Martin has served as dean of the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto since 1998. Previously he spent 13 years as a Director of Monitor Company, a global strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he served as co-head of the firm for two years.

His research work is in Integrative Thinking, Business Design, Corporate Social Responsibility and Country Competitiveness. He has written seven Harvard Business Review articles and published two books among them: The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking. In it Martin interviewed a variety of business leaders including the founder of Four Seasons Hotels Isadore Sharp, Procter and Gamble’s CEO A. G. Lafley, co-founder of Red Hat Inc. Bob Young, Michael Dell, Jake Welsh and Meg Whitman, of eBay fame. He found that their one common skill was being able to employ integrative thinking.

In the interview we discuss the power of design thinking in the business world, what risks leaders have to take and answer the question, why has the renaissance man of yesterday now become the multidisciplinary renaissance team.

Dean Roger Martin received his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981.

Read Roger Martins columns in Business Week »

At Phorecast we specialize in finding and customizing multidisciplinary teams of innovators and experts into sessions working for your organizations future. We are always looking for the most interesting innovators and we wanted to share some of the people that have really inspired us with their ideas and creativity. The Phorecast podcast enables us do just that! Thanks for listening and we would love to hear your comments, questions and innovative ideas.

The Phorecast Audio Podcast is honored to have with us entrepreneur and stand-up comedian Andi Smith. Besides being a very funny comic who has appeared on NBCs Last Comic Standing two seasons now, Andi Smith is one of the founders of the start-up RooftopComedy. Rooftop is an innovative company that uses the internet and mobile distributors to showcase new and established comedy talent, organizing big comedy events and making it accessible to a whole new audience.

Rooftop produces and distributes real comedy through the internet and promises that their clips are raw, uncensored, and not filtered through a bunch of uptight corporate suits. Rooftop is backed by one of the worlds leading venture capital firms Azure Capital Partners and have partnered with distributors such as Nokia, Mobilestreams, Itunes and Facebook. In 2006 Rooftop Comedy took the top honors of “Best Investment Idea” at the InvestorFest; TechCoire’s Investorfest in Sacramento CA brought together over 80 leading venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Andi Smith, who left a career as Creative Director at among other places Icon Media Lab to become a comic, has just released her comedy album, Home Perm and has received rave reviews.

Watch Andi Smith do stand-up comedy on RooftopComedy »

At Phorecast we specialize in finding and customizing multidisciplinary teams of innovators and experts into sessions working for your organizations future. We are always looking for the most interesting innovators and we wanted to share some of the people that have really inspired us with their ideas and creativity. The Phorecast podcast enables us do just that! Thanks for listening and we would love to hear your comments, questions and innovative ideas.