Sarina Chawla

Nothing is Ordinary about this store

                On 5500 W. Silver Spring Drive, Milwaukee, WI is what seems like an ordinary grocery store, and upon entering it seem again like an ordinary store selling vegetables and other products. Then once you take a look behind the scenes, a different magical scene appears. This store not only sells the produce they make it from scratch.

                Starting with the soil, everyone remembers making compost sometime in their life throwing trash into a bucket to make “food” to give the plants, at Growing Power they also make their soil/compost. There are many types of soils that they make, but all of them are friendly to the environment and use up some type of waste product, one of those soils is called Microbiological Compost. This compost is made out of mainly worm castings ( worm manure)and  worms to produce the manure. They put the worms in a huge bin with some of the mature compost and the worms eat away and leave their manure behind. This type of compost actually makes the plants grow faster. Another genius idea that Growing Power, uses for their soil is coir. Coir is the fibers from the outside of the coconut. They are unusable to most and usually considered waste, so these fibers are shipped in blocks for Growing Power. Using coir is very environmental friendly, not only because the fibers won’t go in trash, but the plants grow faster and actually break down the fibers.

                Being environment friendly is a main goal for Growing Power, and this is apparent throughout the whole store. There are solar panels on top of the greenhouse, which provide most of the electricity. A representative of Growing Power said “Not only does the solar panels reduce our energy bill, but we also get tax credits for going green.”

                For Will Allen, the creator of Growing Power, is amazing but for him to share it the way he has is better. This knowledge of agriculture has spread to many youth across Milwaukee and continues to expand with the Milwaukee Youth Corps program. This program allows youth to come in and help out with the raising of the plants, and livestock on the farm. Just remember whenever someone tells you that one person doesn’t make a difference, they are completely wrong, give them the example of Will Allen, he is making sustainable agriculture and being environmental friendly at the same time.  

Collin Rich had an idea to have a balloon that carried a camera embedded in it, with hopes that it would reach 100,000 feet and back. Mr. Rich has a passion for capturing pictures that aren’t usually taken and capturing pictures in a different light or a new angle. Mr. Rich and a group of other people launched this balloon, even though they had doubts about where the balloon would land. “Maine isn’t the ideal location, there is an ocean and it has a rough coast,” as Mr. Rich puts it. Although he has launched a balloon like this before they still never fully know the location where it will land. The group of them worried that the balloon might land in the ocean, which it was in its predicted projection plan. Fortunately it didn’t land in the ocean and it landed in a field. Although that was good news, there was also bad news that followed, which was that one of the cameras had been lost. Keziah Green (another youth ambassador) and I were talking about the balloon and we thought that it was interesting, but we were wondering what sparked their interests to make these balloons.

Time Warner Cable is sponsoring PopTech and they put out this about PopTech.  Click here to see it

October 23, 2010, 12:03pm

Mike Blum and Marica McNutt talk about the oil spill and look at the spill from a different perspectives. I really liked to take notes on the speeches using the visual technique, which is what I did.

October 23, 2010, 10:44am

Kim Cobb talks about global warming and the studies that she has done. Brian Hare spoke about the difference between different species, the comparison between humans and banobos. Siddhartha Mukherjee talks about his new book about cancer and the influence and impact it has on many people. Amishi Jha answers the ultimate question about how our attention span works. I documented these speeches in a visual approach.

Tom Darden is part of an organization called Make it Right. He started out by helping build homes for victims of  Hurricane Katrina, because of his passion for this, he made a living of doing this. After Hurricane Katrina many people died and many were left without homes in New Orleans. Make it Right strives to help these people start over, and provide a sustainable home in which they can live in, to “rebuild their roots.” America has been forced to put profit ahead of quality, the idea of neo-liberalism, Make it Right wants to put the quality ahead of money. “New Orleans has been flooded before, and no doubt it will likely flood again, so why would we make another house that could be swept away again.” This organization makes house that are designed to float, so incase of another natural disaster, these people don’t need to fear that their house will fall down. The world is moving toward more environmental friendly energy, Make It Right has embraced this principle, using solar technology lowering the energy bills from around $209 to around $22. The “green” ways don’t stop there, they use recyclable carpets and drywall, and non-toxic paints in these homes. This organization helps the victim of a natural disaster, where homes are destroyed to “rebuild some hope.”  ”Together we can let people have hope.”

How are you feeling? An everyday question that you might hear from friends and strangers. Orlagh O’Brien looks at this question and takes it a bit further and asks why do you feel this way? When you open up the world to this question answers can be very diverse.  A survey was taken, asking people these questions, everyone had a different answer like expected, but what surprised me was that some people wrote to answer this questions and other drew their answers. In drawings I would normally think of drawing a face about how they felt, but this was not the case, some drew wings and other designs to express their feeling. Like anyone in this situation, Ms. O’Brien wasn’t really sure how to evaluate these images. Not only were they interesting drawings but the colors were all different. Ms. O’Brien spoke about how each color represent an emotion or feeling. An example she gave was “the stronger emotions had a deeper and darker color.” When talking about emotions as a whole I was deeply interested the comment she made which was “Emotion is a force, we are helpless against it”. It is fascinating just to observe the emotions of the people around you and their surroundings when their feeling change.  

 Our education on science has been lacking in the last couple of years, compared to all the other countries, the United States used to be at the top and now it is down to around the 20th. Why is this happening is what many may ask. One reason is defiantly the way we are taught science, being a teenager in high school I know that the last thing I want to do is listening to a boring lecture with a professor who has a monotone voice teaching me about how paint dries. Ben Dublin-Thaler realized that this is one of the root causes for the lack of education, and tried to fix it. He created a bus that had a wind turbine on it, a solar panel, a garden on top, and it ran on vegetable oil. That wasn’t enough for him, he knew that we had to get the youth involved, so inside the bus they had qualified scientists teaching these students, but involving them in the lesson. The students got hands on experience on concepts of science. Mr. Dublin-Thaler really embraced Benjamin Franklin’s principle “Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I learn.” To find out more information about the bus, check out the website BIOBUS.org. We can bring the United States back up to the top with more buses like these. 

October 22, 2010, 7:46amThere are many ways to record information, I tried out a new technique that was taught to the youth ambassadors by Mr. Peter Durand. It is taking a speech and mapping it out visual which is what I did with Ned Breslin’s speech. It makes you think in a unique and different way.

October 22, 2010, 7:43amRube Goldberg machine failed a couple time along the way, but who doesn’t have obstacles standing in their way. Although that contraption didn’t work out perfectly it certainly didn’t stop it from being a crowd pleaser. That’s what PopTech is all about, trying to achieve the unimaginable, and being okay when it didn’t go according to plan, it set in the audience’s mind the theme of the conference Brilliant Accidents, Necessary Failures, and Improbable Breakthroughs.

There is no really way to judge who is wrong it is all based on your perspective and tradition. In the activities today we are going to listen to many speakers about how to “think wrong.” We can up with many ideas of what we thought thinking wrong was, but I am excited to see how many other people define thinking wrong, and the people they see who embrace this principle in everyday life.

We hear the speeches all the time about how we need to change the world to make it a better place for everyone, so I think it will be a different and unique perspective to see how not to change the world. This will be a day will be about looking at a new perspective, that is different than your own.

October 23, 2010, 7:33am

It is amazing to see different ways people communicate. Today we had many people come and talk to us in different fields of expertise, but at the same time they all talked about how to communicate with people.  Jad Abumrad and Joe Palca, were the first people we got the pleasure to meet, they had expertise in the subject of radio. We learned about how they choose a topic to speak about and how they go about creating the broadcast. Most importantly we learned that you don’t have to compromise your passion to make money. Both of these guys followed what they wanted to do, and didn’t take into account if the business was dying or not.  

                Radio is a way to communicate messages to people, but another way to do that is through actual journalizing. Journalizing as Mr. Abumrad puts, it is something that you have to pick up, it doesn’t pick you up. Which is why Christine our next person who talked to us, instilled the importance of actually having a good lead to catch the reader’s attention.  

                Not everyone can learn through a “linear motion” which is just writing everything down through general note taking methods, sometimes people learn through a more visual approach. Peter Durand showed us a visual note taking called mind maps. It is amazing to see the works he has produced from listening to other speakers. It makes you think in a different way especially when you plan activities  or brainstorming.  

                Today we also got the opportunity to help build a structure using only fiberglass wires and connector and we were able to make so many different structures it is mind boggling. Throughout the whole day today I was amazed by the different ways that everyone approaches communication. It makes you think about where we are going in the future with communication.  

                Along this journey of having the amazing people talk about communication, I met many people who have the same interests as me they are Molly White, Anthony Morris, and Keziah Green. They have been with me throughout this whole day and will continue to stay with me throughout this whole conference. I also met people who are helping out with the conference, they have lots of energy and are excited about what they do, I think that more people should be happy with what profession that they chose. Today has not only been mindboggling, but it also has been very inspirational experience. 

In picture is Peter Durand’s way of communication of recording a speech.