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 »

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 »

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.

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.

On this episode of the Phorecast podcast we are honored to interview award winning Chef Wylie Dufresne. Trained at the French Culinary Institute in New York City he is today executive chef of New York’s wd-50 restaurant on Manhattan’s Lower East which he opened April 2003.

Chef Dufresne is world famous for combining traditional cooking art with molecular gastronomy. Molecular gastronomy is a scientific discipline involving the study of physical and chemical processes that occur in cooking. Mr. Dufresne and his staff have through research and experimentation with, for example, different temperatures, textures, gums and gelatins made delicious, innovative and critically acclaimed dishes such as fried mayonnaise and a foie gras that can be tied into a knot.

Many may also recognize Chef Dufresne from the TV show Top Chef where he has appeared as a guest judge several times.

Look at pictures of the wd-50 food on Flickr »

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.

Imagine a printer that instead of printing with ink on paper deposits droplets of plastic, layer by layer, gradually building up a 3d object of any shape complete with circuit boards, batteries and displays! Now stop imaging, because this printer already exists, it can already now print flashlights and watchbands, and will very soon allow you to print your own customized cell phone or Ipod.

Phorecast has the honor of interviewing Evan Malone from Cornell University, one of the brains behind the Fab@home personal desktop Fabber project.

The Fabber is essentially a revolutionary desktop printer that allows you to build three dimensional objects from plastic and other materials. Together with co-creator Hod Lipson, Evan has printed flashlights, watchbands, squirt bottles, batteries, artificial muscles, even fancy chocolates. On their website Fab@home they teach people how to build their own fabbers and encourage them improve the design and share their blueprints online.

Watch the Fabber print a Flashlight »

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.

Phorecast has had the honor of interviewing brand expert and the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford, Jennifer Lynn Aaker. Jennifer Aaker is one of the most respected experts in consumer psychology and the emotions and psychology of the consumer-brand relationship. Among other things, Ms Aaker is well known in the business and academic world for her Brand Personality Dimensions, a framework she developed to describe and measure the personality of a brand. In the interview she talks with us about the five core brand dimensions; Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication and Ruggedness. Ms Aaker also gives us some interesting thoughts on why transparency in business and marketing is so important to this generation of consumers.

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.