Intimate Conversations To Change The World?

Conversation is the intriguing premise of Richard Saul Wurman's, newest creation, www.thewwwconference.com, which will be a series of conversations between the greatest, most interesting and curious minds in the world engaged in immersive and improvised dialogues. He explained this "intellectural jazz" to a riveted audience recently at The Redwood Library, Newport.

The creator of the TED and TEDMED conferences , which drew speakers and participants from around the world to specific locations, and explored technology and medicine and better, innovative ways to align knowledge, Mr. Wurman is closing in on the philosophical idea that everything is connected to everything.

President Garry Fischer opening vintage wine

Described by Fortune magazine as an “intellectual hedonist” with a “hummingbird mind,” Richard Saul Wurman has always
sought ways to make the complex clear. He has written, designed and published 83 books on topics ranging from football to healthcare, to city guides, but he likes to say that they all spring from the same place – his ignorance.

The upcoming www conference (Mr. Wurman loves the "w" words) will be available as an app which can be downloaded, on which the two invited guests from disparate fields have a conversation that will indeed be heard around the world, utilizing the latest in technology. The conversations will be moderated by Mr. Wurman himself, and will run as long as the discourse is engaging and informative, generally 10 to 50 minutes. He describes the proposed conversations as "intellectual jazz".

Richard Saul Wurman and friend Kimberly Skeen-Jones

Wurman, who describes himself as "quite broad and very shallow", is intrigued by things he can't understand. "This conference gives me a whirlpool to wallow in: I can invite anyone," he said. The learning curve will be high.

The first guests will be cellist Yo Yo Ma, recently honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., talking with ? , and is scheduled for next September 2012.

The idea of scientific advances being random and unplanned is a parallel concept to Mr. Wurman's thinking (Did Alexander Fleming set out to discover penicillin?) The whole concept is one of random interchange producing new ideas, enlightenments, and truths.

Saying that the true innovators are those who see something that doesn't exist yet, and that people don't want, Wurman cited as an example Edward Land, inventor of the Segway, and, of course, the late Steve Jobs.

Nell Roberts & Gail Thacher

There will be no audience for the www.conferences and they will comprise 66 people having 33 separate conversations. "It's a new modality team," the creator states, the team including such luminaries as Yo-Yo Ma and Herbie Hancock as Musical Directors, Jon Kamen, Jack Dangermond of ESRI, Dale Chihuly, Glass Installation artist, Norman Lear, Glen Barros of the Concord Music Group, Josh Koppel of Scrollmotion, Charles Melcher, Publishing Consultant, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, Mike McCue of Flipboard , Gregory W. Harper of Harpervision, and many others.

Mr. Wurman's next envisioned project is "Prophecy 2025", scheduled for 2013, and for which he will invite 25 speakers in different fields to give perspectives on the future.

The tables were crowded in Redwood's Reading Room

He evoked Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Fyman and Vincent Scully as great lecturers. For his closing comment , he said it was "nice seeing things before they happen," and that things are not always what our preconceptions of them are. He feels he, and listeners, will get "closer to the truth with two people talking to each other."

Listening attentively were Angela and Gary Fischer, Rita Rogers, author Gloria Nagy (Mrs. Wurman), daughter Vanessa Wurman, Kimberly Skeen Jones, Mary Riggs, Doug Riggs, who introduced the speaker, Jim Roehm, George Herrick, Jim Moore, Katie Brierley, and Molly de Ramel.

-- L.P.