The game designer was one of some thirty paradigm-shifting thinkers and doers who took the stage at this year's Pop!Tech conference
by Jessie Scanlon

A Global Who's Who

Five hundred entrepreneurs, thinkers, designers, educators, and inventors attended this year's conference, which closed Saturday, and which focused on the theme of Dangerous Ideas [4]. ...

While a glance at the Pop!Tech program suggests an eclectic, almost random assortment of interesting people—co-founder of the Global Business Network Stewart Brand [5] and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman...the conference held together surprisingly well, in part because one particular "dangerous idea" kept coming up again and again. ... In the kick-off session, Brian Eno [6], the British experimental-music pioneer and theorist, presented an idea which shocked society when it was first introduced and which, although now widely accepted, continues to reverberate through culture and business: the theory of evolution.

... Pop!Tech isn't the only one to emphasize community and the power of the network, but it walks the walk more than some. Its focus is less on high-power networking—there's no equivalent of the exclusive "Billionaire's Dinner" [7] that publisher John Brockman hosts for TED muckety-mucks every year—and more on the network. ... [3]