Future Salon Changing Finance: Socially-Responsive Debt, Sustainable Resiliency and the Means Meter

Update: Please RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/jrcps

The days are getting shorter, the evenings darker, the babies sleep longer :-), the wait and the way to long summer break is over. Next Friday the 6th of October finally a new Future Salon with Bruce Cahan:

Changing Finance: Socially-Responsive Debt, Sustainable Resiliency and the Means Meter*

A salon title with some big words and Bruce will fill them with life next Friday.

I feel a bit like I have let you all down my friends, a long hot summer without Future Salon. Well, the wait is over. An interesting evening with a solution to one or may be even most of our pressing problems is just around the corner. What I like in Bruce Cahan is, that he is not only talking about the solution, but actively working on implementing it.

You can even get a glimpse of Bruce participating in the Open Mike Future Salon by watching the tape on the Internet Archive.

Abstract: Al Gore aptly describes the planetary forces of energy, environment, industrialization, social justice, war and political malaise as an Inconvenient Truth. How much is Wall Street to blame? What if the finance and insurance markets allocated capital and insurance based on energy efficiency, conservationism, social equity of preparedness and other memes of profound human dignity and insight? What would that world of “high stakes” finance look like?

Short Bio: Bruce’s knowledge of finance, law, technology and government processes is unique and empowers his liaison for new ideas across many domains.

Bruce Cahan is a finance lawyer, who worked for 10 years in New York with the law firm of Weil Gotshal & Manges representing clients as diverse as General Electric Capital Corp, and the Salvation Army. After a Con Ed steam pipe burst outside his Gramercy Park apartment building, Bruce changed focus in 1990, and organized a nonprofit, Urban Logic, to apply technology, finance and institutional solutions to the problems of rebuilding fragile cities.

Bruce is a pioneer in the use of geospatial technologies. His work with OMB, the Federal Geographic Data Committee, EPA, US Geological Survey, the City and State of New York, OpenGIS Consortium and others led to major changes in the supply of publicly available spatial intelligence and analytical tools. In 1991, he was an early advocate of the need for New York Cityto map itself digitally, and the resulting base map delivered 6 months before 9/11 helped emergency work crews coordinate safe and effective response in Lower Manhattan

Bruce has briefed OECD in Paris, the European Community’s INSPIRE Initiative, the White House, Congress, GAO and other groups on his research. Bruce served at NYC’s Command Center, after 9/11, and his work on safeguarding cities reflects the lessons and mutual aid of those days.

Details: Future Salon has the following structure: 6-7 networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP. From 7-9+pm presentation and discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map] As always free and open to the public. Tell your friends. Improve your commute by sharing it with a fellow Futurist. Check the Ride Board for opportunities. Free and open to the public.

Please RSVP: http://tinyurl.com/jrcps so that we know which room and how much food and drinks to prepare.

We will also Webcast the event. Details to come soon. See you there.

Comments

[Melanie Swan]

Social Finance is really starting to take off, Bruce's areas and Affinity Capital in general, there is an essay about it here:
http://www.melanieswan.com/social_finance.html

[mark finnern]

The event was taped and is available at the Internet Archive here: http://www.archive.org/details/FutureSalon_10_2006

Check it out, Mark.