How do we Feed the Planet? Global Food Security and the Next Century

This webcast is the culmination of a semester’s work by freshmen in an MIT class titled Solving Complex Problems. Thanks to Sara Kaplan, a colleague in Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State, for sharing this opportunity. Sara is a mentor for the students in this class. The webcast is scheduled for 7pm (I’m assuming Eastern Standard Time).

Protecting Your Idea

This webcast is about intellectual property. It is being presented by Alan Blake, CEO of the company that invented Glo Fish, and Michael Simmons, the author of The Student Success Manifesto. This webcast is from 7-8:30pm Eastern Standard Time, and you need to register in advance. Thanks to Dave Correll, another colleague at ISU, for sharing this opportunity. Dave is the founder of BioBus, a student organization working to reclaim used vegetable oil on campus to use to fuel our CyRide buses.

• Dr. Nina V. Fedoroff; Science and Technology Advisor to the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to the Administrator of USAID Rajiv Shah.  Author of “Mendel In The Kitchen” Bio here.
• Dr. Robert Paarlberg, Wellesley College.  He is the Betty Freyhof Johnson Class of 1944 Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.  Author of:  Starved for Science:  How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out Of Africa. Bio here.
• Dr. Calestous Juma, Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Professor of the Practice of International Development. Director, Science, Technology, Globalization Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.  Bio here.
• Mark Cantley, former Advisory in the Directorate for Biotechnology, Agriculture and Food, of the Directorate-General for Research of the European Commission, and formerly head of the OECD’s Biotechnology Unit.  Bio here.
• Frank Sesno, moderator, Director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University, Emmy-award winning journalist, and host and creator of Planet Forward, a ground-breaking web-to-television show seen on PBS.  Bio here.
• Dr. Gale Buchanan, CAST report lead author; College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, The University of Georgia, Tifton Campus; former USDA Under-Secretary for Research, Education and Economics. Bio here.

The webcast is sponsored by:

• CropLife International,
• Council on Agriculture Science and Technology, and
• Biotechnology Industry Organization

I know I will be watching this. I am familiar with Fedoroff and Paarlberg, but the other participants will be new to me. Frank will be following it on Twitter, and he tells me that anyone else using twitter can follow the discussion using the #agCAST hashtag (#agchat too), and you can also ask questions on the website here or in twitter by sending them to @CropLifeEvent. (Facebook too.) The event says that you have to register whether you are showing up in person in Washington D.C. or whether you watch it online. I sent an email to the organizers and I heard back that registration is not necessary for you to watch the webcast, and there will be a video available online after the event.

Whats neat about this is it is a live webcast that links viewers around the world who can discuss it together through social media, and even ask questions that may reach the panelists from 1000′s of miles away. “Town Hall 2.0″? I hope to see a lot of you joining in the discussion! Feel free to use the comments section of this post to talk about the webcast as it plays out.

*First time my adviser suggested a media distraction for me to check out! I know. Whoa.