featured speakers

notable people

Daniel Turner was the first man in America to receive a medical diploma, which was conferred by Yale College on September 11, 1729. His honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine was a reward for valuable monetary contributions to Yale. Mr. Turner never practiced medicine.

 

Noah Webster moved to New Haven in 1798, where he compiled his American Dictionary of the English language, which was published in 1828. Webster is buried in the New Haven Burying Ground/Grove Street Cemetery.

 

Yale University Graduates. Among its many notable graduates are George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Gerald Ford, and William Howard Taft. Other famous graduates are: William F. Buckley, Jodie Foster, Nathan Hale, Meryl Streep, Gary Trudeau, Sigourney Weaver, Noah Webster, Thornton Wilder, Henry Winkler and Tom Wolfe.

 

The Nature of Creative Development: Managing Creativity

Jonathan Feinstein, PhD
John G. Searle Professor of Economics and Management
Yale School of Management
Author of The Nature of Creative Development (Stanford U. Press, 2006)

www.jonathanfeinstein.com

Jonathan Feinstein studies individualism and creativity as the basis of cultural development and innovation. He will present a new understanding of the basis of creativity that he calls “the nature of creative development”. Based on interviews with people in different fields and the study of biographical materials of individuals famous for their creative contributions, he will describe patterns of development of those engaged in creative endeavors and the ways in which our interests and conceptions guide us and spark ideas and projects, leading to our creative contributions.

Understanding the nature of creativity, including difficulties that may be encountered at work and ways to overcome them is critical to the successful management of creative individuals and creative enterprises. Towards that end, Dr. Feinstein will discuss how to bring that perspective into organizations and explore issues of fostering creativity at work, identifying creative talent and impediments to creativity.

The talk will conclude with a period of Q & A.




Healthcare Informatics in the Metaverse

Randal Moss
Futuring and Innovation Center
American Cancer Society

As interest in the 3-D virtual community programs grow, and the technological abilities of our population increase, it is reasonable to predict that medical information delivery will leverage higher technology in the coming years. Cell phones as diagnostic tools, virtual worlds as health education centers, and patient centered information delivery channels available on mobile devices, e-mails, and even bio-implants. Information delivery and information gathering will make a marked difference in the overall health and potentially wellness of our population. All of these advents will be possible with the structural advent of the Metaverse: the three dimensional overlay of information technology that will allow us to have extended information about things and events.

The Metaverse is the vision behind current work on fully immersive 3D virtual spaces. These are environments where humans interact (as avatars) with each other (socially and economically) and with software agents in a cyberspace, that uses the metaphor of the real world, but without its physical limitations. The Metaverse also is a potential information blanket that adds invisible information to ordinary things, and places detectable only by a meta-tag reader. Meta Data is data that helps to further define and annotate something else, thereby allowing the environment to be customized to the users needs, wants, desires.

The American Cancer Society is using the Metaverse to support fundraising, education, and other support services, as they integrate Online Community Interaction, Social Network Analysis, and Virtual Online Engagement strategies into the society’s 2015 strategic plan.




Social Networking & Teaching with Social Technology

Harry E. Pence, PhD
Professor of Chemistry, SUNY Oneonta

“Knowledge no longer consists of what is in my head or in my books, but rather is the collective wisdom of the group of individuals (“nodes”) that I am connected to and share with.”

 

~ From The Alchemist’s Blog

Social networking sites (such as Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia) have proven to be a popular means to connect individuals, facilitating interaction in new and innovative ways. How can social software be applied successfully to facilitate learning?

This presentation will discuss social networking technologies including blogs, wikis, social tagging, really simple syndication (RSS), and virtual worlds. It will look at various modes of gathering and managing information online with a focus on using these resources in the context of higher education by both individuals and groups. It will show how these free or low-cost tools can be used to enhance traditional teaching methods, appeal to different learning styles, and even revamp the way a course is conducted. Using examples from two student projects (an island built for Nature Magazine and a virtual concert hall run with music students on campus), this presentation will also discuss the benefits of using a virtual world, like Second Life, for experiential learning.


Phil SimonInformation Architecture in the Virtual World

Phillip Simon

Program Manager, ITS Web Services Department

Yale University

 

As more and more of our daily experience is within digital virtual worlds, the need for designing the space that information occupies in these worlds is becoming vital to communication specialists.

 

The design of this information space has become known as Information Architecture (IA). But unlike the architecture for the static nature of real world buildings, the architecture for information grapples with the dynamic, changing, interactive nature of the virtual experience.

 

This address will present a short history of IA, examine the quandary of defining IA, discuss the challenges of using the IA process when designing non-linear modes of interactive communication, and provide examples of how IA benefits the planning, prototyping, and construction of information structures.
Jonathan Feinstein is the John G. Searle Professor of Economics and Management at the Yale School of Management (SOM). Jonathan studies creativity & innovation, specifically how individuals and teams make creative contributions, in all fields, including business, the arts and sciences, and fields of invention and design. He also works with organizations in the area of innovation practices. Jonathan heads up the new Innovator’s Perspective core course at SOM, as well as the new Careers course. He is the author of The Nature of Creative Development, published in 2006 (Stanford U. Press).

Randal Moss
Futuring and Innovation Center
American Cancer Society

Randal Moss is the Director of The American Cancer Society’s Futuring and Innovation Center. The center specializes in rapid prototyping of programs, in-depth analysis of environmental scans, and future scenario development. He has been with the Society since 2002, and in this position he focuses his energies on analyzing and implementing Online Community Interaction, Social Network Analysis, and Virtual Online Engagement strategies into the society’s 2015 strategic plan.

As part of his charge, Randal curates the National Voluntary Health Association Innovations workgroup. As the Curator of the NVHA Innovations group he strives to address the impact of new upcoming social, business, and management technologies on the industry’s business model. Randal is the Co-Founder of the Second Life Relay For Life and has received awards for his work in the field from NYU Law School, The National Human Services Assembly, and the E-Philanthropy Foundation. Randal is a Board Member of the Association of Professional Futurists, and The Future United, and is a participating member of The UVA Social Network Roundtable. He earned is MTA from George Washington University in 2002, resides in Cincinnati, OH with his wife and blogs at www.como.typad.com

Dr. Harry E. Pence joined the Chemistry faculty at SUNY Oneonta in 1967, after completing his PhD at Louisiana State University. He had previously taught for five years at Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, PA, an experience that helped him adapt quickly to Oneonta, both with respect to teaching as well as the invigorating winter weather. He was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1969 and receive the SUNY Excellence in Teaching Award in 1987. In 1975, Dr. Pence was elected to a two-year term as President of the University-wide Faculty Senate. At the state and national level, he has served on various committees that played important roles in the integration of technology into the teaching process. He is a founding member and past President of the SUNY Faculty Access to Computing Technologies Committee (FACT) and also a long-time member of the SUNY Student Computing Access Committee (SCAP). He has written a number of articles on Instructional Technology. In 1998, Dr. Pence was promoted to the rank of SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor.
Philip Simon has spent his professional career designing communications media from a user-centric point-of-view. Phill is currently Program Manager for the ITS Web Services Department at Yale University, and in that role specializes in information architecture, modeling of software applications, Web design, and development of online training and education.

Phill came to Yale University in 1987 with 10 years of photographic, sound design, computer graphics, and video production skills. During his 20 years at Yale he established the video production services for the Yale School of Medicine, served as Managing Editor of the Center For Advanced Instructional Media, was Director of the Department of Biomedical Communications, Director of Operations for Web Design and Development at the Yale School of Medicine, and most recently helped lead the merger of the medical and main University Web development departments.

Phill has won national awards for his contribution to medical education multi-media programs and has made numerous presentations at professional meetings, most recently at the 2006 E-learning Guild National Conference held in Boston.

Phill is married, and has three children who can’t imagine what the world was like before instant messaging, the Web, and cell phones.