Archive for the ‘Silicon Valley’ Category

Documentary Film Festival Goes Green

UN Assn documentary film festival (UNAFF)

Palo Alto, San Francisco and East Palo Alto (then, coming to a city near you)–Each year, the eleven year-old UN Association Film Festival chooses a theme related to the UN Charter, and this year it is “Blue Planet, Green Planet”.

Numerous other human rights issues will be addressed as well, but the environment and our collective relationship to it will be explored in all sorts of creative ways. And if you think that documentary films are like the “talking heads” we used to sit through in elementary school, be prepared to be very pleasantly surprised.

Between October 19th and 26th, the Festival will screen 41 documentary films from as many countries. Having seen at least a couple of the films every year since the Festival’s founding, I can tell you that great storytelling is great entertainment, and real life stories can be even more engaging than fiction.

Hopefully, the schedule of films in the main festival will be posted on the UNAFF site by the time you are reading this, but the general schedule is: Read the rest of this entry »

Clean Tech Investing and Solar Taking Off

Solar dishesLast week, UCLA Anderson hosted the California Clean Innovation conference to facilitate the new ideas that will drive the future of clean technology. I must admit to being a bit intimidated by the topics to be discussed - I’m far from technically inclined - but the event was well done and I learned a ton.

First, what we’re all interested in…the moolah. I’ve been hearing a lot about the investment going into clean tech these days. The first keynote speaker, Ira Ehrenpreis of Technology Partners in Palo Alto also explained why this is so.