years the only television network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. c-span degraded by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. >> the annual new york ideas festival was held in may by the atlantic and the aspen institute. is next part featured discussion on how to improve more minorities in the technology industry with remarks by the ceos of morgan stanley, hbo and kickstarter. conversation with the founder of the philanthropic website donors choose. altogether this is about two and a half hours. >> please welcome to the stage megan garber, christina halpern, taofeek rabiu and nikolas

rassoules. >> hi, guys. good morning. so today it's my honor to welcome this great group of people. i want to get right to the conversation slowed to a lightning introduction of old in. just about right is christina lewis halpern was the founder of a all-star code, nonprofit dedicated to closing opportunity gap between young men of color and the tech sector. next we have taofeek rabiu, the senior technical manager at aol. he does products and key developer. taofeek has been coding since he was 14. last but not least we have nikolas rassoules who is a sophomore at pathways to technology early college high school in brooklyn. he is actually bit on the robotics team at his high school as a software developer and you just went to nationals this year, right?

awesome, cool. thanks for being here. i would love to start with christina. tell us of a bit the all-star code and what the program does and why you want to focus on young men? >> sure. so all-star code is a prep program for the tech industry, college prep, law school prep and we are tech prep. we prepare young men and one day workshops as well as independent summer program. and professional soft skills but we feel these two things are the recipe for success in the tech field which is of course the engine of job growth and innovation in this country and is the field that is extremely un-diverse. only 3% of workers are black or latino. fewer than 1% of started seven african-american on the founding team. we have students from low and middle income areas with interests in tech and give them

the extra skills and intensive training so that we can help place them in the tech career pipeline. ultimately, after a program will provide college guidance and assistance in choosing the path. the reason were focused on boys is that this program concept is so successful, there are already two national programs focused on girls in the states. i spoke with the founders of those organizations. they felt as i did minority boys naked programs like this, and there's no need to duplicate their work. we've been operational six months. and we are piloting a first summer program this summer here in new york city. we just elected our first class with 20 students. we got over 130 applications. >> that's amazing. let's talk about some of the particulars of the program. necklace, can you tell us what your experience with the hack of

fun? did you have a favorite? >> i've only been to one so far. from it i received a whole bunch of education. when i went they showed me how to do problem encoding to solid in a way that was unknown to me. when i went, they stated the problem to a whole group of people and then they decide how they would use, they would choose certain apis that tumbler give them to solve the problem. it was cool. i've never seen anything like it. >> that's awesome. what we can offer these students is exposure to the tech industry even sit students like nikolas will renew want to go into tech and to study at his school and the on the robotics team have so little access to actual technology professionals. never visited a company, a

technology company in new york. in fact, the first company that we brought you to was spotify necklace that i thought spotify was just overseas in europe. he didn't know that actually u.s. had course is here in the city. that's a we can make a difference. did you can't see it, you can't see how and understand that what you learn in school can be used in the real world. we feel you can't dream it, you can't follow that path. >> let's talk about this idea of exposure. you do hiring and team development et cetera, et cetera at aol. let's just i guess did in this idea, networking and what networking itself, i know that sort of a dirty word in some ways, and maybe rightfully so in some perspectives but it can

actually be real beneficial? >> absolutely, absolutely. a large part of what attracted me to the program with the premise of networking these kids with professionals. i mean i found that i benefited a lot from mentors in my own social and professional that were. i thought it was intriguing to be able to offer that to these upcoming technologists. >> awesome. how does that play out within your mentorship role and also code? >> it's strange. mentoring is prescriptive, it's about being available and providing exposure. that was one of the things that i enjoyed, just have that tacked on, let me explain some things against you quizzical looks. you're not quite clear what it is you know, what you can convey and tell your asked. >> that's awesome. what's been your favorite moment?

>> just at the night watching the kids enjoyed what it is that you. when teams have an internal spark, it's a limitless what can be created. you see that spark indicates. you know they're on a path and there's very little they can accomplish at the point. >> necklace, i know this might change like a bar or in the, at this point what you want to do later on? >> at this point i would like to do a little web design and i would like to start learning all the more about photography. >> and integrated within technology to? >> you have. >> great, awesome. one of the ideas i would love to get your perspective on is this idea of culture fit, the term we hear a lot in hiring in silicon valley and the tech sector in general. they can be a good thing if people want to hire people who can work well with the team and who can integrate and community well at all of the stuff but at the same time it to be an excuse

to our people who look like you, act like you and think like you. what is the ideal hiring approach that you guys would like to see? what you think of this particular idea of culture and? >> my career was originally as a professional journalist. i was a reporter for "the wall street journal." i was my with a different assessors that i was not familiar with the tech industry and i want to tech conference three years ago. it was a different world with a different set of expectations from the corporate world that i knew. so ultra- fit is indicative of that. i cite the same time there were very few minorities. i could see that things like culture fit a that an emphasis n informality and emphasis on being a self-taught learner are all things that black and latino students are not as a mere with a needed exposure to. i think things like ultra- fit

are a fact of life in the tech industry, and what we're doing in supporting our our students and educating them so that when they do high and into this and we fully expect our students to be able to do that, they will not feel so different when they arrive. we have to prepare them for th that. >> cannot talk to me about the expiration? >> please do. >> my father, reginald lewis, was a pioneer on wall street. but he was born in 1942 in segregated baltimore and what the all black schools all his life until he went to an early prep program that was run by harvard law school. that program opened the world to him and eventually, and gave him the education and credentials to supreme court him on to wall street where which will offer many of the being extreme successful as a financier, a

world that is were the prototypical white boys club in the '70s and 80s, early '90s. so because of that i have firsthand experience in seeing how early access programs can that huge effect on the lives of interested and talented students if they are exposed to the stage where they can take advantage of it. that's why i feel confident that with this program our students can innovate and pioneer in the sector. my father, unfortunately, passed away 21 years ago. >> this is a wonderful tribute to him i think. this idea of education in general has come up a lot. what would you guys like to see about the sort of the education system as it currently stands?

what should we sort of change, if they could be something changed about the way we sort of approach teaching skills versus teaching approaches? >> everything in our teachers and inner mentors is project based in terms of our learning in our students are exposed to videogame design, the wearables, to of course web development, mobile apps. all of our workshops at the end, the students demonstrate what they've learned and put together a product instead of working one on one where the teacher assigns the students work and they do it. they work in formally in teams all with the sensitive to collaborate and work in formally, put something together. i think that, many people feel that schools have to do more of that with the students in terms of lab work and other things. that helps students give them the skills, the holistic set of skills that are so important in

the job market today. >> and nikolas, what was your final project? >> we worked, before we start working on the robots we worked on, they gave us three problems, and i believe i chose, yes, i chose the problem that there's a rundown park in the neighborhood of what he doing to do to get your dignity to come and fix the park? what my team and i did, we went and we photoshop a bunch of posters and we said we're going to put all over the neighborhood and get the word spread. >> that's excellent. did you have one more? >> i wanted to talk about his project from the first workshop. >> modify. we had to build a place where people can learn about music and learn about the new music that is coming out. so i coded a website and it was

basically a prototype of what it would look like. it was a whole bunch of articles where you can talk to the wrappers or talk to the musicians or the and about what they're trying to make. >> that's amazing. is that why? >> i haven'i have it but it isnn a domain. >> i hope you get it up soon because i could generally use that site but it's wonderful. thank you, guys so much for being here. i wish we had more time but this has been wonderful. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> please welcome to the stage deep nishar. >> thank you. wow, that's loud.

it's great to see everyone here. i was a little worried getting on stage was saw the lineup this morning because for those of you who are here at 9 a.m., you saw first biking, can manage that. [inaudible] has anybody done that? has any of your friends than the? there was one in california this past weekend. i saw some pictures. it's pretty gruesome. and to think people pay $100 each not only like two bars, but at the end you have to go through a wall of live wires. you actually get jolted with electrical shock. some people will go to any extreme. so i thought i had to notch it

up a bit. i will talk about not economic empowerment but bare hands and feet, rock climbing with a 50-pound knapsack on your back. that's my next multimillion dollar business i think. no, i'm just getting. i do climb for fun but that's not what i going to talk about today. i'm going to talk of economic empowerment. to set the context, i want to bring it back a few years and talk about a communication device that is quite expensive. you had to wait in line for a long time to get one. it was only available in one color. can anyone guess what that is? [inaudible] >> i heard some people say iphone. almost close. one color, $200, you had to wait in line for months. my friends under the wait in line for like 40 hours or so in palo alto. that's not what i'm talking

about. i'm talking about the big black box. does anybody remember this? probably an exhibit at the natural history museum. this phone was a very important device when i was growing up in india. it's one of the phones that makes that sound when it goes by, the road reductive it's a very important device. the reason was it caused 10,000 rupees to get, in the '80s, about six bud selig for an average person in india at that time. you had to wait in line sometimes for five to 10 years to get one. it was only available in the color black. this was so important that most of the time it would be under lock and key. it was not readily available. it was a very expensive, hard to get, important device.

80s mumbai where i grew up looked like this. lots of tenement housing. i grew up in one of these apartments. 200 square feet, me, for siblings, my parents, seven of us. we shared an outside toilet with a bunch of other tenants who lived on the same floor. we got running water for 30 minutes every evening between 9:00-9:30 tonight. we were told every bucket in a big plastic, so would use that water for the next few hours. in other words, we had a very happy middle-class existence. yet, that's true. in the '80s in india that's what middle-class used to be like. most of us also aspired to go do something different. and as i was going up and i was in the early '80s, i was in high school, and isaac science geek. go figure. one year the project i was

wanted for the size there was a great electricity out of geothermal energy. by concept was the following. a lot of extra energy that comes out of the earth through volcanic eruptions, through geysers, it all goes -- what if you could harness this energy and then convert that into electricity. the reason i wanted to demonstrate that was have a little red lightbulb glow at the end. my partner and i spent months making all this work. we build things together, we will do things, we glued them. we did a bunch of research at the library. the whistle internet than. and we got the thing to work. and practice sessions all was working. then finally the big day arrived. the judges came by. we were presenting our project to them. and then that exact moment

happened, as i showcasing the demo. i knew that is going to become an engineer. because i had that moment that every great engineer has at least once, if not multiple times in their life. that demo failed at that moment. the lightbulb did not light up. and i was like, crushed. thankfully the judges saw the power of what we could do. they were excited by our enthusiasm and we placed second. and not only did we placed second, we showed up in a national newspaper the next day. i was famous. loved it. i even got over the fact that the first place winner was some kid who want copied a popular mechanics thing of creating a robot from bicycle chains your come on, really people? just getting.

i was jealous. i was on cloud nine. if i only had one regret it was the i did not parlay this same into a hot date. because i went to an all boys school. could and would do anything about that. the person who was behind a lot of his work was really my middle school and high school science teacher. let's call her mrs. j. she was part disciplinarian, part the person who brought you back on track. she would make you think about the problems you were facing. she would try to connect the theory that women in the classroom to what you are trying to do in our project. to teach us why on paper the geothermal energy product would always work flawlessly, but in reality is simple vacation and

perception was not always with the textbook showed you and why things didn't quite work. she when a couple steps further. called forward progress. we didn't have space or time sometimes to work on the project that we are doing. she literally opened up her home and we would work on these projects on evenings and weekends and holidays in her living room. she enabled us to go beyond who we were. once, i had a bunch of questions that she couldn't catch her, and she said, why don't you go call someone? here's a person, here's another. go talk to them. imagine, i'm like 12, 13 years old, barely able to use this phone. we don't have one at home. there were only two such phones in our entire school. one was on the principals desk, and the other one was in a chore

under lock and key. so i go up i go to the school office. i asked the school clerk, i would like to make a call. he reluctantly hands me the phone but i finished the call, short call, and i get an answer. and something changed for me. i went in and as i walked out i felt an inch tall. suddenly i found a connection to the world that was build a one kilometer radius between my home and the school. it's almost like mrs. j., the mentor in my life, had shown me the art of the possible. beyond the confinement of where i lived and where i studied. she did this not just for me but for hundreds of other folks like me. we have all gone on, many of us, to become doctors, engineers,

lawyers. and in some small way try to make the world a better place. she gave us the key that opened the lock. i've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, because even as the world is becoming increasingly connected, and nowadays this is a cyber café in my old neighborhood. i can walk in there. kids like me 30 years ago and walk in there and can instantaneously be connected to all sorts of information, all sorts of people around the world. the disconnect is what andy mcafee in his book a second machine, and anti-will speak this afternoon. i highly recommend listening to him, talks about how the second half of the tech, what we're teaching our young people these days is about how to solve technical problems. the challenge is the computer for all these problems, we need

to teach them is also how to construct these problems together. and that is something that needs to be really embraced through something called steam. steam stands for science technology in getting arts and math. steam is important because of one very fundamental reason. would have to not just have scientific problem-solving but we need a gang of housing to constructive public if you can't answer right problems to solve, you're not going to be able to solve encrypted. at the same time and teachers are becoming better and better. technology is becoming better and better. we can solve these problems are easily. some the phones where their pockets to have more power than supercomputers had 20 years ago.

the computers that be the best grandmasters in the world on just cannot do, they cannot go and solve the genetic code. they are programmed to do a specific thing. it takes human beings. but as a program computer i need one of these problems that will solve all of them. we need to construct these problems together, bring together the disciplines of science and art. countries that embrace this, china, india, israel, are already seeing the value of this. piercing the economic rates greater than what we see out in west. use it in the growth rates of gdp. this is important to be personal as well, not just as a person again from mumbai to silicon valley but also as a father. i have two teenage kids, and as they go on to their professional life, the one thing we all worry, what will they do? will they have a future in the age where all of us, all of our skills are becoming quickly

obsolete. these problems are not easy problems. unemployment, poverty, inequality. but at the same time all of us at some level or the other have overcome problems in our lives. we have helped to make the world a better place through our work, through archimedes, through our professional work. so as i think about these issues, particularly the issue around unemployment, i feel like there are three problems that together we can tackle, something that i learned from my days growing up in mumbai. the first issue is that of the skills gap. we've come out of one of the worst recessions that we have known for story. 3.9 million open jobs in the u.s. right now.

even as 30% of young people under the age of 21 in the city of detroit are without jobs. we cannot fill the jobs in silicon valley. there are 30,000 open jobs as we speak. new college graduates with a computer science degree are getting $100,000 in signing bonus alone in silicon valley today. and yet there are tens of thousands of people in the american who don't have a job. it's because we don't understand the skills that are needed in silicon valley with what is being taught to all these young people, whether it's in high school or college. this is why what they are doing is so powerful. we are teaching young people that kinds of things they need to know in order to be successful in tomorrow's economy. we need to do more of that.

the second issue is about creative thinking, what i was talking about earlier. it was famously said that computers are useless. they only give answers. he was half right. they do give answers. they are not useless, not completely useless. the second part of that equation is they are getting answers to the problems that we are setting as human beings in front of those computers. this is that left brain and right brain. this is what gives us the iphone, the amazon buying experience. this is about the creativity that is inherent in all of us that computers cannot necessarily mimic, that technology cannot mimic. we have to bring together, we have to teach us to our young people. the final thing is diversity. most of the s.t.e.m. jobs is high-paying jobs, are still

going to white males. nothing against them but it's not their fault. it really isn't. they are capable, they are available, they get the job. the challenge is that since 1984 when we had 30% women representation in computer science discipline at universities, we have come down to 12% today. that trend is going in the wrong direction. if you don't have enough diversity in our universities, clearly we will not see that diversity reflected in workplace. we need diversity. diversity breeds creativity. this is where programs start, folks like -- have put in place are so heartening. i just published this one unlinked in a discussion with her on how she is actually increased involvement.

this is a preeminent education institution in computer science and engineering, from 10% to 40%, it is gone in the other direction. she's done using some very well known techniques. more and more universities are following suit. so the challenges clearly our big. the problems are big. but as i think back on that little black phone and mrs. jake, i think we also have some possible solutions in our grasp. the first is connectivity. when you think of the skills gap, the challenges that no one is telling a 20 euros in detroit that they should not be taking shop class, because a lot of automobile and manufacture jobs are changing. are you going to robots or they're going overseas. however, that same person should be taught welding because as we

speak there's a power plant in georgia being delayed because there are not enough welders in the country. we can talk i was programming or and reprogramming. the art millions of apps and people want to build more of those. we also have a huge advantage today. with linking with more than 300 people, with hundreds of thousands of jobs, over 3 million companies, a lot of professional knowledge. education institutions. all of these can come together and so we can figure out where the skill gaps are and what skills are me. wiccans are pointing people not just individually but also through policy, public policy and government to work. we are already working with the us government on things like this. we can do a lot more. the second of these human connection, i've had dozens of

mentors during my 30 year career, and i'm really thankful for that. but all of us are paying it forward to all of us will be mentors to young people. we have to create more institutions like all-star code, like mento mentor not come undee position we've recently gotten involved in at linkedin and the person, mary fernandez, the chief executive of mentor net is a great example about mentoring students a. she was a computer science student who almost dropped out in college from the discipline. and what to do something different. then she found a mentor to what the mentor found her and said no, you can do it. let me help you through it. she then went and got a ph.d, worked at ibm. became an engineer and is now taking that knowledge of knowledge and creating a network of mentors to help other young minority people and youth in

colleges, and help them become successful. one of the of the challenges you can bring people into s.t.e.m. colleges and the dropout because it's a hard field and you need a support system. you need other people like you. it's difficult to be a pioneer in those cases. the final thing we can have is leadership. leadership, not just in terms of taking but in terms i could turn. things like was happening in society, the tools we're gradi grading. this makes difficult subjects very, very accessible and available everywhere in the world. we also need to use the platform not as a connector. there are 30,000 nonprofit boards right now. nonprofit boards that a 30,000 board memberships.

at the same time so many folks who have accomplished so much who can get back into the committee and they don't know about these opportunities. we create a platform for them to come together to we can do the same for any this one that we choose to. this world is a very daunting world. it doesn't matter that i was 14 years old in the early 1980s and feeling like the doors were locked. if you ask any young person today, live in silicon valley, new city, mumbai, são paulo, they all say -- face the same security, the same worry. about what the future holds for them. but just like my mentors, the leaders in my life who connected me to the outside world by virtue of the metaphoric big black phone, we can also enable

the young people that we know in our lives that we want to help and see them, help them see the power of the big beautiful world full of opportunities in front of them. i hope that today we can take some of these ideas back and help at least one young person in our lives and make the world a better place. thank you. [applause] >> please welcome to the stage justin brown and ben rattray.

>> well, thank you very much to new ideas. it's a real pleasure to be. my name is justin brown, i am one of the cofounders of the idea spot which is a social media platform for ideas. it's my absolute pressure to be interviewing ben rattray, the founder and ceo of change.org which is the world's largest petition platform prevent over 65 million users from 196 countries in the world. i guess they begin this interview of like to ask ben, can you help us understand what a petition is by giving us an example of a successful campaign from your platform? >> thanks, and great to be here. so you know a lot of people historic reference skeptical about the power of petitions and i think understandably so, because historically they have been running in a way that is not strategic and not effected to what we're seeing is a dramatic transformation in the efficacy of online and off-line movement. i will give one example from last year everything was especially inspired to a 10 year

old girl who have cystic fibrosis who have two lungs that were very and did a double transplant to live except there was this old archaic law restriction that events kids under the age of 12 from receiving adult lung transplant. she was first i was supposed to get against the but couldn't get it because this old regulation despite recommendations for doctors and many more given her size the her parents understand the lobby, try to change the policy. beethe unsuccessful but it looks like she is going to die. they start a public campaign, started petition on change.org, got 3000 people to join, get endorsements of senators and congress and cnn, others covered in a week of campaigning and hundreds of thousands of people mobilize, government ends up changing the revelation, gives her two lungs and changed her life agenda for all the kids who -- all of the kids as well. we see his kind of thing all the

time. it's not just around government stuff, it's a lot of corporate stuff as well. just yesterday coke and pepe announced for the first undergo a group effort controversial chemical from all of their products. the reason is because of a 15 your girl literally. this girl lassies such a petition gatorade to remove this chemical that is a fire retardant. it is banned in europe, then in japan. the lobby of the soft drink industry is prevented from doing so far. she's getting over 100,000 people to join her campaign. she's on the cover of this section of the new york times. she was on doctor all after a few weeks of campaigning, gatorade announces they will remove the chemical. then she subsequently starts the campaign against powerade and all these other campaign turned of the coke products from other products and after year they changed against the policy around all those toxic chemical

from all other soft drinks literally because of a 15 year-old girl. this stuff seems remarkable to people who don't track the companies but it literally happens every day. dozens of victories just like that everyday. >> i think that's absolute amazing to these specific examples of campaigns. what we'r we are seeing today ia real explosion of these campaigns, particularly on change.org. why a recent this explosion and what do you think explains the success of these campaigns? >> historically, one of the biggest impetus a social movement has been the expense of organizing people together rapidly for a common cause which is very expensive in time and the money and it has impeded the number of social movements that could be born. structural disadvantages long groups of people with limited resources and it advantages small groups with much interest. what you have is a situation which private interest oftentimes overcomes the public good. a radical reduction in the

barriers to collective action to the result of that is 100 times more campaigns than we've ever existed before. when you have incredible ease with which to start and spread campaigns, they start to look different as well. instead of campaigns are changing the health care system, it's a specific campaign around a single young girl 10 years old to get her new lungs and changes regulation which spawns many more campaigns. it's not a campaign to change any and all toxins and all products. it's a specific entry to a particular chemical added to the particular companies products, coke and pepsi. while they look small because of the capacity for massive scale, not one but two campaigns but hundreds and thousands of campaigns, you end up having greater national impact through the distributive moments than the old a store, large movements that people have tried to run nationally. >> what would you say would be the key components of a successful campaign?

>> the most important thing we see is that the campaign is achievable within a small short production. traditionally the recent additions have worked on what historical is most targeted at the u.n., the president or congress. the three least responsive institutions in the entire country. so campaigns that are targeting individual mayors, city councils or school boards and individual companies end up being much more effective. not because that's the ultimate aspiration of the movement, it's rather the necessary small step required to build a movement from person-to-person, city to city. what's interesting is it's not as if we have an event on understand how to run social movements historically. the fact that the most powerful movement initiative was started in no small part a narrative, able to refuse to walk to the back of the bus sounds crazy. it was the spark necessary to move from city to city, state to state, over thousands of campaigns, many years, ended up

winning that national battle. >> ben, would you say that change.org and these citizen movements leading us toward the direct form of democracy? >> yeah, i think if you look at traditionally speaking out people have responded to their citizens, there's very smoky mutation between elected officials and their elected representatives. in private vacation but, you know, sometimes but mostly not for most campaigns or legislation. the result is for every single piece of legislation there is a lobby group that is pressuring because of my deep interest and jeb this disproportionate influence. adjuvant increasing% of the constituencies of every different elected representative to mobilize, we will have an excuse literally half the voting public onge.org will take action. you provide incentives elected officials to respond open and transparent way to the own constituents which is a radical

transformation regrettable in the world we think in many ways. the greatest democracy. this is an exciting thing at it properly incentivizes elected officials. owes people you talk to in congress and state reps don't want to be spending a huge amount of time around raising money and only responding to never interest in the service of having the kinds of resources to buy attention during elections but if you can more direct we go to constituents and have access to much larger percentage of the electorate, you have incentives to engage effectively and that is what's happening more and more. >> can you provide an example of a petition on a campaigns is contracted to elected officials that's led to policy change or change in government? >> yeah. i guess one of my favorites and it starts with a tragic story, there's a loophole in the department of transportation authority bill that was passed in early 2000 that made it such that rental car companies were not legally required to return recalled cars to literally

dangerous cars were not required, enterprise and hurts and what not lobbied to make a change. tragically 2042 young girls range from enterprise the pt cruiser that have been recalled three months before. was not returned for the loophole in the law. it ends up catching on fire for the concern of the recall on the highway, it's a semi, they die. their mom understandably not just distraught, wants to fight this so she files a civil lawsuit against enterprise. it takes seven years and she wins in 2011. the law hasn't changed. there are a number of senators that a try to change this but this is an incredibly obscure thing and there's a small group of my deep interest data lobbying heavily to maintain this and it's this generic flaw that most people don't pay attention to. but the mom in this case ends up starting a change addition, gets 1000 people within 24 hours, it's on the division of the today show called in to pressure, and literally after

decade of lobbying for this policy, turned around immediately and announces their changing the position will support a law which is usually so that's under the names of these two young women. incredible powerful example of a once over take situation that advantage small groups of muddied interest, now a massive mobilization of everyday people pay much more attention in no small part because we're personalizing issues that once seemed abstract and impersonal and inaccessible but now are powerful and emotional, and sort of leverage the empathy that human beings have and that engages in and politics in ways that didn't happen previously spent i think it's fascinating to hear about the power of social media to empower citizens in treating change all our brothers in the local context. but i guess there's a huge role to the traditional medium in helping us advance change. can you tell us a little bit about the role of traditional media in the petitions on the website change.org about

actually crates a successful campaign? >> so i think there's a lot of members of the media do limit what looks to be there inevitable demise but i think the media has far more power, potential power than ever before. the reason is historic with the power of media and in large part of the entrance patty, revealing things that they laid you hopefully to accountable. effectiveness of the kind that the that is fully transparent is predicated on a population of people who consume that content and then mobilize to enforce the accountability that it requires. used have a lot of articles the independent investigative report or whatnot seem trivial awful practices, after which the issue just falls flat. there's the subsequent action which then justifies no subsequent news coverage and it dies. now you have this reader base that mobilizes a campaign that ends up expanded into the system that tracks it out over paris of time that prevents the target is

prevents the target either politicians or companies from just ducking and covering and avoiding. the one example i will give here is that i love result is the guardian has been writing in the past about this tragic issue of female genital mutilation which happens a lot in uk launch because immigrants coming to the country, legal but 24,000 young girls are subject to this thread have you but they don't have exact. the guardian has been writing about it but it's hard to get people engaged on the issue. they partnered with a 17 year old somali-born crowe is not a uk citizen, and she been camping around this issue to to start a petition unchanged a corporate she gets over 200,000 people to join. recovers i think seven times on the cover of the guardian over the period of that month and she into getting it endorsed by ban ki-moon, after literally ignoring the issue entirely gets a meeting with the education mesh at the next and the context of trying to avoid this issue because of embarrassment for many, many years, the education minister because of a 70 no girl

amplified by the guardian announces they will educate 1% of the teachers across the uk to inform and achieve both the girls at threats and the friends who can identify a solution for it. that would not have happened were it not for the guardian, a 17 year old, and would not have happened without what the guardian provided. >> that's amazing. we have here a picture painted of a future in which citizen engagement, direct democracy and technology public is all great a bit of future together. what words would you say to those of us in the audience would like to bring that future a little closer towards us so we can get a little more action and create the change in an accelerated pace because i'd set a couple think the one on of her pragmatic love for a lot of people in the audience who are a part of members and influences of the institutions that are going to be responsive to citizens movements. while i think it is inevitable this will happen and unfold over time, we deceive they are

pioneering elected officials and companies that are embracing the reality that now we live in a different on which consumers and constituents have more power than ever before. literally they hold the brand of these politicians and these companies in their hands. we actually started, established formal channels through which elected officials to engage with constituents. elizabeth ward and paul ryan they don't do a lot together both committed to responding to the constituents through the site. companies are doing the same thing. so the extent you work for a company or a politician and member of the media that can start to embrace this new reality, to respond directly to constituents and consumers or amplify those in public i think there's an opportunity. then the second thing i'd say is if there's anything we see as a primary impediment to social change isn't actually the tools necessary to make it happen. it is the belief that it is possible. one of the things we fight is a cultural skepticism people have

that everyday people cannot make a difference. so as citizens, which we are all, as citizens i think they passionately, the suspension of cynicism and skepticism, the recognition is not some random episodic small incremental change but the technology is actually transformed changed in the structure of relations between everyday people at large institutions. our belief and our ability at her commitment to engage in that as citizens, not just as workers are these companies and politicians, is an immensely important thing and i hope to see more and more people do it. >> thank you, ben. i think we've had a wonderful picture painted of how technology is changing the world. we often do you about social media i was going to lead to massive change but it is tools like change.org have put ideas into action. thank you very much for joining us. >> thanks so much. [applause]

>> and please welcome to the stage derek thompson, mangesh hattikudur, william pearson in david burstein. >> hello, guys. hello, everyone. hello to the new people in the room. i hope you find a seat it we're here to talk about young people and reading habits. how young people read. and how we all read on the new screens that are ubiquitous. david has the difficult job of speak on behalf of 86 my people, the millennial generation, and mangesh has the easy job to speak on behalf of two people.

my first crush is for the mental floss guys. facebook has become the homepage of news for news publishers. the atlantic is seen as. facebook now drives more of our traffic that our homepage but it is literally our most important page for news. it's not necessarily a homepage for news for most people. a pew study found just 10% of facebook users go to the site for the purpose of reading news. i was looking at a piece i wrote recently a few months ago of the most vital stories of 2013, the stories that were most successful on facebook in the buzzfeed network which covers a lot of different publishers. you they are. how y'all and use guys talks. two years action is what a woman is her them and unforgettable christmas, buzzy. things give you some as the bridge to label the u.s., we are so sorry, america, buzzfeed. 30 side you're almost 30. buzzfeed. you go through this entire

lives. there are practically no news stories. that are lots of interesting stories. what mental floss is seems to me discovered very early on is that there's something about the curiosity for content. it doesn't necessarily pride time in his or newsworthiness that journalistic principles, but rather interestingness. tell me a little bit about how that's animated your philosophy at mental floss, and mental floss, and how maybe you've seen an evolution in greater behavior and social media has picked up in the last few years. >> obviously facebook has made a number of changes to the algorithm and really trying to figure these interesting stories as you see. i'm not sure i look at facebook necessarily as an outlet for news so much as an outlet for conversation around that news. so what we found is an interesting challenge is that whenever something huge is going on, that's what everybody is going to be talking about. as a new source or an information source, if you were to just repost our tell the

story of what just happened, you're going to get any picked up from that to the key is to cut through the clutter in an interesting way. one simple i can give of that is during the presidential debate a few years ago you got obama and romney up on stage and left and right are cashing a check on social media. romney then brings up "sesame street." well, rather than any commentary on that or telling the story of why he would've said what he said about "sesame street," our social media editor jason english simper tweets the fact that big bird is a foot, too. industry. it becomes one of the most re-tweeted comments of the evening and it's that keep the people at the dr. schear that most interesting thing that happened that night and it's not usually just the story itself. >> as those mental floss started this very selfish endeavor. it started in a dorm room. it was a mixture of cocky and naïve you're in college, there's no magazine like this, we will start a.

in 2001, which was the best time to start a print publication, but it was also from necessity. this was a gut feeling that we had, do you create a magazine that was optimistic, very inclusive, that could educate in a very quick and fun way. but it also had to have a shelf life and had to stay on stands fontnths, four months. and so we contemplated on this. like it really was what felt natural to us and what we wanted to read. >> i loved the description of in mix of cockiness and nativity. some combination of that. david, there's this sense i think that millennials are like this human utopia when it comes to news habits as we because there is a pew study that looked exactly how young people read and it was surprisingly conservative.

in exactly, likely use smart phones and tablets for news. 60% of them said they preferred print style reading experiences over these graphics rich snowfall ask reading experiences. so should this surprise us? tell us about how we'd like to consume information. >> i think it's interesting because when you think about millennials, one of these suppositions as you said is that it's this generation that is unlike any other, just want a few things online. when you think about the tactile experience of leafing through a magazine or leafing through a print publication, there's something about that experience that is about the sense of curiosity. and that there's a sense of seriousness the young people want to consume the news with. i think there's been a lot of assumption to think this generation doesn't want serious content because we're younger, we are not seeking that.

this is a generation that cares deeply about the world, cares about important issues that wants to engage in the. they want their experience to mirror that. while we enjoy going on a site like buzzfeed and we certainly do, there's a sense that we really do care about the world. we want to consume the news in that kind o way. if you look at how everybody wants to consume news, the kindle for instance, and more and more emphasis on trying to emulate the print expense that people read. so when we think about millennials, those trends on how they're consuming news is not dissimilar from other generations, but millennials do care much more about where the information comes from. it's more likely that their friends are going to show something in that format than in other ways. i think that's one of the big differences. it matters much more to is where the information comes from, who gives it to us and that i think is one of the biggest changes. that trust is really important. >> when you say who gives it to

us, our youth about the publisher or are you talking about the person sharing that piece of information on facebook or on twitter, so the share becomes somewhat synonymous with a publishing friend? >> that's exactly it to the share is becoming much more important than actual source of information. do i trust this person with how do i feel about this person? this is one of my most trusted friends, the chances i'm going to think highly of that are greater that if it's a person i met one drunken night in college and i friended accidentally. >> right. although -- >> you know, pivoting to sort of media strategy, you guys have an extremely successful you to chill. right now in media as people are beginning to see that display advertising on regular articles doesn't necessarily scale to the will to its difficult have high cd is to return to video is a safety. the trouble with video as i see

it in order to make a profit on video you want to make cheap, quick video. cheap quick video tends to look like cheap quick video. they say will make running expensive, luxuriously graded beta. that's expensive to you lose money on the. where's the goldilocks principle? what did you guys dig it out about the of the people in the audience working with media company and advertisers would love to know? >> just before we answer that, i'm thinking like part of the reason our everyday work is because it's simple and authentic i feel. when you talk about things like snowfall, i think it is this very elegant experience but it is sort of the same learning you get over and over. when everyone moved to great websites in like 96 and 97 or whatever, every publisher put all these bells and whistles and craziness. remember a great story so start the same with ipad. everyone for all these ads and loaded them with craziness and

then you find out what people are reading the pdf readers over applications. spearing people just want the words. >> right. i feel like that's part of what we do, you know, we found someone who relayed information in an authentic way. we packaged it in a list with a bundle of surprising information. and it stalled very simply. ..

whether 30 second as the crosswalk, three minutes in line at starbucks, ten minutes during the break at their computer and we look to find multiple thing we can do to fill each of those gaps. so when you mention high quality, there is high quality production and there is high quality content. that is is the part we focus on. we say let's not just crank out content and focus do a great show every week and looking to add more shows, each show should be well-researched and well-scripted and that does not cost a fortune to do that. >> who is the mental floss

reader. is it the college student or people passing out at bars? >> especially as done video number of teenagers and college students. more, young professional, late 20s, early 30s who we're findings. busy professional who do have the gaps to spend time to read. we're killing productivity across america with mental floss. >> fantastic. david, this is a tough question but i hope a good question. the internet, when it was coming about was ignored a while by a lot of publishers but dominant sort of revenue but all sorts of publishers including big ones like "new york times." twitter came along. and people said it was stupid and now it is news for old school journalists. facebook was lambasted but now the homepage for content on the

internet. in terms of our reading habits, is there something right now that we think is stupid thatfy years from now we'll think we were stupid to think it was stupid? >> well, i don't know if this something we think is stupid but i think it is something that is underrealized or sort of viewed as kind of not serious. and i think there is a difference between being not serious and being stupid. but it is sort of data vision allization and info graphics. we're in the early days of that world and content. people in traditional news that is interesting, novelty, play around with that and figure out that but we're living in incredit blix incredibly complicated age and being able to break down issues, being able to break things down more easily digestible and bringing those experiences right now, they're very, very expensive and very hard to replicate on mobile devices. as that field grows, it is going to become a bigger and bigger part of mainstream news coverage

and deliver them to people. one thing if i may, that is serious now which will be silly later which is sort of niche media. things that are focused exclusively on one audience. a lot of sites specifically catering to young people, advertise young people want to come here and read young people news. >> feel free to use. >> i think that world is going to change. a lot of these sites that target for specific audience, more and more we're viewing ourselves wanting to consume news everyone is consuming and wanting to be in the same place, having that same conversation. i think that will chart to change over the next decade. >> what do you guys think? >> i mean, well, info graphics i think are easy. you can see the they have a long shelf life but i think there is always a good idea how people are communicating and there is always better way to use medium.

something like gifts which seem like jokes of property of cat falling or badger waving can also be instructions on how to tie a tie or things. i mean, to be able to see complicated ideas very quickly is, it is something that is valuable. i feel like people don't see the kernel or elegance how something can be used. >> initially just word, used essentially animating animals doing human-like things. you see serious pieces, trying to explain serious issue but animating serious issue or with sports. grant land. absolutely. >> whether or not people embrace a platform more to me whether or not they're worth a way of communicating information. >> that's great. thank you guys, very much. thank you.

[applause] >> so charles best, cover boys, donorschoose is most celebrated ngos in the world. i'm goaling to interrupt, when i was a public high school teacher in the bronx and donorschoose ott.org ask experiment our students would work on. there was one person in the world of philanthropy that saw potential and that is darren, who brought me in with our students to see what we were up to. >> you were doing this amazing innovation. now you've become very much associated with a new sense of philanthropy. i want to, i want you to reflect on a quote that i am inspired by

and challenged by when think about our work at the ford foundation. this is a quote by dr. martin luther king about philanthropy and philanthropists and what he said is, that philanthropy is commendable but it must not, it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of injustice in america which make philanthropy necessary. and so i want to, i want to ask you to reflect on that, in your own work. you have created a platform that is one of the foes popular platforms for micro philanthropy in the world. are the people who are on your platform, are they speaking about the injustice in american education when they click to buy that playground or that trip to the met for a student in the bronx? >> well that quote, which,

weighs on me and inspires me, evokes an understandable criticism of donors choose.org which is that you are letting ivate citizens let government off the hook. when citizen donors step in where the system is falling short. are you not inviting state legislatures and governments across the united states to stand down now that donorschoose.org is here? if that were all true we would quit. when someone gives to a classroom project on our site, very often, 70% chance this their first real encounter with what is going on in public schools on the other side of the tracks. and they emerge from their giving experience fired up, politically angry, because they have just had a much more vivid encounter with the unmet need of

students in low-income communities then if they read statistics in a newspaper article. large proportion of our donors are more likely to vote in education budget referendum or take some other form of systemic protest as a result of being on our website because it was energizeing rather than reassuring when they encountered these classroom needs. there are several more things we're doing to change the system itself but i let you go with your next question. >> are you building a movement of angry people about public schools? is, are you raising the consciousness of these people who, and i'm one of them, who sit in their comfortable homes and go online and look at your pictures of these terrible places that we can't believe are american schools and try to, are you moved, building a movement? are you about a movement?

or, are you a nice platform that allows people to go and buy classroom products for kids? >> yeah, yeah. well, you as the audience will be the judges. you each have a $25 donorschoose.org gift card our board of directors underwritten so you choose the classroom project to support. this is stephen coal barrett, our board member gives to every guest. when you find a classroom project that makes your eye twinkle and spend the $25 gift card, you let me know, at charles@donorschoose.org if that is okay or you are awakened to needs and challenges that you didn't know exist beforehand. we think we can show the world, crowd funding, donorschoose.org specifically but crowd funding is not just a thousand points of life, feel good, one-to-one

connections, ask for stuff, everybody be angels, and everybody feel warm and fuzzy, we think there are three ways to help the system. i will give you headlines rather than go into them. by piloting a third way or teacher performance pay where teachers get donorschoose.org classroom funding credits commensurate to student educational outcomes. think of it as a performance bonus one where the currency is not cash money, it is classroom funding credits which made the favor of merit pay much more amenable to teachers and teachers unions themselves. second way is vendors and entrepreneurs circumvent the industrial complex and introduce new tools to teachers without having to hire a force of salespeople and lobbyists. the third way by opening up our data so that policymakers and budget makers can see what resources teachers most need in bed sty, brooklyn, or what

louisiana high school teachers are thinking about expressed by projection they're creatings on our site. we think we can give voice to teachers at the budget making, and policy making data opening update at that by 600,000 classroom projects that quarter of a million teachers created on our site. >> what has been the biggest surprise for you? when i first met you you were really naive, charles. you were really naive. and i was so inspired by your naivete. and your determination to make a difference in the lives of these kids. and so, over these years, what has been, if you, i were to say, tell me, your biggest surprise? >> there are still district leaders who want to shut down donorschoose d.o.t.org because they don't like idea of teachers getting funding for books that they might not have approved of or going on field trips that

deviate from the mandated curriculum, getting any resource they're not personally authorizing and controlling. this began first year operating outs of my classroom in the bronx and another teacher in the bronx got funding for a field trip to go up the hudson river on clearwater vessel. gotten oceanography training summer before. would take the students fishing, testing, taking water samples, learning about the hudson river ecology. students signed off, parents signed off. principal signed off. when the district administrator heard the it was funded through the our site and told the bus driver to turn around at got to the hudson river and 86 a.i.d. the field trip. similar reaction to principal early on she would be fired if she used our site because the first project requested dictionaries was respectful of the school but revealed the

school didn't have dictionaries by virtue of requesting them. >> we shouldn't be angry about just the inequality but about the system and bureaucracy. >> that's right. >> the question is how do you navigate that politically? what you are doing politically very combustible and very disruptive? >> i think we're still taking some comfort in that naivete. initially we, kind of circumvented the powers that be and the bureaucracy by going directly to teachers. we do keep school principals in the loop, every time project are funded and tell them materials aren rout to the school. but the teacher does not need to pay the dues or got higher-ups to sign up. they are a social entrepreneur when it comes to donors choose.org, when they create that project. if citizen donors think it is

worthy it is coming to life. but where we are kind of ignorant how to get the powers that be to pay attention to what our teachers are trying to tell them in the projects that they're creating on our site. we know we can create killer info graphics when we open up the date that show what books high school teachers think are most effective getting kids hooked on reading as expressed by the most top 10 frequently requested books on donorschoose.org. we don't know how to get policymakers to pay attention to the info graphics. >> you're also just not innovative platform you're innovating what the demand is by what you see? you see a lot of things that would imagine come in trend and that could certainly be aggregated with policy implications, and yet, you don't have a foot in the policy making? >> that's exactly right. we're going to need to partner, we think we can be the best at creating an amazingly vivid

giving experience and liberating teachers to tell the world about their best ideas for helping students learn. we'll never be about that great at lobbying. so we'll need a partner for that. speaking of trends that we see, give you just one example, because it shows not just that policymakers should be paying attention to what teachers are trying to tell them on our site, but so too shoed schools of education train teachers. we noticed not long ago there were a lot of special education teachers who would request books on our site for students to read, to therapy dogs because they had concluded that special needs students are often very reluctant to read out loud in front of the classroom because they are afraid they will be taunted. if that same student given a book to read therapy dog, 100%, attentive, non-judgmental rapt audience and this student can blossom as orator. schools of education are not hip to this discovery.

this is the kind of thing that strictly teachers, classroom teachers on front lines, using primary, street expertise, that only those folks come up with these insights. yet, i think it would enrich the training of any special education teacher to know that this is a neat little trick for a getting a special needs student to come out of their shell. >> so let's switch gears from the bronx to noting hill gate and your friend begin negotiate. you understand, has joined the charles best band wagon. what is this goop thing that i keep hearing about. >> she doesn't me from adam and knows donorschoose.org. i notice this newsletter she creates as an incredible following. it is always interesting to us to see which media outlets

generate the most activity and awareness and inspire the most people to support classroom to projects on our site. the media outlets are not the unusual suspects do not drive the most giving. goop is great example. people say they supported classroom project on our sight from newsletter feature from gwyneth paltrow than inspired by national news stories. >> most advocacy organizations don't have access to gannett and your friend oprah. --gw. in the qneth and oprah. they don't have the charles best charisma and story telling capacity but they are doing important work. what is the message to those organizations who are the 99.9% of the education advocacy establishment? >> i you how oprah came to learn about our site.

after 9/11 a lot of teachers at schools beside ground zero were creating projects on the site to recover from the attacks on the world trade center. there was a first grade teacher whose students were saved by a group of firemen. they wanted to thank the firemen who saved them by doing musical performance in front of the fire ladder company which they needed musical instruments. there were hundreds of these projection. i thought the new york media would jump on story. i called 100 reporters. they all hung up on my. my 100th call was to jonathan alter at "newsweek" at the time. called him during my lunch hour. he was first reporter not to hang up on me. he wrote a piece arguing that this little experiment growing out of a bronx classroom might one day change philanthropy and oprah's producers read the story. i think the example i like to think one of hustle and humility that years later pays off. >> well, charles, when i met you over a decade ago you were naive in many ways but what i saw was

a determination and a commitment to justice and rightousness in this country and you are doing that with donors choose, making us all very proud. >> you saw it first, darren. [applause] >> hamdi ulukaya, came as guest of a guest at dinner at my house and lo and behold i had chobani yogurt in my refrigerator. he is the most interesting person that revitalized a whole section of new york with his wonderful product. he will be interviewed by steve clemons and one of these days you will open your closet and there will be steve clemons. the ubiquitous steve clemons. >> thank you very much. everybody standing in the back. seats are open up. don't be shy. don't worry about the cameras. aggressive ram yourself through those aisles to get a seat

because it is worth it for the lineup we have today. hamdi, thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> you were a guy growing up in turkey. you came over here to study byrnes you said ah-ha, fetta cheese. and, we're not even at the yogurt story. you're going to make your fortune in fet at that, i need to know why fetta? >> well, two things. i came to learn english. so i didn't know a word of english. >> and fetta was great english word? >> we don't call it fetta we call it white cheese. the reason i came up with the idea, my father came to visit and the cheese, white cheese is very big in our breakfast dishes. when i brought the cheese i couldn't find in supermarkets. my father said is this it? i said yes. why don't you make some? i grew up in eastern part of

turkey in farming, cheese making, yogurt making. my father not liking cheese i brought for him for breakfast made me go into the cheese business. >> we need to jump to the real story here. how many of you have lots of yoplait yogurt in your refrigerator? how many of you are dan none consumers? how many are chobani consumers? this was not set up. i no idea. i thought it could go really badly for you. >> like to make it more. >> i just dino more. you moved into yogurt. and story is fascinating. love to tell you, tell us the story real quickly, not why yogurt. tell us why entrepeneurship? and how you saved the town, how you saved a factory? >> but i was, to make the story short, i start the cheese business. very small, struggling with language, with running the

plant. trying to sell, all the small, all the big issues that small businesses go through that every day that i did. around i going through my junk mails one night in my office. it said fully equipped yogurt plant for sale. there was picture on front side of it and i continued to throw it in the garbage can and smoking my cigarettes and making garbage. about half an hour later i went back to the paper, now took it, it is dirty -- >> it was craft yogurt. i didn't even know that kraft made yogurt. maybe that was problem. >> it was brand called breyers. i didn't even know it then. this was about 90 years old plant. they were making yogurt and cheese. they said it was original plant that they invented philadelphia cream cheese. >> yeah. >> how hold is that? >> you say that everybody knows that.

>> i couldn't believe the price they were asking for. i thought they were missing one zero. 700,000 or 7 million? i was afraid to ask one more time. i didn't want to look so surprised, so cheap. >> maybe should ask if you knock off another zero. >> on my way back i called my attorney, i just saw a plant i want to pie. he thought i was the craziest guy every. and he told me a million things why i shouldn't get it. one was, there was largest food company was getting out of the category. this was a plant that they were selling as is. that means all the mistakes and crimes done in that plant it was on this turkish guy's shoulder. then he said, i'll tell you one more thing is the biggest problem. you have no money. [laughing] you haven't paid me for the last six months. >> ah. >> it was true. i hadn't paid him. so, that was the thing. and i figured it out with a small bank to buy a loan.

>> did you finally pay him? this is on the record that could be used against you in confession. >> i did. he said i wish i was a partner with you then. so, the first day i bought the plant with sba loan, small business administration was august 15, 2005. and i have the cemeteries, waters are dripping and i hired five people of the 55 kraft let go. there was a bar across the street, people coming to the bar was bikers. i had only seen them on movies and it was scary. when i saw them -- >> hamdi, come on over. >> if i had seen them before i probably wouldn't buy it. but that was the first day. five people and me and, i could not describe how scary it was and how lost i was. and everything that the attorney said, it was true at that

moment. i did something really, really crazy and i didn't know what i was going to do next. my first board meeting with the five people, and they were factory people. mike, rich, maria, myself, and frank. they said what are we going to do next? and first thing that i recognized from the picture when i when there first time is the wall outside. it was white, maybe 15 years ago. no longer, it was horrible. go to the ace store and let's grab some white paint and let's paint these walls. and mike said, he was retired and then came back to the plant. he has been in that plant for almost 25 years. he said tell me you have more ideas than this? [laughter] >> well you know, i just want to ask you, we just had brian green up here. one of the most cosmic concept

allizers and thinkers. did you think the universe of yogurt was a universe of -- i mean at the time, i think it is a, you're clearly successful but one of the questions is, i remember the yogurt. i liked yogurt. i remember greek yogurt coming online and taking on more and more. it is interesting a turkish guy is making greek yogurt. >> only in america. >> yeah, only in america. you go back to istanbul and, does that play well in turkey? do they say wow, our guy gone out to own the greek yogurt market in america. >> the turks are angry. the greeks are angry. >> we were going to take a selfie like ellen at the academy awards and tweet erdowan. and it is a big thing. when i began thinking about talking to you today, i didn't know where did you steal the market from? when you look at absolute

dollars out there for this sort of product, there is some finite number. i didn't know whether you were displacing velveeta cheese or displacing yoplait or whether the universe was getting bigger and right place at right time or have you made the universe bigger? >> you summarized the whole thing. all of it. >> it was an accident if i did that. >> all of it. the we created a market. some of them came from the other categories and some of them people started eating more. when we started there was greek yogurt by a company who brought from grease 10 years before me, 10 years. i mean you're talking, 11 years actually. they created this buzz as a greek yogurt in specialty stores and some fancy places but not in the mass market but someone who grew up with yogurt. yogurt was simplest thing you had. it didn't matter if you were rich or poor, in the city or not, just simplest purest food. you should have access to this i

didn't understand why you have to go to new york city to specialty store to pay $3 for a good cup of yogurt. i worked two years to make the cup. when i made it i said i would go to the mass market first. my first store was shop-rite. my buyer went to shop-rite, we have five show bon anies to put in your shep. we will charge, 30 to $50,000 per cup to put on the shelf. he said, we need that money to be paid. we didn't have that kind of money. well we said, what if we pay with the yogurt? when you sell, you can take some of it for the weeks, we can pay it off? then the guy asked a very nice question, what if it doesn't sell? we said we give you the plant. we said we will give you factory. >> did they want the factory. >> no, he sold a lot.

he called me two weeks later, i don't know what you're putting in the cup but i can not keep it on the shelf. from that moment on i knew this wasn't going to be a about selling. it was going to be about can i make enough. i'm this tiny little guy in up state new york who worked two years to make this cup. now it is selling. i will make the big guys wake up at one point. this is the destiny of every small food startups. you start some dream. you work hard. you don't sleep. you have neck pain, back pain, all kind of pain, right? you don't go to the bahamas. you don't do anything. >> he was in the bahamas last weekend. don't feel sorry. >> i was there for two days. >> i was trying to track him down for something and telling me about roosters on pearl, pink beaches. he was doing fine. you moved, you have another plant in twin false, idaho.

are there sim laters between edmiston, new york, chuck schumer loves you for saving this town and those people but tell me about twin false. i got to get to vladmir putin whether he eats chobani. but -- >> tried, didn't work. what happened from the five people i launch ad brand in 2007. people need to know what happens. the magic happens in the small towns like up state new york and twin falls. with those five people we create ad brand became number one in five years. from that five we have right now 3,000 people. in 2012, from 2007 to 2012, within five-years we went from zero to one billion in sales. and -- [applause] this is, some people said, and i haven't seen anything otherwise, some people said this is fastest

growing startup ever, including all technologies. one of the most amazing things is, until 2012, 2013, actually, we all did it independently. we stayed independent. and we invested had that factory that i bought from 700,000, almost $250 million. then we built a factory in twin falls for 450 milliondollars. we built it in one year. i and all people working the company never had this kind of business experience before. we never marketed, finance people or operators or anything like that. so we figured it out along the way. you know what the secret is? not a big deal. [laughing] it is not a big deal as much as people tried to make it as a big deal. around what they do is, when you talk about these things, it sound like, oh, you have to go through some kind of school. you have to get in front of big corporations. you have to have this kind of discipline. you have to know all the textbooks and everything.

bs. you need to, you need to really be there and along the way, you figure it out. >> what was the biggest mistake you made at the beginning? [applause] what was the thing, obviously you got beyond your biggest mistake or maybe you're perfect and you never made a mistake but what was the biggest mistake you made what you thought you would need to do and you changed course? >> the biggest mistake i made is a human mistake is towards, as business kept growing, 500, 600 million, two plants and plant in australia, the people that you start with is your friend. >> ah. >> you shared a dream together. and as business grows so fast -- >> dreams become complex. >> and capability of being able to handle that kind of business is a different one. >> right. >> so you need to change the skin and you need to bring more people and different people.

and you know, i have struggled with it. i should have done it maybe a year or two years earlier, including myself. i could have brought some different people in. these are the entrepreneurs and people like us that struggle a lot. i think all the issues are human issues, mistakes that are human mistakes. but i think i have done, or we have done together, we've done more good moves and predicted what was going to happen in two years or three years and we did it in time. these are way overshadowing the mistakes we've done. and, i kind of tried to keep it simple. but it became really big that it wasn't as simple as, you know, we are trying to put a structure around it to make sure chobani goes on for a long, long time. >> are there other turkish or greek foods, before you answer this question, next, i was in the green room last week with a

young man, entrepreneur out of washington. i don't know if any of you are familiar with the 15th and u street area in d.c., there is a place called cake love. this creating something, brought people from the neighborhood. created a big thing and talking about his new product, cake in a can which he is supplying to various large chains that is interesting. i was thinking about fact i would be seeing you here. he is really moving forward. he is struggling. he is not a billion dollar company. it is harder thing and worked really hard in the community. i was going to ask on his behalf, what is the biggest thing he can do to get on road to more dramatic success? >> well you have to have -- >> other than appearing on msnbc. could hurt him with a lot of consumers out there. >> you have to have a great products. you have to have a, people worked two years. people said this is good. i said not enough. >> did it used to be crappy?

>> it is good, we made it first month but better than in the marketplace but my expectations is really, really high. the cup, and there is not yogurt cup left in the world that haven't seen. when we launched chobani there were five bags of cups from china to colombia that they took off from my office. you have to be sick about what the product is. once the product is perfect, then the rest is really your capability. i mean there is a lot of stuff you can do right. >> get it out there marketing. >> yeah. >> did vladmir putin not letting official yogurt sponsor of the u.s. olympic team get in help? we're all talking about it. >> yeah. >> most of those people in sochi are sanctioned now in the united states and europe. >> we were really heartbroken because the olympians, they were eating chobani training in this country. it was in the kitchen. it was in their smoothies. came to our plant. all the factory people.

it was like festival day. all the community farmers, kids, everybody in the factory. we made the palate together. everybody in the factory signed to 2012 london. we were hoping this pallet was going to go and we hit the wall. >> there was a lot of speculation that they change of uniform for from underarmor uniforms affected performance of some of the athletes but really absence of chobani yogurt. >> we really believe in that but we're sad. next olympics we think we will do well in brazil. it is foods, food is, people forget a simple cup of yogurt or simple loaf of bread or whatever you get from the store, it is available when you're in turkey and greece and italy and new york city but you got supermarkets in twin falls, new york, it is shame what is in supermarkets. the manufacturers could definitely do better.

they can do better. take the preservatives out. take the colors out. >> talk about that. we have minute 22 seconds. any of you haven't done it i'm not advertising for him but you have a really great web page. i went on my iphone, i hadn't been on it before. you have this thing called, how matters. tell us who about how matters and issue of ingredients. can we walk away from all the preservatives? >> yes. >> i think it is interesting. when you go through the stores, there aren't that many foods, i think, that i'm eating that are probably along the lines of ingredients you have. i'm pretty much of a bad eater. so, but you're telling me i can get on without all of that? >> yeah. is your choice. maybe you live in washington, d.c. -- >> i mean stuff that will survive a month in my refrigerator, maybe two. [laughter]. >> but -- accessibility to natural, good food is human

right. who will make it? everybody wants better food but it is too expensive or it is not there. so manufacturers like us, big guys, they have to put this in the center. meaning somebody will eat this. somebody's baby will eat it. somebody's friend will eat it. how matters. how you make your food it matters. it goes beyond that, that when i started with that five people in that community, the cost of chobani became, everybody come to work and go back to their home and say we've done something amazing today. the promise that certain portion of profit goes back to the community, first in our own community and then expand. so, i believe business is the best vehicle to solve issues in the community and society. and it is the vehicle that is sustainable because it's a business. but the business has the right mind set, that not only the founder or ceo but everybody in there, when they walk into the

plant or the offices, that they're going to do something right and return that comes in, it will go back and do something more right and it will be the effect of going on and on and on. i'm proud that chobani, every act that everybody does every day, we're not perfect, but we have the right mind set. we're not perfect. we're trying. >> before we thank you, we're right at the end, you just got a $750 million loan to expand. so which food company out there should really fear you? >> big guys, i love fighting with the big guys. i think one thing that is message to all the starters, especially in the food world, when they tell you, oh, these are people, they have a lot of marketing money, they have plants, they have all the people, you will find out that the big size that they have is actually become advantage for you to be fast and smart. and, it is really fun to play

with them. >> ladies and gentlemen, hamdi ulukaya. stand up for that. everybody wave. we'll do ourselfty. hold on here. say high to erdogan. i will send it to turkey. >> send it to greece, steve. >> there you go. >> thank thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> only in america. my favorite line. and that, you can walk into my house one night i could serve chobani. it was great. thank you. next we have david kestenbaum of npr is going to tell us what's happening to our money. where it is going. how we're going to spend it. how we're going to play for thing with jeffrey alberts with

prior cashman and phillip bruno and nicholas cary ceo of blockchain. welcome. [applause] >> quick story few years ago, reporter colleague of mine, we heard a story about bitcoin. let's try to eat lunch with it. people are saying this will be the future of money. great, we'll go buy lunch in new york with it. was incredibly difficult. took two weeks to buy money. exchange where you exchange dollars for bitcoin got hacked and shut down. bitcoin doubled from $12 to 20. what was ultimate high? >> ultimate high was a thousand, now down to 450. >> we had to find a guy with bitcoin and hand him dollars. he gave us bitcoins digitally. and there was one place that took bitcoins for lunch and it shut down. my question, where are we now since then? there was question whether it

was legal as currency or what it was. could you maybe bring us up-to-date on one little part of that. tell us, how far we are now? >> sure. i can speak to some extent to the law that relates to bitcoin. the short answer is it is legal but regulators are all still trying to figure out exactly what it is and how it can be used. you can use it legally or use it illegally. >> buying drugs with it is still he will legal? >> afraid so. some regulators came out made statements about legal requirements, fincen came out. irs had rulings. >> bernanke said the word. >> all significant. it is legal but i think it will be a couple years until people kind of figure out how all the preexisting regulatory mechanisms apply to it because it is constantly changing. >> nick, can i buy lunch in new york. >> i say a awful lot changed

since you tried that. i live my life 100% on bitcoin. my company pays all employees with bitcoin. we're bankless institution. we have employees on four continents. there is unbelievable human, intellectual, financial capital pouring into bitcoin projects. from the last year, just in our company alone, we've seen growth from 100,000 users to 1.5 million. it is important to remember outside confines of this room, bitcoin is absolutely global phenomenon. in argentina, there are 400 times more restaurants and bar services that accept bitcoin in new york. there are more fundamental reasons there why its more interesting and approachable financial solution for people than in the united states. >> is there a restaurant in new york that takes them though. >> there are several. a bar not too far away called ever. and one in brooklyn that accept bitcoin. and several others. >> you're a payments guy?

>> i think what is interesting here is that bitcoin is a currency or as a store of value, so we're seeing some interests in there. in that regard. but i think -- >> explain what those two are. >> store of value, do you want to hold your life savings or some portion of it in bitcoin as a means of keeping your money? the other is medium of exchange. and so that's for, buying lunch and doing other things there. i think what we really find special though is, thinking about it as a network, as a way to transact and to send money point to point without involving a financial institution or intermediary. most things up until now have been set up as these hub and spoke met works where there is somebody in the middle, all the transactions go through that. this new fa many no none is a way to transact that doesn't involve those intermediaries or doesn't involve the fees associated with it so it is

incredibly low cost. >> in other words, these are two visions of bitcoin future. people talk how much they have an use it to buy lunch and other say it's a way to send money from one place to another in