Climate Change as an Opportunity
On Monday April 17, I journeyed from my family home in New York City to give a speech at the Startup Shell, the student-run startup incubator at the University of Maryland College Park, where I am an alumni, BS Mechanical Engineering ‘12.
The speech was entitled Climate Change as an Opportunity. The goal; to instill in the students an understanding of the circular economy, biomimicry, and resilience, and the opportunity to start businesses built with a foundation of a status quo shift.
I love to visit the schools I’ve gone to, even as far back as elementary school. I would go back to Gramercy Preschool if it was still around. When thinking about how I was going to spend my time in NYC for Passover before the Go Youth Conference where I was scheduled to speak with Impossible Labs Co-Founder Tito, I took the opportunity to coordinate a climate opportunities event at University of Maryland, home of Fear the Turtle and the nation’s first Do Good Campus.
I partnered with the student-run entrepreneurship group, Startup Shell, which hosts weekly talks by alumni, among other events. After a planning call with Sam Drosdov, the events coordinator there, the word was spread: Matthew Eshed is coming to town to speak about Climate Change an an Opportunity.
My slide deck can be found on Slideshare here. It introduces key concepts such as the circular economy, biomimicry, resilience, and permaculture, lessons from my time at MakerBot and Human Condition Safety, and the organizations and technologies that are currently on my radar.
Unfortunately, plans to livestream the speech were foiled by a power outage during my scheduled time, so my oration is absent. Perhaps Scott Pruitt heard about the talk and wanted to silence me? ;-)
Next steps for me: Continue building a San Francisco climate lab influenced by the principles of open innovation and a model for its replication, the Hacker’s Guide to Climate Change (sneak peek coming soon!), and programs to support technology startups in food, air, energy, and water.
https://www.slideshare.net/MatthewEshed/climate-change-as-an-opportunity-umdcp-2017
