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October 10, 2007

BIF-3: Mossberg interviews Richard Wurman

Richard Saul Wurman and Walter Mossberg

Author Richard Saul Wurman of Newport and Walt Mossberg, obviously old friends, have a delightfully rambling conversation to end the first day of the conference.

Mossberg taks about conferences Richard would host that would feature, typically, Larry Ellison (Oracle), Bill Graham, a juggler, Yo Yo Ma, Norman Lear, Jeffrey Katzenberg showing parts of Shrek, a storyteller, singers, Nobel prize winners.

Wait for the punchline:

"But he sends emails in all caps."

Mossberg: Why is everybody here?

Wurman: It's the age of also... We use email, snail mail, phone, fax...

We're always approaching how to communicate with another human being. We do it in a fancy way and make money from it but underneath it all, you're making conversation.

You should only be able to copyright bad ideas. Good ideas should be public.

W called R and asked what to call his conference: "Call it D," Walt said, shaking his head. (He did.)

Wurman is the man behind many atlases.

"You don't drive across the United States alphabetically. And the maps are all different scales and different legends. You leave one state and on the next map it takes an hour to go the same distance that took 10 minutes. So I decided to make my own atlas.

"Which Rand McNally then picked up."

Newest project: The rise of supercities. 19 cities in the world with a population of 20 million people each in the 21st century.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 6:45 PM | Permalink

Comments

redragon | October 11, 2007 9:05 AM link

Sheila Lennon | October 11, 2007 9:13 AM link

Greg | October 11, 2007 12:17 PM link

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