The Fyre Festival Disaster Has Made It Harder For All Big Festivals

“A Fyre-like calamity is the greatest fear of most festival organizers. The majority already seek to protect themselves by obtaining insurance, but it doesn’t come cheap, or easy. Insurers typically begin working with mega-festival organizers well in advance, determining exactly what kind of coverage they need. In some cases, risk and claim specialists will even tour facilities in advance and during the festival in an effort to mitigate any potential issues.”

Why “Smart” Cities Aren’t Just About Tech

Jason Schupbach: “I think what tech misses a lot is the culture of place. One of the biggest problems that happens in city development is that people are saying you can use the same solution everywhere without really understanding how a society works or what the culture of a place is. Just slap on this tech thing and it’ll just work, everybody will adopt it, why not, it’s awesome. So I feel like one of the things that creative placemaking can do really well, or that an artist can do really well, is to help be that bridge between the community and the tech company, or whoever’s trying to come in and do something.”

Jane Austen Had The Best Words

There’s a reason her work has thrived since it was published. “Her novels, reasonably successful in their day, were innovative, even revolutionary, in ways her contemporaries did not fully recognize. Some of the techniques she introduced — or used more effectively than anyone before — have been so incorporated into how we think about fiction that they seem to have always been there.” Also, ask the data!

Empathy May Be Overrated

That’s right, we need to understand irreducible alterity – a philosophical concept developed by a Holocaust survivor. “What if instead of sameness it were otherness that was the foundation for ethical action? What if being confronted by someone utterly different from you — someone you are opposed to, confused by, scared of, someone you can’t understand — was the urgent signal that there was a life in need of your protection?”