The
Global Conversation DTLA
Thursday. April 2nd.
7pm-10pm.
WeWork in the Arts District.
You have an extraordinary opportunity during your time at USC, that you will never have again.
You are on campus together with students from all over the world, with the ability to create a true global community, that will remain with you throughout your life, if you choose to grab it. This would be a real community, not an online one—a group of people who get to know each other, sharing an experience, sharing your cultures, understanding one another, lessening global tensions, and creating together. It is a possibility for a lifelong global collaboration between you. If you dream, you folks can become the central nerve and leadership of true globalization. You can create ideas together, create business together, create startups together, make money together, solve issues of the planet together, make a better world together. You can influence the values of entire generation. The conversation between you has value for businesses, nonprofits, government, to learn what your generation is thinking as a global community. Your voices are important at this time in the world.
This first Global Conversation will take place in the central lobby area at WeWork in the Arts District in Downtown LA, an industrial co-working space which was the former warehouse of Maxwell House Coffee. Perfectly designed for this kind of experience. Sofas. Pillows. Chair seating. Floor seating. Movable tables. A conducive, welcoming and flexible venue.
Dinner
As someone who curates and facilitates Conversational Dinners among business and nonprofit leaders, I know that when the experience begins with participants sitting around dining tables, eating great food, the conversation gets richer and richer. Dinner will be served from Wexler's Deli, my son’s restaurant, which is now the subject of an episode on Season 3 of the very popular Netflix show, The Chef!
Cost:
I am self funding this first effort, including the cost of the space and dinner. In order to help me with some of the cost there will be a charge of $25 per person. The money will not be refundable. (If someone is absolutely unable to pay that amount, but really wants to come, please let me know. )
Your collaboration in planning this event would be wonderful.
If you are so inclined to want to be part of the planning of this event, offering your suggestions and taking some light responsibilities helping to organize, please email me at gary@GaryWexler.com. Below is my initial thinking. I am open to all suggestions.
I want to keep this first Global Conversation to 50 people. I see this as an ongoing event that will keep building. Because this will be the first one, I am sure there will be kinks to work out before the next one, where there can be more people. The space can hold up to 200.
I want to make sure we are balanced between Americans of every background, as well as International students--- Chinese/Asian, Indian, European, African, Latin, MiddleEast and others from anywhere. As of now, we need to gather more African, MiddleEastern and Latin students.
We need more men. Most of those responding are women. We also need people who identify as gender specific in any way.
I need help to pull this off. I want to form an organizing committee. Which mean, I need some people to step forward to help me recruit in each area. American diversity. Chinese/Asian. European. Latin. African. Anywhere. Gender categories. PLEASE VOLUNTEER YOURSELF. For this to work, we are going to need to compose and balance this group properly with enough voices from each group. (If it’s slightly out of balance and over 50, we’ll figure it out.)
We need to create a great idea for when people arrive how we get them to mingle and meet, and not stay in their own groups.
I want to begin the evening with some form of entertainment. Music. Or singing. Or spoken word. I want this entertainment to come from people who are attending.
I am envisioning each conversation to center on a certain topic. Topics such as: Entrepreneurship. Money. Innovation. Creativity. Values. Culture. Sustainability. Corporate Social Responsibility. Millennials. Gen Z. War. Peace. Refugees. Influence of Religion. Terrorism. And many other topics. The first topic will be about Global Creativity and Collaboration among your generation.
We will first be in an open conversation together, learning from one another how your cultures interact with the topic above. Then we will break into groups, balanced by cultures, to create ideas. We will first determine, what kind of idea categories, such as business, entertainment, social justice, academic, startup, environmental, global health, policy, etc. I will give the directions and prompts. Don’t worry. I will lead you to access your creativity.
Each group will present one idea. We will vote on the best ideas. Then we will talk about in the future what we may do with these ideas. Do we create another event with VC’s, startups, philanthropists, governments, consulates, etc to move these ideas forward?
I want to include business, nonprofit, government, entertainment, startup leaders in these conversations so you folks can begin to create networks for future job possibilities.
This is not an official USC event.
I am doing this myself. If I begin to work with USC on this, there will be too many rules, regulations and bureaucracy. It will take a year before it gets off the ground. In a sense I am doing this as a social entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship and risk is a good thing.
Spread the word
We need to spread the word through friends and social media. We need to keep spreading the word during and after the event. I look forward to hearing from you
-Gary