From our friends at Smithsonian Media...
Smithsonian Magazine Announces 2014 The Future is Here Festival, Featuring Advance Screening of X-Men: Days of Future Past
Actor George Takei; NASA’s “Rock and Roll Engineer,” Adam Steltzner; Cosmologist Brian Greene; Actor Patrick Stewart; The Mythbusters; Award-winning Sci-fi Author, Kim Stanley Robinson; Award-winning Sci-fi Author, David Brin; De-Extinction Expert, Stewart Brand and Other Scientists, Visionaries & Experts to Speak
Smithsonian magazine is proud to present the second annual The Future Is Here Festival, a three-day event highlighting some of the most advanced thinking in science, technology and engineering from an array of experts, visionaries and noted science-lovers including The Mythbusters, Mars Rover engineer Adam Steltzner, actor George Takei among many others. The Future Is Here Festival, which takes place May 16-18, will feature an advance screening of X-Men: Days of Future Past followed by a Q&A session led by actor Patrick Stewart.
The festival - whose theme is “Science Meets Science Fiction”— will be accompanied by Smithsonian magazine’s special “The Future is Here” May issue, which hits stands April 23. Festival events will kick off with a VIP cocktail reception at the National Air and Space Museum on May 16th. Day 2 will feature speakers and presentations at the Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center providing an eye-opening look into the near and far future. On Sunday, the festival will be the site of the Nerd Nite Global Conference, an 80-city organization devoted to science and alcohol.
“The Future Is Here is one of those rare events that will impact people’s thinking for years to come,” says Stephen Giannetti, VP of Marketing & Advertising at Smithsonian Media. “With the greatest minds in science, technology and sci-fi convening, this will be an amazing and unforgettable three days of engagement, exchange and exploration.”
The Future Is Here features some of the world's most renowned and entertaining experts, including:
· George Takei – Star Trek's Sulu and subject of the new documentary To Be Takei
· The Mythbusters - Courtesy of the Science Channel
· Adam Steltzner – NASA’s “Rock and Roll” Engineer
· Dr. Mae Jemison – American Physician & NASA Astronaut
· Kim Stanley Robinson - Hugo and Nebula-award winning science fiction author
· David Brin - Scientist and Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction author
· Brian Greene – Cosmologist & Author of “The Hidden Reality”
· Stewart Brand – De-extinction expert & Founder of The Long Now Foundation
· Sara Seager – MIT Professor of Planetary Science & Physics
· Dr. Alex Dehgan - Science and Technology Adviser to the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development
· Joshua Moskowitz – Engineer and Former Space Shuttle Flight Controller
"We're living in a science fiction world," says Smithsonian magazine editor-in-chief, Michael Caruso, "a place where the distance between imagining something and building it is getting shorter and shorter. The Future Is Here Festival pulls together some of the most exciting minds working today to dream up and construct the future. It will be intense, mind-bending, deeply thought-provoking and, as much as anything else, immensely entertaining.”
In addition to presenting sponsor UL, the festival collaborators include Nerd Nite, the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, Smithsonian Grand Challenges Consortia, the Smithsonian Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, and in partnership with 1776 and iStrategyLabs.
For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit www.smithsonian.com/future.
About Smithsonian Media:
Smithsonian Media comprises of its flagship publication, Smithsonian magazine, as well as Air & Space, Smithsonian Books, and the Smithsonian Media Digital Network. Smithsonian Media is a division of Smithsonian Enterprises, the revenue-generating business unit of the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian Institution is the world's largest museum and research complex consisting of 19 museums and galleries, the National Zoological Park and nine research facilities. Approximately 30 million people from around the world visit the museums annually.
