"Blue Zones: Secrets of a Long Life"

World renowned explorer and National Geographic writer, Dan Buettner, and his team of researchers have traveled across the globe to discover Blue Zones -- hotspots of human health and vitality.

Along the way he's met people teeming with vigor at age 100 and beyond. Working witth the National Institute on Aging, he identified four small populations with the world's highest life expectancy. Then, working with second team of scientists, he isolated the common denominators that explain extraordinary longevity. What is the optimal diet for making it to a healthy age 90? Should you be running marathons or doing yoga? What supplements work? Does stress really shorten your life? Dan debunks the most common myths and offers a science-backed blue print for the average American to live another 12 quality years.

His presentation incorporates National Geographic images that will take audiences into the world’s four Blue Zones, tell stories and instruct how to get more life from your years and more years from your life. The presentation ends with a simple formula that shares how you could add quantity and quality to your life.

“Our Energy Future”

A native Minnesotan, Ed Driscoll is an entrepreneur who has founded a variety of high-growth service and infrastructure companies. His latest, Rational Energies, combats a significant current national issue: Energy.

By its nature, renewable energy is a regional business due to the cost and logistics challenges incurred by transporting biomass over large distances. Rational Energies will establish strong ties between plants, partners, and the communities where the plants are built, producing high-value fuel for local markets. Local revenue creation benefits the economy, improves the quality of life in the community and creates local jobs.

Most energy depends on the burning of fuel. The by-products of combustion include gases that become trapped in our atmosphere. These gases are partly responsible for climate change that affects the entire earth, and all the living things on it—including us. Beyond economic profit, then, any new fuel source must also generate social and environmental benefit.

“Silence, Loss and Sensation”

Matthew Sanford is the author of the award-winning book Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence, a nationally-recognized yoga teacher, a leading voice of the integrative health movement, and the founder of Mind Body Solutions, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporation.

At age 13, Matthew survived a devastating car accident that killed his father and sister and left him permanently paralyzed from the chest down. In this interactive presentation, he explores the experience of silence and loss as a transformative mind-body sensation. This personal realization has led Matthew to develop a ground-breaking, research-tested, mind-body approach to trauma loss and disability, one that holds the promise of revolutionizing the rehabilitation process.