SERIES HOST: Martin Prosperity Institute

SPEAKER: Richard Saul Wurman, Creator, TED conference, TEDMED conference, e.g. conference and WWW conference; Author of 90 books

TOPIC: "Understanding Understanding" (Richard Saul Wurman, 2017)

TIMING: 12:15-12:59pm check-in; 1:00pm sharp to 2:00pm book talk; 2:00-2:10pm book sale

COST: $96.66 plus HST per person (includes 1 hardcover copy of "Understanding Understanding" and 1 seat for the book talk)

BOOK SYNOPSIS: This is a book for people to dip into, as they would walk in and out of the room of a dinner party and embrace their interests.

Before Information Architecture, before the rules on how to organize information, before you learn grammar, before you work hard at expanding your vocabulary and go through the exercises of parallel meanings of things as using a Thesaurus and as one writes papers in class, before any learning one must understand.

Understanding Understanding precedes the whole process of learning, of giving yourself permission to understand the formations of facts, data, stories, pictures, words, conversations that allow you to understand. This book could be called “A Celebration of Conversation” or “Musings with my Mentors”.

It is about the fantasy of being the dumbest person in the room and being able to identify all the myriad connections of how others think, talk, explain and visualize. The following is a collection of many of the most interesting idiosyncratic paths of understanding that lead to creation.

BIOGRAPHY: Richard Saul Wurman has written, designed and published 90 books on wildly divergent topics. He received both his M. Arch. and B. Arch. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, from where he graduated in 1959 with the highest honors, and was awarded the Arthur Spayed Brooks Gold Medal.

He has been awarded several honorary doctorates, Graham Fellowships, a Guggenheim and numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as being the Distinguished Professor of the Practice at Northeastern University.

He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Smithsonian, Cooper-Hewitt Museum. Wurman has also been awarded the Annual Gold Medal in Discourse from Trinity College, Dublin, a Gold Medal from AIGA and Boston Science Museum’s 50th Annual Bradford Washburn Award.

He is also a Fellow of the AIA and in the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame. Richard Wurman created and chaired the TED conference from 1984 thru 2002, the TEDMED conference from 1995 to 2010, as well as the e.g. and WWW conference.