Music How's it going? Applause So welcome. It's obviously very inspiring to see the group of diverse individuals here. I know people have traveled from overseas. I know a lot of people have made the attempt to come to this conference because they are interested in the ideas that we have here. My name is Jeff Lea. I'm the Executive Director of the Radical Exchange. And I've been responsible with the rest of our team for organizing this event for the last few months. So about a year and a half ago, Glenn Wile and Eric Posner wrote this book Radical Markets. And it struck a chord and found resonance with many people. And I'm sure many of you here have read this book. It was an economist book of the year for 2018. And it saw that we could find a way to bridge the divides that we have in our society today. That we can reinvent institutions to fix problems like inequality. That we can find a way to build the more prosperous world. But it also found a question. Okay. So the book found resonance. Now what? And so Glenn, as a founder, had the idea, why don't we build a cross track collaboration and set up a conference around the ideas? And so in August of last year, about five of us got together to start to do that. And so there were various constituents that we brought together for that. We had an activist and government group. There was artists and communications, entrepreneurship and technology, and then ideas and research, which was academics. But one of the first things that we came to in that conversation was, okay, let's have an honest conversation to begin with. This is a very diverse group. These are heightened issues. What are the defining qualities of these various groups? But also, what are the stereo types that we're going to encounter when we go into a conference like this? So, and this was from one of our presentations. Artists are a creative, playful, critical, out-of-the-box thinking type of group. They're fun, they're interactive, they're deeply thought-provoking. But the stereo types. Is it the case that they can be too critical in ironic, disorganized, and perceived as elitist or inaccessible? Academics. You're next. Defining qualities. Thuro experts and specialists. They synthesize a variety of inputs to go deep into a problem. But can they be bound to old models? Can they have difficulty communicating? Are their ideas sometimes locked in theory? Activists and policymakers. So, they're the community builders and the change agents, action-oriented, pragmatic, experimental, and they understand real world problems. But can they be too focused on what to fight against? Can they be too clikish? Or can governments have perverse incentives that are all too commonly understood? And then our builders, our entrepreneurs, and our technologists, the doers, they challenge norms and they turn ideas into action that have has real world impact. But do they sometimes have fin judgment for the best ideas? Do they often, or at least sometimes, release inventions into the wild without thought of the systematic implications of those inventions? And then when you think about the ideological camps that we're trying to traverse here, today you hear the left, the right, centrist, conservative. And you think about the criticisms that can be advanced towards something like this. These are a bunch of technocrats. They're utopian. They're communists. They're hyper-capitalists. What is it that we can find commonality to start out a conference like this in? What about good? And a good we all know. Just pick one. Pick one example. What about a parent who has a child and clearly definitely wants a prior future for that child? What about knowing that there's brilliance in everybody here and there's brilliance in that diversity? Don't we want to believe that we can have a conversation together beyond those differences to advance to a new world? So you would have seen this. It's not critical. It's not radical to critique our current society. It's radical to build a better one. So radical does have the political sense, but it also has the root meaning of the word. And at its root, radical means to go to the root of something, just like a plant. And so when we think about radical and looking at different ideologies, we think about going to the root. And do we believe at the root that there's a commonality in looking for liberalism, justice, and can we agree to those outcomes? So our beliefs. Institutions can be redesigned for the better. This book is fundamentally rooted in economics and mechanism design. And we believe that with those ideas, rigorous methodology can lead to new institutions. But we also believe that that has to be grounded in moral social principles. When you go back to the works of Adam Smith or Karl Marx or Henry George whose ideas were key in this book, you re-situate economics in moral and political philosophy, sociology, and ethics. And we believe that that's key. Diversity is essential. And that's why we aim for it despite our differences. And we strive to bring that diversity together. And ultimately we believe people are good. Our values, openness. So for openness, this means to us openness to the fact that our ideas are not yet finalized. This is a conversation. It's an exchange. It means an openness to hearing your ideas. It means asking you to be open in this conference to hearing perspectives that you might not have agreed with before you came here. It means earnestness that we are adamant about our goals of striving to build a better future. It means we believe in social innovation and it means that we believe in the dignity of the individual. So we set out some goals for our organization originally and we sat down and we decided what were the goals that we wanted to bring together. And basically our event is constructed in line with these goals. So the first is to inspire and connect. Day one is about inspiring that we can envision a future that's different than today. And connecting with other individuals, and especially diverse individuals that you haven't connected with before, that believe the same thing. Day two is about learning and experiencing. And day three will ultimately be about catalyzing action. And all in day three you're going to hear some of the ideas for radical exchange and where we might take this organization and community. But more importantly, catalyzing actions for where you might take the community or these ideas out in your work. The conference has five main themes, politics, space, collective action, identity, and economy. And in line with diversity, the cross connections across these domains is particularly important to us. And we're not just listening to speeches and panels during our time here. We're going to have art exhibits, workshops, a games night, movie screenings. The idea is not to come and be told what to think or what to believe, the idea is to get involved. And the successful outcome of this conference, if there is one, will be that you've gotten involved and you've engaged. We're looking for open dialogue, we'll have on conference sessions. We have, again, intentional diversity. And we'd ask for the respect of that diversity during the time of the conference. And ultimately this is your conference. We've had a great team of 50 plus volunteers that have put it together for you. But it's ultimately for your experience. So we looked at about 100 venues on this path. And we kept coming back to want and college for creative studies in Detroit. And why? Well, first of all, when we contact the venue, it felt perfect because of its story part of Detroit's history. And we'll have President Rodgers come up to present that. Because Detroit does have a history. And we understand that it has a history here in terms of industrial periods of Detroit. It's reimagining a future for itself. And then the concepts of designing creativity and imagination that come out of this school. And you can see it as you visit tour around the campus is in line with what we believe in our core values. So our first welcome guest to the stage here is President Rick Rodgers. And we're delighted to let him speak to you and tell you a bit about the history of college for creative studies.