In seven days, a group of the world's most inspiring dreamers and doers will convene in international waters off the coast of Florida for this year's Summit Series conference, Summit At Sea -- an event organized by myself and a team of 17 young entrepreneurs. Given the surreal setting of the event, we are capitalizing on the opportunity to focus attention on ocean conservation.
During this three-day adventure at sea, scientists, business leaders, techies and top entertainers have the opportunity to go shark tagging for science with The Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science -- University of Miami. And this is totally hands on. Participants will be taking blood samples, fin clips and measurements, all to determine the diet and overall health of the local Bahamian shark population.
THE QUESTION
To qualify to participate, attendees were asked to answer:
What is the most serious issue facing the oceans today, and how can you, your company, or your industry help address it?
THE IDEA GALLERY
We've aggregated the best of the entries so far and have created a living, breathing catalog of cross-vertical ideas that catalyze all kinds of ocean conservation, at SharkTagYoureIt.com. In the Twitterverse, @SummitD is sending out daily updates tagged with #sharktagyoureit.
Responses have come in all shapes and sizes -- an Xtranormal video from the 13th employee of Google, a proposal to institute a migrating mural along the coast of California, an analysis of the opportunities of profit-based financial blogging, and a call to map the GPS coordinates of sharks' migratory patterns to a synthesizer to make beats for famous artists to sample and then sell on iTunes.
Our goal is to get the world's most innovative, talented business minds to use their intellect to solve a different kind of problem, and to show the environmental community that their best new friends (and resources) might be a music manager from New York or a Web developer from MIT.