Rick Smolan

Rick Smolan is a former Time, Life, and National Geographic photographer best known as the creator of the "Day in the Life" book series – the bestselling photo books that captured life in diverse locales like America, Japan, Australia, the Soviet Union, and other countries in the '80s, as well as "America 24/7." As CEO of Against All Odds Productions, his projects focus on capturing the human face of emerging topics and specialize in the design and execution of large-scale crowd-sourced global projects that combine compelling storytelling with state-of-the-art technology. His work results in bestselling illustrated books, TV specials, apps, exhibits, and hundreds of millions of media impressions.

Smolan's book "From Alice to Ocean" is based on a National Geographic cover story that he photographed about Robyn Davidson, a young Australian woman who traveled solo across the Australia outback accompanied only by camels. Her adventure is considered one of the five most memorable stories in National Geographic's 125-year history. Davidson’s narrative of her trip, "Tracks", became a classic and bestseller. The book has now been turned into a film by the Oscar-winning producers of The King's Speech, starring Mia Wasikowska as Davidson and Adam Driver as Smolan. The movie premiered to glowing reviews at the Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals and was released in the U.S. by the Weinstein Brothers in September 2014.

Smolan’s recent projects include "The Human Face of Big Data," which looks at how all of our devices are creating a planetary nervous system and that the massive gathering and analyzing of data in real time is suddenly allowing us to address some of humanity’s biggest challenges, including pollution, world hunger and illness. On December 4, 2012, the book was delivered to 10,000 world leaders, Fortune 500 CEOs, heads of media companies, Oscar, Pulitzer Prize and Olympic winners, and other notable figures in 50 countries around the world. The book was a bestseller and has sold more than 55,000 copies. Additionally, the one-hour documentary based on the project recently won The Boston Film Festival’s “Best Cinematography Award.” His latest bestseller "The Good Fight: America’s Ongoing Struggle for Justice," focuses on America's continuous battle for justice and equality, showcased through photographs, videos, essays, and music, and was chosen as the official TED BOOKCLUB selection and made People Magazine's top 10 best gift books list. Smolan's talk explores the profound impact of Big Data and the Internet of Things on society, discussing the trade-offs of data collection as highlighted by the Edward Snowden NSA revelations. Having spent years immersed in the world of Big Data, Smolan is convinced that Big Data will have a far greater impact on our lives than the internet.