From Politico:
Founder Elliott Bisnow, a 24-year-old Washington native and mastermind behind the Bisnow newsletters — which provide city-specific business news via e-mail — aims to gather some of the world’s top entrepreneurs and CEOs to, well, talk and have fun.
“The biggest difference between Summit Series and anything else — the biggest take-away,” said Bisnow, “is it’s all about friendship and fun and shared experience.” The Summit grew from a small skiing trip a couple years back, which he started simply by cold-calling up-and-coming CEOs.
“It’s all about collectivism, ‘how can I help you?’” Summit Series’ co-founder Jeff Rosenthal added.
The twice-yearly conference will draw 750 attendees and take place Thursday through Sunday at the JW Marriott. Various business leaders (and famous faces) will lead discussions on subjects ranging from relief work in Haiti to grass-roots fundraising to the power of storytelling to start-up investing. Attendees include musician John Legend, President Bill Clinton, Ted Turner, model Christy Turlington Burns, actress Kristen Bell, fashion designer Marc Ecko, the cast of MTV’s “The Buried Life" (sharing their stories at 1:30 a.m., another example of why this isn’t your typical business conference) and six NASA astronauts.
The official site
I LOVE this idea and have already been following the hastags on twitter: #summitseries and #DC10
I really enjoy listening to and learning about social entrepreneurs and this seems the perfect chance to do that. Tickets cost $3,500 and are invite only so it will be a long time before I can attend one of these events (this and TED are on my dream events list) but the idea is one I can't stop thinking about. Just today I was thinking about what a great experience How It Ends was last Summer and how much I enjoy the networking aspect of these events. I will actually be heading to Tampa after work tomorrow for the Florida Young Democrats convention and am excited to meet like minded Floridians!
It's now 10:03 and I am finally back in my hotel room. We got up at 6am this morning so our bus could leave exactly at 7am. First we visited the Pentagon. When I toured the Pentagon through TWC we got a standard issue tour. One of my professor's friends gave us a mini-tour ( a little different from the standard tour, we even got to visit “The Tank” where the Joint Chiefs of Staff hold meetings) and also told us at the beginning of the tour that he would have to leave at some point because he had to brief members of Congress on the new defense treaty that Admiral Mullen will be signing on Monday. The timing for our topic could not have been any better. The first group presented their ideas to Paul Stockton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas' security affairs. He was very receptive to our ideas and said many were in the beginning stages of development.
After leaving the Pentagon, we headed to the State Department. We arrived late because our Pentagon tour ran over but were able to join the 8th floor tour in progress. After that tour we headed to our meeting. I was presenting in this meeting to Deputy Assistant Secretary Chris McMullen and the United States Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States (OAS). The meeting went well and we were also joined by a man who works at the State Department in refugee issues and is originally from Jacksonville (Secretary McMullen always went to Jacksonville University for a year). I really enjoyed being able to discuss refugee issues, as they are something I feel very strongly about. The discussion and presentation went well and we also got to see a good portion of the building. To be honest., I found most of the building to be very unappealing (lots of plain white halls) but enjoyed the experience.
The 8th floor of the State Department: 
After the State Department we visited Office of American States. It was an incredibly beautiful building and I learned a lot about the organization, something I didn't know much about before that trip. There we meet with the Brazil Ambassador to the OAS and a few staff members. The best part of this was learning about the “peace tree.” When we first came in, our tour guide pointed to a picture near the door. The OAS is about to celebrate its 100 birthday and when it first opened President Taft gifted them a peace tree. They are asking for President Obama to come to their 100th anniversary gala to plant another tree (we actually mentioned this to the member of the NSC we met later that day).
The outside of the OAS:
Meeting table at the OAS:
The original peace tree (it was maybe 4 feet tall when President Taft planted it):
After our tour and presentation at the OAS, we walked across the street to our meeting at the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB). As we came through security, my professor pulled three names from a bag to decide who got to go with her to a tv interview she was taping that evening. I did not get picked but my roommate did. As we headed up stairs for our meeting all of the sudden I hear my professor say “Oh, David! How are you?” I looked up and saw she was hugging David Gergen. I'm still pretty shocked he was just wandering the halls but I was excited (and the teasing for that has been constant). We met with Luis Rossello, the director for the Southern Cone at the National Security Council and Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs: Dan Restrepo. This meeting was a great learning experience. Both men explained what points could be expanded, what was logical, etc. They did a great job explaining exactly the questions we should be asking ourselves when writing a paper like and the questions he has to answer when he wants to bring an issue to his boss. This was, without a doubt one of the best meetings we had.
My EEOB pass:
After that meeting (our final for the day), we split up. A few members of the group headed to Ambassador Soderberg's interview while the rest of us visited the Kennedy Center. Because we were running late we missed the free performance but walked around and took it all in. Following that, we all meet up at dinner. We ate a very tasty Peruvian restaurant (El Chalan on 19th and I). It was deliciously and a great way to end the night. Shannon and I went right to our room and to sleep.
In exactly 1 week's time I will touring the State Department (then having a meeting with State Department officials). All because of one UNF class.
Ambassador Nancy Soderberg (formerly the third-highest-ranking official at the United States National Security Council under President Clinton and US Representative for Special Political Affairs at the US Mission to the United Nations) is a distinguished visiting professor UNF. I'm not sure exactly what that means for the school but I know what it means for me. The class I'm taking with Professor Soderberg is titled "Real World/Super Power Myth," a title I find very misleading. The class basically works like this, the first half of the semester we covered foreign policy topics all over the board (from Russia to North Korea, from terrorism to foreign aid, we read extensively on all topics). At about the half way point of the semester, the class choose a topic to take to DC with us. Our original list included nonproliferation, North Korea, Turkey, and cyber security, among other things. The criteria for choosing a subject was that it was a topic on which we wanted to advocate change in government policy and one that was a bit "off the radar." The goal was to get "ahead" of the government in our recommendations, present our ideas to the bigwigs in DC, and learn something while doing it.
The topic we choose was Brazil. I'm more than wiling to admit I knew little about Brazil before this class (lots of rain forests, lots of crime, lots of drugs, that was about it) and I still wouldn't consider myself an expert on the country but I have a learned a lot. A few of my favorite Brazil facts:
Brazil is the 5th largest country in the world (by land mass and by population).
About 12% of the fresh water in the world is in Brazil.
Brazil has the 2nd largest number of airports in the world (after the US).
Brazil has the largest population of Japanese descent outside of Japan.
Anyway, our recommendations range from increased cross training for police and peacekeeping forces to UN Security Council reform to strengthening economic ties. While we are on DC some of the people we are meeting with are: Department of Defense Deputy Secretary, William Lynn; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the
Western Hemisphere, Dr. Frank O. Mora; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counternarcotics and Global Threats, William Wechsler (who was on the NSC with my professor) (all at the Pentagon); Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo A. Valenzuela (who also spent some time on the NSC); Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, Esther Brimmer (both at the State Department); Special Assistant to the President for Latin America, Dan Restrepo (at the White House); the staff of Sen. Nelson (Congress is out of session of course); someone at the CIA (not sure who yet); Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative at the Organization of American Sates, Lewis Amselem; and someone at the Brazilian embassy (we are also not sure yet who exactly this will be). We may also have a catch to meet Secretary Clinton and Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
All that having been said, I need to work on my assignment for class tomorrow! I plan to blog on the trip as I really want to have a record of the meetings we hold. The assignment due tomorrow for this class is the first draft on an op-ed we will be sending to the Florida Times Union about Brazil. When I finish this and feel good about it I plan to post it here as well.
