IdeaFestival Bowling Green 2017

Make Nice with Your Ideas

Speakers Sessions

Session 1: Creative Technologies

Max Moore: Make Nice with Your "Bad" Ideas

Max Moore, of Max Moore Films and Vilas Entertainment, is an American music video director whose work has been featured on media outlets such as NPR, Vice, MTV, VH1, USA Today, Pitchfork, and SPIN. His music video work with dozens of punk, hardcore, metal and indie bands from all across North America collectively totals over 35 million views online. In addition, Moore's narrative short films have also been selected for Academy Qualifying and International Film Festivals throughout the US and Europe. Moore completed his degree in Film Studies at WKU in 2013.

Luiggi Carlin: Video Games, Startups and the Never-Ending Climb

Luiggi Carlin is a project manager for Southern Made Co. in Nashville, a technology company supporting today's digital marketers & agencies with marketing campaigns and web applications. He previously worked at Hitcents in Bowling Green and has lead teams of developers, animators, and illustrators. His work at Hitcents included the mobile games Draw a Stickman Epic and Battlepillars, and various mobile apps. A native of Peru who has worked to raise awareness on immigrant issues, Carlin graduated from WKU in 2011 with a degree in English.

Megan Tan: A Time without Gatekeepers

Megan Tan is a radio producer based in her closet in Portland, Maine. Before graduating from WKU with a degree in photojournalism in 2014, she worked alongside WNYC’s Radiolab, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Timber & Frame Media. Her film and photographic work has been recognized by College Photographer of the Year, National Press Photographers Association, and The William Randolph Hearst Competition. As a radio host and producer she has been recognized by The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, The AV Club, and The Guardian; and was listed in Refinery 29's "29 Under-30 Powerhouses Poised To Change The World." She is the creator, host, and producer of Millennial, a podcast about coming of age that explores what it means to be an adult.

Session 2 :Social Entrepreneurship

Hannah Drake: Equity in Creativity

Hannah Drake, an artist-advocate with an inspirational message, is the lead artist for Project HEAL (Health Equity Art Learning), which uses arts and culture engagement to help communities discover creative new ways to identify their health priorities and to develop a health equity action plan for maximum impact. A writer and performer, Drake is currently working in the Smoketown neighborhood of Louisville. Project HEAL is the signature program of IDEAS xLab, a nonprofit that is driving large-scale social change by training artists to become a unique force of social entrepreneurs in the health sector.

Alex Kimura: Who Is the Adult in Charge?

Alex Kimura is the executive director and cofounder of Sharing America’s Marrow (SAM), a nationwide grassroots campaign dedicated to fighting blood cancer and blood diseases. In 2015 Kimura and two other members of the SAM team undertook a fifty-state road trip with the goal of registering 50,000 people to the national bone narrow registry. While at WKU, where she graduated in 2012 with a degree in interdisciplinary studies with a focus on social justice and equity, she founded WKU FeelGood, a student-run nonprofit deli that made grilled cheese sandwiches in exchange for donations to end world hunger.

Kenan Mujkanovic: The Tale of a Visionary: The Journey of One in a Million

Kenan Mujkanovic is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Young Visionaries Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Bowling Green, Kentucky that assists those in poverty and at the same time instills the value of education in youth. The foundation seeks to allow youth to give back to the community through service work and inspiration. The son of Bosnian refugees, he began the foundation when he was sixteen and has won numerous awards for his work including the Jefferson Award and the National Caring Award. He is the author of Voices of Bowling Green: Tales of Young Visionaries, is a freshman at WKU with a double major in biology and political science, and serves as a senator in the Student Government Association.