Author Fred Dust "Making Conversation"

Description

Join author Fred Dust at the Jesup Memorial Library on Tuesday, Aug. 24 at 7 p.m. for a hybrid program. The program will be in person and you can also sign up to watch the program on Zoom. During the program Dust, a former Senior Partner and Global Managing Director at the design firm IDEO, will look at how to perfect humanities oldest and least lethal tool – conversation – using creativity.
 
Dust will read selections from his book “Making Conversation: Seven Essential Elements of Meaningful Communication,” and then help attendees practice crafting hard conversations together. In this session we will explore illuminations—very short stories—as a means of revealing interesting and surprising facts about who we are and what we believe. In addition, we will explore the whys of rules and how changing them can change a conversation, or even change the world. Finally, we will practice the art of Lectio Divinia, the use of a passage, any passage from a book, to guide us through conversations that need design and art to navigate.
 
Dust helps groups in media, finance, retail and health confront disruption stemming from shifts in consumer behavior, social trends, economic pressures and new technology. In this capacity he has helped NBC redesign the TODAY show’s audience experience on Rockefeller Plaza, guided the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to help students make better decisions about paying for college, and collaborated with patients and staff to build innovative service models for the Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente. In the government sector, he has worked with the US Agency for International Development, the US Office of Personnel Management and the US Social Security Administration to create citizen-centered strategies and the structures to implement them. Dust collaborates closely with nonprofit and philanthropic foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies to create new frameworks for engaging with stakeholders to improve the impact and reach of their programs.
 
Dust is currently Chair of the Governance Committee and on the executive committee of the Board of Trustees for the Sundance Institute, on the Board of Directors for NPR, on the Board of Directors at The New School and Chair of the board of Parsons School of Design. He lectures widely on various topics, including design methodology, future trends and social innovation.
 
Copies of “Making Conversation” will be on sale at the event courtesy of co-sponsor Sherman’s Books. Copies of the book are also available for purchase at any of their locations, online at shermans.com or by calling their Bar Harbor store at 207-288-3161. To watch the Zoom program, registration is required. To register fill out the form at jesuplibrary.org/events/dust or email kchagnon@jesuplibrary.org.