A few weeks ago, I had the honor of being given a special invitation to attend Google’s Zeitgeist Conference in Arizona. Zeitgeist is a conference attended by some of the greatest internationally recognized minds throughout the world, invited by google, to debate and discuss current, real word issue.  I was brought in through a company called Livity which is a UK based firm that held a competition to find some of the best and brightest young minds in the Western Hemisphere.  Each of the 10, age 18-24, young winners were chosen to come to Arizona to present their solutions to real-world socioeconomic problems that plague our world today.  This was my winning submission

Upon arriving, we were greeted by Livity representatives who told us their goal was to “multiply our net-worth and projects by the power of Google. (See diagram below).  They then informed us of what was the conference agenda and that for the next 2 days they would like to help us network.

The Young Minds competition was definitely extraordinary and beyond my wildest dreams as I did not expect such a phenomenal, life changing experience. Just at breakfast alone I had the privilege of networking with CEO’s and executives of Comcast, Sears, Salesforce.com, Motorola, etc.

This was such an amazing and rare opportunity, and I planned on taking full advantage of it.

After breakfast, the Young Minds winners attended sessions with some of these world leaders to network and to further mentor us in becoming global leaders. The sessions continued throughout the evening and I shared my story with people like Tony Hawk, Peter Vesterbacka (Creator of Angry Birds), Scooter (Justin Beiber’s manager), and even Sir Richard Branson

                       

It did not stop there. Later that evening I saw iLuminate perform live, 15 feet away from me. After the amazing performance I had the fantastic opportunity to see Karmin, (the newest YouTube sensations) perform on stage.

                                                                                  

The next day only proved to be better than the first!!!  I witnessed great debates between Arianna Huffington and Ted Koppel, heard from political and business leaders such as Cindy Mccain, Chelsea Clinton, and Mark Cuban.  I even heard from well known authors like Deepok Chopra.

                              

Even though we were able to glean such wisdom from these individuals, honestly, I can say the most interesting people I met at this conference were my fellow peers. The other Young Minds winners, Alice, Ayna, Daniel, Dyas, Eric, Jackie, Kendall, Lindsay, and Varun, have all done amazing things and no doubt will continue to do amazing things in the future. They will be valuable connections to have when our generation is making the decisions.This weekend provided motivation for me to see that iSchool Initiative is moving in the right track and is on the cutting edge of what tomorrow’s world will look like.  My goal with iSchool Initiative is to continue moving forward in ways that will dramatically solve real-world socioeconomic solutions as my fellow attendees have done and hopefully next year, be a presenter for Google Zeitgeist 12.