Live Today: Shai Agassi and the Trillion Dollar Transportation Opportunity

FORA.tv is pleased to present tonight a LIVE Premium Event featuring Shai Agassi, Better Place founder and CEO. The program begins at 7 PM PT and is hosted by the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.

Agassi has what has been called a "breathtakingly ambitious" systems-based approach to electrify the automobile and help free the world from its dependence on oil. This is a rare chance to hear directly from Agassi his perspectives and preconditions on how the transportation will continue to unfold and the role that Silicon Valley and the wider investor community can play.

REGISTER NOW to join us and participate in this unique conversation on the upcoming transportation revolution.

Live Today: Social Entrepreneurship in America with Conchy Bretos

FORA.tv is pleased to present tonight a LIVE Premium Event featuring Conchy Bretos, Ashoka Fellow and CEO of MIA Consulting. The program begins at 6 PM PT and is hosted by the Commonwealth Club.

Tonight's discussion is part of Social Entrepreneurship in America, a Commonwealth Club special series featuring leadership thinkers and pioneers in the field of social entrepreneurship. Running through March 2011, this 13-part series includes such notable speakers as Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank, Sally Osberg of the Skoll Foundation, Premal Shah of Kiva, and Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen Fund.

About tonight's speaker:
Conchy Bretos
CEO, MIA Consulting Group, Ashoka Fellow
In 1993 Conchy Bretos was appointed to the job of Florida Secretary for Aging and Adult Services, a position that allowed her to see firsthand the thousands of low-income elders and disabled adults who were not getting the service they needed to stay in their homes. As a result, many ended up in nursing homes prematurely, because they could not afford in-home care or assisted living facilities. Bretos became the driving force behind the nation's first public housing project - the Helen Sawyer building in Miami - to bring assisted living services to older adults who just need a little help to stay in their homes. Today she runs a consulting company that has helped 40 public housing projects in a dozen states bring assisted living services to their residents.

Be sure to REGISTER NOW for this remarkable series.

For more information, visit Social Entrepreneurship in America.

Winners Announced for Wired Business Conference Twitter Contest!

It's with great pleasure that we announce the five lucky winners of free online passes to the Wired Business Conference: Disruptive by Design, streaming live on June 14 at FORA.tv.

Thank you to everyone who retweeted the contest message.

The five winners are:

@scotsullivan




@vpsingh




@FatBlood




@motiooon




@GeoffSlaughter




Congratulations to the five of you, from all of us at FORA.tv!

The Wired Business Conference is now less than a week away. Register now to join us on June 14 for this landmark event.













Disruption happens.
How you respond is what separates the leaders from the left behind.

Experience The WIRED Business Conference: Disruptive by Design live, as it happens!

On June 14, disrupters of the first order will convene at the Morgan Library in New York to talk to Wired Magazine editors on how to respond to change, and how to use it to your advantage. From start-up founders to CEOs of huge companies what these speakers share is an aversion to business as usual. How you decide to respond is what separates the leaders from the left behind. Today's smartest executives know that disruption is constant and inevitable. They've learned to absorb the shockwave that change brings, and can use that energy to transform their companies and their careers.

This year's speakers include:

* Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired Magazine
* William J. Bratton, Chairman, Altegrity Risk International; Former Commissioner, NYPD and Chief, LAPD
* Steve Case, Chairman and CEO, Revolution; Cofounder, America Online
* Caterina Fake, Cofounder, Hunch
* Bre Pettis, Cofounder, Makerbot Industries; Cofounder, NYC Resistor
* Mark Pincus, Founder, CEO, & Chief Product Officer, Zynga Game Network
* Vivian Schiller, President and CEO, NPR
* Clay Shirky, Author; Adjunct Professor, Interactive Telecommunications Program - NYU
* Frederick W. Smith, Chairman, President, and CEO, FedEx Corporation
* Howard Schultz, Chairman, President, & CEO, Starbucks Coffee Company

Follow us on Twitter @foratv. We look forward to seeing you!

See Christopher Hitchens LIVE on FORA.tv this Friday at 7:00 PM EDT

LIVE on FORA.tv:
Christopher Hitchens at the New York Public Library
Friday June 4, 2010 7:00 PM EDT
SUBSCRIBE TODAY

On Friday, June 4 one of the world's most provocative intellectuals comes to the New York Public Library for a conversation with Paul Holdengraber, Director of LIVE from the NYPL -- and to the Internet, for a live webcast on FORA.tv.

FORA.tv proudly invites you to watch this extraordinary NYPL event live on your computer from anywhere in the world.
SUBSCRIBE TODAY



Hitch-22: Some Confessions and Contradictions
A Memoir

How did Christopher Hitchens become Hitchens?

Christopher Hitchens, tackling nearly everything with unmatched enthusiasm, erudition and, at times venom, has up to now barely touched upon one subject: his own life.

After many years writing about world issues and traveling to some of the most dangerous places on the planet, comes his memoir Hitch-22. Though Hitchens can navigate any argument with great dexterity, his memoir focuses on those whom he has loved, those he has abhorred, and those who have helped shape him throughout his life. The memoir answers this question: How the hell did Christopher Hitchens become Christopher Hitchens?

With tenderness he writes about his parents -his mother Yvonne, in particular, “a beautiful woman who loves me” and about his father, Commander Hitchens, whose “liver was that of a hero.” In a form that is anything but shy, Hitchens describes his complex and warm relationship with his mother, whose Jewish heritage he discovered only after her suicide.

The memoir naturally touches upon friendships, both lost and found over the course of his life. Hitchens' many sketches of friendships and ex-friendships from Martin Amis to Noam Chomsky, Edward Said to Gore Vidal are delivered in a style that is at once ironic, witty and tough-minded. A legendary bon vivant with an unquenchable thirst for literature, Hitchens has at times ridiculed those who claim the personal is political, even though he has often seemed to illustrate that very idea.

Paul Holdengräber, Director of LIVE from the NYPL, in conversation with Christopher Hitchens, will goad him to help bring into focus the many sides of Hitch, thereby illustrating Robert Frost's dictum that "a liberal is a man too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel."

FORA.tv + YouTube = 25,000 Subscribers!

Hooray! We just passed the 25,000 subscribers mark on the FORA.tv YouTube channel.

A big thank you from all of us at FORA.tv to all 25,074 of you (and counting).

These numbers put us above other big media outlets. For instance, CBS News has 19,000 subscribers, CNN 17,000 subscribers, and Fox News about 11,000 subscribers.

So, another HUGE congrats to our manager of syndication, Nick Ryan, and to our passionate, engaged community of subscribers on YouTube. The FORA.tv YouTube channel is distinguished not only by the high-quality of its video programs, but most important, by the insightful comments of its viewers.

So, if you haven't yet visited us on YouTube, we invite you to join the conversation:

http://youtube.com/foratv

Live Event: The Churchill Club's 12th Annual Top Ten Trends Debate

What new trends will take shape in the year ahead?

Find out at one of the Churchill Club’s most anticipated programs of the year: The 12th Annual Top Ten Tech Trends Debate.

Watch this FORA.tv Premium Event LIVE at 7:10 pm on May 19th, and ON-DEMAND afterwards.

Join us as we welcome the techno-industries’ leading (and most opinionated) visionaries as they make predictions for the year ahead. Our usual live audience of Silicon Valley’s best and brightest—all with opinions of their own—will be asked to agree or disagree.

Speakers:
Ron Conway, Angel Investor, SV Angel
Esther Dyson, Chairman, EDventure Holdings
Kevin Efrusy, General Partner, Accel Partners
Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
David Weiden, General Partner, Khosla Ventures

Moderator:
Tony Perkins, Founder, AlwaysOn

BONUS: At the end of the evening, one of the panelists will be voted this year's Trend Idol!

ANNOUNCEMENT: The Monitor Breakfast on FORA.tv

News-Tipping Washington Power Breakfasts Go Online
at The Christian Science Monitor and FORA.tv

New weekly video series puts Web viewers in the room with Beltway newsmakers and top journalists.

BOSTON, MA, May 17, 2010—The Christian Science Monitor and FORA.tv today debut online videos of the weekly Monitor Breakfast, a 44-year-old tradition where Washington newsmakers meet unscripted and on-the-record with top journalists. This new partnership brings a pivotal resource to the public in a way that only online video can, and gives a wide audience the chance to get ahead of the news.

Same-day highlights of The Monitor Breakfasts, which invite top journalists on short notice to ensure timeliness, are available free at www.CSMonitor.com/MonitorBreakfast and www.FORA.tv/MonitorBreakfast. Full-length videos of each Breakfast can be viewed for $14.95 monthly or $99.95 annually. These may be accompanied by advertising sponsorships. Advertising sponsorship opportunities consist of pre-roll video within the videocasts on both Web sites and standard ad units on the video page of the Monitor Web site.

“The Christian Science Monitor is now at the forefront of online video in terms of selling subscriptions, pushing distribution across multiple platforms, and promoting this one-of-a-kind a weekly event,” said Blaise Zerega, CEO of FORA.tv. “The Monitor Breakfast is the type of gathering that online video can bring from the confines of a meeting room to a worldwide audience without losing its intimacy or immediacy.”

For 44 years, Monitor Breakfasts have been the source of defining and dramatic news stories. For instance, in 1991, then-Governor Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, came to Breakfast to discuss their marital problems for the first time. It became, in effect, a dry-run for their famous 60 Minutes interview – and helped preserve his viability as a presidential candidate. And in 1995, Speaker Newt Gingrich complained about being made to exit through the rear of Air Force One while on a presidential trip. Some say his Breakfast comments helped trigger the subsequent government shutdown.

In all, four presidents, five vice presidents, and thousands of Beltway power players have been guests at Monitor Breakfasts. At the first event in 1966, Illinois Senator Charles Percy tipped off reporters to his Presidential run. Recent guests have included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Democratic strategist James Carville, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and U.S. Postmaster General John Potter. Watch a highlight video of recent Breakfasts here.

“We are committed to explaining the news and foreshadowing what’s next,” said John Yemma, Editor of The Christian Science Monitor. “Online video of Monitor Breakfasts opens access to actual news-making conversations for a wider population of influential people in business, government and media.”

The Monitor Breakfasts going online represents the latest in resurgence for The Christian Science Monitor. After publishing an acclaimed daily newspaper for more than 100 years, the organization dropped daily newsprint in favor of online news and a weekly magazine in April 2009. The company has since added a Daily News Briefing, E-mail newsletters, e-reader editions, and more. Its weekly magazine circulation has grown by more than 75% (to 77,000), while monthly website traffic has more than doubled (to 14 million page views).

About The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com) is an international news organization that delivers thoughtful, global coverage via its website, weekly magazine, and other platforms. During more than a century of reporting, it has developed a global reputation for thoughtful, in-depth coverage of the world – and won seven Pulitzer Prizes along the way.

About FORA.tv
FORA.tv is the leading destination and distributor for smart videos about the people, issues, and ideas changing the world. The company gathers the web's largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates at the world's top universities, think tanks and conferences. Named a Top 50 Web Site by TIME, a Top Education Site by U.K Telegraph, the company has also been covered by Fast Company, The Boston Globe, and many others. FORA.tv was founded in 2005 and is funded by a select group of investors led by William R. Hearst III. FORA.tv is based in San Francisco and can be found at http://fora.tv or on Facebook and Twitter.

Contact:
The Christian Science Monitor
Fred Pfaff, 212-572-8353, fred@fredpfaffinc.com
Steve Ellwanger, 203-856-8303, steve@presscounselonline.com
FORA.tv
Anni Hechtner, 415-599-4618, anni@fora.tv