In 2011-12, What’s Next Lectures will explore how change makers are using entrepreneurship, technology and collaboration to address economic, environmental and social challenges. By looking at change from several different perspectives — people, policy, ideas, capital and history — attendees will find inspiration and information that they can apply to their work and lives. What’s Next Lectures is a collaboration between NextSpace Coworking + Innovation, College Eight at UC Santa Cruz, and the City of Santa Cruz.

Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University and is considered to the be the leading American historian of our age,. Brinkley’s most recent books include "The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom," “The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America” (2009) and the New York Times best-seller “The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast” (2006), which was the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy prize and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times Book Review and American Heritage, as well as a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. In a recent profile, the Chicago Tribune deemed him “America’s new past master.” Before coming to Rice, Brinkley served as professor of history and director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization at Tulane University. From 1994 to 2005 he was the Stephen E. Ambrose Professor of History and director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. While a professor at Hofstra University, Brinkley spearheaded the American Odyssey course, in which he took students on cross-country treks on which they visited historic sites and met seminal figures in politics and literature.

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Community Television of Santa Cruz County