Rick Smolan

I enjoy gathering groups of extremely talented people, challenging them to do the impossible, providing them with cool tools and lots of resources, and getting the hell out of the way to watch what happens Rick, Smolan, a former Time, Life and National Geographic photographer, created best-selling 'Day in the Life' photography series and is CEO of Against All Odds Productions, which specializes in the design and execution of large-scale crowd-sourced global projects that combine compelling story-telling with state-of-the-art technology. Eight of the company's projects have been featured on the covers of Fortune, Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report. THE OBAMA TIME CAPSULE integrated each reader’s photos and stories into an historic and collectible time capsule. The book, printed one at a time using HP's Indigo technology, included the work of more than 140 of the world’s leading photojournalists. Generating over 70 million media impressions it was featured on "The ABC Evening News", "USA Today", "CNN's Situation Room". Sponsored by IKEA, AMERICA AT HOME and UK AT HOME were created by 150 photojournalists and thousands of amateurs. The project captured how we interact at home with friends, family members and pets. Readers could order personalized dust jackets for their books. The books were featured on The Martha Stewart Show, The BBC, CBB, ABC News and The Today Show. BLUE PLANET RUN captured the human face of the global water crisis. The book won Outstanding Book of the Year from the Independent Publisher Book Award) in the category of "Most Likely to Save the Planet." THE PLANET PROJECT was the largest real time online poll in Internet history. More than 3,000 pollsters were sent to the most remote places on earth armed with Palm Pilots containing 220 questions in 8 languages about what it meant to be a human being at the dawn of the millennium. The project generated 781 million media impressions worldwide. AMERICA 24/7 was the largest photographic event in U.S. history. 1,000 top photojournalists (including 36 Pulitzer Prize winners) created an extraordinary snapshot of American life. America 24/7 hit #5 on the New York Times best seller lists. Fortune magazine describes Smolan's company, Against All Odds, located in Sausalito, California, as “One of the 25 Coolest Companies in America.”