Big Think is a

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founded in 2007 by Victoria Brown and Peter Hopkins. The site publishes interviews and round table discussions with experts from a wide range of fields. Victoria Brown is the acting

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

and Peter Hopkins is the acting president of the company.

History

The company was founded when Brown and Hopkins met while working with Google Video to digitize the

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

archives of The Charlie Rose Show in 2006. They began contemplating how to organize information into "short-form intellectual videos targeting online audiences" and envisioned "an online platform where the world's leading experts could weigh in on current issues". In 2008, they launched with only

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

content. The materials involve short clips but with enough content so that they foster thinking, learning, and debate. In 2009, they branched into

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

s and written content. Their first notable blogger was

Michio Kaku Michio Kaku (; ; born January 24, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist, Science communication, science communicator, futurologist, and writer of popular-science. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York and ...

. Other personalities include

Angelina Jolie Angelina Jolie ( ; born Angelina Jolie Voight, , June 4, 1975) is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian. The recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Angelina Jolie, numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards ...

, who joined a panel of experts in a discourse over displaced children in

Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...

, and

Esther Dyson Esther Dyson (born 14 July 1951) is a Swiss-born American investor, journalist, author, commentator and philanthropist. She is the executive founder of Wellville, a nonprofit project focused on improving equitable wellbeing. Dyson is also an ang ...

who talked about the opportunities from space exploration. In 2012, Big Think started live-streaming and providing individual and companies with "real-time interaction with notable guests". The platform also serves as a resource for educators and researchers, facilitating online learning. As of March 2012, the Big Think YouTube channel passed 20 million views, and the video archive of the website included more than 12,000 clips from more than 2000 of its designated experts. Big Think has created video series on "Courageous Collaborations", "Academic Freedom" and "Education Innovation". Big Think spun out other sites: Big Think Edge for Business and Floating University for Higher Education.

References

External links

*{{official website, http://bigthink.com/ American entertainment websites Online mass media companies of the United States Internet properties established in 2007 Education-related YouTube channels