Max Gail

Max grew up playing sports and rock 'n roll keyboards in down river Detroit, used that to finance a BA in Economics from Williams College in Massachusetts and an MBA from U of Michigan before being drawn to San Francisco in 1969. On his way to law school he side stepped into the SF and NYC stage productions of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in the role of Chief Bromden. One line in Clint Eastwood"s "Dirty Harry"("What's in the bag, man?) led to an acting career of sorts including two Emmy nominations for the role of Wojo in the Barney Miller TV series, a one man play as Babe Ruth on Broadway and taped for ESPN, and most recently the role of manager Burt Shotten in the film "42" about Jackie Robinson's first season in MLB starring Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey, a great cast young and old, and writer/director Brian Helegard.

In 1980 Max embraced the emergence of portable video to co-create some advocative documentaries about Agent Orange (Secret Agent), No-Nukes (Gentle Angry People), and Hopi-Navaho/Federal Government conflict (Wrong Side of the Fence) along with a "docu-musical" concept (For All My Relations)featuring Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman, David Amram, Buffey Ste. Marie in the tradition of On the Road, Merry Pranksters, and other quests to discover and add to the great American story.

In 1994 Max encountered Mosaic which became the Netscape browser and saw a way to integrate his own varied interests as the On Air, On Line, On Land realms were converging and a new era was emerging in humanity's signature success strategy, Storytelling. He developed a "Local Access Program-LAP" to address the need for universal access to the emerging technologies as well as a way to hold creative, collaborative conversations for the purpose of "fulfillment of needs and aspirations that enhances the chances for new generations."

He committed his time on the learning curve with leaders from cabinet agencies to inner cities to reservations and it became clear that a major difficulty was transcending the sectors and silos to form a circle of trust relationships outside the proverbial box and hold a conversation with a center rather than sides. This evolved into a simple language and process, a social operating system, for "running LAPs." More currently Max has or will be running laps with METal (Media Entertainment Technology alpha leaders) around issues related to SOPA, PIPA, etc., the Social Enterprise Alliance, the next generation X-Prize, and a group involving Occupation WS, Tea Party, Arab Spring and other movements.

For our Start Up DMC "panels" we will LAP-In by sharing what's in each of our laps (our domain of care, charge, control and responsibility) and building a Relation Ship to explore the possibilities that are before us...in our lap...myourlap.