Brandon Litman and Kyle Ruddick from One Day One Earth came to Los Angeles to tell 140 Conference attendees and speakers about their story, which encompasses so many others from around the world.

One Day on Earth started in September of 2008 with the goal of creating a unique worldwide media event where thousands of participants would simultaneously film over a 24-hour period. The idea for the project was conceived while watching musicians from very different regions of the world collaborate on stage at the opening night of the 2008 World festival of Sacred Music.

Their initial attempts to create music together were awkward, and it was clear that they had never collaborated prior to this moment. Eventually though, over the period of a couple minutes, what was disharmony became harmony, and a beautiful fusion of music came together for the first time. The moment inspired a similar vision for another universal form of communication—cinema.

As for how this initiative took off, he says, “we talked to the United Nations about a collaboration for when we went live. We start encouraging conversations to happen on the site and people realized they were not alone, and the idea started to live on its own.” He then shows us a moving video that someone created from south Africa.