“…(B)eing an OpenAir co-founder is really just being a glorified volunteer. We’re all just volunteers. We’re all just collectors. And we’re all just giving our time, effort and energy to try to have as much impact as we can.”
An Associate Professor of the Arts at the NYU Game Center, Dr. Matt Parker also serves as the Area Head for Programming and is the Director of Special Projects. Additionally, he was the founder chair for IndieCade East and Chair for the festival and conference from 2013-2015 and the lead Curator for the Game For Change conference in 2016 and 2018. In 2018 he co-founded the OpenAir Collective, a global volunteer network that empowers its members to fight climate change by advancing carbon removal solutions. He is a former stand-up comedian who hates the taste of oranges.
What is the OpenAir Collective and how did it originate?

I’ll tell you OpenAir’s origin story from my perspective, but the other founders might see it differently. Sometime in early-to-mid November 2016 I started worrying about whether I could rely on our elected officials to satisfactorily address climate change, so I spent a long time trying to figure out what I could do to contribute to fighting the problem.
My wife was pregnant with our son at the time, I was freaking out a little bit. I wanted to find a way to contribute that would make use of my talents, abilities, background, and network. However, when I looked into my options for impacting climate change, I only found actions that I felt were necessary but insufficient, e.g. recycling, composting, donating, marching, etc. I was doing these things already and it wasn’t enough.
Shortly after that I met Christopher Neidl and Ari Marder, and they had this idea to create a volunteer carbon removal network. I was not even aware of carbon removal then. They were still trying to decide between carbon removal and lab-grown meat. Personally, I was much more interested in carbon removal.

We spent a long time developing this idea–from 2018 to 2020. We started recruiting new members and building the community that we are today. We chose to focus on carbon removal because we thought it was a little-known, under-appreciated part of the climate solution, even though it was a necessary aspect of it. We wanted to maximize our members’ ability to have impact for their effort. We decided that focusing on an area that wasn’t getting as much attention was one way to do that. I personally wanted to maximize my impact forever. I often say that being an OpenAir co-founder is really just being a glorified volunteer. We’re all just volunteers. We’re all just collectors. And we’re all just giving our time, effort and energy to try to have as much impact as we can.
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