Will.i.am Recruited Steve Jobs’ Wife To Help Him Get Kids From His Neighborhood Into College [Macworld 2013]

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williamatmacworld2013
Will.i.am thinks he can predict the future of tech

macworldbug SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – Will.i.am showed up at Macworld today, and yep, he was wearing his stupidly expensive iPhone camera case that you will never want to own.

During his Futurehunting keynote, Will.i.am sat down with Intel’s futurist, Brian Johnson, to talk about where they think the next big changes in tech are going to come from. I came into the keynote thinking Will.i.am would just talk about his camera accessory, but the Black Eyed Peas star actually has some big plans for the world, and he’s enlisted Steve Jobs’ widow to help him out.

Laurene Powell Jobs co-founded a company called CollegeTrack that helps less fortunate teens get into college. The program mostly operates in the San Francisco area and New Orleans, but Will.i.am says he met with Jobs and asked her to setup a CollegeTrack program to turn around his L.A. neighborhood Boyle Heights.

Will.i.am has a few tech projects that he’s working on, but he said his biggest one right now is to give kids the tech they need to change the world. Talking about the future, Will said that, “tomorrow looks like the kids saying, ‘I can’t wait to change my ghetto,’ rather than trying to get out of the ghetto. We’re going to give kids the tools to change their neighborhood.”

With Jobs’ help, Will.i.am got the CollegeTrack program running in Boyle Heights that has been successful at getting teenagers into college over the last year while Will.i.am raised about $8 million to assist them.

Once he was done talking about some seriously great things that he’s done for the world, Will jumped over to his stupid camera case that has it’s own camera sensor, extra lenses, and a keyboard. He’s stoked about it. He hopes you’ll fork over $400 for it. But we hope he sticks to his charity work and leaves the Futurehunting to the guys who know what they’re doing.

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