Here's your chance to hear CyArk's founder Ben Kacyra speak about CyArk's work to digitally preserve the California Missions and El Camino Real, as well as other global heritage sites in the CyArk 500. Kacyra will be speaking next Thursday, May 10th at 6:00 PM at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.

In 2002, Kacyra founded California-based nonprofit CyArk in order to apply a highly accurate, portable laser-scanning technology he’d originally developed for monitoring nuclear power plants and other structures – to preserving the world’s cultural heritage sites.

CyArk’s methods are fast and accurate: pulsed lasers generate 3D points of clouds, which render surfaces at accuracy to within millimeters. Combined with high-definition photography and traditional surveying techniques these data make it possible to create highly detailed media – photo textured animations, 3D fly-throughs – that digitally preserve our knowledge of heritage sites against natural disaster, war, and neglect, and make them accessible to the world. Among the sites already scanned are ancient sites in Mexico, the leaning tower of Pisa, and Mount Rushmore.

The Club’s Science & Technology forum and International Relations forum are collaboratively sponsoring the event. The United States' oldest and largest public affairs forum, the Commonwealth Club, presents 400 impartial discussions and talks annually to the public and its members on the subjects of politics, economics, culture, and society.

For more information and tickets ($12- $20 per person), please see the Commonwealth Club's registration page. The Commonwealth Club is nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization.

We hope to see you there!