Your Iconic Image : Enriching Your Experiences
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Dr. Hoby Wedler\\xa0
Hoby\\u2019s Essentials
Biography\\xa0
Dr. Hoby Wedler is an insightful, disarming, and passionate thinker who loves to bring people together to help them see new possibilities. With the heart of a teacher, Hoby helps turn your dreams into realities. Hoby has been completely blind since birth. He is a scientist, an entrepreneur, a sensory expert, and is driven by his passion for innovative, creative, and insightful thinking. Hoby is remarkably tuned into his surroundings and has frequently chosen to walk the unbeaten paths in life over known territories. In 2016, Hoby earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from UC Davis. His fearlessness is infectious, and he has actively paved the way for others to join him in his quest to follow passions regardless of the challenges that lie ahead.\\xa0
In 2011, Hoby founded a non-profit organization to lead annual chemistry camps for blind and visually impaired students throughout North America. In the same year, he began opening doors to the world of wine aromas by developing Tasting in the Dark, a truly blindfolded wine experience, in collaboration with the Francis Ford Coppola Winery. He has since expanded the program to a global market in a variety of industries and special projects. Over the years, Hoby has become a motivational speaker, a mentor, and an educator. He is also committed to making the world an inclusive, equitable, and accessible place for everyone.\\xa0
In his work, you will find a unique trilogy between sensory awareness, scientific knowledge, and a love for sharing his insights.\\xa0
Numerous people and organizations have recognized Hoby\\u2019s work over the years. To name a few, President Barack Obama recognized Hoby by naming him a Champion of Change for enhancing employment and education opportunities for people with disabilities. Also, Forbes Media named Hoby as a leader in food and drink in their 30 under 30 annual publication. Hoby\\u2019s dedicated to impacting everyone he works with by unlocking doors, overcoming challenges, increasing awareness, and expanding their horizons.\\xa0
Facebook: www.facebook.com/officialhobywedler
Linkedin.com/hobywedler
Instagram.com/hobywedler
www.marlanasemenza.com
Audio : Ariza Music Productions
Transcript : Vision In Word
Marlana: Today\'s guest is truly incredible. Dr. Hoby Wedler loves to bring people together to help them see new possibilities. With the heart of a teacher, he helps turn your dreams into realities, completely blind since birth. He is a scientist and entrepreneur and a sensory expert. He\'s dedicated to impacting everyone who works with unlocking doors, overcoming challenges, increasing awareness, and expanding their horizons. Welcome Hoby!
Hoby: Marlana, thank you so much for this honor, I really appreciate it. It\'s an exciting opportunity to chat with you. You know, we talked a few weeks ago, I think we have so much in common, and we\'re both artists at heart, and there\'s just so much to talk about.
Marlana: Well, you know, I have to tell everybody listening that I have made my life as a photographer, so, I\'ve made it through what I see, and you have taught me how to see differently. Because I think so many of us rely on simply what we see. And we judge by what we see, we assess by what we see. And we forget that we have other senses. And when I watch the way you create experiences, whether it be for yourself or for others, you make them so full and rounded. So how do you go about that?
Hoby: Yeah, you know, I think that for someone who\'s actually lacked one sense, which is the sense of eyesight, for my whole life, you know, I really do have a different approach to how I take life and how I live life, you know, it\'s about embracing the non-visual senses that we have, but creating opportunities out of those senses that create that same joy and pleasure and evoke, you know, happiness, basically, because it\'s not about for me, life isn\'t about, oh, is me, I can\'t see, I can\'t take stuff in, I need all this help, you know, my job is harder, because I\'m blind. It\'s like, know how I am going to figure out how to be the best possible blind person I can be. And, you know, experience life through the non-visual senses, you know, really stopping and listening to birds that are chirping outside or smelling the air and just being happy that I\'m alive. And that I\'m in this, this air in this area where I am. And you know, eyesight allows us to really move so quickly through the world. And I feel stressed out just like, you know, analysis. And sometimes I feel like I don\'t have time. And if you\'re busy and I certain situations happen, or I\'m just totally, you know, running through the world and trying to get things done. But I think that ultimately being blind, lets me slow down a little more than other people, sometimes get the opportunity to, and observe things that that maybe people don\'t necessarily get to observe on a day-to-day basis. And that\'s how I sort of view the world with you experiences that I create. So, one of my favorite things to do is to not use before for game or anything like that. But bring people together. And let the Turley wear a blindfold and engage in something that I created with Francis Ford Coppola, a movie director, back in 2011, called Tasting In the Dark. I developed it with him for wine, but I\'ve since expanded it to many different industries in many different markets around the world. And what would I say about that? When we temporarily remove eyesight, we are really able to focus in on our other senses so much more. And when we use our vision or eyesight to obtain 85 to 90% of the information we take in from our surroundings when we take it away. It\'s not about oh, what does this taste like? I mean, it\\u2019s kind of is we have fun with that, right? But it starts so much earlier than that. It\'s okay. What are we, you know, what does this chair feel like? We mean, what are we talking about when we\'re not distracted by our eyesight? What other information can we take in that we didn\'t even think was possible? And that\'s really exciting. That\'s my way of generating experiences for everybody to sort of understand and go back and I didn\'t realize I was doing this since I was a child. I\'ve really been developing my palate, my ability to observe different flavors and aromas and textures and I\'m particularly done in understanding they are. So basically, really have a library of flavors and aromas in my mind that are individual. And then when something\'s a blend of many different flavors, I can really break it down and pull out the components that you know that really, really contribute the individual components. And I\'m able to talk about those and talk through them to the best of my ability. So that\'s a lot of fun.
Marlana: So, in either two things, but one, I\'ll ask you now and then the other one we\'ll get to. So, tell us a little bit more about Tasting In the Dark. And also too, because I had heard about the experience of Dave Matthews, tell us about that.
Hoby: Yeah, sure! Tasting In the Dark is really just an experience where people get to engage and understand their non visual senses for a while for anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, or sometimes even longer than that depending and really delve into what something is what happens when we remove our eyesight, but really, what ends up happening is that we\'re able to focus in hole in on our other senses, so much more than we would be otherwise. You know, and we can talk about flavor people pick up flavors that they never would have gained, and we don\'t necessarily tell them what the wine or food or drink of any type that their tasting is, you know, we literally just, we let them taste it and explore it on their own. And we use aromatics. Basically, samples that I develop ahead of time to help people really develop their aromatic vocabulary, Scheibel understand wines that we are tasting and working with ahead of time. And then people will be able to smell and understand what lemon by itself smells like, what does vanilla smell like, by itself, you know, things that I pull out of the wines, maybe three to five different aromas that I\'ll make individual samples of. So, people can smell these, and I like to say, sort of calibrate or exercise their aromatic vocabulary. So here are a few things that we\'re smelling by themselves. And the task is going to be can we pull these out of the wines when we smell them and taste them. And then we smell the bad food or beverage. In this case, I\'ll just use wine as my example, for a while and really talk about everything we smell. And finally, we taste it. And we talk about everything we taste, and just analyses it together as a group and people that think, Oh, I\'m not that good with my sensory, you know, describing things find, usually, for me anyway, when they put a blindfold on, they\'re very capable, and they become so strong at understanding, you know, different aromas, different things that they maybe wouldn\'t be able to pick up on, because they would be distracted by their eyesight. And when we don\'t tell people what a wine is, again, just using wine as an example, here. Sometimes people will come to me and say, I don\'t like Chardonnay. And then they\'ll do this experience and say, Oh, my gosh, this wine is delicious. I would love this; I would totally buy this. What is this wine? Well, you\'d be surprised to know that it\'s Chardonnay. And we show people that maybe sometimes they\\u2019re their preconceived notion of what they like, he\'s only based on Oh, I see the bottle, I see that sharpening, I\'m gonna immediately decide that I don\'t like sharp knife for whatever reason, maybe we don\'t need to put up these walls and these barriers around what we do. And that\'s really exciting to just sort of open people\'s minds and change what certain beverages mean to them.
Marlana: And I know that you added in the element of music at one point, which
Hoby: we\'ve done a few times. So, I will talk about the Dave Matthews experience for sure. You know, the Culinary Institute of America are sometimes known as the CIA\'s cooking school. And I work as an adjunct faculty for their properties here in California. And people have learned over the years that whenever they want something really strange, they call Hoby. I\'m gonna be figuring out weird things to do that hopefully are fun for people. So, in this case, we were they basically were doing a summit for beverage professionals and most of the people who attended this are selling games, people who really understand wine or even Masters of Wine and some beer people, some spirits people for sure, but definitely a lot of wine people and they want to do a disco at the end of the first day of the conference, a basically a silent meeting. disco when people wear headphones and go around listening to music and tasting wines, and they rank their favorite wine based on music that\'s playing in their ears, right? They listen to different music, and they rank wines differently. And they said, We want something to do with wine and music the hour before we do this, this discount. That\'s interesting. You know, who\'s someone who does wine and music really well? Well, Dave Matthews has a winery dreaming tree wines, and they\'re very good wines. Very much available pretty much nationwide. So, I thought, you know, most people are gonna know what this is, and let\'s see if we can do an experience around it. And I\'m always the person who says, Well, what\'s the worst they can do? They can say no. So, I decided I would just take a shot in the dark and email Dave\'s winemaker man named Sean McKenzie, saying, Sean, you know, I do this tasting in the dark programme. I\'ve been asked to do an experience your own wine and music. I would love to do an experience where we take wines from the Dave Matthews or from the dreamy tree portfolio and pair them with songs from the Dave Matthews songbook. Is this something you\'d be amenable to? And expected? I don\'t know. I didn\'t know if I would hear back from him. I just didn\'t know. 30 minutes later, I got an email back saying Hoby Yes! Absolutely! Let\'s have a call. We had a call and it\'s like, Okay, wow. And then he said, Okay, well, why don\'t we come to the winery, and we\'ll taste the wines, we\'ll decide what we\'re working with here. And in the meantime, we\'ll talk to Dave about songs. So, Dave weighed in on songs, it was ultimately our decision, but Dave weighed in on what he thought would be best. And lo and behold, you know, we built out this whole experience where we talked about wine and music with people, it\'s about 200 people in the audience. And then while people were under blindfold, for some of them, the last one, we actually I\'m removed the blindfold and just moved to the music and the music video that we showed, but we paired five ports of line with five different songs from the Dave Matthews songbook and the sort of climax if you will, the experience was wise three and four, were for wine three, you know, we serve wine with them, you know, with a piece of music that was sort of very, very happy, very, you know, kind of a romantic piece of music, a little bit of a love song, you know, kind of it\'s just fun. People tasted the wine and suddenly at the end we talked about what the wine tastes like. It was very citrusy, very fruit forward, you know, a lot of floral components smells like something I\'d want to drink in the summertime. And then we played with wine. Sorry, I think that was wine I said wine for, but I think that would that was wine three with the next wine. We played a company of sort of gritty song that was just more you know, work hard and you\'ll get what you wish for and you know, keep on trying, keep on pushing but not that same sort of happy go lucky, sort of tune and I wouldn\'t describing non phase music is happy but luckily but I\'m trying to try to figure out the right words here to describe the music and people tasted the wine and talked about its minerals, how they could smell some fruit but you could smell granite in it, you can smell the basically wet earth Wow, this is just full of minerals almost like you might hear describing a wine from like a Rosie from Provence, France, you know, really just very minerals, very rich, very full of full of flavor. And started from basically anywhere in the south of France. I didn\'t mean to call out Provence as a as a region in in and of itself. But anyone who\'s sort of in the south of France, you might find really minerally either red wines or Ramsay\'s people did identify the third wine as a Rosie. They said for the fourth wine man, this might be a red blend, like, it\'s got so much minerality it might also be an old-world white wine. They just didn\'t know. What we didn\'t tell people is it the fourth wine was exactly the same as the third one, it was just the same dreaming tree Rosie The only thing that was different and they couldn\'t see it, right, that helped to literally the only variable that was different was the music they listen to. And I was doing this to show people how much music can impact anything for that matter, can totally impact the experience, the overall experience of why.\\xa0
Marlana: love that. And, you know, it\'s so incredible to me that people thought it was a completely different thing just because of adding that music.\\xa0
Hoby: Yeah. That\'s amazing. You know, I mean, I guess for just thinking about your work as a photographer, you can make something look totally different, even if it\'s the same exact set or same exact thing you\'re photographing using different light, right? By the way, you edit something.\\xa0
Marlana: Yeah. It kind of boils down to what we want people to see and experience. And so, with what you do, and even with what I do, we are leading them on a journey. And we already have their destination, hopefully in mind.\\xa0
Hoby: Exactly. So, this is what art is to me. You know, everybody says art is visual? Well, it certainly can be, and you\'re a great producer of visual art. But art doesn\'t have to be visual, you know, exactly what you say we lead people on a journey we guide them through. And you know, we help them see things they didn\'t see before.
Marlana: Absolutely. And, you know, I want to talk a little bit about, because I follow your Instagram, and these places that you go to and you experience, you make people feel like they are there and immersed with you. So, when you embark on an experience of your own, how do you approach something? Let\'s say you go to the Swiss Alps for the first time, how do you start?
Hoby: Yeah, you know, it\'s funny, I don\'t, the way that I start is, I don\'t even think about it, I just describe to anyone who wants to hear how I\'m experiencing it. And it kind of grabs them usually and pulls them into it. Because the way that I experience things and describe them is not visual, you know, what I found with people who are very sort of focused on what they see, it\'s hard for them to describe something and make it almost feel like you\'re there. Because they\'re really paying attention to the visual, which they can then explain and you know, that which works fine, but it\'s talking about maybe green hills, rather than, whoa, what do we smell? What\'s the overall experience around us? Like, what are we gaining from this environment, this experience, you know, where we are right now? You know, how are we it\'s a really interesting question. And I haven\'t thought about the answer to what you\'re asking, Where do I start, but you know, and when I think about it, I say that I don\'t think about it at all, but I do try to try to...
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