I’m sitting at a table with two people: Patrick and Conway. In front of me, there’s a knife. I could use the knife to cut the food on my plate. Or I could lunge across the table and stab Conway with it.

If I did that, what would you say Patrick is supposed to do?

He could do nothing. He could call 911 – to get an ambulance for Conway and a cop to arrest me. Or he could intervene – try and subdue me before I hurt Conway or other people.

That is, in fact, more or less what Patrick Young actually does. Every day.

For 3 years Patrick was the Director of Gun Violence Prevention for the City of New Orleans. In 2024 he founded 4 Social Peace. It’s the first organization in the country dedicated solely to digital community violence intervention.

4 Social Peace focuses on the links between threats and aggression on social media, real world crime, and the struggles of people trying to re-integrate after being released from incarceration. It's rooted in Patrick’s lived experience.

Well, the good news is, I didn’t stab Conway Solomon, so I can tell you - he’s Co-Founder and CEO of a company called Wrstbnd.

We first met Conway in 2020 when we were doing Out to Lunch on Zoom because of the pandemic and Conway had plenty of time on his hands because nobody was going to a live event where they’d be needing a hi-tech electronic wristband to get in the door.

That was then. Today Wrstbnd is a real-world applied technology success story. It’s – as the name suggests -  a wristband - that’s also an integrated event organization gadget and platform - kind of like a live event version of the Apple Watch or the Oura Ring. A person attending an event gets an electronic wristband that, first of all, allows people to flow into a big event in almost real time without stopping to have a ticket checked.

The Wrstbnd knows whether people are VIPs or have special needs and tracks their whereabouts. It can be used for super-fast transactions – think,  speeding up the lines for drinks, food or merch.

Wrstbnd partners with international event promotion company AEG, one of the producers of New Orleans Jazz Fest.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

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