[Kirkpatrick talks about the concept of Techonomy. Disclosure: HP is a Bite client]
Last week I attended Techonomy, a meeting of some of the greatest minds in academia and technology in the serene mountain setting that is Lake Tahoe. The conference was a three day affair and the first of its kind, a venture created and led by ex. Fortune media masterminds David Kirkpatrick, Peter Petre and Brent Schlender.
The ‘Techonomists’ (people who are using technology to solve the world’s most important economic issues and drive change) came together from all walks of life but were led by Silicon Valley’s finest. The heavy hitters included Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Kevin Kelly, John Doerr, Bill Joy, Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff and Armory Lovins. The list goes on here.
Overall, it was an inspiring thought provoking buzz of ideas, hope and big thinking. The kind of stuff that brings together best of breed ideas, creates promising relationships and (for me personally) reminds me why I do technology and not another form of PR.
Having never attended Fortune Brainstorm TECH, AIF or DAVOS, I was reliant on other people’s opinion as to how the set up compared. Some called it ‘super TED with a technology focus’ others thought it was in altogether another league. Highlights included the interactive first dinner led by Kirkpatrick and Doerr, during which Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos and Chris Hughes were put on the spot to answer white-boarded audience-generated questions relating to energy, healthcare and education. Others liked the interactive participation, where questions were sourced and read in real time on stage via iPad. Unusually good timekeeping meant there was also ample time for networking and ad hoc meetings inside the walls of the grandiose Ritz Carlton.
A philosophy for progress but how is progress defined? Let’s take education as an example…
According to Gates, online and computer aided learning will be the way of the future. While educational institutions will remain important, (particularly for children who should be spending 80% of their time in schools) they won’t be essential to getting a good education. Building on the one laptop per child concept, we’ll see that it’s the developing world that will be what guarantees the shift to e-books, not the discussions and hype in the US. This notion was supported in the flesh by Kaplan University who organized filmed Techonmist tutorials featuring case studies and advice from the conference’s best.
You can’t argue the wealth of change makers under one roof, but to make real change the next step has got to be international – Asia, Europe and beyond. More summits, different regions or perhaps even people bought together using the power of technology. Also, for me, famous tech-heads are personally more of a draw than celebrity Hollywood-heads, but IT-savvy minds only take us so far – hopefully the right government and policy figureheads will help bridge the gap between what Techonomists have started and the policies that really do enable change.
The three musketeers have plans for a Techonomy publication (a long form journalism style pub is expected in the fall). With such mass brain powered support, it’s really only a matter of time before these new concepts and definitions officially enter our tech lexicon. In the meantime, the biggest takeaway of them all comes in the form of one simple lingering question… How will you help change the world today?
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