I’m having my half day DNC experience this morning. At 10am I’m on a panel creatively titled 2008 Technology Roundtable. It’s limited attendee (200 people at the Ricketson Theater) but appears to being broadcast live on the web.
It’s an interesting experience. I really didn’t want to deal with the traffic and people around the DNC, especially after running a marathon this weekend (and still being in a recovery phase), so I took advantage of my early wake up time and drove to downtown Boulder around 6:30. I’m now sitting all alone in the breakfast room (green room equivalent) waiting for them to pull together the coffee service. It’s kind of tranquil in a weird way.
My session (one of three) – titled "Promoting the Next Wave of Innovation" – covers the following:
The second session will address the question of what strategies that the federal government can use to promote technological development and innovation. In particular, it will evaluate what public policies can best spur capital formation and protect the U.S. advantage in that area; what educations reforms, particularly as to math and science education, can prepare a next generation of engineers and business persons; and what innovation policies, be they support for basic research or patent law reform can spur greater levels of technological development.
My co-panelists are John Seely Brown (Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation), Charlie Ergen (CEO – Echostar), Bill Kennard (Carlyle Group, Former Chairman FCC), Honorable Zoe Lofgren (Congresswoman – U.S. House of Representatives), Don Rosenberg (General Counsel and EVP – Qualcomm), and David Thompson (Group President of Information Technology and Services – Symantec).
It’ll either be really interesting or really dull. I’ll work on "interesting" but I’ve been told "no swearing."