Filling Out Your Fall Calendar: Events Worth Knowing About

Here are a couple events for September, October, and November that I think will be worth going to. I'm planning to be at each of them in some capacity (reporter, moderator, organizer, etc.)

9.23-9.25: Emerging Technologies Conference @ MIT
Werner Vogels from Amazon, Rich Miner from Google, and Craig Mundie from Microsoft top the list of interesting speakers (according to me, at least)

9.25: Tech @ The Movies
This is the first entertainment industry panel that Mass TLC has organized, focusing on the role Massachusetts tech companies are playing in the movie industry. I'm moderating a panel, and giving a short talk about the historical contributions our state has made to the movies, based on my new book Inventing the Movies.

10.2: Mass TLC's Innovation UnConference
Mass TLC is reinventing its big fall event this year (previously known as the investor conference), trying to make it more valuable for entrepreneurs.

10.21 New England Mobile Summit
Part of the Mobile Internet World 2008 trade show, organized by the Yankee Group.

10.30 Ideas Boston
A chance to meet big thinkers like IBM's Martin Wattenberg, Daniel Schrag from Harvard, and John Maeda, the new president of RISD.

11.12 Innovation in Hollywood: Past, Present & Future
I'm giving an illustrated book talk about Inventing the Movies at the Museum of Science... chock full of movie clips, photos, and trivia.

11.15 HBS Cyberposium
Last year's speaker roster included Walt Mossberg, Ray Kurzweil, and Curt Schilling.

11.19 Future Forward 08
A gathering of entrepreneurs, investors, and CIOs/CTOs to explore new directions in technology. Audience limited in size; invite only.

12.6 MIT Venture Capital Conference
No Web site up yet for this year's event... but last year's included Google exec Chris Sacca and VMWare CEO Diane Greene.

Kiva Systems, and the Region's Robotics Cluster

Yesterday's Boston Globe column focused on the warehouse automation solution developed by a start-up called Kiva Systems. It's being used by companies like Staples, Walgreens, and Zappos.com, and it relies on beefy orange robots -- about the site of ottomans -- to move around racks of merchandise. Interestingly, Kiva's founder came east to start the company, after working at Apple and WebVan in Silicon Valley.

Here's the video I shot at Kiva's 'demonstration warehouse' last week:



In doing the story, I discovered that the region's most significant robotics industry networking group seems to be the robotics cluster that the Mass Technology Leadership Council has created. While the MassTLC doesn't have a comprehensive list of all the robotics companies in the state, they have produced a
snazzy brochure (PDF) touting the benefits of being headquartered here.

Aside from Kiva, here's the list of the ten New England robotics companies I heard mentioned most often during my research (ranked in no particular order):

- iRobot: publicly-traded maker of bots for pool cleaning and bomb disposal. Co-founded by MIT prof Rodney Brooks, and Colin Angle and Helen Greiner, his former students.

- Foster-Miller: Waltham developer of robots for reconnaissance and hazmat disposal.

- Boston Dynamics: maker of walking, animal-like robots for the military. Founded by MIT "Leg Lab" legend Marc Raibert.

- Bluefin Robotics: Cambridge, Mass. designer of robots that aren't afraid to get wet.

- Hydroid: another manufacturer of underwater bots, in Pocasset, Mass.

- North End Technologies: stealthy NH robotics company funded by Castile Ventures. Founded by iRobot alums.

- Q Robotics: another quiet Mass. company founded by Paul Sandin and Joe Jones, creators of iRobot's Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner.

- Smart Robots: Dalton, Mass. maker of mobile robotic platforms for education and application development.

- MobileRobots, formerly ActivMedia Robotics: NH company focused on "research and university robots."

- Black i Robotics: Tyngsboro, Mass. maker of rugged six-wheeled robots.

Focusing on the 21-year olds

This quote has been driving me batty all day, from a Globe story Rob Weisman wrote about MIT’s MBA field trips out to Silicon Valley:

“Yes, I wish we could have more anchor companies," said Joyce Plotkin, president of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, a trade group for software and other tech businesses. "I think our culture does not value entrepreneurs the way the West Coast does. Historically, most of our companies are in the business-to-business market, and that's a tougher sell. To someone who's 21 years old, it looks more exciting to work at consumer- oriented companies."

I don’t think that Plotkin really believes that the culture here somehow values entrepreneurs less than the West Coast does. Yes, you do get a higher voltage of entrepreneurial energy on the West Coast, and successful entrepreneurs are deified out there… but I believe entrepreneurs are valued here.

Rather, the part of the quote that is bugging me is about the hypothetical 21-year old.

We do have a lot of 21-year olds graduating from college every June, and we don’t do a good enough job of plugging them into the regional innovation economy.

It’s not because we don’t have consumer-oriented companies (many of them start-ups) to work for. What about Harmonix, creator of “Guitar Hero,” or Bose, or iRobot, or Conduit Labs, or Nuance, one of the leaders of the speech recognition industry?

The problem is that we – and I include Plotkin’s group, the Mass. Technology Leadership Council, in this – don’t offer enough opportunities for:

1. Colleges students to schmooze with local entrepreneurs and VCs, and visit tech and biotech company’s local HQs.

2. Smaller tech companies to engage in on-campus recruiting.

In the same way that Valley companies like VMWare and Google welcome visiting MIT MBA students, are our hometown biggies, from EMC to Genzyme to Akamai, opening the doors to grad students and undergrads from local universities?

I've been saying it a lot at events - and I'll say it here for the record - "culture," another term Plotkin uses, is nothing but the way a group of individuals acts. If we want to change the culture here, and make it totally clear to recent grads that there are some pretty interesting opportunities in town for them, that's easy to do...

Mass TLC Awards

I'm still getting used to calling the Massachusetts Software Council by its new(ish) name, the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council.

On Thursday, they announced the winners of their 2007 Technology Leadership Awards at the Copley Plaza Hotel. Full list is below.

That other technology association, the Massachusetts High Tech Council, is marking its 30th anniversary on Tuesday with a dinner at - where else? - the Newton Marriott. The keynote speaker is Dean Kamen -- a New Hampshire entrepreneur and inventor who at least lived in Massachusetts for a few years, while attending WPI.

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Mass TLC 2007 Awards

CORPORATE CATEGORIES:

Enterprise Applications
Open Pages

Communications/Infrastructure
Reva Systems

Consumer
Communispace

Innovation (co-winners)
InnoCentive
NeuroLogica

User/Implementer (co-winners)
EMC
Barrett Distribution Centers
Jordan’s Furniture


INDIVIDUAL CATEGORIES:

CEO of the Year
Doug Levin, Black Duck Software

CIO of the Year
John Halamka, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical

CTO of the Year
Kenneth Kuenzel, Covergence

CXO of the Year
Tom Murphy, Bit9

Emerging Executive of the Year
Keith Kocho, Extend Media

Mover and Shaker of the Year (co-winners)
David Weinberger, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
Linda Plano, Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center (MTTC)