Summit 2008 Sets a New Bar
For the past four years, I've partnered with AlwaysOn's conferences, and each new conference shows a growth in depth and scope over the previous year. This year's Stanford Summit was no exception, setting a very high bar for other conferences to reach.
There were the time-honored Summit traditions. Steve Jurvetson showed us yet again why he would fairly represent Earth in a galactic IQ contest. AlwaysOn founder Tony Perkins and KPMG's Packy Kelly kicked off the event with their usual combination of humor and insight. A certain Kool Banker showed up with Jack Nicholson-like regularity on the video screen. Plus, the live blogging comments, networking, and panels were uniformly excellent.
This year's Summit launched some new traditions as well. The AO Top 100 Private Companies list expanded to the AO Global 250, making it a truly worldwide event. Sixty-five non-U.S. companies were selected for the list—many for the first time. And that number will surely grow into a majority by next year's list. Entrepreneurs from the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa discussed ideas and potential partnerships while listening to reggae from Jamaica in the grove at the Stanford alumni center. Hopefully, this infusion of global talent will result in new companies presenting at next year's Summit.
Fifty CEO pitches from companies from all over the world—including six from Australia alone—covered virtually every hot space from social networking to mobile to green. Old versions of new technologies mixed with new versions of old technologies to create some incredible new companies. My personal favorite: the professors who created the programs that debugged the Voyager on its journey to the outer solar system who are now taking those 20+-year-old technologies and creating a new paradigm for RFID. Sound kooky? They were there at the CEO pitch.
With all this innovation, the concern comes up about losing sight of the practical challenges that can truly affect quality of life and productivity. In that vein, I close with the following challenges for the next AO Global 250 to show off:
First: Re-focus mobile innovation so anyone can complete a cellular phone call anywhere in the Valley, including—dare to dream—on Sand Hill Road itself.
Second: Develop a working solar-based electrical system that will let residences and buildings alike store the energy generated for future use.
Third: Create a new PC hardware-software paradigm that lets customers actually use their PC for what they bought it for without fear of having to deal with new viruses, ubiquitous pop-ups, and semi-annual hard-drives scrubs.
Fourth: Go green with a working virtual world that has real human interaction as its goal vs. 800 numbers, pre-recorded voices, and avatars.
These are my challenges to the AO Global 250, Class of 2009. Please feel free to share yours.
Ed Lambert, a resident of San Jose, is a senior vice president at Bridge Bank.