TechForum2012 inaugurates a new community event

George Rebane

This afternoon TechForum2012 passed into history as a wonderfully successful new type of luncheon speaker series focusing on the accelerating technologies that will affect all of us in how we work, play, learn, live long, and prosper.  The event was sponsored by the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation to support its ongoing and expanding merit scholarship program built around its flagship annual TechTest, now in its sixth year.

It was heartening to see the community join in to support this fundraiser to encourage Nevada County’s young people to choose careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).  America’s decline in STEM qualified workers has put our country at risk, and we believe that grass roots programs such as these developed and funded by SESF are a hopeful start on America’s road back.  The fundamental objective of the TechTest programs is to serve as a template and resource to other counties and regions across the country, inviting them to stand on our shoulders and start their own merit scholarship support efforts to invite qualified young people to choose STEM careers.

Today’s SRO event had an attendance of over 160 community leaders from the media, government, education, and business.  Our guest speaker was Mr Rick Hutley, VP of Global Innovations for Cisco.  Rick Hutley is a world class business executive and motivational speaker on the leading edge technologies that are shaping all of our tomorrows.  Russ Steele, SESF’s Executive Director, and I had the pleasure of starting the day with Rick with a congenial breakfast at Toffanelli’s.

The entire event was planned and managed by SESF volunteers Ms Laura van den Berg (Event Manager), Mr George Foster, and Mr Russ Steele representing the SESF board.  Laura did an outstanding job in pulling together the furball that these projects all start out as, and served as the event’s mistress of ceremonies.  Truth be told, she did marshall husband Luuk to help here and there.

Special thanks go to the distinguished array of TechForum2012 sponsors that include NCTV, The Union, KVMR, KNCO, AJA Video Systems, NCCA, Christine Foster Realtor, Olympia Mortgage and Investment, Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce, Nevada City Chamber of Commerce, ERC, the County of Nevada, and, of course Cisco Systems Inc.  Their prompt and visible support made this launch a merited and meaningful standard for future TechForum events.

On a personal note, I was heartened to see the extreme interest in the reaction and participation of the attendees.  Rick is disposed to an open give-and-take format of a presentation wherein questions can be asked at any time, and they were.  This gave rise to a number of interesting and illuminating detours that added to the prepared remarks.

Rick’s talk touched on the implications and impact of the approaching Singularity (q.v.).  He outlined the progression of Turing test (q.v.) mitigations as machines become more intelligent.  All this progressing to the point of dismissing the utility of that classic test of machines achieving peer intelligence with humans.  His conclusion was to substitute the test of whether humans consider machines as useful peers and partners in managing our resources and affairs, that would stand in for Turing and the Singularity.  I suggested that perhaps a better test would be the event when machines weigh in and assess the utility of humans as their peers in managing this planet’s affairs.  Rick Hutley mused that this indeed might be a better sign of fin de siècle, and graciously named it the Rebane Test.  In any event Rick is not a strong proponent of the near-term advent of Singularity, even though on one of his summary slides he did note that machines would replace all human workers by 2035.

As you see, dear reader, this was a lively and informative presentation with the attendees sitting at the edge of their seats.  The presentation and its Q&A went well beyond its scheduled time with the room filled to capacity.  Afterward, the podium was crowded with people seeking to continue the discussion with Mr Hutley and other attendees.

Rick Hutley set the bar high for our next TechForum, and I want to assure all that SESF and its team of volunteers will do everything possible to meet these standards when we again assemble for TechForum.  In the interval, we have the last seminar for TechTest2012 tomorrow at NUHS, and the exam itself will be given on 14 April 2012.  Please visit sesfoundation.org for more information.

Comments

[Russell Steele]

George,

Thanks for the kind words and excellent summary of the events. As you noted this was a team effort, but with out Laura it would have been an impossible task. We are also indebted to George Foster for the original idea that SESF should sponsor the TechForum and his assistance that we shoot as high as possible for a kick off speaker. I think we met the goal with Rick Hutley. Following his outstanding presentation Rick spent over an hour with the County IT Staff and Supervisor Ed Scofield.

The presentation will be on NCTV in the near future and I highly recommend that anyone who could not attend watch the presentation and Rick Hutley's interview.

[John Galt]

I wasn't able to attend, but I heard first-hand reports that Mr. Hutley's presentation was very interesting and engaging. Awesome accomplishment for all involved.

I'll definitely be looking forward to watching this on NCTV.

--John Galt

[George Rebane]

This comment on TechForum2012 by Michael Anderson was posted under 'American Technical Slide ...' before I had a chance to compose this post.

Just got back from the event. Best technical presentation I've ever attended in Nevada County.

As I suspected, the event was entirely non-partisan and the room was filled with a good sample of Nevada County denizens of all political types--liberals, conservatives, and independents.

Mr. Hutley also gave George a good run for his money regarding the Singularity prediction. All in all, an extremely informative, entertaining, and worthwhile presentation. Once it's up the NCTV website I encourage everyone who was not able to attend to have a look.

The video below is about the future in glass; Mr. Hutley's presentation was in this same vein, but about every category of technology you can image. Well done TechForum organizers and SESF.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkHpNnXLB0

Posted by: Michael Anderson | 24 February 2012 at 03:36 PM

[Ryan Mount]

Rebane Test? That's awesome! ha!

A disgruntled IBM colleague of mine (he's in marketing so he's perhaps even more cynical than me) was complaining about the gi-normous internal bureaucracy we have within my IBM Software Group. How it takes forever to get anything done. Disclosure: I work for IBM and I am more empathetic towards these processes as they mitigate risk and ensure quality...imagine that! When was the last time you saw an IBM Point of Sales cash register crash?

Anyhow he quipped the other day: "Apple innovates furiously and we be the iPad. IBM innovates furiously and we get a slot on Jeopardy."

Being a software solutions and services guy, I jumped in and asked him to consider what a system like Watson might mean to, let's say, US Medicare fraud auditing, as a sample use case. Or if it was installed in a third world country for payment processing and auditing. So we're talking, assuming IBM can get through their quality/risk processes in a timely manner a couple of years to implement such things to replace an entire call center of Yuba County government employees. So 2035? I think that's way too conservative.

Yeah, the American narcissist class may look cool at Starbucks with their iPads and their Sea Glass Pearl colored Priuses (is that the plural of Prius? Maybe it's Priusim? Priusii?) parked out front, but elsewhere on planet Earth, we're building Skynet to jab the paranoid. And that's a good thing.

[Douglas Keachie]

Wussimobiles would suit some here, but the well to do of all political stripes are buying them up.

[Gregory]

Ryan Mount, Cisco also has (from my perspective, had) a set of ISO-9000ish processes that at first blush look like straightjackets, but in actuality are a pretty good process for getting promising technologies the engineering, marketing and manufacturing resources needed to deliver what is wanted at about the time the sales guys promised it would be there.

That process isn't entered immediately, there is time to make mistakes. That isn't the case after everyone signs onto the final project and sales starts selling it...

[Russell Steele]

Laura van den Berg has posted some more pictures and interesting thought on the SESF Blog here: http://sesfoundation.org/2012/02/25/techforum-students/

[Ryan Mount]

@Gregory

I used to run a couple of large data centers for the company that was just gobbled up by IBM last year. And no where in my designs did you see anything but Cisco gear: load balancers, switches and routers. The whole network stack was always a pure Cisco play for good reason. It [mostly] just worked. But boy are their solutions expensive(that's an understatement) compared to their competitors. Note, I didn't say better.

Anyhow, being a start-up guy (please no questions how I arrived @ IBM: big fish eat little fish), I've actually come to appreciate extensive QA control both for product quality and risk mitigation. And IBM does it well, as I'm sure Cisco does. Of course out in the marketplace, such controls really impact our time-to-market competitiveness. It also impedes innovation. Also I've found that the, um, "less productive" employees tend to hide behind such processes. "Not my job, man."

But then again as the saying goes, no one ever got fired for buying IBM...or Cisco for that matter.

[Gregory]

Ryan,

The process of getting project goaheads at cisco included a thorough analysis of the profits the new gizmo would make possible at the target customers. Cisco loves customers, wants them to make lots of money and be able to give lots of that money to Cisco.

In return, Cisco was the most customer focused company I've ever worked for. The "not my job, man" attitude is one that I never saw there in five years, and I never saw anyone hiding.