Singularity University held an event in conjunction with Women@TheFrontier at NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley last week. The program: “Designing the Future 2012”, brought together some of today’s female game-changers who are designing the future and disrupting the status quo. Women@TheFrontier’s Susan Fonseca and KristinaMaria T-Gutierrez introduced inspirational women who had one heart warming story after another to share. NASA’s Yvonne Cagle also paid a sentimental tribute to astronaut Sally Ride who passed away on July 23. Ray Kurzweil kicked things off and also closed the event in a unique appearance with his daughter Amy Kurzweil who interviewed him in fireside chat style. Ray’s son was also in attendance with a beaming smile throughout the interview as he watched father and sister chat informally in front of a few hundred people on everything from inspiration and life lessons to technology, health and the future. Below is Women@TheFrontier founder and CEO Susan Fonseca. A poised and graceful Kay Koplovitz took the stage with confidence, something certainly not new to her as the first woman to head a television network; she founded USANetworks under the banner of Madison Square Garden Sports in the seventies. She is also known for founding the Sci-Fi Channel which has become a top ten rated cable network and USANetworks, which runs in 60 countries worldwide. President Clinton also appointed Kay to chair the bipartisan National Women’s Business Council. With a success record that keeps going, she is a great reminder that persistence and tenacity pays off. She reminded the audience that 57% of women have masters degrees and 52% of women have doctorate degrees as she threw a quote from Coca Cola CEO onto the screen who said in 2010: “The drivers of the post American world won’t be led by China but led by women.”…

I’m a long time fan of the DEMO Conferences and events and have been attending for well over a decade (since the start of their events really, but let’s not date myself that much shall we?). This past week, they held an evening event called DEMO Enterprise Disruption at San Francisco’s Temple Bay & Nightclub at was so well organized that it felt like a shorter version of their twice-a-year launch events. (in the states that is as they’re now doing events around the world).

Not only was the event well organized with an agenda, but they had incredible food (soups, burgers, sauteeds and sushi), as well as a sake tasting station, wine, beer and cocktails. Fusion.io sponsored the event, who touts speed speed speed as their main value proposition.

They’re a pioneer of a new storage memory platform that significantly improves the processing capabilities within a data center by moving process-critical, or active data closer to the CPU where it is processed. They announced breaking a billion IOPS barrier at the event (see full release here).

Also on the stage were student-run companies such as @teamitt who demoed their job app to motivate employees and @diffbot, who is combining news reading with natural language processing, machine learning and robotics.

Sococo, who develops and sells virtual environments for network-centric individuals to work and play (think: combining all forms of communication for employees to collaborate and more), originally launched at DEMO and returned to the stage to give the audience an update. Team Space is their flagship product.

Below, VentureBeat founder & DEMO producer Matt Marshall moderated a venture capital panel with Dr. Forest Baskett from NEA, Chris Schaepe of Lightspeed Venture Partners and Peter Wagner of Accel Partners.

The biggest highlight of the event however was the fact that they managed to get Star Trek hero Leonard Nimoy (aka Spock) and Steve Wozniak (now Chief Scientist for Fusion.io) on stage at the same time to have a “chat.” Nimoy also gave the audience a mini-speech about some of the things he’s learned over the years, including admitting to flunking Chemistry.

The more amusing part was Wozniak sharing with him the fact that you can easily download translation apps for your iPhone (among other devices) and the awareness for all of us how far away our “app” world was from his. It sounds like he may actually have a “life.” 🙂 Below is a video short of his talk and here’s a link to the follow on chat that Nimoy had with Wozniak.

I’m a long time fan of the DEMO Conferences and events and have been attending for well over a decade (since the start of their events really, but let’s not date myself that much shall we?). This past week, they held an evening event called DEMO Enterprise Disruption at San Francisco’s Temple Bay & Nightclub at was so well organized that it felt like a shorter version of their twice-a-year launch events. (in the states that is as they’re now doing events around the world). Not only was the event well organized with an agenda, but they had incredible food (soups, burgers, sauteeds and sushi), as well as a sake tasting station, wine, beer and cocktails. Fusion.io sponsored the event, who touts speed speed speed as their main value proposition. They’re a pioneer of a new storage memory platform that significantly improves the processing capabilities within a data center by moving process-critical, or active data closer to the CPU where it is processed. They announced breaking a billion IOPS barrier at the event (see full release here). Also on the stage were student-run companies such as @teamitt who demoed their job app to motivate employees and @diffbot, who is combining news reading with natural language processing, machine learning and robotics. Sococo, who develops and sells virtual environments for network-centric individuals to work and play (think: combining all forms of communication for employees to collaborate and more), originally launched at DEMO and returned to the stage to give the audience an update. Team Space is their flagship product. Below, VentureBeat founder & DEMO producer Matt Marshall moderated a venture capital panel with Dr. Forest Baskett from NEA, Chris Schaepe of Lightspeed Venture Partners and Peter Wagner of Accel Partners. The biggest highlight of the event however was the fact that they…

Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny came to the Founders event in Dublin this past week to talk about the importance of technology and Ireland’s commitment to its expansion and innovation as a major contribution to a growing economy both at home and abroad.

Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny came to the Founders event in Dublin this past week to talk about the importance of technology and Ireland’s commitment to its expansion and innovation as a major contribution to a growing economy both at home and abroad.

Michael MacDougal from StockStreak talks to me about their application at the Dublin Web Summit this past week in Dublin Ireland.

Essentially, its a game that allows you to play the stock market. Predict the stock price of ONE of the listed stocks and whether it will go up or down, and whether the next trading day’s closing price will be higher or lower than the prior day’s closing price. Votes placed after Noon Eastern Time will be counted towards the next day’s session. Listen to how it works.

Michael MacDougal from StockStreak talks to me about their application at the Dublin Web Summit this past week in Dublin Ireland. Essentially, its a game that allows you to play the stock market. Predict the stock price of ONE of the listed stocks and whether it will go up or down, and whether the next trading day’s closing price will be higher or lower than the prior day’s closing price. Votes placed after Noon Eastern Time will be counted towards the next day’s session. Listen to how it works.

Entrepreneurs Michael Birch, Dave McClure and Geoff Ralston from Imagine K12 were on the Dublin Web Summit main stage this past week in a discussion moderated by TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher on Disruption: How the technology industry eco-system is changing.

Entrepreneurs Michael Birch, Dave McClure and Geoff Ralston from Imagine K12 were on the Dublin Web Summit main stage this past week in a discussion moderated by TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher on Disruption: How the technology industry eco-system is changing.

At the Dublin Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland this past week, Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels was interviewed on the main stage. Have a listen: