Geared up for Techonomy Detroit Tuesday 9/15!

On September 15th our FOURTH Techonomy Detroit conference hosts fantastic thinkers and leaders for conversations about how tech is changing companies, work, cities and countries. Speakers include Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, and Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, plus leaders from Google, IBM, Microsoft, and numerous other companies. And 41% of our speakers are women!

By Simone Ross

September 11, 2015

Simone Ross oversees Techonomy's conference programs. — Simone Ross oversees Techonomy’s conference programs.

It’s amazing to think that next week on September 15 we’ll be hosting our FOURTH Techonomy Detroit conference. Our Detroit event holds a special place in my heart because I love energetic cities and the important urban, economic and social themes that play out in them. My love for Detroit emerged rapidly thanks to a couple of amazing guides who have shown me its many, many interesting corners.

This year we’ve got another fantastic group of thinkers and leaders joining us for conversations centered around how tech is changing our companies, our work, our cities and our (well your, I should say, since I’m not American) country.

We’ll be interviewing a couple of unique CEO’s–Carl Bass of Autodesk and Mark Bertolini of Aetna– along with Karoli Hindricks (all the way from Estonia!) to talk about her company Jobbatical which connects people to projects globally. (I wish it were around back in 2009 when I got laid off from FORTUNE.) I’m especially looking forward to the opening session “Can We Hack our Way to the Cities We Need?” (I worry the answer is “probably not.”) and to the “Get Engaged!” session Jim Fallows of The Atlantic will moderate on tech, civic engagement and cities.

I’m also looking forward to the session called “Developing and Retaining Diverse Talent.” It will be moderated by Techonomist Marlin Page, founder of Sisters Code and newly appointed Global Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Fiat. It continues the conversation we started at last year’s Techonomy Detroit in a rather feisty session moderated by Andrew Keen on how the tech industry can become more inclusive. We’ll also be continuing the discussion at TE15 in November. By the way, for those counting, of 49 speakers at this year’s Techonomy Detroit, 20 are women.

IdeaMarket will launch a $250,000 Detroit Transportation Challenge at TE Detroit. We’ll close talking about how to “Make Detroit a Movement” with business strategist John Hagel, Deep Dive Detroit’s Lauren Hood and David Egner from the New Economy Initiative.

If you can’t be in Detroit Tuesday, watch the Livestream!