Finally! It’s time for TechonomyNYC, our first conference in New York. It’s time for TechonomyNYC, our first conference in New York. May 26 we’ll be gathering a great group of speakers and participants to discuss how the expanding digital economy and the Internet of Things is transforming ecosystems and the underlying social and economic infrastructure of our cities. As with our main November program, the range of perspectives and topics is wide (or as wide as you can get with just one day). With segments on urban transformation, data and health, industrial IoT, media, finance and yes…more blockchain.
Here are some highlights I’m particularly looking forward to.
On tech and health — Pioneering cancer researcher and doctor Dr. David Agus on the promise of personalized medicine, how data can drive healthcare outcomes and how every company should have a Chief Health Officer. And, speaking of personalized medicine, later in the day, Nina Tandon founder and CEO of the awesome EpiBone will talk about building with biology on the frontiers of biotech. EpiBone grows new bone from your own stem cells, believe it or not.
While conversations about “smart cities” have been around for many years now, I’m starting to see a shift in the dialogue. Rather than talking just about how buildings are smart and networked, there’s finally more talk about how the smart city actually impacts its citizens and services. Let’s not forget that without citizens and communities and neighbourhoods there’s no city! (Hello Masdar.)
Our cities segment at Techonomy NYC will include a presentation by the MIT Media Lab Social Computing Group and GoDaddy about data neighbourhoods and how to bring them into the larger economic ecosystem of a city. GoDaddy? The super bowl advertising, Danica Patrick-sponsoring GoDaddy? Yes them.
There’s the “Citizenship and Companies in a Connected Social City” session with Qualcomm’s Kiva Allgood, NYC CTO Minerva Tantoco and Veniam CEO João Barros. Barros believes that it is through building the internet of moving things, a mesh network of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure networks, that cities will truly become smart.
Bloomberg’s Megan Murphy will be interviewing U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.
My go-to guru on the sharing economy, NYU Professor Arun Sundararajan, will be interviewed by Techonomy’s David Kirkpatrick about his new book The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-based Capitalism.
Rana Foroohar of TIME will be talking about her own new book, Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and The Fall of American Business with VC Alan Patricof.
And I’m especially excited about our closing session. It promises to be a fantastic free flowing closing session on data, discrimination and trust with Data and Society’s danah boyd and the FT’s Gillian Tett.
If you’re in NYC May 26 I hope to see you at Techonomy NYC!
