From Biotech to War Simulations
We our holding our next TechBoise event this Wednesday August 27th at 5:30pm at the WaterCooler, located at 14th and Idaho. (From here on we’ll actually try and always hold the event on the last Wednesday of the month.)
We have 2 of the smartest people I’ve met lately speaking on two very diverse topics.
Dr. Kathy Swords is the Director of Business Development for Simplot Plant Sciences. Kathy was in BSU’s EMBA program with me and I’ve had plenty of opportunities to talk to her about the cool AgBiotech projects they have going on. I’ve asked her to come and speak briefly about where she sees the future of this business and what innovative things Simplot is working on.
Our second headlining speaker is Kevin Bentley who has a background in video game programming but has recently been working on Department of Defense modeling and simulation training. If we’re lucky he may even share a little with us about the Artificial Intelligence stuff I’ve heard him mention.
I haven’t asked him yet but I also figure we’ll have Rick Ritter share with us his plans for bringing some coveted government SBIR dollars to Idaho.
Other than the brief presentations the rest of the time will be taken up with the usual mingling and back room plans for World domination.
Mark your calendars, bring a friend or two and leave with some good ideas. As always, leave me a comment if you plan on attending or shoot me an email - tac@techboise.com
Technorati Tags: Simplot, BioTech, Department of Defense,
Guten Tag from Jena, Germany - another visit to the thinktank on economic growth here. And what timing!
It’s not far from Leipzig, home to this year’s Games Convention.
http://www.gc-germany.com
Over breakfast & lunch I got to chat with people who were there and Kevin B’s niche is booming. The timing is excellent for the DOD SBIRs in this arena. [NATO & Germany are both already funding this as is Putin.]
The first big lesson from GC, though, was that the content needs to be very, very good. Great technology will not rescue lame content.
The second lesson: However, the key factor that distinguishes the big winners in training is the ability to take full advantage of what we now know about optimal human learning. “Hands-on” is far from enough, to be truly experiential learning requires some serious expertise in educational design (not content, not tech). In fact, poorly-designed “hands-on” work can actually be harmful to learning.**
Anyway, I’m spending part of this developing more on our “Neuro-Entrepreneurship” initiative — and one of its key connections is with experiential learning, so I should be picking up even more intel on that front.
But regardless - the winning ventures are the ones who really get it in terms of cutting-edge content and especially in terms of being completely constructivistic in educ design.
Gotta go have a Pilsner Urquell (our kind of coffee break, LOL)
/nk
** for an overview (and more hits for Pronetos): http://pronetos.com/disciplines/3/articles/165
Nice lineup Tac - diverse, fascinating-sounding speakers. Wish it wasn’t competing with Aslyum Street Spankers ;-( But I hope to be there!