NET RESULTSIbec's recent conference offered strong speakers and attracted delegates from a range of sectors, writes Karlin Lillington
CONFERENCES, especially those intended to consider future directions for an economy, industry or country, can be pretty dry and dull.
Some conferences in the technology sector have in the past suffered from being worthy but bland, or have run into that other recipe for tedium: bringing in too many pleasant but only moderately interesting industry figures to relate case studies - which can quickly slide into little more than promotional presentations for their companies.
Another risk - which has been prevalent at many events in the past decade - is for industry events to become yawningly self-congratulatory. Self-praise is no praise, as one of my friends likes to say.
Ibec found a good balance that managed to avoid these pitfalls in Dublin last week when it hosted its two-day Meeting of Minds conference on the theme of convergent technologies.
As with a number of other recent events from groups such as the Irish Software Association (ISA), this event benefited from having a strong line-up of keynote speakers.
There was a time when the speakers at such events hardly seemed worth getting up early for, much less devoting a day or two out of a busy life to. And attendance reflected this - over the years, the buzz has gone out of many industry events. Good intentions are not enough to get paying bums on seats.
Perhaps the economic slowdown focuses minds on producing a truly attractive event with compelling speakers but, for whatever reason, events large and small have begun to see a turnaround.
Outside Dublin, the IT@Cork crowd have pulled in a sequence of excellent keynote speakers in the past. This year's ISA annual conference had a great line-up too, with tech evangelist and venture investor Guy Kawasaki topping the bill.
The Ibec event had two strong opening talks, the first by well-known technology futurist and Stanford professor Paul Saffo, who is regularly interviewed in the US, especially in Silicon Valley. The second was by prominent economist and former Stanford professor Brian Arthur, who, it turns out, is Irish - something I'd never realised, nor had any of the people familiar with his work who I spoke to at the conference.
Arthur is originally from the North, but acknowledged that he'd lost most of his accent from years in the US.
Both speakers thoughtfully and enthusiastically addressed, from different angles, the topic of convergent technologies - the way in which separate strands of research and invention consistently hone in on some moment where they start to enhance and complement each other.
The two - and the strong programme generally - clearly proved an attraction, as the conference room at the Crowne Plaza in Santry was packed and there was a real buzz during coffee breaks and mealtimes.
What I particularly liked about the programme was that it offered, not just forward thinking, but also an overview of where we are now across several sectors - and where researchers, sectors and the State might go next.
The audience reflected the topic - I can't recall another Irish conference where technology, medicine, investment, general business, engineering, chemistry and other specialities merged in quite the same way.
At one coffee break, I found myself chatting with a physician interested in the application of everyday technologies like mobile phones to medicine. It was a fascinating conversation - though it was initially a bit of a surprise to be standing beside a doctor when I expected information- technology people. It also goes to show that we tend to segregate sectors such as information technology, biotechnology, medicine, software development, and telecommunications into artificial islands when there should be more opportunities to meet and mix productively.
Many great ideas and great companies have been born out of a conversation over a cup of coffee. But these divergent sectors don't often get the chance to have that cup in the same place.
In particular, I've found that life sciences and biotechnology are shunted over to one side, seen as a kind of curious detour away from the information and communications technology main show.
All the indications are that this is going to change. The future is increasingly a converged roadmap, in which an understanding of one area alone, one bit of territory, will not be enough.
I'm sure that many who attended the conference came away from Arthur and Saffo's keynotes feeling that, wherever their own area of expertise might lie, they need to learn more about these other sectors as they pull closer together and begin to weave together in fascinating and promising ways.
klillington@irish-times.ie
Blog: www.techno-culture.com
