First-ever FORTUNE iMEME Conference to Convene Top Tech and Media Leaders in San Francisco

July 6, 2007; 04:04 AM
Top leaders in technology will convene in San Francisco on July 12th & 13th for FORTUNE's first-ever iMEME: Thinkers of Tech Conference. The invitation-only event will bring together a select group of leaders and innovators in technology to discuss digital evolution and its impact on the worlds of commerce and culture. Participants will include leaders of the Internet, tech, media and telecom industries, founders of the information age, and explorers of new digital frontiers.

iMEME will be comprised of a mix of keynote presentations, along with panels on topics like: the growing opportunity for technology companies in the developing world, the future of media, bionics, why Internet companies want to be platforms, the future of open source, and the coming green automobile.

Confirmed speakers include: Mark Hurd, Chairman and CEO, Hewlett-Packard; John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Systems; Paul Jacobs, CEO, Qualcomm; Vinton Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google; Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Google; Padmasree Warrior, CTO, Motorola; Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce.com; Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook; Robert Glaser, CEO, RealNetworks; Beth Comstock, President, Integrated Media, NBC Universal; Jimmy Wales, Chairman Emeritus, Wikimedia Found.; Richard Barton, CEO, Zillow.com; Jim Buckmaster, CEO Craigslist; Jeff Weiner, Executive VP, Yahoo!.

Editorially sponsored by FORTUNE's technology, media, and Internet editorial talent and chaired by technology editor David Kirkpatrick, iMEME's major corporate sponsors include: Avaya, BT, Herman Miller, and The NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc.; Knowledge Partner: McKinsey & Company; and Supporters: spigit, Inc. and Yoomba.

In advance of the event, five prominent iMEME attendees have contributed their unique perspectives on the future of technology by answering the following three questions:

1) For you personally, what technology has taken the most unexpected turn in your lifetime?

2) What, for you, has been the most surprising infectious idea of the past year?

3) What really drives innovation in technology?

iMEME Q&A:

Jonathan Schwartz
CEO and President
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

1) For you personally, what technology has taken the most unexpected turn in your lifetime?

The telephone. I remember when they used to be attached to walls. I remember pay phones, too. Now mobile phones are literally everywhere. There are billions of them around the world, and they've become the dominant device through which people experience the Internet. Via SMS, social networks, maps, bank accounts, music or news -- even camera phones dwarf the number of stand-alone cameras. People fight hard to communicate with one another; now they don't have to fight quite so hard. Mobile devices, and the services delivered through them, will only become more interesting and valuable.

2) What, for you, has been the most surprising infectious idea of the past year?

Twitter, a service to connect people across the world in 140 characters or less. Who would think they could build millions of registered users, send hundreds of millions of SMS messages, or start to build a distribution network that advertisers and media companies had to begin paying attention to?

3) What really drives innovation in technology?

Courage. Courage to challenge conventional wisdom, to wholly commit to an idea or ideal, to lead and inspire those around you, whether they're collaborators or customers.

Esther Dyson
Editor, Release 0.9
EDventure Holdings

1) For you personally, what technology has taken the most unexpected turn in your lifetime?

Most of the interesting developments have been a combination of business and technology, such as the commercialization of the Internet or the nascent commercialization of space travel

2) What, for you, has been the most surprising infectious idea of the past year?

Facebook as a platform.

3) What really drives innovation in technology?

User demand. It often pulls the innovation through features and functions that look frivolous.

Padmasree Warrior
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer
Motorola, Inc.

1) For you personally, what technology has taken the most unexpected turn in your lifetime?

For me personally, the technology that has taken the most unexpected turn in my lifetime is what I refer to as "the device formerly known as the cell phone." I still remember many predictions that by 2000 there would only be about a million cell phone users. Boy, were they ever wrong!

Today there are about 2.9 billion mobile device users, i.e., roughly half the planet uses this technology for so much more than a phone call. Today people call people, not places! Today a new language called text speak is practiced across the globe with the characters "< 3" meaning "love" the world over. This new speech crosses language and cultural boundaries, bringing us closer. Today's mobile phone retailing at less than $40 has more processing power than the spaceship that first put man on the moon; and the 13-year-old using it may well know more than the 1969 Apollo engineers!

The mobile device of the future will be your persona. It will carry your mail and keep your calendar, it will be your wallet and the jewel you wear, it will be your camera and television, it will remind you when you forget, it will entertain you with music and games, it will help you get there from here, it will show things that you may miss, it will understand and talk to you, it will allow you to share your experiences and your worlds - and all this as easy as a simple phone call.

The first call from atop Mount Everest, the farmer in India earning a livelihood using SMS, the lifesaving weather information for fishermen in Africa via the mobile, the videos and TV shows that people watch in Korea and Japan on their commute -- no one ever expected any of this on the mobile device. It is the first computer for many people, and it is the platform for the next internet.

2) What, for you, has been the most surprising infectious idea of the past year?

The most surprising and infectious idea in the past year has been the ability to time-, place- and device-shift media. Think of how viewing habits have changed with DVR's that allow people to take control of program schedules. People are now creating their own video programs and sharing them online for others to watch. We are now moving TV and video content from the living room to the mobile device. This shift is revolutionizing the video and broadcast industry.

Media and entertainment will change dramatically compared to the past five years. A significant amount of content creation will be spontaneous generation in addition to planned production. Content distribution will include "persona-cast" and not just broadcast. Content presentation will shift to multiple screens from one screen. Content delivery will move beyond the living room to time-, device-, place-shift. Content consumption will become more participatory rather than remain passive.

It is no longer about "always on;" the future is about "always on-demand." There is a third screen enabling this - on the mobile!

3) What really drives innovation in technology?

Innovation is hard work. It takes remarkable thought leaders with vision, passion and energy to drive ideas into reality. It is about letting a few geeks and gadflies change the game. There are no rules in the ethos of innovation - that has been my mantra for the past several years.

I passionately believe that innovation is birthed from the union of technical IQ, business IQ and entrepreneurial IQ. It is nurtured by a handful of persistent individuals debating a seemingly stray idea, and asking why it may or may not work. It grows with tweaking and twiddling, unglamorous and fast-paced iterations called experimentation.

Innovation happens by bringing together diverse thought: sociologists, technologists, marketers, and well, sometimes even those lawyers! Agile, small groups working towards a defining vision may be not always in perfect harmony, but always moving in the right direction.

Innovation in technology is driven by people solving real problems. It is catalyzed by people with provocative ideas to create an impact on the marketplace. Often they swim upstream against the tide of conventional thinking, having a strong passion for their vision. Cultivating an environment that encourages and protects such people is imperative in fostering innovation in technology. I often ask five questions to stimulate innovation: what relevant problem does this solve, what are the competing alternatives, what differentiates this solution, what are the barriers to entry, and what is the business opportunity?

Yusuf Mehdi
Senior Vice President and Chief Advertising Strategist
Microsoft Corporation

1) For you personally, what technology has taken the most unexpected turn in your lifetime?

Despite the time I have spent working on Microsoft's browser and related set of technologies, the Internet continues to take the most unexpected turns in terms of its impact on people, business, and software applications. The very basic capability of providing worldwide access to information as a corporation or as an individual publisher has been something that I knew would happen someday, but never at the speed and with the impact that it has had in terms of how information is created, shared, and consumed.

2) What, for you, has been the most surprising infectious idea of the past year?

The most surprisingly infectious idea for me personally is the work Microsoft is doing with our SeaDragon incubation. It hasn't gone mainstream yet, but the promise of what this technology will do for the future of web navigation, ecommerce and advertising, and applications like Photosynth which are now in development is limitless. The hyperlink structure of the web is powerful, but the ability to create more immersive experiences with some of the SeaDragon technology has me almost giddy.

3) What really drives innovation in technology?

People and ideas drive innovation in technology. The ability to write software is hard but is something that is broadly available to people with a personal computer. The innovation comes from the individual who can surpass others in terms of their focus on the customer, their ability to dream and conceive of great new ideas, and ultimately the ability to take the conceptual idea and architect it into a real piece of software.

Harriet Pearson
VP Regulatory Policy & Chief Privacy Officer
IBM Corporation

1) For you personally, what technology has taken the most unexpected turn in your lifetime?

I have been most surprised recently by the interest in virtual worlds and related subjects. A year ago at this time I thought it was just games, and just this June IBM and MIT hosted an extremely well-attended conference in Cambridge, exploring how businesses and others are engaging with virtual worlds and the 3D Internet. The momentum and interest are amazing.

2) What, for you, has been the most surprising infectious idea of the past year?

For me, it's the new understanding of how corporations organize themselves to do business in a more-networked, "flattening" world. We've been using the phrase "globally integrated enterprise," but whatever it's called, there isn't a doubt that thinkers and leaders understand that something different is afoot -- that there's a recasting of organizational design that's reflecting and taking advantage of global communications and trade networks. This idea comes with its own set of challenges, of course. What does it mean to lead and work for a globally integrated enterprise, and what is its role in society?

3) What really drives innovation in technology?

I think that the biggest driver is the marketplace. We have more technology than we know what to do with. The real breakthroughs happen when we discover something that is successful in the marketplace because it solves a real problem that people or businesses have, that allows people to reach an end state that they desire or discover they really want!. Every so often a technology comes along that by itself is spectacular, but those technologies home runs are very rare. Most marketplace innovations happen with fairly well known technologies that someone finally figured out what to do with.

For additional information and a full list of speakers at iMEME, visit: www.fortuneimeme.com