AUTM 2015 Annual Meeting
By Claire T. Driscoll
Our upcoming AUTM Annual Meeting in New Orleans (February 22-25, 2015 at the Hyatt Regency) will feature science historian, media theorist and innovation guru Steven B. Johnson. Mr. Johnson wrote the bestselling Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation and How We Got to Now and contributed articles to Wired, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Nearly 3 million people have watched his TED talk on innovation. Mr. Johnson also advises several technology start-up companies including Jelly (run by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone).
Mr. Johnson is co-creator and engaging host of a new six-part Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) documentary series entitled How We Got to Now (www.pbs.org/how-we-got-to-now). Each the six episodes ─ Glass, Clean, Time, Cold, Light and Sound ─ tells the fascinating tale of the often centuries-long evolution of several remarkable innovations from conception to adoption to the unanticipated and transformative impact these ideas have had on society today.
In the recent episode Glass, Johnson offers an illuminating and entertaining discussion of how one makes the conceptual leap from a grape press to the printing press to the creation of a method of making glass from sand to the invention of eye glasses (thereby ushering in an age of literacy), telescopes (creating the field of astronomy and sparking an era of space exploration), microscopes and the discovery of microbes (catalyzing a revolution in science and medicine) not to mention glass’s contribution to the physical transformation of our cities and the entertainment industry. Bottom line: the invention and many uses for glass have opened our eyes, literally, and our minds to the wonders of the universe big and small as well as allowed for advances in how we work, play and live.
I’m hoping that during his keynote address to AUTM, Steven will discuss the intriguing concepts described in his books and new TV series including information spill-over, innovation hothouses, invention/idea stacking and recombining, the fact that expertise and intelligence are less important than other qualities in an inventor and innovator and, my favorite, the slow hunch.
Register today so you don’t miss Steven Johnson, the featured speaker during the Monday plenary session that begins 8 am on February 23, 2015.