There are three weeks and one day to go before XSITE—the Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship, which we are holding at Boston University on June 24—and we are pumped. We are finalizing the agenda, and have added a host of fantastic new speakers, including inventor extraordinaire Dean Kamen. We’re also putting the finishing touches on some great panels that uncover some of the incredible strengths (many of them underappreciated) of New England’s innovation community.
We are pleased to be part of Innovation Month in New England, and hope XSITE 2009 will serve as a great anchor for the month by devoting a full day to innovation and bringing together key players from across the innovation spectrum. Speakers at XSITE will include leading executives from EMC, IBM, Microsoft, Alnylam, and Sirtris/GlaxoSmithKline, as well as top entrepreneurs such as Yet-Ming Chiang of MIT and A123Systems; Tillman Gerngross of Dartmouth, GlycoFi, and Adimab; Mick Mountz of Kiva Systems; and Christina Lampe-Onnerud of Boston Power (who just announced ambitions to build a 600-employee battery plant in Massachusetts). And we’re very excited about keynote speakers Juan Enriquez of Excel Medical Ventures, and, of course, Dean Kamen.
And for those of you who want to drill down into one of New England’s most vibrant innovation sectors, XSITE’s afternoon breakout sessions will offer you three to choose from. Our chief correspondent, Wade Roush, will host a session on Boston’s little-known—yet highly influential—assembly of digital entertainment and media firms: The Digital Entertainment Cluster: Boston’s Best-Kept Secret. It’s a topic near and dear to Wade’s heart, and sure to spark some lively discussion. Atlas Venture’s Jeff Fagnan, meanwhile, will provide a tour of what we’re calling The Health 2.0 Hub, the local people, institutions, and companies that are using innovations from IT to transform healthcare, from bench side to bedside and beyond. And energy innovators, executives, and investors will come together in a third session—Getting Energy Innovations to Market—to talk about what it takes to translate and scale new ideas in solar, wind, batteries, grid management, and energy efficiency into market realities.
The up-to-date agenda is here—sign up soon because early bird registration ends tomorrow. Also, when you sign up, please take our quick survey about the economy—we want your views on when it will improve, and which sectors will lead us out of recession. We will be revealing your predictions at XSITE.
