Rock Stars of Innovation Present: Have You Ever Seen the Rainmakers?

Rock Stars of Innovation Summit Xconomy Connect

alternative investment platforms. They are: Howard Lindzon, a super angel and hedge fund manager who founded StockTwits in San Diego, and who makes tech investments through his Social Leverage fund; Audrey Jacobs, a San Diego-based executive for the Israeli crowdfunding platform OurCrowd; and David Coats, the founder and managing director of Correlation Ventures, a venture firm that uses predictive analytics to choose its deals.

Brain Rock: In a session showcasing San Diego’s “rock stars of research,” Ralph Greenspan, who oversees the Center for Brain Activity Mapping at UC San Diego, will discuss advances in neuroscience with Casimir Wierzynski, a senior staff engineer at Qualcomm Research who has been designing computer chips that emulate the way the human brain processes information. My neurons are already tingling with anticipation.

Surf Music: It seems like everyone from the Notorious B.I.G. to Wilson Phillips has a song about California. Yet where would Jack Johnson or the Beach Boys be if there were no surfers—or surf culture—to write music about? This year, the Rock Stars of Innovation Summit has invited several leaders of San Diego’s burgeoning community of recreational sports innovators to discuss how innovations in sports medicine, action sports branding, and online social media platforms are sending waves through the action sports industry. Speakers include VAVi CEO Steve Stoloff, Dr. Christopher Wahl, the chief of sports medicine at UC San Diego Health, and John Lee of the Wasserman Media Group.

Between sets, the 2014 Rock Stars of Innovation Summit has arranged for a number of “garage band” startups to give a quick-pitch demo for investors in the crowd. Those presentations include the early stage technology companies Dagogo, DineLogik, and Mobile Learning Networks; the life sciences startups AnaBios, Nephosity, and Trefoil Therapeutics; and the lifestyle startups California Fruit Wines, Polara Golf, and ScanBright.

More information and online registration is here.

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.