Countdown to the Rock Stars of Innovation Summit: Whats Going On

We’re just a few days away from “The Rock Stars of Innovation Summit,” which is bringing together San Diego’s best and brightest innovation leaders to talk about the ideas spinning out of our local clusters in the life sciences, wireless technologies, and active lifestyle industries.

The show begins at 8 a.m. this Friday, April 4, at the Andaz Hotel in downtown San Diego. Once the curtain goes up, it isn’t coming down again until 3 p.m., so you might want to bring your dancing shoes. You can find the agenda and other information online here.

Connect has organized the Summit (with help from Xconomy), and CEO Greg McKee will be stepping on stage as impresario for the first time since he was named to lead the San Diego nonprofit group just over a month ago. I’ll be joining Greg on stage, but standing 20 Feet from Stardom—just like a backup singer at any other event where the rock stars come out.

As in the past, this year’s Summit will be preceded by a jam session and networking reception on the preceding evening—Thursday, April 3—at the San Diego House of Blues. Our headliner for the evening is the Left4Dead band.

Tickets are still available, and the networking reception and jam session are included as part of the Rock Stars of Innovation Summit. You can find more information and register online here, but the window for online registration will close Wednesday at 3 p.m.

After that, you can still register at the door for either or both events. But hurry, because we’re pickin’ up good vibrations. Good, good, good, good vibrations.

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.