Supernova Conference Debates High-Tech Future Technology Industry Leaders Meet at Wharton West
What’s next for search engines? How are wireless technologies and online games changing our media experiences? What are the consequences of online globalization, especially in India and China?
These were just a few of the questions that shaped this year’s Supernova conference, held on June 21-23 at the Wharton West campus in San Francisco, where over 400 leaders of the high technology industry came together to create and debate their industry’s newest ideas.
Founded in 2002 by Kevin Werbach, Wharton assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics, Supernova has become a key annual event for high-tech innovators, thinkers, and business leaders to consider their industry’s future. In Werbach’s words, the conference “strives to bring together people and ideas at the bleeding edge with more practical and established business realities – people who have shared interests but are not going to run into each other anywhere else.”
Going Beyond the Web
Sponsored by Wharton for the second year, Supernova began with a day of workshops at Wharton West, at which leading innovators offered hands-on exposure to the latest tools and trends, and continued with two more days of panels, perspectives, and workshops.
“Many of the exciting things addressed at the conference this year either don't involve the World Wide Web or go far beyond it,” notes Werbach about this year’s sessions.
“We're seeing the innovations pioneered on the consumer web the first time around make their way into a much wider set of contexts – for instance, the social and business implications of massively multiplayer online games; and services like Ether, Yahoo! ZoneTag, and Skype that use Voice Over IP to meld communications with network-based services.”
Making Connections in a Complex World
This year’s conference theme, “Making Connections in a Complex World,” provided a springboard for a wide variety of topics, including:
The increasing complexity of the tech universe: the diversity of devices (PC, mobile phone, PDA, home entertainment server); the diversity of use contexts (home, business, mobile); and the more diverse user base created in part by globalization.
The innovation of new ways to help people find what they are looking for in that complex environment, as well as new approaches for those who want to be found (e.g., marketers).
The impact of massively multi-player online games (MMOGs) on the future of social and business interactions, as well as on future computer operating systems.
The second-order consequences as broadband and mobile/wireless connectivities become more widespread.
The changes in traditional marketing as users assert more control, especially new marketing practices and customer relationships created by social multimedia platforms.
The tricky balance between open, bottom-up approaches and top-down controls, as even businesses renowned as decentralized and user-dominated (like Craigslist) spend energy keeping bad actors from destroying the experience.
The significant "innovation blowback" to the developed world, as people go online in countries like India and China in very different environments from what was first experienced in the US.
“I thought the workshop day at Wharton West was a high point of the event,” notes Werbach, former Counsel for New Technology Policy to the FCC and advisor to tech guru Esther Dyson. “The workshops were all a great balance of, on the one hand, edgy ideas and technical elements and, on the other hand, solid business discussions involving major players like Microsoft, GM, P&G, Google, and Yahoo!.”
This mix of perspectives embodies Werbach’s long-term goal for Supernova: creating dialogue between high-tech innovators and established businesses, who need to “see the value of this kind of interaction with people and ideas at the bleeding edge.”
After all, he concludes, “the more virtual you are, the more you appreciate the things that can’t be virtualized. There’s a magic in putting interesting, intelligent, engaged people in a room together.”
