COFES thrives by having 'friends and family' attend. A goodly portion of the attendees seem to have come year-after-year. I've talked with a half dozen for whom it is their first time, but most have been four to ten times in the fourteen years. It is my third time in five years, invited each time as a speaker so maybe that doesn't count, but I've seldom gone to anything (even SIGGRAPH years ago) any more frequently. The :"upside" of this is that friendships are renewed, new ideas circulate amongst trusted colleagues, and new partnerships happen almost spontaneously.
The downside, from my view, is that the conference doesn't have enough young people. It resembles a DeSoto owner's club in 1950 (or maybe Hudson). An aging community, a little bitter that it hasn't played out quite like it could have -- after all, this is the backbone of damn near everything designed around the globe in the past thirty years, whether it be better electronic chips, systems, buildings, cars, planes, or infrastructure, not to mention the software that makes all sorts of things we take for granted work. Four percent growth per year in revenue, diminishing profit margins, "no respect" as Rodney Dangerfield would have said.
Holtz is aware of this concern, and he has put great effort into soliciting interns. Fresh-faced, enthusiastic local college kids from Arizona State enlivened severral sessions, plus the lunchtime and dinnertime tables. But the best happened at the Maieutic Parataxis, in the late afternoon. I didn't know either word.
Maieutic means "the midwifery of knowledge" -- don't know how I've missed that one all these years!
Parataxis means "the juxtaposition of ideas, without connection or conjunction". Again, a word I should know, mostly a word my wife Jenny would say characterizes my own conversations and even my blog posts.
So, nine speakers, each for a "lightning round" of five minutes, held forth on their own favorite topic. Most were in their early twenties; the excitement for several was wild. One presented a computerized way to make clothing with ZERO excess material, using a smart phone and 3D software to build a form, and 'weaving software" to make the garment. He ordered a suit on Tuesday from Indai, is wearing it today. Today, some 40% of mail-order garments are returned, more than half because they don't fit. And on average, fabric wastage of 30% occurs in all clothing manufacture. Great new app!
Another, from a new company StreetLightData led by co-founder CEO Laura Schewel, focuses on "Data Exhaust" which is not Data Mining and not Business Analytics, but rather "using data created for something else in a new way since it has already 'been exhausted' for the original purpose" I think the point is that this 'exhausted data' is relatively cheap to obtain, and hence can provide high residual value for her clients. I started imagining how useful this could be for InnovaScapes, such as the COPD work.
Nell Watson with Poikos engaged the group around some provocative thoughts re health care; Elizabeth of ScienceExchange had some great ideas for how to crowd-source 'citizen science'.
I came away thinking that, as in sports, politics, and all forms of business, the future is with the kids.
COFES will do well to encourage more of these youngsters. I just have to adjust my vision and my hearing aids, plus get my walking stick going, to keep up. What a great challenge.
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