Journey Conference II
written by David A. Broadwin
The Journey conference was attended by close to two thousand attendees from Israel and abroad, and offered various lectures, workshops and presentations. Prof. Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab, gave a keynote lecture on technology trends and presented One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit association which he founded dedicated to developing and distributing to children around the world a $100 laptop. Later on, attendees had a choice of several workshops on trends in the wireless, semiconductor, internet and nanotechnology industries, as well as on IPOs in the US and London, strategic acquisitions and more. The most popular sessions were part of the Healthcare Track, including a lecture by Professor Elazer Edelman from the Harvard - MIT Biomedical Engineering Center titled New Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine. Prof. Edelman mentioned several start up companies, some of whom are Israeli, which developed innovative technologies in the area of cardiovascular medicine. It seems that life sciences related companies, and in particular medical devices companies, are gaining more attention in Israel and drawing large investments from local and foreign investors. The Israeli VC and technology arena is definitely a dynamic and productive sector which generates innovative and cutting edge technologies. The success of the Journey conference, despite the fact that it was being held so shortly after the war, reaffirmed this reality.