SDForum attendees got a glimpse of the future last Friday. Microsoft hosted the 4th Annual SDForum Teens Conference – an assembly of some of the most dynamic and creative young minds in Silicon Valley.
I had the pleasure of moderating a panel of high energy high school students who are using technology to pursue their dreams of, well, simply: changing the world. Why not indeed?
Katherine Nasol, a junior at Notre Dame High School, who aims to eradicate child trafficking in the Philippines through her Pagkabata Project, put it best:
“In a time where youth have a bad reputation of going on Facebook all day and spending most of our time playing video games, this conference challenges that notion. Youth have the power to do anything, whether it be building a global network or changing the world views to care for the environment.”
Her colleagues were equally impressive, from Emily Gran, who wants the world to take action in response to climate change (and has created a high school syllabus to trigger that change); to Daniel Brusilovsky who founded Teens in Tech Networksto help launch young entrepreneurs in business (and wants to replace Steve Jobs at Apple when he grows up – there will be no stopping this guy !); to Veronica Hume and Diana Chen who have created the GirlsForTech site to connect techie girls around the world; to Emily Munoz and Natalie Hon,Freestyle Academy students, who made a documentary about the importance of arts education in schools.
Panelists include, from the left: Diana Chen (Mountain View) , Veronica Hume (St. Francis), Katherine Nasol (Notre Dame), Emily Gran (Menlo Atherton) and Daniel Brusilovski (Aragon) and not photographed: Emily Munoz (Mountain View) and Nathalie Hon (Los Altos). Moderator: Alison van Diggelen
For more Fresh Dialogues interviews with teens, click here and check out our full archiveof interviews with Paul Krugman, Tom Friedman, Martin Sheen et al.
I talked to celebrated tech leader and VC Ann Winblad at Hummer Winblad on December 5th. New jobless figures had just been released, and were reminiscent of the mid 1970’s. Yet, despite that gloom, the views over the Embarcadero to San Francisco Bay Bridge were breathtaking, and Ann, in true venture capitalist style, was refreshingly upbeat.
She talked about her early days:
Working in the strawberry fields of Minnesota at age 7… “I learned that patience and focus is a very good balance with overall efficiency; and that’s served me well as an entrepreneur.”
Drinking the Kool-Aid. To be a successful VC, “we have to look at the glass as half full….we have to slurp up that Kool-Aid for an instant, but we can’t get addicted.”
“SDForum is an open door to entrepreneurs and innovators…we’ve funded several companies from walk-in meetings…Susan Lucas (Conwell) is our CEO and a remarkable director.”
Is Green Tech going to save Silicon Valley? “The press likes to focus on Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer; they forget about Prancer and Dancer and Donner and Blitzen. They want one cartoon character of salvation.”
Ann has been friends with Bill Gates for over 20 years. What was the atmosphere like among software experts in the mid 80’s? “Everybody was working so hard…we’d get together for dinners and we all had a lot of fun. People would share their stories…their dreams. That’s how we got to know that some people had bigger dreams than others.”
In part two of Fresh Dialogues with Ann Winblad, we explore top market trends, cloud computing, virtualization and the attributes of successful VCs. Check back soon.
