TTI/Vanguard - Citizendia

TTI/Vanguard is a Santa Monica-based company that puts on five conferences a year for senior business executives exploring upcoming trends in technology, with a 2-5 year horizon.

1 History
2 Activities
3 Advisory Board
4 Business Model
5 Profile of Member-Organizations
6 The Conferences
- 6.1 Speakers
- 6.2 Format
7 Notes
8 External Links

History

While working for CSC Index, a division of Computer Sciences Corporation, Dr. CSC2jpg|thumb|250px|CSC's branch office in HITEC City, Hyderabad, India]] Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC is an Information technology Richard J. Schroth co-founded CSC/Vanguard with fellow CSC Index-er Chunka Mui in November 1991. CSC/Vanguard's mission was to put on forward-looking conferences about upcoming technological developments for senior business executives. The topics of these conferences were chosen and developed by an advisory board of distinguished technologists.

In 1998, CSC/Vanguard was spun off and become a part of Technology Transfer Institute, a Santa Monica-based company "founded in 1976 to provide quality education and training in the computer and telecommunications areas"^[1]. The former CSC/Vanguard, now renamed TTI/Vanguard, continued putting on conferences for senior executives concerning upcoming technological developments, with the help of its advisory board. TTI also offered nuts-and-bolts training for IT practitioners but, over time, stopped offering IT training seminars and tradeshows to focus exclusively on the high-end TTI/Vanguard executive conferences. l

Activities

TTI/Vanguard offers five conferences a year in different cities throughout the world. These conferences are typically two days long, often with an optional field trip to a local university or technology company on the day after the conference's end. Each TTI/Vanguard conference is focussed on a topic related to an upcoming trend in technology. These topics, which change every year, are chosen and fleshed out by TTI/Vanguard's Advisory Board, a group of twelve well-known and well-regarded figures in technology.

Advisory Board

The advisory board consists of: John Perry Barlow, Gordon Bell, Peter Cochrane, Deborah Estrin, Eric Haseltine, Michael Hawley, Alan Kay, Leonard Kleinrock, Douglas Lenat, Robert Lucky, Nicholas Negroponte and David Reed. John Perry Barlow (born October 3, 1947) is an American Poet, Essayist, retired Wyoming cattle rancher political Gordon Bell (disambiguation C Gordon Bell (born August 19, 1934) is a Computer engineer and manager Peter Cochrane (born 11 July, 1946 -) is an English futurist. Deborah Estrin is a professor of Computer Science at UCLA. She is a pioneer in the field of Embedded network sensing and is the director of the Center for Dr Eric Haseltine is a technologist who has worked in senior-executive positions in both industry and the United States intelligence community Previously at MIT’s Media Laboratory, Michael Hawley is an artist and researcher working in the field of digital media Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) is an American Computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on Object-oriented programming Leonard Kleinrock PhD (born June 13, 1934 in New York) is a Computer scientist, and a professor of computer science at UCLA Douglas B Lenat (born in 1950 is the CEO of Cycorp Inc of Austin Texas, and has been a prominent researcher in Artificial intelligence, Robert Wendell Lucky (b 1936 in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania) is a retired electrical engineer Nicholas Negroponte (born December 1, 1943) is a Greek-American Architect and Computer scientist best known as the founder and Chairman David P Reed (born January 31, 1952) is an American computer scientist educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, known for a number ^[2]

Business Model

TTI/Vanguard is a membership-based organization and its conferences may only be attended by members. Membership entitles members to attend 5 consecutive conferences, regardless of when the member joined. It is not possible to pay to attend a single conference.

In addition to the conferences, membership also includes access to archived conference materials as well as the ability to participate in workshops and also to go on optional post-conference field trips to local research and development labs, both academic and corporate, that would be difficult to arrange otherwise. ^[3]

Profile of Member-Organizations

The company characterizes its member-organizations ^[4] as follows: "TTI/Vanguard member organizations represent global private, public, and academic sectors. Members include: brand-name manufacturers, cutting-edge software and hardware developers, aerospace and defense companies, financial and investment institutions, insurers, retailers, pharmaceutical and healthcare groups, telecommunications firms, corporate and government labs, service providers and consulting groups, energy and chemical companies, broadcasters, startups, Internet businesses, food and beverage companies, universities, and top advisors in international government agencies. " ^[5]

The Conferences

Speakers

TTI/Vanguard's conferences feature talks by technologists, academic experts, futurists, business-leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, authors of fiction and non-fiction, and journalists. ^[6]

Format

TTI/Vanguard conferences are typically two-days long, occasionally with a field-trip to a local research and development facility on the day after.

Unlike many conferences, the TTI/Vanguard conferences are interactive, with the audience expected to interrupt the speaker with questions and comments. Author David Weinberger, described his experience as a speaker as follows:

"Everyone in the audience has a microphone and is encouraged to interrupt with questions and disagreements. David Weinberger (born 1950 in New York) is an American technologist professional speaker and commentator probably best known as co-author of the Cluetrain So, I didn't make it all the way through my talk, which is common here. Unsurprisingly, the comments were quite trenchant: . . . I should have figured more audience-conversation time into my talk. I was well into describing tagging when the big red light flashed, and I didn't get to the conclusions I outlined in my previous post. "^[7]

Conference recordings and documents are later archived in a repository accessible by TTI/Vanguard members.