Press releases

O'Reilly Reveals ETech 2009 Program at Web 2.0 Summit

Press release: November 6, 2008

Sebastopol, CA, November 6, 2008—Registration has opened for ETech, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, scheduled for March 9-12 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, California. Conference chair Brady Forrest has unveiled the program, which explores the technology of abundance and constraints to discover ideas that matter.

ETech is O'Reilly Media's flagship "O'Reilly Radar" event. Since 2002, ETech has put onstage ideas for radical innovation, bringing to light the disruptive yet important innovations that we see on the horizon, rather than the ones that have already arrived.

Among the participants expected to explore the future at ETech are hackers, grass roots developers, researchers, strategists, makers, thought leaders, artists, entrepreneurs, business developers, venture capitalists, city planners, medical professionals, life scientists, CxOs and IT managers, doers, and other technical visionaries.

New speakers and sessions join the program daily. Featured speakers include:

  • Mary Lou Jepsen, named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People for her work in creating Pixel Qi and for her previous work blazing a trail with One Laptop per Child
  • Joi Ito (Creative Commons), "Creative Commons - Creating Legal and Technical Interoperability"
  • Drew Endy (Stanford and the BioBricks Foundation), "Building a New Biology"
  • Eric Paulos (Carnegie Mellon University), "Enabling Citizen Science"
  • Jane McGonigal (Avant Game), "Superstruct: How to Invent the Future by Playing a Game"
  • Aaron Koblin (Google) "Making Art with Lasers, Sensors and the Net"
  • Chris Spurgeon (spurgeonworld.com) "How New Materials Change History"
  • Ben Ceverny (Stamen Design) and Kevin Slavin (area/code) "The New 'Situation': Frameworks for Spatial Mediation"
  • Andrea Vaccari (MIT) "The Real Time City"
  • Tony Jebara (Columbia University) "Mobile Phones Reveal the Behavior of Places and People"

What technologies cross the divide between those who have plenty and those who make do with what's available? How do the two interact and learn from each other? ETech will explore some of these areas at the intersection of abundance and constraint:

  • City Tech
  • Materials and Mechanics
  • Personalized Healthcare
  • Mobile and The Web
  • Geek Family
  • Nomadism and Shedworking
  • Sustainable Life

ETech 2009 offers attendees:

  • A full day of workshops led by experts and innovators
  • Three days of single-track plenary sessions
  • Demos, panels, presentations, interview-style conversations, "high order bits" demoing cool startups and applications
  • A Sponsor Gallery featuring the latest offerings from leading-edge companies
  • FreeTech, an unconference open to all attendees
  • The Emerging Arts Fest exploring the intersection of art and technology
  • Birds of a Feather sessions and other evening activities designed to connect participants informally

ETech 2009 sponsors include Sun Microsystems, Yahoo! Developer Network, IEEE Standards Association, and Make Magazine.

Attendees are invited to register for ETech 2009

Please see the Media Registration Info page to request media credentials

Visit the ETech website for more information

Do you have ideas about areas you'd like to see included at the conference?

If you'd like to stay up to date on information relating to ETech, sign up for the conference newsletter (login required).

See ETech's News & Coverage for articles, blogs, photos, and other coverage of last year's event.

View select video and photos from ETech 2008.

Read Tim O'Reilly's take on the future, on the O'Reilly Radar.

For information about sponsorship and exhibit opportunities at the conference, contact Yvonne Romaine at yromaine@oreilly.com.

If you would like to discuss forming a media or promotional partnership with O'Reilly for an upcoming event, contact mediapartners@oreilly.com.

More O'Reilly Conferences:

  • Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco November 5-7, 2008, co-produced with TechWeb
  • O'Reilly Money:Tech Conference in New York City February 4-6, 2009
  • O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in New York City February 9-11, 2009
  • Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco in San Francisco March 31-April 3, 2009, co-produced with TechWeb
  • MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, CA, April 20-23, 2009, co-presented by O'Reilly Media and MySQL
  • RailsConf in Las Vegas, May 4-7, 2009, co-presented with Ruby Central, Inc.
  • Where 2.0 Conference in San Jose, CA, May 19-21, 2009
  • The O'Reilly Found Conference in Burlingame, CA, June 9-11, 2009 —Velocity in San Jose, CA, June 22-24, 2009
  • Velocity in San Jose, CA, June 22-24, 2009
  • OSCON in San Jose, CA, July 20-24, 2009

Conference overview

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