800 Irish-US executives for innovation summit

THE LARGEST gathering to date of Irish and Irish-American technology executives in Silicon Valley will take place in California next week.

About 800 people are expected to attend the fifth Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG) Innovation Summit, which takes place in Santa Clara on Monday and Tuesday.

Among the speakers and panellists appearing at the event are: Dr Craig Barrett, the former chairman and chief executive of Intel and current chairman of the ITLG; Roger McNamee, founder of Elevation Partners – the private equity firm where Bono is a partner and which has a significant stake in Facebook; John O’Farrell, partner in Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm founded by Netscape web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen, which is one of the most active funds in the Valley, and Carl Schram, the economist and entrepreneur who is a former chief executive of the Kauffman Foundation.

“For our fifth anniversary it’s basically bigger, better, more,” says John Hartnett, founder and president of the ITLG.

The summit, which is being sponsored by HP for the first time, will also be attended by the business people included in this year’s Silicon Valley 50, the ITLG’s list of the most influential Irish and Irish Americans in the worlds of technology and media.

“Irish business people in the US are fairly visible but Irish-Americans are not so much so,” Hartnett adds.

“It gets these people involved and aware of technology in Ireland. A lot of them may only have a had a cultural or family link to Ireland so we are trying to change that.”

Companies attending the event will also be able to participate in a CEO Bootcamp which the ITLG is running in association with its education partner, the Kauffman Foundation. The four-hour session will be given by Nathan Gold, who specialises in helping companies such as SanDisk, Symbol Technologies, Nokia and IBM to demonstrate and pitch their products and services.

“A lot of companies in Ireland have really good technology but they are not telling their story as well as they could,” Hartnett says.

The ITLG/ Irish TimesSilicon Valley Awards, which recognise Ireland's most innovative emerging technology companies, will be presented at the event.

The nominees in the biotech/cleantech category are: AER Sustainable Energy; Elimbac; Radisens Diagnostics and Redt.

In entertainment and gaming, the nominees are: ClearTone Technologies; Digital Jet; OmniMotion Technology; and VenueOne.

IKON Semiconductor, Rapt Touch and Smyth Research will compete for the hardware/semiconductor category, while in the mobile/social media/web category, the nominees are Aepona, Phlok, RepKnight, Storyful and Betapond.