Joint Venture’s 2016 State of the Valley Conference last week had EVERYTHING:
· A current elected official in San José Mayor Sam Liccardo
· Former Members of Congress George Miller and Newt Gingrich (who, as it turns out, is a not-so-secret Kardashian scholar)
· Current White House Technology Advisor Todd Park
· Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros
· Michelle Lee, Director of the United State Patent & Trademark Office
· Academics Stefan Heck and Jeffrey Ball from Stanford University
· Industry representatives from Tesla, BMW, and Toyota
Joint Venture President and CEO Russell Hancock kicked off the event with a thoughtful, intelligent, and nuanced presentation of the annual Silicon Valley Index, a fascinating study of the Valley’s economic strength and overall community health. All the underlying data is available here: http://siliconvalleyindicators.org/
What Joint Venture does best is connect the private, public, academic, and nonprofit sectors to leverage the collective knowledge of those groups. Given that mission, it seems only fitting that Joint Venture honored Code for America founder Jennifer Pahlka with its highest honor, the David Packard Award. Pahlka’s efforts to bring the best of Silicon Valley to the public sector does indeed meet the “highest standard for civic engagement,” and Pahlka’s work and influence – ranging from the local Code for San José brigade to the Obama administration – is just the inspiration 2016 needs.
Here’s a look at the conversation:
