Following the annual dinner, KCALSI with the support of Kauffman Foundation held a full day of exponential learning for community leaders called Exponential KC. The day provided 160+ attendees the opportunity to hear from local and international experts in exponential opportunities.
The keynote morning session was given by astronaut, physician, inventor and entrepreneur, Dan Barry. His talk opened the day detailing the fragility of our environment, the risk of space travel and the opportunity in robotics and artificial intelligence.
The morning presentations offered examples of our regional strategic priorities interlaced with exponential opportunities including the nexus of human and animal health, precision medicine and outcomes research presented by Jimi Cook (University of Missouri), Stephen Kingsmore (Childrens Mercy), and John Spertus (Saint Luke’s Hospital) respectively. Each presented a compelling case for opportunities developing here in the Kansas City region.
Marcus Shingles presented the afternoon keynote session and described the power of exponentials including crowdsourcing, the maker movement and shared economy. Marcus gave examples of outsourcing bioinformatics and data challenges to the smartest people on earth – the millions on the internet! Market research is now conducted by anyone at any time and organized on apps like Gigwalk. And he reminded us of the likelihood of failure, so fail fast and move on.
The afternoon panel included Truman Medical Center physician and earlier technology adopter David Voran along with Mohit Tiwari (UT Austin), Anna Young (MIT) and Elmar Mock (Creaholic) discussing how to bring exponentials to life and the challenges with implementation.
Finally, Kevin McGinnis, Sprint VP and head of Pinsight Media, summarized the day and helped us appreciate possibilities in Kansas City and the importance of creating our own identity. Kevin is an entrepreneur within Sprint and brought the Sprint Accelerator to Kansas City to bring new technologies, companies and entrepreneurs to the region and to the Sprint ecosystem.
The purpose of Exponential KC was to expose community leaders and entrepreneurs to the opportunities that lie within exponential technologies. We must be ever diligent to identify demonetized and dematerialized opportunities with digital backbones. The future of Kansas City lives within each of us.
Video recordings of Exponential KC will be available on our website in the near future.