May 24, 2011 - Tuesday
Micro Agronomy Meet Up
Event Video Available
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Micro-Agronomy (Micro-Ag) Meet-Up is for people who believe that micro farming is going to change in the future and want to be part of it. The last decade has been an exciting time as people started growing gardens up-side-down and even on vertical walls. The small farm, back yard and indoor vegetation have become a new experience.
The health benefits go beyond just small amounts of food, to improving air quality, the natural environment and providing healthy exercise. In fact, gardening is rated among the top ten best forms of exercise.
Some people are becoming part of this movement for reasons of self-sufficiency and others just for the fun of it. Farming is tied to our happiness, well being and the good life. Will it always be just that memory of a day on the farm or can it become a more significant part of our future?
We at the DaVinci Institute think this will be a central part of our future. For this reason, we are planning something big, and you can be part of it.
At this Meetup we will fill you in on what we are working on. Join us as we share visions, investigate emerging opportunities and help define where the future of Micro Agronomy can go.
EVENT: Micro Agronomy Meet Up
DATE: May 24, 2011 - Tuesday
TIME: 6:30pm-9:00pm
WEBSITE: http://www.davinciinstitute.com/events/541/micro-agronomy-meet-up---wednesday-june-22-2011
LOCATION: DaVinci Institute, 511 E. South Boulder Road, Louisville, CO 80027
DIRECTIONS: Driving Directions
COST: $0, Members: Free, SuperMembers: Free
PHONE: 303-666-4133
TOPIC: Micro Agronomy Meet Up
SPEAKERS: Bert Vermeulen, Brian Baker, Jeffrey Samson, Kevin Weller, Thomas Frey
HOST: Bert Vermeulen
Senior Fellow at the DaVinci Institute, and the Founder of Corp21
Bert Vermeulen has worked around the world for a variety of businesses, both large and small, and both successful and not so successful. This includes:
- Helping to build a $160M/year tape drive business for Hewlett Packard in Bristol, UK.
- Partnering with a Colorado based-entrepreneur to grow a manufacturing business to over $25M/year in revenues and then successfully selling it. He then helped the new parent company acquire and build other similar businesses in Ireland and Hungary.
- Providing in depth help and guidance to over 30 startups and smaller enterprises during the last 5 years, some of which have done quite well. This has provided exposure to a number of excellent entrepreneurs as well as some that were flawed and others that were lucky.
- Creating an industry association in an emerging retail field (meal prep) and providing consulting support to over 400 enterprises in this field.
- Doing independent research on why some companies succeed while others don’t.
- Serving as a guest presenter on entrepreneurship at a number of universities and industry groups.
HOST: Brian Baker
Principal at Small Planet West
Brian Baker created one of the very first web sites in the early 1990’s, and spent the next 10 years working in software, building several of the most visited websites, Fortune 100 enterprise systems, and management software tools. He is responsible for several online technologies we use every day, including how we read our news and how we view online video content. Mr. Baker moved to hardware design in 2003, finding great success with his own consumer electronics startup, selling product at national retail and earning awards and media attention around the world (company sold to a private equity group in 2008).
For the past 3 years Mr. Baker has helped Fortune 500 clients and startups with product discovery/design, marketing, and the manufacturing of consumer electronics and textile products. Mr. Baker has won several awards for user-centric approach to interactive and physical product design; including Forbes 'Best of the Web,' Yahoo's yearly 'User Experience' award, and the DaVinci Institute's own 'Inventor of the Year Award.' Mr. Baker sits on the board of three companies, and loves motorcycling in the Rocky Mountains.
HOST: Jeffrey Samson
Founded Samson Design, a product design and development firm
Jeffrey Samson has been involved in product development for 35 years, working on large systems like mass transit vehicles to micro-precise surgical scalpels and instruments. In 1984, Jeff founded Samson Design, a product design and development firm, specializing in product solutions for the medical, consumer and high tech industries. His firm’s clients include 3M, Medtronic, Emerson Process, Coleman, Pelco Security Systems, Lund, Gates, Coors, IBM, HP, Agilent, Ingersol-Rand, Sartorius, ADAC Laboratories, Valley Lab and Becton Dickinson. Under Jeff’s direction, his team has launched over 40 medical products including electro-surgical generators, sterilizers, a kidney dialyses machine, infusion pumps, an EKG harness, recyclable medical waste handling equipment, an intra-venous catheter, disposable surgical pencils, a closed chest heart by-pass surgical device, a vessel-clamping ligature, an ostomy pump and nozzle system, an inferred mammography machine and two nucleo-medical imaging machines. The products have been recognized for design excellence, including the prestigious Medical Design Excellence Award in 1999.
Jeff received his masters' degree in Industrial Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art and completed post-graduate work in Design Management at Harvard University. In addition to his corporate and consultant R&D experience, Jeff served on the faculty of RIT, the University of Colorado, and the University of North Carolina. He serves on several design and corporate advisory boards, has hosted a radio program on Advanced Materials and Technology, and facilitated special product innovation sessions nationally.
HOST: Kevin Weller
Software Architect and Web Developer
Kevin Weller is a veteran software architect and web developer with more than 20 years of professional experience in many different information technologies and roles. He has spent well over 16 years focused primarily on database-driven web application engineering in Java, C, C++, 4GL, Perl, and Ruby on Rails. Key roles and accomplishments include:
- Senior Engineer, Private Networks - Implemented one of the very first database-driven private internet sites (extranets) in 1995 (arguably one of the internet's pioneering years in terms of mass-market popularity).
- Program Architect, BEA Systems - Designed the common architecture and infrastructure for BEA's public web portals on the J2EE stack and the WebLogic product suite.
- CTO, X-Ray Analysis & Distribution - Architected and built a sophisticated tele-radiology solution involving DICOM image processing, 3-D bone structure modeling, and secure data transmission over the internet.
- CEO, ASAP WebSoft - As both an engineer and team project manager, built several scalable systems of Rails web applications and batch servers for clients--including those that run clubdining.com and idwatchdog.com--fully integrated with back-end and third-party business systems.
HOST: Thomas Frey
Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute
Thomas Frey is Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute as well as Google top rated futurist speaker.
As part of the celebrity speaking circuit, Tom continually pushes the envelope of understanding, creating fascinating images of the world to come. His keynote talks on futurist topics have captivated people ranging from high level government officials to executives in Fortune 500 companies including NASA, IBM, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent Technologies, First Data, Boeing, Capital One, Bell Canada, Visa, Ford Motor Company, Qwest, Allied Signal, Hunter Douglas, Direct TV, International Council of Shopping Centers, National Association of Federal Credit Unions, Times of India, Leaders in Dubai, and many more.
Because of his work inspiring inventors and other revolutionary thinkers, Tom has been referred to as the modern "Father of Invention" and the "Dean of Futurists." Before launching the DaVinci Institute, Tom spent 15 years at IBM as an engineer and designer where he received over 270 awards, more than any other IBM engineer.
