The Week in Silicon Valley
Tamara Delaney `02
Issue date: 2/13/01 Section: Johnson News
- Page 1 of 2 next >
From glimpsing a fully automated future to participating in a product-development brainstorming session, attendees of the Fifth Annual Week in Silicon Valley were captivated by the innovative spirit of the high-tech sector. The tour, attended by 40 students as well as Professors John McAdams and Dick Conway, included visits to companies such as Intel, Yahoo, 3Com and Ideo plus attendance at several Bay Area networking functions with the Johnson and Cornell communities. A result of months of planning by the High Tech Club, the trip was a huge success and much enjoyed by all who participated.
The tour kicked off Sunday, January 7th at the Hotel Sofitel in Redwood City, where the Cornell Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise program (EPE) hosted a dinner attended by area alumni. Keynote speaker Jeffrey Hawkins, Cornell '79 and CEO of Handspring Inc., gave an inspirational speech detailing the progression of his career and his creation of the Palm Pilot. Early the next morning, the group climbed onto the bus and headed over to iSpheres, a start-up that develops Internet infrastructure software. Ethan Rafferty '97 discussed the importance of developing culture in a start-up company, and pointed to the open, sun-lit space, oval meeting room and lofted nap area as indicative of the company's fun, dynamic and collaborative culture.
Tuesday the bus headed to Hewlett-Packard, where the group experienced "Cooltown," HP's vision of a future where every person, place and thing is web-linked. Imagine, a wireless, hand-held web access device that tracks the movements of your bus route and notifies you when you must leave to catch the bus, or a wristband that calls an ambulance when your pulse drops below a critical rate. These are among the hundreds of capabilities HP forecasts for a web-linked future. Later that afternoon, Johnson School students met their most enthusiastic welcome of the week from Yahoo!, where senior vice-president Tim Brady led an interactive discussion about the company, culminating in the awarding of door prizes to several lucky students.
The tour kicked off Sunday, January 7th at the Hotel Sofitel in Redwood City, where the Cornell Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise program (EPE) hosted a dinner attended by area alumni. Keynote speaker Jeffrey Hawkins, Cornell '79 and CEO of Handspring Inc., gave an inspirational speech detailing the progression of his career and his creation of the Palm Pilot. Early the next morning, the group climbed onto the bus and headed over to iSpheres, a start-up that develops Internet infrastructure software. Ethan Rafferty '97 discussed the importance of developing culture in a start-up company, and pointed to the open, sun-lit space, oval meeting room and lofted nap area as indicative of the company's fun, dynamic and collaborative culture.
Tuesday the bus headed to Hewlett-Packard, where the group experienced "Cooltown," HP's vision of a future where every person, place and thing is web-linked. Imagine, a wireless, hand-held web access device that tracks the movements of your bus route and notifies you when you must leave to catch the bus, or a wristband that calls an ambulance when your pulse drops below a critical rate. These are among the hundreds of capabilities HP forecasts for a web-linked future. Later that afternoon, Johnson School students met their most enthusiastic welcome of the week from Yahoo!, where senior vice-president Tim Brady led an interactive discussion about the company, culminating in the awarding of door prizes to several lucky students.