13 cool technologies & 6 trends after 3 weeks in San Francisco

I’ve just returned from 3 weeks in the bay area. The trip started with the Singularity University Global Summit and ended with Techcrunch…

Leslie Barry

Leslie Barry

— 3 min read
13 cool technologies & 6 trends after 3 weeks in San Francisco

I’ve just returned from 3 weeks in the bay area. The trip started with the Singularity University Global Summit and ended with Techcrunch Disrupt and the Rocketspace Innovation Collective Summit. More on these later, but here’s the coolest tech and trends I saw that made an impact on me.

13 things

  • Meeting an Astronaut, So-Yeon Yi , The VR World Builder for the Hawaii Mars simulation and an animator from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. In the same hour.
  • Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis speaking about exponential technology and amplification of these when they combine. With evidence.
  • Airpods. Because they solve this problem …and they’re going to make it feel ok to talk to your AI / Bot / Siri in public.
  • Chatbots. Platforms for chatbots. Chatbots for medical advice, stock advice, sports tips.
  • Building or experimenting with a bot? Check out the bot list below.
How to build your best bot: the Bot Stack Compendium
You might have noticed the craze for all things conversational these days.
  • Lowe’s, a home improvement business putting a 3D-printer in space and launching robots that welcome customers and scan aisles for stock levels in their downtime.

Meeting people who think at ‘Billion people’ scale to create impact. Like a Billion tree planting drone.

  • IBM Watson is everywhere. And you can enter the Xprize for AI
  • Reframing Artificial Intelligence as Augmented Intelligence.

A privately funded Moon Lander — ETA 2017

  • Taptic touch using either ultrasound or static electricity. Useful for feedback that you can feel on your screen and VR.
  • Paint like a master with a few squiggles using AI. try NeuralDoodle -
  • Pepper the robot. Engaging and useful.
  • Big bets on VR. In-VR engagement models getting figured out. Think about Authentication, killer apps.
  • The concept of the rising billions. Imagine the impact of 3 Billion new minds coming online in the next 5 years?
  • Smart money is going into ‘AI anything’ startup. Words of warning from Riva.

Starting a movement vs starting a traditional company. Dirk from Hyperloop has an incredible CrowdStorming story. Join the Hyperloop project here.

Thinking about the least data you can use to get the result. An example is a company building minimalist maps for autonomous vehicles. They don’t need to know about trees and the height of buildings to navigate.

I’ll explore these concepts further in future posts. Let me know in the comments if there’s anything specific you’d like to understand.

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