May 3, 2014 10:46pm PDT

TiEcon 2014, marking the 21st consecutive TiEcon, is one of the largest & longest ongoing conference focused around entrepreneurship and tech innovation. Ranked alongside Demo, TED and World Economic Forum among top 10 conferences worldwide for ideas and entrepreneurship by Worth magazine, TiEcon last year attracted 3600 technology professionals from over 50 countries. Over a two-day period, TiEcon 2014 will once again focus on the hottest areas of innovation.

There will be three full-day tracks on Friday, May 16th focusing on Cloud Infrastructure, Big Data and Internet of Things.  Saturday, May 17th will focus on best practices for entrepreneurs for starting, funding, building, growing and creating long-term value for their start-ups. In addition, on Saturday, there will be tracks on Youth Entrepreneurs, Disruption in Health Care , NexGen Technology Services, Energy and Impact Investing.  Attendees will hear perspectives of  industry luminaries, VCs, successful entrepreneurs and seasoned executives. TiEcon also offers  opportunity to interact with a chosen mentor, find a co-founder of your next venture or interact with innovative companies in the Expo area.

Join us in this ode to the spirit of entrepreneurship! Register Now!

Grand Keynote - Catching Fire: Tapping into the new cognitive computing market
Speaker: 
May 16, 2014
9:30am - 10:00am
PDT
Day: 
Friday, May 16th
Start Time: 
09:30 am
End Time: 
10:00 am

A new class of cognitive systems is emerging that will change the dynamics and marketplace of information technology.  It will create new businesses opportunities and change the way applications think, act and operate. 

IBM’s Watson, the leader in cognitive systems, understands deep natural language and can infer contextual insights across large volumes of unstructured content.  With a $1B investment in commercializing the technology, and $100M in equity to accelerate IBM's recently launched Watson Ecosystem, IBM invites entrepreneurs to tap into the technology and join IBM in making new markets.  The Watson Ecosystem is poised to spark innovation across industries and catalyze a new breed of cognitive applications. 

This panel will delve into the Watson ecosystem and the important role entrepreneurs play in the creation of new markets.

 

Speakers

Manoj Saxena

Manoj Saxena

Managing Director
The Entrepreneur’s Fund IV

Manoj Saxena is a founding General Partner of The Entrepreneur’s Fund IV where he oversees investment and growth in the Cognitive and Cloud Computing space. Saxena is a serial entrepreneur and most recently was IBM’s General Manager for the Watson Division.

At TEF, Saxena focuses on identifying, investing, and scaling cloud-centric software companies in the Cognitive Computing space and aligned with the IBM Watson Cloud ecosystem. Saxena is also a Special Advisor to IBM senior leadership where he focuses on operationalizing IBM’s $100m Watson Cloud Ecosystem Fund and making side-by-side investments with the TEF IV fund. He is interested in meeting entrepreneurs and technologists with original ideas, and executives with strong track records and can be reached at [email protected].

Prior to joining TEF, Saxena was General Manager, IBM Watson where his team built the world’s first cognitive systems in Healthcare, Financial Services, and Retail. He received the IBM Chairman’s award for Watson commercialization and helped with the formation of Watson Business Group in January 2014 with a $1B investment from IBM. Prior to IBM, Saxena successfully founded, scaled, and sold two venture-backed software companies within a five year span. Webify, an emerging leader in industry-specific SOA middleware, which was acquired by IBM in 2006, and Exterprise, a business process collaboration company, purchased by Commerce One in 2001. Saxena holds two U.S. patents for web services technologies.

He currently serves on several boards including the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, San Antonio Branch, Communities In Schools, and the Saxena Family Foundation. Saxena holds a masters degree in business administration from Michigan State University, and a masters in management sciences from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science in Pilani, India.

Mike Rhodin

Mike Rhodin

Senior Vice President
IBM Watson Group

Mike Rhodin is Senior Vice President, IBM Watson Group.  

Watson is one of IBM’s most significant innovations in the company’s 103-year history and represents a new era of information technology. IBM will invest more than $1 billion in the Watson Group, focusing on development, research and bringing cloud-delivered, cognitive applications and services to market.

Mike is playing a key role in leading the IBM Watson Group (@IBMWatson) to accelerate into the marketplace a new class of software, services and apps that have the ability to think, improve by learning, and discover answers and insights to complex questions from massive amounts of data. Mike is also leading the effort in building the Watson ecosystem with $100 Million venture investments to support start-ups and businesses that are building a new class of cognitive apps powered by Watson, in the IBM Watson Developers Cloud.

Before heading up the Watson Group, Mike led the Software Solutions Group, delivering industry-specific solutions in high-growth areas such as Business Analytics, Smarter Commerce, Smarter Cities and Social Business. Mike’s 30-year career at IBM has been infused with a passion for helping clients extract value from their technology investments, improving their business performance, and simplifying the way people work.

Mike joined IBM in 1984 after he graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science.

Moderator

R "Ray" Wang

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst, Founder, and Chairman
Constellation Research, Inc.

R "Ray" Wang is a Principal Analyst, Founder, and Chairman of Constellation Research, Inc. He's also the author of the popular enterprise software blog "A Software Insider’s Point of View". With viewership in the millions of page views a year, his blog provides insight into how disruptive technologies and new business models impact the...Read more

 

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