Center For Digital Transformation Research Forum To Examine 'Quiet Revolutions'
The Center for Digital Transformation at Penn State's Smeal College of Business will host its semiannual research forum in September 2008 to examine "quiet revolutions"—technologies that are altering major market segments yet receive little attention in the popular media.
Center For Digital Transformation Research Forum To Examine 'Quiet Revolutions'
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (August 1, 2008) – The Center for Digital Transformation at Penn State's Smeal College of Business will host its semiannual research forum next month to examine "quiet revolutions"—technologies that are altering major market segments yet receive little attention in the popular media.
The fall research forum will be held Sept. 30 to Oct. 1 on Penn State's University Park campus. Previous research forums have been devoted to The Data Economy, Paradoxes of Digitization, and The Next Enterprise.
At this forum, leading technology experts from industry and academia will offer insights on several quiet revolutions currently making an impact.
Richard Taylor, Palmer Chair of Telecommunications Studies and Law at Penn State's College of Communications, will join John Jordan, executive director of the Center for Digital Transformation, in a discussion of current trends affecting the telecommunications industry. They will discuss global trends in mobile and IP-based voice services, implications of the drop in circuit-switched voice traffic, and the growing availability of multimedia via cell phones.
Dr. Charles Peterson and Amy Nyswaner of the U.S. Army Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center will discuss surgical robots. Peterson and Nyswaner are current members of the team that first envisioned and developed the robots that are now being successfully commercialized by Intuitive Surgical.
John Ackermann, chief strategist for Linear Air, will discuss the growing air taxi market. As major airlines struggle with the many limitations of the hub-and-spoke model, firms like Linear Air are employing small, inexpensive "very light jets" to challenge the traditional airline model with customer-initiated, point-to-point service.
Jeff Thomas, chief executive officer of World Sports Technology Inc. and president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, will discuss the future of the fantasy sports industry. An estimated 35 million North Americans have participated in a fantasy sports competition, and after this year's Supreme Court ruling that fantasy leagues do not need to pay royalties on box scores or statistics, the $800 million global business has further impetus to grow.
Mark VanderWiele, Distinguished Engineer with IBM Research's Compute Cloud Initiative, will talk about "cloud computing," which allows Internet users to plug in to vast resources through standard Internet technologies without regard to location.
Additionally, the forum will feature a presentation from an unnamed start-up company that is developing powerful and somewhat controversial search tools.
Such blue-chip organizations as American Express, AT&T, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deutsche Bank, Ernst & Young, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, SAP, Transunion, Verizon, WPP, and Xerox are expected to be represented at the forum.
Attendance at the fall research forum is complimentary, but by invitation only. For more information about the forum or the Center for Digital Transformation, visit www.smeal.psu.edu/cdt or contact Heather Weikel at hweikel@psu.edu.
REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Wyatt DuBois in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or wed112@psu.edu.
Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Center for Digital Transformation, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.
