On a brisk fall morning at the Yale School of Management’s Evans Hall, faculty, students, and staff gathered to hear their peers discuss cloud computing strategy, global online education, advances in architectural prototyping, and integrating animation in teaching. And that was just in the first hour of the inaugural Yale Technology Summit, which took place October 31, 2014.
Months of planning and the efforts of dozens of ITS staff members and volunteers went into the event, which was coordinated by Yale Information Technology Services for the benefit of the entire Yale community.
“Today, our community comes together to learn and share the innovative ways technology, and the culture of technology, has grown, and continues to grow at Yale,” said University CIO Len Peters in his welcome address. “What I hope you will find is that beneath the innovation is passion.”
In the more than 30 lectures and panels, presented by more than 75 speakers, passion was more than evident. Divided into tracks covering Teaching & Learning, Scholarship & Research, and Entrepreneurship & Innovation, the sessions covered an astonishing range of topics, from mobile technologies in language study to 3-D scanning in medical research. FLY co-chair Alina Nevins presented in the session “Beyond the Blog”. The event also featured poster sessions by Yale and community technology programs, and displays by corporate sponsors, including HB Communications, IBM, Juniper Networks, and Lenovo/GovConnection.
Peabody Museum’s preparator Michael Anderson explained how leaves are preserved for use in the museum’s dioramas.
“I liked the Tech Summit because it gave me a sense of how technology can help develop solutions for real-world problems,” said Charlie Pasternak, a undeclared sophomore in Morse College, who was one of the approximately 400 Yale affiliates who attended the event.
Yale College alumni Justin Kan ’05 and Emmett Shear ‘05, co-founders of the enormously successful video-game website Twitch, presented the keynote session at the event. The pair traced their path from seeking small grants and funding for their startup ventures to the creation of the webcam site Justin.tv, and finally to the creation of Twitch, a company they sold to Amazon for $970 million in September 2014.
Yale College alums Emmett Shear ‘05 (center) and Justin Kan ’05 (right) prepared for their keynote address.
The School of Management’s gleaming new building served as an appropriate backdrop for the summit. One session even focused on the learning technology in Evans Hall classrooms.
“Speaking for all of SOM, we were proud to be host to the first Yale Technology Summit,” said Alan Usas, Director of IT and the CIO of the Yale School of Management. “It was fitting for the event to take place in Evans Hall, the most technically advanced Yale building.”
“From hearing terrific presentations on the effective use of technology in teaching, learning, and research to enjoying animated post-session discussions, Summit attendees were challenged with new ideas on a wide range of topics.”
HB Communications, one of the event’s sponsors, discussed their technologies at the vendor fair.
CIO Peters has pledged to make the Yale Technology Summit an annual event.
Peters said that future iterations of the Yale Technology Summit will give Yale faculty, students, alumni, and staff “an opportunity to come together as a community to continue the dialogue about the vibrant ways in which technology is being used to drive new breakthroughs, cure diseases, improve student outcomes, share knowledge with the world, and spark entrepreneurial enterprises.”
“As a community, let’s seize the tremendous opportunities that technology at Yale has to offer.”
View the Keynote session with Justin Kan ’05 and Emmett Shear ‘05
View more images of the event on Instagram
Emmett Shear ‘05 (left) and Justin Kan ’05 described their path to success as founders of Twitch.
Some attendees sported costumes; the event took place on Halloween.
Written by Roger Ngim, Associate Director, Office of the CIO for the ITS Monday Morning News