On his initial day in office, President Obama directed the United States' first Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, to develop a more transparent and open government. Chopra was tasked with the massive challenge of ushering in a new era of collaboration with the private sector, one which focused on creating the jobs and industries of the future. Drawing on his experience of promoting productivity growth in public and regulated sectors of the economy, Chopra led efforts to open up government day to spark innovative products and services in the private sector.
Past Talks and Colloquia
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Sep 26 13 6:00pm - 7:30pm
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 Speaker:
Aneesh Chopra |
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Sep 26 13 12:00pm - 2:00pm
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Conventional video mediated communication technologies provide a live window between remote spaces but do not support users who want to create and interact together the same virtual space. Seth Hunter will present the design and implementation of WaaZam, a merged telepresence application that allows users to create personalized play environments. The goal of the project is to facilitate more engaging and creative play experiences for adults and children when they are geographically separated. |
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Sep 24 13 10:00am - 11:30am
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 Join us on Twitter: #MLTalks Daniel Suarez writes Sci-Fi thrillers focused on technology-driven change. His books, Daemon, Freedom™, Kill Decision, and Influx were informed by his nearly two decades as a systems analyst designing mission-critical software for the defense, finance, and entertainment industries. He is a past speaker at TED Global, NASA Ames, the Long Now Foundation, and the headquarters of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. An avid gamer and technologist, he lives in Los Angeles, California. |
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Sep 23 13 2:00pm - 3:30pm
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 As Chairman of National Geographic's Cross Platform Committee and Senior Vice President of Content Development, Mark Bauman oversees the Society's cross platform editorial development process, working with the Executive Editor of the magazine and National Geographic Channel leadership to decide which large projects the Society will feature next. As part of this process, Mark also guides strategy for the hundreds of science and exploration grants that the Society gives each year. |
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Sep 23 13 1:00pm - 3:00pm
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Sartorial Robotics is a method of merging fashion theory and robotics through the design and development of robotic systems. These systems facilitate interaction and play as well as mimic the materiality, aesthetics, and construction techniques of textiles, apparel and fashion. This will enhance the social aspects of human-robotic interaction and assist in how we situate robotics in our lives and cultures. |
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Sep 21 13 9:00am - Sep 22 13 5:00pm
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 Speaker:
Baratunde Thurston Comedy Hack Day, an initiative by Director's Fellow Baratunde Thurston's company Cultivated Wit, is two-day hackathon during which comedians, designers, and developers work together to build hilarious apps and hardware hacks. Participants brainstorm ideas and form teams Saturday morning (or the week leading into the event). They spend all of Saturday and part of Sunday developing their projects, grabbing a few hours of sleep in between. |
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Sep 16 13 10:00am - 12:30pm
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 Speaker:
Joi Ito The MIT Media Lab, Harvard Business School’s Japan Research Center, and the Consulate General of Japan in Boston present an exciting seminar and panel discussion on the innovation ecosystems in both Japan and Boston, and how Japanese and Boston-area organizations can further develop entrepreneurs, startups, and innovative companies in Japan. |
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Sep 13 13 9:00am - 11:00am
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Speaker:
Ankur Mani Host/Chair:
Alex 'Sandy' Pentland
Participant(s)/Committee:
Asuman Ozdaglar Parag Pathak How different are the characteristics of societies that are constrained to local interactions in networks as compared to societies where all interactions happen in organized markets? Among most species and even in modern human societies, exchange, whether of food, information, or labor, naturally tends to occur locally, as encounters happen between nearby individuals in networks. In the absence of coordination across multiple individuals and arbitrage, such exchanges are also often bilateral. Neoclassical economic theory has provided us with a deep understanding of organized markets. |
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Sep 12 13 5:30pm - 7:00pm
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This talk will be live webcast Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab and Ethan Zuckerman, director of the MIT Center for Civic Media will discuss the challenges of innovation within large structured organizations such as big corporations and newsrooms. In particular, they will explore the question of how organizations adjust their tolerance for risk in order to innovate. |
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Sep 06 13 12:00pm - 1:00pm
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