Ohio 2.0 - Thought Leaders, Community Building and Inspiring Convervsation

In August I wrote about the momentum that was building in Columbus around Social Media and the Tech sector

Another postiive notch to this momentum happened last night with a gathering called Ohio 2.0 held at the Polaris Hilton. The event was organized in Web 2.0 speed (four weeks) by Angela Siefer and Ben Blanquera and a team of great volunteers and sponsors.

The event was a showcase for inspiring presentations and conversations from Thought Leaders from Silicon Valley and Washington, DC.

The participants included Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, Judy Estrin, author of Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy and former CTO of Cisco, and Mike Nelson, who among his numerous credentials is the Chief Tech advisor to the Obama campaign.

Lara Kretler was live blogging much of the event and offered these excellent comments about the speakers:

From Judy Estrin-

Judy says the fundamentals of innovation are trying and testing, assessing and learning. It’s a messy, iterative process. You need to be willing to invest without knowing the outcome. And talent matters - a combination of skill, aptitude, passion and drive. Diverse perspectives are critical to innovation.

From Reid Hoffman-

Three things come together for innovation. First, the germ of an idea - which must then be refined through other people. This is why networks are so important - the application of expertise of those around you. The other two elements are capital and execution. The process of how you execute your ideas has to continually improve and adapt.

From Mike Nelson (talking about his role working with Obama)-

He’s here from Washington to listen to us. He wants to hear what we think about how technology can help create jobs and innovation for this country. He gave us his email address so we can contact him with ideas (email me if you want it) and says he will gladly share our suggestions with the Obama campaign.

My biggest, of many, takeaways from the evening were Judy's comments The Innovation Ecosystem (see the graphic) and her take on the Core Values of Innovation:

• Questioning
• Risk
• Openness
• Patience
• Trust

Estrin explained that Innovation means having the capacity for change.

I hope to write more on Reid Hoffman and Mike Nelson in further posts, as well as touch on Craig Newmark's (Craig's List) appearance and several of the others who I had the opportunity to meet during this special evening.

Finally, if you're interested, I've posted a video from a talk that Judy Estrin gave to Google employees a couple of weeks ago if you're interested in hearing more from her.