Deep Pockets

New Orleans is described as the northernmost Caribbean city with a rich cultural heritage.  Michel Hecht, CEO of Greater New Orleans Inc. talks to us how economic development efforts on federal, state, and local level have enabled Nola tech companies to create $2.5 billion worth of exists since January 2021, how oil and gas rigs are being turned into wind farms, and how NASA, Lockheed Martin and Boeing are creating the New Orleans Space Campus. 

Climate crisis, Russia's aggression, Cybersecurity: Many good reasons to reduce dependency from static, large fossil fuel based energy infrastructures. Rao Konidena, Founder and CEO of Rakon Energy LLC walks us through the logistics, finances, and policy aspects of distributed, aggregated energy grids.  

The US, EU, China and other states have announced public initiatives worth of billions, in support of quantum technology development in their regions. Celia Merzbacher, the Executive Director at the US based Quantum Economic Development Consortium QED-C, discusses the public and private quantum economic dynamics that will have a tectonic impact on how nations  will prosper in the future. 

Why is CIA investing in tech startups? Should the Department of Defense be responsible for basic science? Was 9/11 good or bad for innovation? Laura Thomas, a specialist in National Security and  Emerging Technologies discusses the role of national safety, budgeting and public procurement in how they affect technology innovation. 

In 2001 Ora Lassila, James Hendler, and Tim Berners-Lee publish a paper in the Scientific American titled The Semantic Web. This would be a new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers rather than humans and will unleash a revolution of new possibilities. Then what happened? Dr. Ora Lassila tells the story. 

David Wood, Futurist, Catalyst, Author, and Singularitarian shares the fascinating stories of the early smartphone industry. "The story of the evolution of smartphones is fascinating in its own right – for its rich set of characters, and for its colourful set of triumphs and disasters. But the story has wider implications. Many important lessons can be drawn from careful review of the successes and, yes, the failures of the smartphone industry." 

"Any investor that invests into quantum computing and expects a liquidity event other than exit is fooling her or himself".  André M. König, CEO of Entanglement Capital talks quantum computing, public support and private investment landscape. 

In the spring of 2020 I realized I was spending too much time watching Netflix, and reading too few books. I stumbled upon Dr Mariana Mazzucato's The Entrepreneurial State. That led to a journey into technologies, governments, and deeply rooted worldviews.