Media & Technology

MI Forum with Charles Elachi, director of the Jet Propulsion Lab. ike the Mars rover, Charles Elachi's curiosity knows no bounds. Now director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he has spent his entire career as a modern-day Magellan. With the landing of the latest rover in August 2012, Elachi oversaw one of the most challenging engineering feats since the Apollo moon landing. "I could only think of the words of Teddy Roosevelt as I was sitting there: 'It is far better to dare mighty things that we know might fail than to stay in a twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.' And the team brought us victory," he said at a post-landing press conference. At this Milken Institute Forum, Elachi will discuss that particular victory, his storied career in space exploration and the remarkable work that JPL is doing as it monitors its existing 23 spacecraft across the solar system and prepares for the next generation. About Charles Elachi: The director of the Jet Propulsion Lab is also vice president and a professor of electrical engineering and planetary science at the California Institute of Technology. In his 43-year career at JPL, Elachi was a leader in developing the field of spaceborne imaging radar. The principal investigator on numerous research and development studies and flight projects sponsored by NASA, he is currently the team leader of the Cassini Titan Radar experiment and a co-investigator on the Rosetta Comet Nucleus Sounder Experiment. Elachi is the author of over 230 publications and the holder of several patents. The recipient of numerous honors, he was named one of "America's Best Leaders" by U.S. News & World Report and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in 2006. He also has an asteroid named after him in recognition of his contributions to planetary exploration.

MI Forum with Walter Driver, Susan Feldman and Michael Jones. Moderated by Dana Settle. The City of Angels is suddenly the city of startups. After spending years in the shadow of Silicon Valley - and Boston and New York - Los Angeles finally has real tech cred. Say goodbye to startup envy and hello to the new entrepreneurs. The local tech community saw a flurry of activity in 2012: More than 220 startups launched in greater Los Angeles, 43 L.A.-based companies were acquired, and more than $870 million was raised from venture capital and angel investors. Overall, entrepreneurs in Southern California attracted more investment than any other region outside of Silicon Valley. At this Milken Institute Forum, several of these pioneering innovators talked tech and gave their take on why Los Angeles has come into its own as a popular place for startups.

Speakers: Doug Barry, Managing Director, Selby Ventures Ryan Kavanaugh, Founder and CEO, Relativity Media Tom Rogers, CEO, TiVo Michael White, President, Chairman and CEO, DirecTV Moderator: Andrew Morse, Head, Bloomberg Television U.S. The proportion of households with a cable or satellite television subscription is declining for the first time. About 3 million Americans have already cancelled their service, including more than half a million in the last few months. These "cord-cutters" are joined by a new group -- the "cord-nevers." A full 83% of new households choose to live without pay TV, contributing to the apparent collapse of the cable/satellite industry's financial model. Yet most of these households are still avid entertainment consumers. How is the new content being delivered, and are these systems economically viable? This panel will discuss the new frontier of entertainment as consumers take control of how they receive their content and decide what wins at home.

Speakers: Gale Anne Hurd, CEO and Producer, Valhalla Entertainment Michael Lynton, CEO, Sony Entertainment, Inc.; Chairman and CEO, Sony Pictures Entertainment Leslie Moonves, President and CEO, CBS Corp. Robert Pittman, CEO, Clear Channel Communications; Founder, MTV Moderator: Julia Boorstin, Media and Entertainment Reporter, CNBC. This past year has seen a dramatic shift in global media and entertainment As the supply of mobile content continues to develop, how that content is financed and distributed keeps changing. That's reflected in Disney's acquisition of Marvel and Lucasfilm, Comcast's completion of its NBC Universal acquisition and the ongoing evolution in the relationships with such providers as Netflix, Apple and Amazon.com, not only in the U.S. but in growing international markets. As revenue from traditional models declines, are artificial limits on broadband speeds and content delivery inhibiting the uptake of paid digital distribution? Do international markets compensate for potential declines in U.S. television revenue? As media companies deal with such issues as changing platforms, declining movie revenue and globalization, what does the industry's past tell us about the big picture for media in the future?

Speakers: Bonin Bough, Vice President, Global Media and Consumer Engagement, Mondelez International Gotham Chopra, Filmmaker and Co-Founder, Graphic India Ryan Holmes, CEO, HootSuite Kenneth Lerer, Managing Director, Lerer Ventures; Co-Founder, Huffington Post Moderator: Lisa Ling, Host, "Our America". Audacious innovators are out to change the world. Risk-takers are turning classic business models upside down. Social-media entrepreneurs are revolutionizing the workplace and shortening the business cycle. Corporations with in-house incubators are recreating entrepreneurial environments as a recruitment and retention strategy. Tweeting consumers promote while purchasing. These are the disruptors, innovators and entrepreneurs who keep reinventing society. How do we measure social currency and build community? Does everyone need a personal brand-marketing strategy to succeed? Philanthropists and global citizens, filmmakers, gamers and storytellers are transforming the way we look at and interact with the world. Join us for a conversation without boundaries.

Speakers: Paul Barber, Managing General Partner, JMI Equity Paul Maeder, Co-Founder and Managing General Partner, Highland Capital Partners Brett Rochkind, Managing Director, General Atlantic Scott Sandell, General Partner, New Enterprise Associates, Inc. Robert Smith, Chairman and CEO, Vista Equity Partners Moderator: Alec Ellison, Vice Chairman, Jefferies LLC; Chairman, Technology Investment Banking . Consumers are crazy about Apple, Google, and Facebook. But when it comes to IPO performance, valuation and revenue growth, less sexy enterprise technology has a great story to tell. Our panel of venture and private equity investors will turn a spotlight on technology market segments that have been advancing under the radar. Among them, a range of software niches, virtualization, network and cyber-security as well as opportunities surrounding big data. What's the latest in cloud computing and mobile broadband? And consumer segments won't be overlooked as we discuss e-commerce, social networking and other models in the pipeline. We'll expand your view of what's leading-edge and lucrative.

Speakers: Kit Beall, Vice President, Global Service Provider Segment, Cisco Marianne Braunstein, Vice President, Product Management, Epocrates David Carr, Founder, Supermechanical Cory Ondrejka, Vice President, Mobile Engineering, Facebook Moderator: Jonathan Spalter, Chairman, Mobile Future. Wireless communications, not long ago a niche market with limited capability and clunky gear, has evolved into a dramatically innovative industry. Now that it has merged with the Internet, it is present in every sphere of life and transformational in many. Parenting, politics, healthcare, finance, education, government, philanthropy, and certainly entertainment - there are proliferating apps for that. This panel will showcase the ideas that could enable mobile platforms to better serve communities, concepts that may grow into industries and probably will make what we are doing now obsolete. It will also consider the challenges of accommodating untethered growth in regard to spectrum, infrastructure, regulation, and cost.

Speakers: Marc Andreessen, Co-Founder and Partner, Andreessen Horowitz Peter Thiel, Partner, Founders Fund Moderator: Martin Giles, U.S. Technology Correspondent, The Economist. Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen are Silicon Valley luminaries, epic entrepreneurs and prominent financiers. Both have something to say about where high-tech is taking the world economy, and what is being left behind. Andreessen, co-developer of the first Web browser and now a top venture capitalist, expects software to automate and ultimately dominate most other industries. Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, has written in depth about what he considers the stagnation of innovation in fields that others see as emblems of progress: energy, pharmaceuticals, space exploration, nanotech and much more. In fact, Thiel links the austerity gripping the Western world to productivity gains that never happened. Join these acute observers for a unique exchange on science, business and innovation, or the lack thereof.

Speakers: Di-Ann Eisnor, Vice President, Platform and Partnerships, Waze John Malloy, General Partner, BlueRun Ventures Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist, Progressive Policy Institute Ray Sharma, President and Founder, XMG Studio Inc. Moderator: Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, All Things D. Though the most popular smart phone activity may be flinging kamikaze birds across a small screen, mobile apps mean big business -- even for small businesses. Navigation has become social, with programs showing up-to-the-second data about your drive from Tucson to Toledo. We can now exchange business cards with a quick phone bump. We can board jets and enter theaters ticketlessly - and manage our health through monitoring devices that connect to electronic medical records. Demand seems insatiable, and many developers, designers, and marketers are well-rewarded. Apple has reported more than 40 billion app downloads, covering 775,000 programs on the App Store alone, and those developers have been paid, in aggregate, more than $7 billion. About 500,000 jobs have been created in a field that didn't exist five years ago. This is the new apps economy. It's global, it's social, it's empowering a new generation of entrepreneurs and it's changing the way we do business.