Will the capital’s VC community make London a rival for Silicon Valley?

London is preparing to compete with Silicon Valley as the largest gathering of heavyweight technology entrepreneurs outside of the US come together at the Royal Albert Hall on the 30th September. It will be the first time that the leaders of global household names, such Apple, Wikipedia and Virgin, share a stage to debate the uses of next generation technology.

Thousands of delegates are expected to come and listen to the tech luminaries in the highest profile non US show, of its kind. The London gathering of tech big guns is set to become a prestigious annual fixture in the UK business calendar. The event’s research highlighted that London was seen as a gateway to Europe by entrepreneurs, ensuring a consistent and strong lure to the city.

Called Technology of Tomorrow08 (ToT08, http://tot2008.com), the event is billed as the foremost business executive seminar in the UK and will address the big issues in the technology space today:

* Leadership * Consumer experience - present and future * How future technology will impact lives - enterprise and consumer spaces

ToT08’s co-founder, Martin Warner commented: “Silicon Valley’s VC community makes it globally unique and has resulted in several of the world’s biggest companies. London’s VC network is still a force to be reckoned with and will, I’m sure, help bring the UK technology scene closer to that of the US.”

In pre-event interviews (see links for videos) with Martin Warner the following statements were made:

Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP on leadership (tot2008.com/video14.asp):

“I think this is a very exciting conference. [I have], the opportunity to talk without a specific company agenda, that’s very liberating.”

“I’m going to talk about what’s common in every leadership challenge [and]… why technology is so historic now in its impact. We are in a truly pivotal and unique point in human history in many ways because of the impact of technology.”

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia on collaboration (tot2008.com/video17.asp):

“We’re really only at the beginning of the user generated content revolution.”

“We’re going to see more collaboration around things beyond just text. In [video] we’re still at the YouTube stage. We haven’t seen mass collaboratively produced documentary films. I think we’ll see these kinds of projects come by as we get more band width, as we get more technology.

Jimmy Wales on search:

“All of the existing search engines, to me, are like [Encyclopaedia] Britannica. They’re closed. They’re top down. The editorial decisions are made behind closed doors”

“There are already open source [search] projects. [The challenge lies with the question] how do you allow the public to participate whilst excluding people who are just there to spam?”

“There’s a lot of really interesting ideas floating around. We’re in a time of major transition in ways I don’t even understand.”

Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak on consumer products (tot2008.com/video10.asp):

“Thinking about products, thinking about technologies and making products that work for people; that’s what I love to do.”

“Almost everything you do with a computer now you did it a whole different way 10, 20, 30 years ago.”

“I believe that the way to faster computers will be photonics, light switches on the silicon. The problem with computing is how much computing you can do on silicon without burning itself up to heat. You have to use energy.

“Photons are so much lighter than electrons. They use virtually no energy at all so there’s no heat problem. And that means you can make a processor a thousand times faster.”

“We need a lot more processing to make the computer seem like a human being… I can’t wait.”

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin on business leadership (tot2008.com/video19.asp):

“The way we set up a new business is to decide there’s a market for it then to go out and find the best engineers for it and see whether they can deliver what we need.

“The way to get the best people is to set about doing it.”

Further interviews with the attending CEOs and industry leaders can be found at http://tot2008.com/podcastMain.asp, including Cancer Research UK’s CEO, Harpal Kumar, on the charity’s use of technology in finding cancer cures.

Key information:

- Technology of Tomorrow08 event, 30th September, Royal Albert Hall

- UK’s largest debate on the business applications of disruptive technology

- Presenters include: Richard Branson, Carly Fiorina, Steve Wozniak, Jimmy Wales, John Swainson, Harpal Kumar