O'Reilly's ETech conference scopes out ideas at the edge of innovation

For Immediate Release

CONTACT:   
Maureen Jennings
707.827.7083
maureen@oreilly.com

O'Reilly's Flagship ETech Conference Scopes Out Ideas at the Edge of
Innovation
Emerging Technology Adopted as Tool for Success

Sebastopol, CA, March 23, 2009 - ETech 2009, O'Reilly's Emerging
Technology Conference held March 9-12 in San Jose, urged web technologists
and visionaries to grasp the opportunities in today's financial and
political turmoil by focusing on work they care deeply about. Through four
jam-packed days, conference-goers immersed themselves in revolutionary
ideas and emergent technologies they can exploit to succeed.

The conference has been O'Reilly Media's flagship event since its
inception in 2002, fulfilling the company's mission of "spreading the
knowledge of innovators." More than 130 speakers explored the far edges of
web innovation, robotics, data applications, urban planning, and more.

Founder and CEO Tim O'Reilly built on the conference theme of "Living,
Reinvented: The Technology of Abundance and Constraints" by telling his
audience to embrace the opportunities inherent in today's giant challenges
and aim for the sky. "You guys are inventing the future, and what we want
to do is help you spread the word, take on those giant challenges and
eventually change the world," O'Reilly said in his keynote address.

O'Reilly also announced a new conference dedicated to helping to change
our world. Gov 2.0 Summit, scheduled for Sept 9-10, 2009, in Washington,
DC, and co-produced with TechWeb, will bring government leaders and
innovators of Web 2.0 together to explore how technology can enable
transparency, participation, collaboration, and efficiency at all levels
of government.

In addition to O'Reilly, the keynote speakers included Mary Lou Jepsen,
named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People for her work in
creating Pixel Qi and for her previous work blazing a trail with One
Laptop per Child, who spoke about "Low-Cost, Low-Power Computing." Christa
Hockensmith with EMRTC/New Mexico Tech talked about "Jackhammers,
Polymers, and Diamonds: New Applications in Explosives," and Rebecca
MacKinnon with Global Voices spoke on "Freedom and Control: Lessons from
China for the World." Also keynoting were Joichi Ito with Creative
Commons, Kati London with Area/Code, Chris Luebkeman with Arup, Jane
McGonigal with Institute for the Future, Sameer Padania with WITNESS, Alex
Steffen with Worldchanging, and Nathan Wolfe with Global Viral Forecasting
Initiative.

As the keynote speakers illuminated the big picture, plenary sessions,
breakouts, and tutorials explored the details of the newest technology and
how to implement it to gain a competitive edge now and in the future. At
the ETech Maker Shed, conference-goers could make their own shirts, among
other projects. Throughout the week, attendees experimented with RFIDs and
collaborated in the forecasting game Free Space. Other evening events
included an ETechFest, Ignite, LateTech, and performances by Zoë Keating
and Andrew Schneider.

Creative Commons and Microsoft chose ETech as the place to announce the
release of the Ontology Add-in for Word, which enables authors to add
scientific hyperlinks as semantic annotations to their documents and
research papers.

Helping to bring together the leading thinkers working in the rapidly
evolving high-tech sector were sponsors Sun Microsystems, Yahoo! Developer
Network, IEEE Standards Association, Make Magazine and Orange.

For complete information on O'Reilly ETech 2009, including keynote videos,
speaker presentation files, and photos, visit:
http://conferences.oreilly.com/etech

For news, coverage and comments, go to:
http://en.oreilly.com/et2009/public/content/news-coverage

If you'd like to stay up to date on information relating to ETech
conferences, sign up for the conference newsletter (login required) at:
http://elists.oreilly.com#conferences

To read Tim O'Reilly's take on the future, go to the O'Reilly Radar at:
http://radar.oreilly.com/

For information about exhibiting at or sponsoring an ETech conference,
contact Yvonne Romaine at yromaine@oreilly.com

If you would like to discuss forming a media or promotional partnership
with O'Reilly for an upcoming event, contact mediapartners@oreilly.com

For a conference overview, visit:
http://conferences.oreilly.com

More O'Reilly Conferences:

   * Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco in San Francisco March 31-April 3, 2009,
co-produced with TechWeb
   * MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, CA, April 20-23, 2009,
co-presented by O'Reilly Media and Sun Microsystems
   * RailsConf in Las Vegas, May 4-7, 2009, co-presented with Ruby
Central, Inc.
   * Where 2.0 Conference in San Jose, CA, May 19-21, 2009
   * Found in Burlingame, CA, June 9-11, 2009
   * Velocity in San Jose, CA, June 22-24, 2009
   * OSCON in San Jose, CA, in San Jose, CA, July 20-24, 2009
   * Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, DC, Sept. 9-10, co-produced with
TechWeb
   * Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, CA, October 20-22, 2009
   * Web 2.0 Expo New York in New York City, Nov. 16-19, 2009


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has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in
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