Diverse Engaging and Eclectic
The Eclectic and Energizing Conference
What other conferences can you attend that offers you exercise and revitalization programs, alongside engaging presentations from key leaders in some of the top companies in pharmaceuticals, technology, healthcare and a demonstration environment packed with the latest and greatest innovations and technologies? The CNS Summit – now in its 8th year and continuing to expand offering an amazing collection of diverse and eclectic minds in life sciences and technology and beyond with some major coups with Amazon, Proteus, Otsuka and Google X.
The CNS Summit – now in its 9th year of production and continuing to expand offering an amazing collection of diverse and eclectic minds in healthcare, pharma and beyond with some major coups with Amazon, Proteus, Otsuka and Google X.
CNS Summit
Imagine what its like to step into the Starship Enterprise for the First time – that’s how it felt at the CNS Summit
Planning for this event starts during the previous year’s summit with many of the members and attendees learning from the current sessions to understand what works, what does not and what might need refinement. Challenging the mind, body, and senses is the mantra for this event and participants leave with a renewed vigor and vitality that is grounded in the opportunity to learn from some inspirational and thoughtful leaders.
One of the challenges we have attending these events is capturing the rich content and remembering what was learned to be able to apply this in your regular work environment. This year featured Jim Kwik – brain trainer to the stars shared some techniques and insights to turn on the true potential of our brains
As Jim Kwik said
“With great power comes great responsibility. With great responsibility comes great power. When we take responsibility for something we have great power to make things better”
This became my mantra for the conference – the tremendous power of connections, network and the collection of amazing minds sharing insights all pulling in the same direction to improve healthcare for the benefit of everyone.
Short punchy keynote presentations were delivered by a procession of leaders from a wide range of companies and areas including IBM, Allergan, Novartis, GoogleX, Akilli, Sanofi, Neo.Life, Amazon and the FDA. Intertwined with these were presentations of new ideas, new companies, and concepts by individuals from all over the world. At past events, some of these companies have been unknowns with groundbreaking ideas that have gone on to be big successes in the marketplace and the conference prides itself in being on the path to fame and discovery for many innovations.
New Year – New Ideas
This year included another collection of new and exciting ideas – difficult to pick one from an amazing collection but LyGenesis stood out. Solving an ongoing challenge with lack of available donor organs that sees 20 people per day die waiting for donor organs by harnessing the body’s own bioreactor to create new organs in the lymphatic system
With so much content this is not the summit you go to and miss the sessions but thankfully there are built in networking sessions in the afternoon and evening that include a show floor populated with companies and products that are turning innovation into action.
Healthcare Security
One of the more popular sessions was one that you could describe as disconnected from the average person’s day to day work – Jayson Street a well-known security professional who challenged many commonly held beliefs of security and privacy. He took the attendees on an eye-opening journey into the world of hackers and the paucity of privacy and security that is underappreciated by the majority of people. He had set up a spoofed wireless access point that had been accessed by 47 people in just 7 minutes potentially exposing them to attacks or even breaches of their data (none had taken place in this instance as this was simply a demonstration of the potential). Most left with a humbling sense of exposure and hopefully a slice of caution to be applied more liberally in their daily lives.
The conference hashtag #CNSSumit offered an opportunity for anyone to follow the proceedings and as one astute presenter pointed out – Twitter users generate better ideas. More precisely they highlighted the paper from MIT Sloan with the same title
That offered research to support the notion that diverse networks created better ideas in employees and in many ways the CNS Summit was the real-world version of a diverse twitter network.
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Amir Kalali On January 17, 2018 at 7:22 pm
Great Summary of CNS Summit Nick!