Conference Highlights

Keynote Speakers

The detailed full agenda for GTH2012 continues to evolve and up to date information will be added frequently to the conference website. However, we are excited to announce the first two keynote speakers for Wednesday and Thursday programs:

Wednesday Keynote: Charles Fishman

Charles Fishman will keynote speak on May 16th, our ‘Ecology’ focus day. He is a senior writer at Fast Company and the author of The Wal-Mart Effect and most recently The Big Thirst. He has twice received the UCLA Gerald Loeb Award for outstanding business writing.

"We use purified drinking water to flush our toilets and water our lawns. That doesn't make any sense," says Charles Fishman. "In an era of scarcity, we won't need to limit whether we have water to boil pasta or take a bath. But we will think differently about a whole portfolio of water. There will be different kinds of waters for different uses. And water itself will get smart."

Thursday Keynote: Jeremy Rifkin

Jeremy Rifkin is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and a best-selling author on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, workforce, society, and the environment. We are excited to feature Mr. Rifkin on Thursday May 17 as part of our focus on ‘Economy’.

In his book, The Third Industrial Revolution, Rifkin describes five pillars of the restructuring plan of the Third Industrial Revolution: ”Pillar one, lies in exploiting all possible renewable energy forms – in a decentralized fashion – wherever they are found; Pillar two, buildings and structures become their own independent power plants; Pillar three, energy is stored with hydrogen; Pillar four, merging internet technologies with new distributed energy generation to create a nervous system infrastructure for the new energy economic paradigm; Pillar five is electric plug-in transport. These pillars are based on the premise that great revolutions occur when communication revolutions emerge to actually organize the complexity of new energy regimes."

Friday Keynote: TBA