Missed a Wednesday Breakout Session? Some takeaways

1. FiRe CTO Design Challenge: Working Session: “Privacy Vs. Security: Finding a Technology Solution”

The Challenge Team: Barry Briggs, IT Chief Architect and CTO, Microsoft; Hugh Bradlow, CTO and Head of Innovation, Telstra; Larry Smarr, Director, Calit2, UC San Diego/UC Irvine (HQ Qualcomm Institute), UCSD; Kevin Surace, CEO, Appvance; Simon Aspinall, Chief of Vertical Markets, Strategy, and Marketing, Virtustream; David Schoenberger, CIO/CTO, Secure Cloud Systems; Thomas Aidan Curran, CTO Imarum GmbH

• FiRe’s CTO Design Challenge Judges, Mark Anderson, Vaclav Vincalek, and Richard Marshall, provided a challenging target: Identify the rightful stewards of data, the potential separation of privacy and security, as well as a solution that is simple and transparent enough for consumers to understand and use. Above all, the solution should focus on protecting individuals, corporations and governments from data thieves and hackers.

• At the breakout session, there was general agreement that individuals should have complete control over their own data — where it is stored and how it is distributed — and that obtaining suspicious data must be done with transparency, by using a subpoena. Ideally, the end user should have an opt-in and opt-out privilege, it was decided. One road bump there: Some organizations force individuals to either opt-in to utilize the system or not use it at all.

• The team puzzled over how to pinpoint which particular data is essential to protect from theft or misuse. A few individuals proposed encrypting individual pieces of data, as if part of a puzzle, so that a hacker would have to unencrypt each piece in order to access the data as a whole.

2. “Saving the Biggest Brains in Washington – The Orca Whale Protection Zone”: Moderated by Bruce Stedman, Executive Director, Orca Relief Citizens’ Alliance; Con Slobodchikoff, CEO, Animal Communications Ltd.; and Roger Payne, Founder and President, Ocean Alliance

• The session broadened to include a number of highly social cultural animals that have conservation problems. Bruce Stedman spoke about the decline of the orca habitat in the Puget Sound due to limited food (fewer Chinook salmon), the noise from boats and ships interfering with whale sonar system, and development of the whale watching industry.

• Con Slobodchikoff spoke about federal government initiatives to poison prairie dogs in response to pressure from ranchers and the public, due to the inaccurate perception that prairie dogs are disruptive to cattle herding. In reality, he said, cattle are healthier when they coexist with prairie dogs.

• Roger Payne spoke about the politics of whaling and the dire situation of humpback whales due to the strength of the whaling industry lobby in different governments and the lack of information open to the public about the situation.

3. FiRe Global Rescue System Update: “Using Technology to Reduce Human Trafficking”: Moderated by Hugh Bradlow, CTO and Head of Innovation, Telstra; and Andrew Wallis, Founder and CEO, Unseen

• Hugh Bradlow, CTO and Head of Innovation, Telstra; and Andrew Wallis, Founder and CEO, Unseen, presented a challenging topic: 21 million people worldwide are victims of human trafficking today, and nearly 1 million kids are brought into the U.S. as “slaves” every year, mainly from the Caribbean and Latin America, but also from Asia.

• There was general agreement that the group should create a single, preferably 3-digit, highly publicized phone number that victims may call or text from anywhere in the world in order to report that they need to be rescued. Although there is a national hotline in the U.S., it is largely unknown.

• Participants discussed how to create and publicize such an international rescue hotline. Suggestions included contacting celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, who are involved with the UN and various charitable projects, and working with mobile carriers in order to include the emergency number in the informational text messages that the carriers send to their users.

4. “A Revolution in Healthcare”: A conversation with Samir Damani, Founder and CEO, MD Revolution; William Hearl, CEO, Immunomic Therapeutics; Jessica Richman, CEO, uBiome; and Jonathan DeHart, President and CEO, NorthShore

• “We need to stop treating food as mouth entertainment,” Larry Smarr said. He kicked-off the session by emphasizing the need for individuals to be more conscientious of what they eat and the consequences of those decisions. Firestarters’ Samir Damani and Jessica Richman further argued that food is only one part of the equation. Factors such as stress, sleep and physical exercise are also important for individuals to improve their well-being, and apps and devices that monitor these will be ahead of the game.

• “The revolution in healthcare is not a myth or a rumor, it is happening,” said Damani. Technology plays a huge role in this process, he said, allowing data to be collected to determine future outcomes. The audience agreed that wireless health is the new big thing driving behavior changes,  although Damani strongly emphasized that technology enables, not creates change.

• The session ended with an interesting discussing regarding the kind of challenges that the healthcare is facing right now. Richman pointed out three: privacy and data sharing, system integration, and legal frameworks. A few individuals also defended data access is another: Scientists are finding it hard to access patient information due to privacy policies, creating an obstacle to discovering cures.