About the Talk
So when Santa delivered this pine box and electric screwdriver, I was very curious…And delighted to find a gonzo huge rocket motor… a bit over 8 ft. tall. For context, the largest motor I have launched so far is 1/8 the size, a sparky N.

And the Aerotech G motor in the foreground used to impress me… It’s the largest you can buy without a license, but now I see why theothers chuckled that they make good igniters.

The machined aluminum closures and graphite nozzle are on the left, as well as the infamous o-rings. Next step – anodizing the aluminum. Then we have to pour the solid propellant grains, just like the Space Shuttle boosters.

I’ll post some photos below of the rocket this baby will fly in… Should hit Mach 2.4 on a single stage… and Mach 4.3 and 250K+ ft. altitude with Tom’s two stage bio-sampling rocket.

About the Speaker
Steve Jurvetson is a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading venture capital firm with affiliate offices around the world. He was the founding VC investor in Hotmail (MSFT), Interwoven (IWOV), and Kana (KANA). He also led the firm’s investments in Tradex and Cyras, acquired for $8 billion. Current Board positions include Synthetic Genomics, SpaceX, NeoPhotonics, Tesla Motors, and Wowd. Previously, Steve was an R&D Engineer at Hewlett-Packard, where seven of his communications chip designs were fabricated. His prior technical experience also includes programming, materials science research (TEM atomic imaging of GaAs), and computer design at HP’s PC Division, the Center for Materials Research, and Mostek. He has also worked in product marketing at Apple and NeXT Software.

Past Talks
TED2007 – Steve Jurvetson on model rocketry

About the Talk
Crowdsourcing saved lives after the Haiti earthquake. Part of the reason I’ve been so behind in planning BIL is I’ve been in Miami collaborating with members of the open-source / open culture community (Sahana, Ushahidi, OpenStreetMaps) and the US Government (USSOUTHCOM, US Coast Guard) to respond to the crisis in Haiti. I’ll give an inside look on how these two cultures worked together in ways that have never been seen before.

About the Speaker
Hello my name is Todd Huffman, and these are the things that I do… toddhuffman.pbwiki.com

About the Talk
There is very little in our world that is actually impossible – it’s just that a lot of the time, we are missing one of 4 key elements: attitude, approach, action plan or accountability. This talk addresses each of these elements in turn, suggesting methods that will guarantee success on virtually any goal! Time permitting, the talk will focus on bonus topics: dealing with procrastination and staying motivated.

About the Speaker
I am a professional multi-tasker and am passionate about what I see as the two “extremes” of humanity: surviving (grand human challenges) & thriving (innovation, technology and creativity), and how we can use the latter to address the former.

As to how that translates into “what I do,” depending on when and where we meet, that answer could be Chief Medical Evangelist for CiviGuard Technologies, lead for partnerships development with the TEDx Silicon Valley Media team, co-founder of Space Without Borders (using space technology for global development), motivational speaker, Singularity University & International Space University Alumnus, Canadian medical student gone rogue, martial artist (1st degree black belt in taekwondo), musician (piano, singing/song-writing), writer or expert in a field I like to call “rocket surgery” – the point at which space tech and medicine converge.

Previously, I have completed degrees in neuroscience and space studies, and am halfway through a medical degree. I have served as VP Research for an inner city free-clinic for high-risk youth, VP Research & Development for a national organization promoting youth involvement in space exploration and development and Co-founder/Director of a community-wide anti-bullying program for school-aged children.

Published works include papers on telemedicine for the developing world, a book chapter on space spin-off technologies for medical benefit and clinical neuroscience. I also conducted pre-clinical and early clinical testing for neuroArm, a neurosurgical robotic arm based off CanadArm technologies and worked with the Crew Medical Support Office at the European Astronaut Center in Germany.

About the Talk
You gaze into the Cloud Mirror, and it gazes deep into you. It will violate your privacy, especially if you carelessly litter the Internet with sensitive personal details.

The Cloud Mirror is an art piece which temporarily merges visitors’ online identities with their physical selves. It uses augmented reality, computer vision, and Internet web services to identify visitors by name; mine the Internet for photographs and facts (dirt) about them; and superimpose that data in an on-screen comic book thought bubble that follows the visitor’s motion.

About the Speaker
Eric Gradman is an interactive artist in Los Angeles, CA. His work often features computer vision, large-scale projections, unusual sensors, and custom electronics to produce fun environments that compel people to interact.

Past Talks
BIL 2009 – The Perils of Robotics
BIL 2009 – Demo: Brainwave Controlled iPhone App

About the Talk
At BIL 2008 I introduced the future of robotic cars. But they’re still a decade away. This talk will focus on technologies that are on the near term horizon, or even available now. It will also outline new thinking in the design of transportation and energy based on modern computer technology that can be used while the people are still driving. I’ll show videos of cars today avoiding pedestrians and valet parking themselves, and simulations of intersections without stoplights taking us down the path to automatic transportation.

About the Speaker
Brad Templeton has just completed a 10 year term as Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the leading civil rights defender in cyberspace. He is also on the boards of the Foresight Institute and BitTorrent Inc. He was founder of ClariNet.com, the internet’s first dot-com, rec.humor.funny and Looking Glass Software. He is also a panoramic photographer and Burning Man artist.

Past Talks
BIL 2009 – The Evils of Cloud Computing

About the Talk
This talk will focus on a project in Wellington New Zealand entitled Sentimental Plastics. As part of the IntensCity Urban Design Week artist residency in 2007, Morgan Barnard and Robert Appierdo used a shipping container in the busy Courtenay Place entertainment district in Wellington as studio space and live urban screen. During the month-long residency, Barnard and Appierdo conducted workshops where they interviewed Wellington residents and gathered plastic bags to serve as raw material for the culminating Live Cinema performance and installation. These workshops focused on looking at ways to creatively reuse and up-cycle plastic bags. Bags were transformed into reusable material using a widely known heating method. The material was then used to create practical items and projection screens for the installation. The shipping container was transformed at night into an urban screen, evolving from and responding to the surrounding urban and data environment. The project culminated in a Live Cinema performance, projecting interviews and data-mined content onto screens made from up-cycled plastic bags. This talk will review Sentimental Plastics and look at Live Cinema and Urban Screens as a space for community entertainment and engagement.

About the Speaker
Morgan Barnard is a new media designer, filmmaker, and lecturer living in Los Angeles, California. For the past 12 years digital media and new technologies have been a core element that has informed his practice as an innovative artist and designer. From the early days of interactive digital media production at the California College of the Arts to film & video industry experience in Los Angeles and New York, he has worked with media through digital technologies to tell stories, create experiences, and engage audiences. In 2005 he received a master’s degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program in New York University creating a thesis that explored interactive storytelling and immersive narrative experiences. After graduating from NYU ITP, Morgan stayed on as an adjunct faculty member teaching courses in new media production video and interactive media. In 2006 he was awarded a Production fellowship at Eyebeam Atelier where he worked with artists creating documentaries and designed interfaces for live video performance. His background in documentary, music video, motion graphics, and post-production informs his academic practice. He is currently working on interactive installations, locative narrative, live video mixing and the creation of custom hardware and software for live visual performance.

About the Talk
Most web sites are designed on large screens, where they look and function very well. Most of your web site visitors though have much smaller screen. This means that critical part of the web page aren’t visible to users without scrolling. Many users will get confused if they can’t see the important part of a page and will exit rather than scroll downwards.

The technology was used on the Google Earth download page to increase the install rate by 10%. The simple change required was moving the “Install” button 100 pixels upwards.

About the Speaker
Bruno is an Engineer at Google, working on GMail spam. Prior to that he worked at the startup Keyhole which became Google Earth. Browser Size is a 20% project of his at Google.

About the Talk
The old education infrastructure is what’s holding the world back from moving forward and truly empowering people to live a learning life-style that fits the information age. We need to build a new infrastructure for learning. We need to build new digital roads, bridges and highways to connect people world-wide to learn and teach from each other on a daily basis. We need a next generation school. A technology platform that can create schools and connect them within seconds. In this talk I will share some of the stories of our experiment of creating 50 online schools in 50 days…the things we learned…the things we screwed up & the things that surprised us most!

About the Talk
Exploring the idea of using a variation of economic strategies, operating simultaneously, to give economics the strength of biodiversity.

About the Talk
I will discuss the yin/yang of Artificial Reality. Can we create virtual worlds as rich and interesting — or even more so — as the one we find ourselves in? Are the rules of reality themselves digital, discrete, and computable?

About the Speaker
Daniel B. Miller has led a varied career as a musician, computer guy, and serial entrepreneur. As a co-founder of On2 Technologies (now in the process of being acquired by Google), he championed the release of Theora, the open-source video codec. Recent ventures include Singular Robotics and Katalabs, Inc.