Voting is currently open for the South by Southwest (SXSW) PanelPicker! SXSW has evolved to become one of the largest interactive media, technology and innovation conferences in the country. While panels span topics from ‘Art and Inspiration’ to ‘Science and Space Exploration’, the ‘Government or Citizen Engagement’ track has been receiving a lot of attention in recent years. Of the 3,123 proposals this year, 82 have been tagged as “Government or Citizen Engagement.”
Show your support for by voting for Entrepreneurs-in-Residence: Not Just for VCs! Venture capital firms have utilized the services of ‘Entrepreneurs-in-Residence’ (EIRs), seasoned innovators with functional expertise to help spur entrepreneurship and fill gaps in expertise. Now, imagine combining the “innovation mojo” of EIRs with some of the government’s brightest intrapreneurs to solve the nation’s most pressing challenges.
Do the words ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘government’ sound paradoxical to you? The panel, consisting of Rich Bendis (CEO, BioHealth Innovation), Arnaub Chatterjee (Special Assistant to the Chief Technology Officer at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) and John Paul Farmer (Senior Advisor to the U.S. CTO), will discuss how state and federal government have already jumped on the best practices of the startup world and have actively been recruiting world-class entrepreneurs and innovators to join the best internal talent to rapidly create, develop, engage and accelerate innovation. Additionally, Senator Mary Landrieu (schedule pending) will discuss how Congress, through the Entrepreneur-in-Residence Act of 2012, plans on bringing on-board 30 EIRs in federal agencies over the next two years.
The end goals? Moving from cash to electronic payments to support foreign policy, building technology to withstand natural disasters, evaluating new licensing proposals from start-up companies or revamping the nation’s organ transplant system, just to name a few!
To vote, please register on the SXSW website at https://auth.sxsw.com/users/sign_up. After confirmation, you should be able to see all of the proposals submitted this year. Voting closes on August 31st, so please vote now!