Paper maps and atlases were a big deal for Chris Heivly when he was growing up. Then he helped to kill them.
Heivly co-founded MapQuest, the first internet-based mapping tool, in 1996, disrupting the old world of paper-based cartography long before the phrase “disruptive technology” became a part of business lexicon.
Three years later, Rand McNally hired him to help revive its former domination of the direction-giving business, he said. Both companies still exist, but these days you’re more likely to find Waze Navigation, Google Maps and Apple Maps in your smartphone’s app store.
“And by the way, if you are under the age of 30, you’ve never heard of it,” Heivly said of MapQuest. “If you’re up to 35, you’ve never heard of Rand McNally either.”
Heivly, an investor, author and speaker, will kick off the Roanoke Blacksburg Technology Council’s second annual Emerging Technology Conference, at The Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center. The event runs Thursday and Friday and features multiple tracks, including cybersecurity, biotechnology, energy, manufacturing, artificial intelligence and innovation.
Science, technology, engineering, math and health science (STEM-H) and talent tracks, plus a Radford University cyber track, will bring students together with potential employers, event organizers said. Companies from across Virginia and beyond, and speakers from as far away as Alaska, are scheduled to participate.
“So it’s going to be kind of a great melting pot of different, different people, different industries, which is going to be really fun,” said Alla Daniel, RBTC’s program coordinator.
Other speakers include Stefani Quarles of Microsoft, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion Executive Director Michael Friedlander, SpaceX-engineer-turned-nuclear-energy-entrepreneur Ben Kellie and Blue Ridge Innovation Corridor Executive Director Rachel Yost.
Disruptive but good
MapQuest is way back in Heivly’s rear-view, and he has only recently started talking about it again at speaking engagements such as his scheduled Thursday keynote.
In recent years, he has written his “Build the Fort” book series, geared to startup companies, and is a regular blogger. He has invested, mentored and consulted at several companies, including Accenture. Preparing for a recent talk at an event in Cincinnati, he realized that his speech deck hadn’t included MapQuest. It hadn’t exactly interested him of late.
“That’s like, to me, like talking about being the high school quarterback,” he said.
Still, people who remember it are curious. Heivly learned to code while in undergraduate geography studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was a terrible geographer who loved coding, he said.
“So for me, smashing those two things together is kind of the genesis, if you will,” he said. “I was always applying kind of the next technology to mapping and to see where that went. And obviously one of those took off pretty big.”
Heivly, based near Raleigh, North Carolina, said he has “a bunch” of antique maps and a couple of road atlases lying around, and he’ll occasionally page through them. Long gone are the days of finding a map of each state you visited for sale at gas stations or convenience markets. MapQuest was the first in a line of websites, then apps, that disrupted that business into obsolescence.
“I do worry that people will have no kind of real good spatial knowledge because, you know, it’s hard to get that off of a small screen,” Heivly said.
Then again, drivers and passengers no longer have to open the glove box to retrieve a huge piece of paper to plot and replot courses, then attempt to fold it back the way it was. The old paper tech wasn’t connected to satellites and other users who could help sound alerts of traffic jams, crashes and other highway and byway concerns.
“We’re definitely in a much better place, aren’t we?” he said.
Left brain, right brain
Stefani Quarles, too, grew up with a multitude of interests. The Kokomo, Indiana, native worked at General Motors during her high school summer breaks. The company offered her a full scholarship to study mechanical engineering wherever she chose, if she would come back after graduation and work at GM for at least two years.
“And to an 18 year old who’s all about theater and arts and show choir, I just didn’t see myself doing that,” Quarles said. “I wanted to go to Broadway, you know, so I declined that offer.”
She went to Indiana University instead, where she wound up with a communications degree. Quarles has combined her tech knowledge with her ability to translate into a quarter-century career with companies including Rolls-Royce Aerospace and Delphi Automotive. She has been with Microsoft for 11 years, working remotely from her hometown.
Her title is customer success leader, focused on manufacturing and mobility industry transformation. Her portfolio features hotel chains, cruise lines, airlines, train lines and supply chain companies, each with thousands of employees, she said.
Her Thursday lunch keynote will focus on adoption and change management.
“Everyone’s got pain points when it comes to technology, and what we mean by pain points are those frustrating areas that prevent broader consumption of any one solution,” she said. “I think it’s one of the biggest hurdles that organizations face when they think about those investments and realizing the [return on investments] is people actually have to use it.”
She flashed back to her Gen X experience with computers.
“We had to load stuff with a floppy [disc], right? And you know, it was a physical update to using technology,” she said. “And in those days, large companies like Microsoft and others, IBM, Apple, they didn’t really care to talk to you again as a customer until it was time for that update to that license or that software.
Nowadays, it’s the cloud-based “software as a service,” or SaaS.
“And so everything you’re investing in requires people to actually use it for you to see the value and to get the return on that investment,” she said. “And so that’s what adoption and change management really nurtures, is helping to identify the barriers to broader usage, the hurdles to people finding value in the solutions you’re deploying to them as an organization.”
Local, regional presenters
The conference will show off what local and regional organizations can do, as well.
An interactive live session on Thursday, Life Cycle of a Medical Device, will feature Carilion Clinic Innovation and Human Factors. Carilion public affairs senior consultant Pete Larkin, the clinic’s director of innovation Aileen Helsel and others will discuss a device’s history from the idea phase to FDA submission, testing and product launch.
John Provo, Virginia Tech’s executive director for economic and community engagement, will lead a Thursday conversation about 3D printing, a manufacturing area where the university is working to lead.
Radford University’s Prem Uppuluri and Go Virginia’s William “Eddie” Amos are among those presenting ideas on Thursday about developing cybersecurity talent. Radford is hosting multiple cybersecurity sessions at the conference.
On Friday, Virginia Tech chemistry professor Webster Santos and his PhD students will showcase a weight loss drug.
Erin Burcham, executive director of RBTC’s umbrella organization, Roanoke Blacksburg Innovation Alliance (formerly Verge), calls Santos a “phenomenal chemist” who chairs the Virginia Drug Discovery Consortium, which is working to commercialize pharmaceuticals.
“He’s a gem in our region that some people don’t know yet,” Burcham said.
Parts of both days will include board certification in micropipette and a serological pipette use, for accurately measuring and transferring small volumes. Virginia Western Community College biologist Kristylea Ojeda will give hands-on training on Thursday. The next day, Heather Lindberg of Virginia Western and Len Pysh of Roanoke College will oversee certification testing.
That’s part of the conference’s STEM-H track, which, combined with a talent track, will bring students and employers together, Daniel said.
“We’re being intentional with getting students in a room to talk with employers on why is it important to stay here in the region and work here, and are these jobs really here?” she said. “And they are.”
Last year’s event drew 250, and organizers expect 400 for the second iteration. Artificial intelligence was front and center last year, and will be an undercurrent this year — Quarles is among those who will do an AI session. This version will be more “industry-based,” Burcham said, with a heavier focus on emerging technology in biotech, cybersecurity and manufacturing.
“We’re … really looking at what is hot in each industry, how to get engaged with new emerging technologies,” she said. “This is a very technical conference, and we want to bring our technical community together and work together. So we challenge the speakers not to bring all the answers, but to present some of the barriers that they’re running up against and use this as a conference to collaborate, work together with other people across different industries to solve major challenges.”