Internet Cowboys Un-Conference (IC3) 2016

“Internet Cowboys” is an interesting name for a retreat. If you’re unfamiliar with the “un-conference” format, adding “un-conference” to the title doesn’t help clarify things much. It’s not what you might imagine, but equally cool. Hosted at the Wyoming ranch of Yuval Almog, visionary founder of the global investment firm Coral Group, this private retreat brings thought leaders from a broad range of industries together to share information and connect.

While enjoying my time as an invited guest, I was unexpectedly selected to participate on a healthcare panel. Notable panelists included Dr. Oz and Bob Bradway, Amgen’s Chairman and CEO.

One thing that surprised me about Dr. Oz: he has an incredibly deep and unique insider understanding of the current political situation in Turkey. Dr. Oz has Turkish roots and in part due to his profile, is connected to various political players in Turkey. His perspective on current events there was intriguing, given his position and level of access.

On the panel, I described the potential of video game technology in medicine and threw in my two cents, or maybe twenty cents, on unleashing the psychology of game design  in healthcare.

Due to the makeup of the panel, however, we focused mainly on genomics.

What a pleasant surprise! Computational genomics is one of my lesser-known hobbies, which I don’t think I’ve ever even talked about on a panel until this one.

GPUs have evolved over decades based on the voracious performance needs of video games. Now these miracle engines of Moore’s law have become incredibly flexible and can be used for a wider variety of applications, including… accelerating computational genomic algorithms.

IC3 is the kind of place where one’s hobbies can include using GPUs in CUDA to accelerate a genomic search algorithm, and people understand and care about the implications. Cheers to another great IC3!