Technology Leadership. Wicked problem solver. Keynote futures Conference speaker, mentor, university lecturer.

Joined November 2007
83 Photos and videos
I will give a talk at InnoTech Austin on Securing the Distributed Future: Sovereignty, Edge Intelligence & Quantum-Ready Infrastructure. Hoping for a great turnout! #InnoTechAUS - via #Whova event app
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I will give a talk at InnoTech Austin on The Dawn of Distributed Intelligence: Orchestrating the Next Era of Computing. Hoping for a great turnout! #InnoTechAUS - via #Whova event app
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David B Smith retweeted
Brad Staats is a tremendous hire for UT Austin. I am proud to welcome him back home to the Forty Acres as the new leader of the world-class McCombs School of Business.
He’s coming home. Bradley Staats has been named the next dean of the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. A proud Longhorn and nationally recognized leader in business education, he returns to the Forty Acres to build on McCombs’ momentum—expanding opportunity for students and strengthening connections between the classroom and the real world. More: utex.as/4w9IZXB
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David B Smith retweeted
I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired. The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass. A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed. Everything else was improvised. I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76. What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation. I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one. She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure. The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet. The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent. That's priority. The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced. That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details. I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column. I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously. 188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.
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I've been presenting here for about 20 years. Come and hear this one. It's about the next era after the age of data, AI, and massive data centers.
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David B Smith retweeted
The Invisible Value Multiplier and Why Heat Pumps Are Rewriting the Rules of Electric Vehicle Resale and Performance torquenews.com/17995/invisib…
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David B Smith retweeted
BREAKING: Michael and Susan Dell announced a new $750 million commitment to the University of Texas at Austin. The investment will build the UT Dell Medical Center in north Austin. It will be a new kind of medical center for the AI era. @cbsaustin @UTAustin
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David B Smith retweeted
Texas

ALT Banner Texas Longhorns GIF

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David B Smith retweeted
🇺🇸🇺🇸 Welcome home! 🇺🇸🇺🇸
Apr 11
Replying to @NASA
Welcome home Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy! 🫶 The Artemis II astronauts have splashed down at 8:07pm ET (0007 UTC April 11), bringing their historic 10-day mission around the Moon to an end.
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RT @RL9631: Incredible! 🇺🇸🫡 American jet evades Iranian Shahid missile on February 28th surprise attack!
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David B Smith retweeted
The Internet of Things has transformed how we live and work—connecting billions of devices, from smart homes and wearables to industrial systems and critical infrastructure. 🌐 But as Chuck Brooks explores in Inside Cyber, this explosion of connectivity fuels innovation and introduces one of the most urgent cybersecurity challenges of our time. hubs.li/Q042L-gX0
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