“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay
These words were echoed by Pat Gelsinger, VMware’s CEO, during the closing keynote at RADIO 2019 in May. That is what RADIO is all about: a glimpse into the future, a celebration of innovation, and most importantly, a testament to our human potential.
This year’s RADIO event marks our 15thannual internal R&D Innovation Offsite where we set out to connect, learn, and be inspired. Over the course of four days, more than 1800 people coming from 26+ countries, shared and discussed novel ideas, explored new opportunities, and challenged each other to think differently about the future and impact of our work.
We celebrated the struggle and hard work that thousands of us put into our research papers and submissions. From the incredible 1,150+ submissions we received, 250+ ideas were selected to present their work. Behind the scenes, RADIO is a massive effort that involves hundreds of volunteers who help shape the technical program. With this in mind, we opened RADIO with a short animation to celebrate our innovators, their stories and why they chose to do their best work at VMware.
We see what we do as an enormous case study in human potential. It is all well and good to talk about ‘innovation’, but we observe that innovation doesn’t happen without the discipline and tenacity that makes these brilliant ideas a reality. It’s something we’re proud to showcase year after year at RADIO.
It was amazing to have Michael Dell join us. Not just because he is the Chairman of the Board, but because Dell is a living example of what RADIO represents. A person who created something from just an idea… innovated like heck and worked hard to make it an incredible reality. It should be an inspiration to all of us and a reminder that we too started with just an impossible idea. This all solidifies the power of mindset, will and brainpower for transformation.
We had amazing speakers and presentations throughout the four days. We heard about the state of Cloud, Mobile, Edge/IOT. We covered 5G, block chain and everything in between. We heard about the future of ML and AI from Professor Michael Jordan, and regenerative agriculture from farmer and author Gabe Brown. Joy Buolamwini, founder of Algorithmic Justice League, shares how she is fighting bias in machine learning. A mind boggling collection of brilliant speakers left us feeling smarter and inspired.
We couldn’t possibly cover all of the content, discussions, panels, posters and connections that were made over the four days (mainly because the content is confidential), but in total it left us all even more proud and committed to who VMware is as a group of amazingly talented people, and in our potential to change the world.
Ray O’Farrell, VMware’s CTO, spoke about the idea that everyone in VMware is part of shaping the future for the next generation and it’s our job to make sure that the technology is reliable, trustworthy and secure.
While RADIO is over until next year, we invest year-round in sustaining the innovation movement with many other innovation programs, including Borathons, Tech Talks, Flings, xLabs, Open Source, and VMware’s Research and Academic Program. The ideas doesn’t stop at RADIO, it may just be the beginning as the innovators embark on their own innovation journey.
