@ Stanford: Accelerators and Entrepreneur-Professors in Italy and Ireland

This event is organized by Stanford University.

This event is free and open to the public.

Session Two of Stanford's "European Entrepreneurship & Innovation" speaker series features an in depth look at one of Italy's leading startup accelerators, and the growing role of 'Professor Entrepreneurs' as sources of spin outs at Irish universities.

Both speakers offer contrasting examples of how new generations of European entrepreneurs are wearing multiple hats and blurring lines between traditionally highly separated careers, sectors, generations and institutions.

Location: Hewlett 201 Auditorium (on the Engineering School campus)

Time: 4:15 - 5;30pm (Pacific)

Website: http://me421.stanford.edu

Directions/Map: http://www.europeanentrepreneursatstanford.com/aboutME421/mapDirections.php

SPEAKERS:

• John Breslin — Director, boards.ie; Lecturer, NUI Galway (IE)

John Breslin is a Lecturer in the School of Engineering and Informatics at the National University of Ireland Galway. He is also leader of the Unit for Social Software at DERI, the world’s premier Semantic Web research institute.

John is best known for being a co-founder and director of boards.ie Ltd., Ireland’s largest discussion website. John has won two IIA Net Visionary awards for his work on boards.ie and spin-off classified ads site adverts.ie.

More recently, John co-founded US company StreamGlider Inc. with web entrepreneurs Nova Spivack and Bill McDaniel, a real-time streaming newsreader that can be private-labeled for content publishers on tablets. He also set up Technology Voice, a web publisher that covers emerging technologies in long-form articles. Dr. Breslin is an advisor to CrowdGather Inc., a forum network based in LA, and Dot-Irish LLC, an applicant for the .irish top-level domain.

• Maurizio Rossi — VP & Co-Founder, H-FARM Ventures (IT)

Maurizio Rossi is Vice President and co-founder of H-FARM Ventures, based near Venice. He belongs to the "bad boy" generation that is connected to creative culture inspired by design because it shapes new things as well as people's minds.

Maurizio originally worked for family-run fashion company Rossimoda, a market leader of luxury women's footwear, where his main focus was new product-line spin-offs and market expansion. In 1990 he launched Vista Point, a business unit dedicated to internationally expanding leading US action-sports brands such as NoFear, Spy Optics and DC.

Maurizio has been involved in both retail and wholesale distribution networks and believes that the 21st century will bring a big shift to new information technologies, clean energy and environmental issues as driving forces of change.

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Mondays 4:15pm - 5:30pm. Stanford Mechanical Engineering's European Entrepreneurship and Innovation Thought Leaders (ME421) is a weekly speaker series that presents industry leaders from Europe's hitech startup, venture finance, corporate and university research and technology commercialization communities to share their insights and experiences with aspiring and veteran entrepreneurs and investors from Silicon Valley.

JOIN US ONLINE:

LinkedIn Group (9700+): http://www.linkedin.com/groups/European-Entrepreneurship-Innovation-Stanford-Silicon-1573967/about?trk=anet_ug_grppro

Twitter: http://twitter.com/europreneurs

Google+ Group: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/105382283122975616891

Meetup Group: https://www.meetup.com/European-Entrepreneurship-Innovation-Stanford/

EUROPEAN GOVERNMENT PARTNERS (2013):

Invest Northern Ireland: http://www.investni.com

VINNOVA (Sweden's Innovation Agency): http://www.vinnova.se/en/

Enterprise Estonia - Silicon Valley: http://www.investinestonia.com/enterprise-estonia/

Sponsored by the Stanford Dept of Mechanical Engineering, Center for Design Research (cdr.stanford.edu)