Joe Lopano

Bio:

Mr. Lopano arrived in Tampa on January 1, 2011, as Tampa International Airport’s new Chief Executive Officer. Prior to accepting the CEO position in Tampa, Mr. Lopano worked at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport for 14 years as its Executive Vice President for Marketing and Terminal Management. Additionally, he has 22 years of airline and airport expertise, having held management positions at Continental Airlines, Lufthansa and Pan Am. He has held leadership roles in financial planning, international route development, advertising and frequent flyer programs. He received a bachelor’s in finance and accounting from Pace University in New York. He serves on the boards of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce, the Tampa Bay Partnership, the Tampa Bay Defense Alliance, the U.S. Travel Association’s inaugural Gateway Airport’s Council and the Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization. He is a member of the executive committees for the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corporation, the ACI–NA U.S. Policy Board and the Tony Jannus Society. He is an Honorary Commander at MacDill Air Force Base Mr. Lopano is married and has three children.

Description:

Tampa International Airport is working to transform the region by bringing in international flights, connecting the Tampa Bay area to the West Coast of the United States and embarking on $2.5 billion in capital projects that include a people mover that could ultimately provide a connection to a regional transportation system. The importance of international flights is clear. One non-stop daily flight to a major European city has a $154 million economic impact on the region and creates 1,200 jobs. Better service to America’s northwest also will help boost our local economy. Tampa to Seattle and Tampa to San Francisco are among the most underserved routes in the country. Nonstop flights to those cities will serve as an enticement to tech companies from that region considering relocating or opening offices in the Tampa Bay area. And the airport’s proposed 1.3-mile people mover that will connect an “aerotropolis” near the entrance of the airport to the main terminal can serve as a catalyst for improving transportation options for the entire region.

Sophia B. Liu

Bio:

Sophia B. Liu, Ph.D. is currently a Mendenhall Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in St. Petersburg, FL, though she recently moved from Colorado three months ago. She researches the use of social media in disaster situations and investigates the challenges with integrating official and crowdsourced crisis information in the emergency management domain. She received her Ph.D. from University of Colorado at Boulder in the Technology, Media and Society interdisciplinary program at the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society Institute. She was also awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for her dissertation research on the emergence of socially-distributed curation practices as a way of managing crisis information in the social media landscape. As a social artist, Dr. Liu loves rollerblading, tribal dancing, and brewing jun elixirs.

Description:

Although “crowdsourcing” was a big buzzword just in the past few years, it is not a new concept to the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS “Did You Feel It?” internet questionnaire that began in 1999 asks people who feel earthquakes to answer questions about where they were and what shaking effects they experienced. This information from the public gets fed into a series of other official USGS earthquake products to better inform emergency managers and other stakeholders responding to an earthquake. Harvesting data from social media sites like Twitter has also proven to be a fast way to detect shaking events, where we can detect earthquakes as quick as 24 seconds after the origin time of an earthquake. The USGS is also exploring the use of crowdsourcing for analyzing post-Hurricane Sandy aerial images of the coast to help scientists better predict coastal hazards after extreme storms. As we increasingly have access to the ever flowing streams of content online, there is an opportunity to integrate crisis data and services from crowds within emergency management agencies, the tech industry, disaster-affected populations, and the general public together to better facilitate emergency response, recovery, and mitigation efforts. What crowds are you a part of because sharing your expertise in these crowds can potentially save lives in times of crisis.

Rick Homans

Bio:

Rick is President/CEO of Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp., an organization funded by private investment and contracts with the City of Tampa and Hillsborough County. The primary role of the EDC is to help create economic-base jobs in Hillsborough County by recruiting new companies and helping existing companies grow here. Commission Chairman Ken Hagan announced recently that Rick will be the Chairman of the Tampa Hillsborough Film and Digital Media Commission. Rick came to Tampa in January 2012 from New Mexico where he served as Secretary of Economic Development for Governor Bill Richardson. In NM, Rick successfully recruited Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic to locate its world headquarters, and he coordinated financing and construction of Spaceport America, the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport.

Description:

Everyone is always talking about collaboration. We tend to collaborate well within our own circles, but how do we reach outside of those circles and make connections with people we truly need to connect with? People from different walks of life, different industries and just someone we would normally would not encounter during our normal routine? It is not an easy question to answer, but I am here to tell you we are working on it! I am here today because I want to collaborate and hear what you have to say about innovation, technology and your vision for the growth of Tampa Bay. I am here today to say I hear you! The EDC and Government Officials hear you! We very much value and want to listen to what you have to say. Several of you have worked very hard over the last 3 years building this grassroots effort and we want to work together with you to further develop Tampa Bay. We are holding a conference on May 13th at the Marriott Waterside called Medifuture2023. This conference is just a stepping stone for us to promote what our vision is for Tampa Bay’s future in healthcare innovation. A conference does not facilitate change, people do! We have established a meeting with a few individuals who have been key in this grassroots movement. I wanted to come here today to tell you we plan to continue meeting with these individuals and truly working on a collaborative relationship. What messages are you trying to spread through your movement and how can we help you? I am not here to promote the EDC’s agenda or to here to promote the conference. The future of Tampa Bay is bigger than both of those items. I am here to say “I want to hear from you.”

Steve Salengo

Bio:

Steve Salengo has worked in a variety of roles for hospitals and healthcare systems throughout the country. He teaches at the university level and embraces the concepts of lifelong learning and teaching. Steve is a prolific speaker at local, state and national conferences and symposiums on a variety of clinical, operational and leadership topics. He is particularly interested in advanced life support and resuscitation medicine, patient interviewing and communication, incident command systems and cultivating the next generation of progressive healthcare leaders.

Description:

How often do you find yourself trapped in a box of limitations? Most of what we do is based largely on how we think about and view the world, and many of our past and present experiences shape our future decisions. Rescuers are trained to incorporate a nonconventional mindset and approach to emergency situations that often benefits them in other aspects of their lives. In this witty and lively presentation, Steve will share some of his favorite “survival” tips and actionable advice that everyone (not just emergency providers) can apply immediately to help emerge from limited thought patterns.

Austin & Zach Hurst

Bio:

Zach and Austin have jointly built companies spanning six industries which include digital marketing, telecommunications, health insurance, consumer products, original device manufacturing, cloud computing and digital commerce. The culmination of these experiences quickly enabled Zach to become an investor in Hurst Capital, LLLP where he primarily assists the firm in identifying investment opportunities such as CloudVDI, a profitable entity based out of Tampa, Florida

Description:

We have 25,000 genes in our bodies... we have ~300,000 switches which turn them on and off. How do you tap an adaptive capacity to switch on the entrepreneurial genes? How do you balance linear thinking with creativity? How do you rewire the brain to parallel right and left brain dominance? There is neurological significance found in every great entrepreneur. Let's take some time today to talk about what makes us champions at what we do. If we can understand the science of how the brain works, we can better understand how we are wired. We can then pick co-founders which collaborate the best with us. Big Data is making this process possible.

Darren McDaniel

Bio:

Darren McDaniel is a strategist, sociologist, educator, entrepreneur, and hat-juggling creative — a deliberate idealist. Twice a Tampan, Darren is the Founding Director of Urban ReThink, an Orlando community hub geared to engage and empower collaborative-minded independent creative professionals. In developing a model that attracts and collides seemingly disparate groups and ideas, Darren seeks to incite purposeful action, economic growth and community evolution. A featured speaker at TEDxOrlando, Darren also professes Digital Storytelling at Full Sail University

Description:

It’s the era of the creative city. Urban centers all over the country grapple with ways to attract and retain talent, but what about engaging it while it’s there? What can a community do to activate those most committed and eager to contribute to its quality of life? How can a region attract and empower its city-makers, its entrepreneurs, and its under-realized talent pool before they give up or move away? Growing job market shifts produce an ever-rising tide of independents—folks experiencing opportunities and challenges that come with lack of a regular workplace. Empowering talent with access to resources, collaborators, and opportunities can be the difference between squandering potential and profound economic and cultural impact. Tampa native Darren McDaniel has a new approach to empowering those in the gap: a low-cost, high-impact community engagement hub combining work, play, and progress. Orlando’s Urban ReThink is a pre-incubator for collaborative-minded, enterprising independents. Twenty years after leaving Tampa, McDaniel returns to share the story and the model of Urban ReThink--as well as his hopes for bringing it home.