Our collective hearts are with those suffering in Texas. We wish you a quick return to normalcy and safety.

Tuesday, Feb 23, TTI/Vanguard will be visiting Dresden, where Chrisoph Kögler of T-Systems Multimedia Solutions will serve as host for an IoT-focused event that will be part Germany startup forum, part TTI/V field trip, reminiscent of the before times. We’ll kick off with a bespoke virtual tour of the GlobalFoundries fab before spending time with a collection of firms that share an affiliation with the Smart Systems Hub Germany center of excellence. These startups span IoT sensor modules, associated machine learning, and municipal/industrial implementation support, as well as a blockchain transaction firm and one that democratizes the training of industrial robotics. Register here, and join us next week.

All of this is just a prelude to “The Power of Networks,” a series-of-Tuesdays conference (March 2, 9, 16, and 23) featuring networks of all sorts: physical mapping, social/informational, telecom, and security. Register here.

Continuing with the 2021 series of international startup forums, friend-of-TTI/Vanguard Mark Bregman will host a virtual visit to New Zealand on Tuesday, Feb 9. This event will cover a broad array of application areas. We’ll hear from
 

• Aider, a digital assistant for SMEs that communicates through natural language (with a Kiwi accent?) and integrates information across dozens of business apps.
• The founder of agritech firm BioLumic will then explain how the company exploits ultraviolet photomorphogenesis to accelerate the growth rate of seedlings and improve agricultural yields.
• Dawn Aerospace is setting its sights high by building space planes to take off and land at conventional airports, transporting payloads to and from near-Earth orbit.
• Mint Innovation, which relies on microbes to extract metals like copper, iron, tin, and gold from electronic waste—a win–win.

Don’t forget to join us as we (virtually) travel to Israel on January 26th. Register today!

All eyes were on Washington, DC this week as President Biden took the oath of office and officially became the United States of America’s 46th President. TTIV is proud of our many civil-servant, federal employee and government contractor members. We wish a smooth transition to all.

In one of new Administration's first moves, 46 elevated the role of science advisor to cabinet-level status and nominated Eric Lander, founding director of MIT and Harvard’s Broad Institute, to head the Office of Science and Technology Policy. (Cyrus Wadia, Detroit, May 2015)
www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/science/biden-science-cabinet.html

Happy New Year! One of our resolutions is to produce an outstanding virtual March meeting for our members. Do you have a story to share on how 2020 changed your workflow for good: What tools/tech/innovation proved invaluable? How relationships between employees and organizations will look going forward? How have networks changed? If you have a suggestion for a topic, we are all ears.

In the meantime, we have much to look forward to. Israel, New Zealand, and Germany will be the first stops on a global start-up series kicking off this month. Register today!