Back in October, Corning held its second “Advancing the Vision” symposium in Palo Alto, Calif., to hear from a broad and select field of advanced technology consumers (e.g., advanced medical, communications, education professionals) about how their worlds might intersect with high-tech glass products. In the last few days, Corning has posted videos that give a sampling of some of the presentations and discussions that occurred at ATV-2.
As I recall, Corning organized the first ATV gathering after the company published its noted “A Day Made of Glass” video. Although that video stimulated a lot of new thinking about glass, a lot of what was portrayed was informed guesswork by the company. Smartly, Corning also organized ATV to solicit responses and alternative “visions” for glass from an influential cadre of thought leaders.
I don’t know if ATV was part of Corning’s plan all along or an afterthought. In the video above, from the second symposium, Corning VP Jeff Evenson essentially admits that the company didn’t anticipate that the “A Day Made of Glass” would go viral (approximately 21 million YouTube views in two years) and generate so much interest. Regardless, hosting annual ATVs seems wise, and opening up some of the presentations to the public seems to me to be a brilliant PR move.
Below are some (but not all) of the videos from ATV-2 that I found interesting and short. Note, these are not about glass, per se, but represent creative prognostications and potential applications using glass-involved interfaces and applications that are fairly far away on the value chain from the point of glass production: