12/2-3 UC Davis Solutions Summit: Bridging Ideas to Action

We at the Mixing Bowl have made a sizable time investment over the last couple months helping UC Davis launch new initiatives that move more of its academic research and ideas to the world of action and solutions.

We decided to make this investment in time and effort because we see an openness and commitment at Davis to work collaboratively and in new ways to get its world leading food science research translated into real world solutions to address challenges in food, agriculture and health.

As evidence of this spirit, on October 29th we held a Challenge Definition Workshop at Davis with well over 100 people— academics, food and tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, farmers, large food/ag company executives and policy experts— to crowd source the challenge topics of the new UC Davis Innovation Institute for Food & Health. 

To generate those topics we utilized a new innovation design approach that provided a new experience for many in the audience.The insights from that event are laying the foundation for the Solution Summit for Food, Ag & Health that we are holding December 2-3 with the UC Davis World Food Center, the Innovation Institute for Food & Health, and Apps for Ag.

On December 2nd we will hold an Apps for Ag Hackathon for coders to tackle California farmers’ real world problems.  Simultaneously, the Mixing Bowl will have an Idea Hack to bring technologists and non-technologists together to make uncommon connections to result in uncommon solutions to some of the food, ag and health challenge topics we identified— all put into a California context.

On December 3rd will have a day long Solution Summit Forum for Food, Ag & Health to include fast pitch presentations from start-ups, keynotes from some of UC Davis’s leading researchers, a tech translation panel with VCs, and presentations and judging from the Hackathon and the Idea Hack.

The Mixing Bowl’s purpose is to connect the people that are feeding the world today with the people who are changing the world through technology and disruptive innovation.  

We are investing the time in this event and with UC Davis because we want to build stronger bridges between places like the Central Valley and Silicon Valley, between the world’s leading food science and agriculture school and the world’s center of venture innovation just 90 miles away.  

By applying new ways of linking these two worlds—like crowdsourcing, hackathons and idea hacks-- we believe we can develop connections and a culture that will result in innovative and meaningful solutions to the pressing challenges we face in food, ag and health.UC Davis is open to trying new approaches.  

Are you?

Please come and join us December 2nd and 3rd in Davis for a different kind of event that we hope will yield new and different solutions.