First Annual Mixing Bowl Food IT Conference Forecasts Innovations & Trends for Food and Agriculture Information Technology

Palo Alto, CA – June 23, 2014The Mixing Bowl, a Silicon Valley-based forum, and Stanford's FEED Collaborative hosted their first annual conference on Friday, June 20th at the Stanford Arrillaga Center in Palo Alto.

Over 350 attendees participated in the conference which featured over 35 speakers across 9 sessions, design workshops, panels, and pitch competitions.

Highlights included:

Stanford D School Design Thinking Workshop with Callaghan Innovation of New Zealand, with a delegation of Maori indigenous food and agriculture producers Steve Blank, Stanford Professor and Author of the “Startup Owner’s Manual” discussing innovative thinking to drive trends for the food value chainInnovative data-driven listening tools for new food product research with panelists from Nestle Foods, DINE Marketing, and Buyer’s Best Friend.

Elliot Grant of HarvestMark, Dana Frasz of FoodShift and others debate technology’s impact in decreasing food waste in industrial and consumer applications.

The inaugural conference also highlighted innovation in Food IT with The Blender pitch competition, recognizing eHarvest Hub and Pantry Labs for their entrepreneurial approach to delivering solutions in agriculture and food tech.

Participant quotes:

“Amazing! The event saved me about 3 months of networking. Definitely worth the trip.”  – Martin Rand, VitalFields“

The pitch competition was incredibly well put together. The Mixing Bowl conference was 10x above the quality of other conferences in this space – and this was so apparent in the pitch competition. The judges were so high caliber and the startups were really impressive.” – Christine Su, Summer Technologies