Overview

What opportunities get created as fields converge? What challenges surface as markets, policies, and investing dynamics shift? What new scientific discoveries are potential game-changers? Convergence exists to explore those questions (and many others), with a high-level audience interested in what's happening in the rapidly-converging worlds of biotech, pharma, health care, medical devices, and the Internet.

The Convergence Forums foster real debate and discussion among audiences that are every bit as high-level as the speakers.  The programs provide an opportunity for participants to make important new contacts, do business, explore important new directions in research, delve deeply into what it takes to maintain competitive advantage in a fast-changing world, and leave feeling recharged.

Mission
Bring together high-level life sciences players to discuss and debate the most pressing topics of interest to the industry - topics like forging strong corporate partnerships; attracting funding from private and public sources; building successful research organizations; streamlining product development and approval; understanding the coming convergence of biology, software, and medical devices; and staying ahead of regulatory changes.

What Makes It Different
Our East Coast and West Coast programs deliver a rapid-fire stream of ideas, advice, lessons-learned, and important insights - not a parade of 15-minute company presentations. They are not your typical investor conferences - they are inivitation-only gatherings designed for people who make news and build important companies in the life sciences field.

Audience
Life sciences executives and company founders; heads of R&D; chief business officers; venture capitalists; investment bankers; and partnership execs at pharmaceutical companies.

Takeaway
Participants will exchange ideas with industry leaders, develop useful connections with a select group of colleagues, and lay the foundation for future business dealings.

Press Policy
Convergence asks those of its participants who are journalists or bloggers to adhere to our "off-the-record" policy.

What does "off-the-record" mean, in our definition? If a speaker or moderator requests that a given comment or presentation be kept "off-the-record," we ask you to respect that and not share it with those outside the room. Otherwise, feel free to blog, report, or Tweet.

A limited number of press passes are issued each year, and by accepting a press pass to the event, the conference organizers expect that the recipient will adhere to this policy.

About the Organizers
Convergence is one of three high-level gatherings produced by Future Forward Events, LLC. Since 2000, our programs, which include the Nantucket Conference and Future Forward, have assembled innovators and change agents from various fields -- people as diverse as John Abele, co-founder of Boston Scientific; inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil; genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter;  Google CEO Eric Schmidt; Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe; Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster; Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer; medical device entrepreneur Dean Kamen; and David Scadden of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.