In Which I Have an Enthusiastic Moment Over Padmasree Warrior

As you can see from the sidebar of our blog, and from our confirmed speakers page, Motorola’s Executive Vice President and CTO Padmasree Warrior will be speaking at the Blog Business Summit this September.

I must confess that since I came across Padmasree’s blog earlier this year, she’s become one of my heroes. Under her direction, Motorola won the 2004 National Medal of Technology.

She’s also been a passionate advocate for federal research and development funding to keep the United States competitive in the world economy. She recently wrote:

For example as outlined in a report on competitiveness from AeA, consider how federally funded R&D accelerated innovations like fiber optics and the Internet. Federal funding of solid-state physics and ceramics/glass engineering in the late 1960s created the knowledge base for widespread use of fiber optic cable in the 1990s. Department of Defense began experimenting with the design of a decentralized file and data-sharing network in 1969, leading to the explosive diffusion of the Internet 25 years later. The fact is that government R&D investments play an indispensable role in building the foundation of a knowledge-economy by investing in concepts years before they are commercially viable.

To top it all off, Padmasree is an advocate for women in an industry that, as Robert Scoble so aptly put it, has a “culture of attacking women that has especially got to stop.”

For all of these reasons and more, I think Padmasree Warrior is the bees knees and I’m jumping for joy that she’ll be joining us this September.