Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley. San Jose is Silicon Valley's largest city, the third-largest in California, and the tenth-largest in the United States; other major Silicon Valley cities include Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Redwood City, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Cupertino. The San Jose Metropolitan Area has the third-highest GDP per capita in the world, according to the Brookings Institution, and, as of June 2021, has the highest percentage of homes valued at $1 million or more in the United States.
TechTV was a 24-hour cable and satellite channel based in San Francisco featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet. In 2004, it merged with the G4 gaming channel which ultimately dissolved TechTV programming. At the height of its six-year run, TechTV was broadcast in 70 countries, reached 43 million households, and claimed 1.9 million unique visitors monthly to its website. A focus on personality-driven product reviews and technical support made it a cultural hub for technology information worldwide, still existing today online through its former hosts' webcasts, most notably the TWiT Network.
MythBusters is a science entertainment television program, developed by Peter Rees and produced by Australia's Beyond Television Productions. The series premiered on the Discovery Channel on January 23, 2003. It was broadcast internationally by many television networks and other Discovery channels worldwide. The show's original hosts, special effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, used elements of the scientific method to test the validity of rumors, myths, movie scenes, adages, Internet videos, and news stories. The show was one of the most popular on Discovery Channel, being preceded only by How It's Made and Daily Planet, both in Canada.
James Franklin Hyneman is an American special effects expert who is best known as the former co-host of the television series MythBusters alongside Adam Savage, where he became known for his distinctive beret and walrus moustache. He is also the owner of M5 Industries, the special effects workshop where MythBusters was filmed. He is known among Robot Wars devotees for his robot entry Blendo, which was deemed too dangerous for entry in the competition. He is the inventor of the Sentry, an unmanned firefighting robotic vehicle. He is also one of the designers of the aerial cable robotic camera system Wavecam used in sports and entertainment events.
Adam Whitney Savage is an American special effects designer and fabricator, actor, educator, and television personality and producer, best known as the former co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters and Unchained Reaction. His model work has appeared in major films, including Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and The Matrix Reloaded. He is the host of the TV program Savage Builds, which premiered on the Science Channel on June 14, 2019. He is most active on the platform Adam Savage's Tested which includes a website and a YouTube channel.
Salvatore "Tory" Paul Belleci is an American television personality and model maker, best known for his work on the Discovery Channel television program MythBusters. He has also worked with Industrial Light and Magic on films including Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. The Federation battleships and podracers are some of Belleci's pieces.
Northwestern Polytechnic University (NPU), now known as San Francisco Bay University, is a private, non profit university in Fremont, California. Founded in 1984, the university awards bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science, engineering, technology and management programs.
Doug McConnell is a television journalist who has focused on environmental issues, with programs on the air continuously since 1982. He has created, produced and hosted many series, special programs, and news projects for local, national and international distribution. His broadcast awards include multiple Emmys, an Iris, and a Gabriel.
Kari Elizabeth Byron is an American television host, best known for her role on the MythBusters and White Rabbit Project series.
James Louderback is the CEO of VidCon, and was previously the CEO of Revision3. He has had numerous jobs in media companies involved in technology, most notably with TechTV and editor-in-chief of PC Magazine. He is also well known as the television host of TechTV's Fresh Gear for three years from 1998 to 2000.
Meyer Sound Laboratories is an American company based in Berkeley, California that manufactures self-powered loudspeakers, multichannel audio show control systems, electroacoustic architecture, and audio analysis tools for the professional sound reinforcement, fixed installation, and sound recording industries.
VillageTech Solutions began with EcoSystems (Nepal) in 1996, to improve living standards for rural people by creating affordable energy and transport products. VTS creates inexpensive technology by focusing creative talent on problems ignored by commercial investors because the solutions are intentionally easily copied, and the markets are distorted by conflicting cultures, governments, subsidies and real conflict.
Dirk I. Gates is an American businessman, founder and chief executive officer of two companies, Xircom and Xirrus.
Joe Grand is an American electrical engineer, inventor and hardware hacker known in the hacker community as Kingpin. He achieved mainstream popularity after his appearance on Prototype This!, a Discovery Channel television show. He specializes in, "finding security flaws in hardware devices and educating engineers on how to increase the security of their designs". Grand has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs regarding government and homeland computer security under his internet handle, Kingpin.
TechShop was a chain of membership-based, open-access, do-it-yourself (DIY) workshops and fabrication studios. As of 2017 they had ten locations in the United States: three in California, one in Arizona, one in Arlington, Virginia, one in Michigan, one in Texas, one in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one in St. Louis, Missouri, and one in Brooklyn, New York, as well as four international locations.
Zach Kaplan is an American entrepreneur and the CEO of Inventables.
Moira Gunn is both an academic and a professional journalist. She is perhaps best known as the host of the public radio program Tech Nation, its regular segment BioTech Nation, as well as the weekly tech-sci commentary, Five Minutes. It airs on the National Public Radio "NPR Now" channel at SiriusXM 122, public radio stations both nationally and internationally, and the Internet in a number of podcast syndication outlets podcast. A former NASA computer scientist and engineer, Dr. Gunn is an associate professor at the University of San Francisco, where she is the Director of Bioentrepreneurship, where her work on BioTech Nation dovetails with academic, reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of moving scientific breakthroughs on the lab bench through to the commercial products.
Cathy Edwards is an Australian software engineer and entrepreneur. She co-founded and was chief technology officer of app search engine Chomp in 2009. It was acquired by Apple for $50 million in 2012.
Bruce Burdick (1933–2021) was an American designer and founder of the Burdick Group. He is known for The Burdick Group modular desk system, and designing various museum exhibits around the world, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame exhibit space.
