For speaking requests, nonprofits can contact me directly; universities and business organizations should contact my representative, Andrew Walker, at my speaking agency. His email is awalker -at- apbspeakers.com.

Upcoming speaking engagements

September 15, 2010. Presentation at a workshop for Procter & Gamble, New York City.

October 28, 2010. Michigan Audiology Coalition, Lansing, Michigan.

November 1, 2010. I’ll be giving a talk to a freshman seminar at UC-Santa Cruz.

July 24-25, 2011 (exact date/time TBD.) I’ll be keynoting at a Continuing Medical Education conference at the University of Pennsylvania.

October 29th-November 7th, 2011. I’ll be speaking at the Genoa Science Festival in Italy to celebrate the publication of Rebuilt in Italian.

Past speaking engagements

81. Read from Rebuilt and World Wide Mind at the Institute for the Future’s Health Horizons annual conference at the Cavallo Point Conference Center in Sausalito, California. Also participated in a panel discussion. June 2010.

80. Gave a talk and Q&A with parents of deaf children at The River School, an elementary school where 15% of the children have hearing loss (most use CIs) and 85% have normal hearing. May 2010.

79. Spoke at TEDx Islay in Austin, Texas. “TEDx” is a sort of franchise of the TED conference, and Islay is the name of a 1986 novel by Douglas Bullard, who envisioned a country that the deaf community calls home. May 2010.

78. Gave a lecture, “Brain Augmentation:Realities and Illuminating Fantasies,” at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Neuroscience and Society. April 2010.

77. Gave a talk on cochlear implants and brain implants at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Arlington, Virginia. February 2010.

76. Colloquium participant, “When Everything is Programmable”, Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, CA. September 8, 2009.

75. Gave a lunchtime presentation at Karl Deisseroth’s lab at Stanford. May 2009.

74. Spoke to a parent group in Annandale, Virgina. May 2009.

73. “My Collision with Neurotechnology,” in the Speakers and Signers colloquium at MIT. April 2009.

72. Speaker on seven panels during the Conference on World Affairs, April 2009. Subjects included “Ending the War on Science”, “Brain Quirks”, “Happy Bicentenary, Darwin”, “Cyborgs: Aliens Among Us?” and my favorite, “The Battlefield of Flirting.”

71. “Confessions of a Reluctant Cyborg,” public lecture, Georgia Tech. February 2009.

70. Lectured to Steve Potter’s class “Neuroengineering Fundamentals” at Georgia Tech. February 2009.

69. Member of a panel titled “Emerging Technology and the Future of Independent Living,” run by a nonprofit named HealthTech. February 2009.

68. Spoke at the Virginia chapter of the Alexander Graham Bell Foundation, Williamsburg, VA, November 2008.

67. Guest lecturer at UC-Santa Cruz, for a course titled “Participatory Evolution: from Human to Posthuman.” October 2008.

66. Keynote speaker at the University of Southern California’s 2nd Body Computing Conference, October 2008.

65. “Cochlear Implants and the Future of the Deaf World,” Gallaudet University. October 2008.

64. Addressed the Sinai Forum, a nonprofit organization in Indiana that brings in speakers from around the country. October 2008.

63. Spoke at the Gordon Research Conference on Science and Technology Policy in Big Sky, Montana. The theme of the conference was “Governing Emerging Technologies.” August 17, 2008.

62. Spoke at Google in the Authors@Google series, Mountain View, California, June 30, 2008. See the YouTube video here.

61. Spoke at the “Frontiers of Healthcare” conference, Brown University, Providence, RI, June 2008.

60. Spoke at the SV Life Sciences CEO Connections Summit, a group of CEOs of biotech venture capital companies, in Key Biscayne, Florida, May 2008.

59. Spoke at the Institute for the Future’s 33rd Annual Ten-Year Forecast Retreat, held at UCSF’s Misison Bay conference center, April 2008.

58. Spoke to Jose Blackorby’s course on special education at San Francisco State University, March 2008.

57. Delivered a colloquium talk on the World Wide Mind concept at the Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, CA. February 2008.

56. Gave a reading with Josh Swiller at Summit Speech School, New Providence, NJ. November 2007.

55. Gave a talk titled, “From World Wide Web to World Wide Mind: Is it Possible?” at Arizona State University. November 2007

54. Spoke to Bob Ostertag’s Technoculture course at UC-Davis, November 2007.

53. Spoke to the honors program students at Gallaudet University, October 2007.

52. Keynote speaker at the Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems conference at USC, September 2007.

51. Read at the RADAR Reading Series, San Francisco Main Public Library, August 2007.

50. Keynote speaker at the Educational Conference for Pediatric and Educational Audiologists, Reno, Nevada, July 2007.

49. Keynote speaker at the 6th Biennial Northeast Cochlear Implant Convention in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, July 2007.

48. Speaker and panelist at the MIT Media Lab’s one-day symposium titled H2.0: New Minds, New Bodies, New Identities, May 2007.

47. Panelist at the 59th annual Conference on World Affairs, Boulder, Colorado, April 2007. Panels of mine included “Community in a Wildly Wired World”,
“Engineering Humans: Bionics and Biomedicine”, and
“Let’s Talk About Sex…or Not.” See the full list of my panels here.

46. Speaker at the Literary Cuisine luncheon, Santa Clara University, April 2007.

45. Panelist, “Making the Case For and Against Human Enhancement,” part of the Spring 2007 Life Science Breakfast Series run by the Women’s Technology Cluster, March 2007.

44. “Politics, Technology, and the Future of Deafness,” public lecture, Gallaudet University, March 2007.

43. Spoke to a freshman writing class at the University of San Francisco, February 2007.

42. Duke University, public lecture at the Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary Studies titled “The Future of Bodies and Communities in a Hypertechnological Age”, February 2007.

41. Reading and signing at a chapter meeting of Self-Help for the Hard of Hearing, San Francisco, January 2006.

40. Participated in a reading to benefit the Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, November 2006.

39. Gave a talk to Bob Ostertag’s Technoculture course at UC-Davis, November 2006.

38. Speaker on a Litquake panel, October 2006.

37. Spoke to a class on disability at San Francisco State University, October 2006.

36. Book reading and signing at Black Oak Books in Berkeley, California, September 2006.

35. Public talk on cochlear implant technology at the IBM Almaden Research Center’s monthly health care colloquium, July 2006.

34. Banquet speaker at 2006 Hearing Loss Association Convention, July 2006.

33. Reading at the San Francisco Public Library (Main Branch), June 2006.

32. Speaker at Boston Scientific’s awards banquet, Boston, June 2006.

31. Reading at “Scary Science”, Edinburgh Castle, San Francisco, June 2006.

30. “Myths of Human Enhancement”, at Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights, Stanford University Law School, May 2006.

29. Speaker at the Ear Foundation’s “Twilight Lecture”, Nottingham, United Kingdom, April 2006.

28. Speaker at the British Cochlear Implant Group’s annual conference, St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, April 2006.

27. Speaker at the Countrybookshop in Derbyshire, April 2006.

26. Panelist at the Conference on World Affairs, Boulder, Colorado. Panels I was on included “Super Geeks–Programming Outside the Box”; “Love Is the Answer–What Is the Question?”; “and “Pheromones and Stiletto Heels–Weapons of Mass Seduction”. See the full list here. April 2006.

25. “Reflections on a Remade Life” at Ears, Hearing, and Beyond, Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center at the University of Washington, Seattle. April 2006.

24. Speaker at the Peninsula chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America (formerly SHHH). Redwood City, California, April 2006.

23. Lectured to Dr. Jose Carmena’s course on brain-machine interfaces at UC-Berkeley, February 2006.

22. Addressed the San Francisco chapter of Self-Help for the Hard of Hearing (SHHH), February 2006.

21. Addressed the school and guest-taught two writing classes at The Menlo School, a private high school in Atherton, CA. February 2006.

20. “An Inside Perspective on Cochlear Implants…by a John Tracy Clinic Graduate.” John Tracy Clinic, Los Angeles, CA, November 2005.

19. “Beyond Cochlear Implants: Implications for Future Neurotechnologies.” University of Southern California, Los Angeles, November 2005.

18. “Postmodernism, Through the Body.” Invited talk at UC-Davis’s English and TechnoCulture Studies program, Davis, CA, November 2005.

17. Keynote speaker, Annual Symposium on Deafness, Language, and Learning, Breckenridge, Colorado, October 2005.

16. “Beyond Cochlear Implants: Implications for Cognitive Technologies.” Keynote talk at the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disorders’ annual conference, Boulder, CO, October 2005.

15. Panelist on “Science is Sexy,” a discussion on science writing held at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, October 2005. The other panelists were James Calder, Michael Pollan, Richard Rhodes, and David Ewing Duncan. A Litquake event.

14. “My Gosh, I’m Posthuman.” Brown University, September 2005.

5 - 13. Numerous book readings in May-June 2005, including Books Inc., Cover to Cover, and Writers With Drinks (San Francisco), Kepler’s (Menlo Park), University Bookstore (Seattle), Vroman’s (Pasadena), Harvard Bookstore (Boston), BookPeople (Austin), and Cody’s (Berkeley.)

4. “Cochlear Implants and Transhumanism.” Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, CA, August 2005.

3. Invited talk to approximately 200 members of the sales staff at Advanced Bionics, July 2005.

2. “’What’s It Sound Like?’ An Introduction to Cochlear Implants (By a Cochlear Implant User).” New Jersey Speech & Hearing Association, Atlantic City, NJ, May 2005.

1. “Computers and Drugs Working Together: The Present and Future of Neural Biotechnologies.” The Future Salon, Palo Alto, CA, August 2004. My talk is available on the web as streaming video here.