I geeked out most over the clean tech presentation. Unlike in the old days, (sigh) PARC no longer invents whatever its free-thinking nerds can dream up. But it does find awfully creative ways to spin-off printer technology.
Take solar power. A few years ago, PARC spied SolFocus—a start-up that makes solar concentrators. The idea: Instead of laying down hundreds of square feet of pricey silicon photovoltaic cells, use mirrors to concentrate light onto chips covering as little as 1/100 the area.
Here, the big collector dishes of SolFocus's first-generation panel track the sun outside Xerox PARC.