Provided/Magdalena Kalinka Bartishevich

From left, Dan Huttenlocher, vice provost and founding dean of the CornellNYC Tech campus; Michael Kubin '71; Adam Hirsch '04; and Vivian Schiller '83 discuss technology at the Cornell Club in Manhattan Feb. 23.

The Cornell Club in Manhattan buzzed Feb. 23 as 140 alumni, students and faculty joined Dan Huttenlocher, the newly appointed vice provost and founding dean of the CornellNYC Tech campus, home of the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute, to discuss Cornell's impact on the technology scene and the increasing role of technology in media.

The sold-out event, organized by the Cornell Entrepreneurship Network (CEN) in partnership with Cornell's Faculty of Computing and Information Science, kicked off with an overview and update on the tech campus.

"One of the things that we've really been missing at Cornell, that some of our peers like [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] and Stanford have, is having an ecosystem like this close to campus," Huttenlocher said.

Even without a centralized hub for innovation -- what Silicon Valley is to Stanford or Boston is to MIT -- Cornell's entrepreneurial talent is clear, Huttenlocher said. A survey conducted during the tech campus application process found that in the last five years Cornell alumni, faculty and staff have started 2,600 companies, created 34,000 jobs and raised $10.6 billion in venture capital.

"Those numbers are as good as any university in the country," said Huttenlocher. "It's just that we didn't know that about ourselves because these companies are spread out all over the country and even around the world."

The CornellNYC Tech campus will provide a hub not only for Cornellians, but also for the city's tech sector. In addition to the 8,000 direct and indirect jobs from campus operations and 20,000 construction jobs created by the campus, it is estimated that the campus will produce 30,000 permanent tech jobs through spinoffs, licenses and corporate grants, he said.

"We think it's really important that this campus be able to serve as a magnet for the technology ecosystem much more broadly in New York City," Huttenlocher said. "Not only our students and our alumni, but the tech community in general as well."

As part of this commitment, Cornell has pledged to invest $150 million in New York City startups by acting as a limited partner in venture and early stage investment funds: an undertaking that will be supervised by Cornell's investment professionals.

Following the update on the tech campus, Adam Hirsch '04, chief digital officer of DoSomething.org; Michael Kubin '71, managing director of Ionic Media and executive vice president of Invidi Technologies; and Vivian Schiller '83, chief digital officer at NBC News, joined Huttenlocher in a spirited panel discussion of journalism, online media and intellectual property.

The discussion, which touched on the transforming identity of newspapers, online media, cable television, as well as the fight over the online piracy bills -- the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act -- only further underscored the importance of creating a space in New York City for innovation, collaboration and entrepreneurship.

"It's really important for Cornell to be in New York City," said Hirsch, who developed intimate knowledge about the city's tech center in his former role as COO of Mashable.com. "The biggest thing that startup companies in New York need, besides money, are developers. We have a brain drain from New York to Silicon Valley. We need a new source of technologists, and we need to bring experienced ones back to New York."

Claire Lambrecht '06 is a freelance writer in New York City.