Larry Brilliant, Chief Philanthropy Evangelist, Google.org: "I feel like FiRe is my home, the place I come back to every year. It's great to see old friends."

Lee Hartwell, Nobelist, and President and Director, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center: "I found the meeting a delightful coming-together of highly motivated and accomplished people with a strong interest in using their talents and resources for the social good."

Bruce Sterling, Science Fiction Author: "I prophesized something like this FiRe conference in 1998, a new artistic and social movement - the Viridian Movement. Green tech is advancing as fast as global warming. The new cyber solar and wind energy systems are different entities from the old Dutch windmills. It's a 30-year overnight success."

Ricardo Salinas, CEO, Grupo Salinas: "I'm glad I came. FiRe has been extremely enlightening, and I am happy about that. The whole issue of climate change has taken on a new perspective for me. This is my first time at FiRe, and I have had the opportunity to meet lots of very interesting new people."

David Brin, Author and Physicist: "The future is made by hard-nosed optimists, and there are few places where you'll get as fine a mix of horizon technologies, economic insight, and focused truth-telling than at FiRe."

Jerry Woodall, National Medal of Technology Laureate and Distinguished Professor of Elec. and Comp. Eng., Purdue University: "As both education and research professionals, [Dr. Nancy Bulger] and I have attended hundreds of conferences, meetings, and workshops. We found FiRe 2008, our first FiRe, to be the best meeting we have ever attended, bar none."

Sidney Rittenberg, Founder, Rittenberg Associates, and Author, The Man Who Stayed Behind: "[Yulin and I] felt we were in the presence of genius and greatness, and that Mark and his sisters were the Oistrakh violin trio that produced these three days of wonder."

William A Haseltine, Ph.D.; President, The William A. Haseltine Foundation for Medical Sciences and the Arts: "The FiRe conference is an excellent opportunity to view cutting-edge emergent technology for the most relevant applications presented in a compelling manner by leaders in their field in an intimate and delightful setting."

Erik Blachford, CEO, TerraPass Inc.: "As usual, the insights [at FiRe] flowed fast and furious, not only on the panels, but at all the breaks and social events."

Stephen Evans, Presenter, Business Daily, BBC World Service "Every time I do one of these [FiRe] sessions, I feel more and more enthused, and feel better about humanity."

Larry Smarr, Director, Calit2 ["The FiRe Lab"], UCSD: "It was a great thrill for me and all of the Calit2 staff to see the level of response from such a high-level audience. I have next year on the calendar and will start planning for it now."

Bruce Harned, President, MarketFit Associates: "FiRe is truly the unifying force in technology. This year's "Rapid Response" theme empowered many disparate disciplines into an amazing core of innovation, action, and hope about the Earth's future."