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SAN FRANCISCO -- A conference dominated by chips, servers, and wireless radios really owes it all to just a good teacher. And if not that, than someone doing a small, good thing.

In a keynote address opening the Intel Developer Forum here, Intel chairman Craig Barrett announced four $100,000 prizes that will be awarded next year. An inventor can visit IntelChallenge.com and submit his idea in four areas: healthcare, economic development, education, and the environment. The money will be used to implement the idea, not as a reward.

At a recent conference on IT in Kuala Lumpur, Barrett said he came back to his hotel one night to see this message left next to a candy on his pillow: "A small deed done is better than a great deed planned." "We have the opportunity to a number of great small deeds," Barrett said.

As he has moved into the chairman's role, Barrett has increasingly taken a "softer" role, leaving the nitty-gritty details of chip introductions to his senior vice presidents. Barrett himself has focused more on the impact of technology, and he continued to do so on Tuesday in his keynote.

"We collectively are the folks that bring innovations in software and hardware and connectivity, and we must be leaders in how to educate" the emerging world, Barrett said.

Barrett said that he had seen a proactive attitude toward in education in all countries except the United States. When he was asked what one tool he would place in the classroom to help students, he said he replied "a teacher".

"The answer is not throwing money at the problem; the answer is throwing good qualified people at the problem," Barrett said. There is a lack of good qualified teachers in the U.S. public school system."

That's not to say that education is the only solution; not surprisingly, technology was seen as the dynamic force of change in emerging countries. Barrett asked the chief executive of Kiva,org, a microfinance organization, to explain the organization's mission. And Barrett also asked a doctor in Colombia to demonstrate a practice where a Colombia ID card could be read remotely via a mobile phone, providing vital medical history information to a doctor in the field.

Barrett compared the world' healthcare system to an ancient mainframe. "The hospital is the mainframe," he said. "If you get sick, you go to the hospital. What we need to do is bring the PC to the healthcare system."

Finally, Barrett asked the third-place winner of the Intel Science Talent Search to take the stage, a thirteen-year-old boy who had interned at Portland State University, doing work in solar cells made of plastic. Barrett said that project would be the type of development the $100,000 prizes were designed to empower.