Lucy Sanders – the CEO of the National Center for Women & Information Technology – was a key participant in last week’s Microsoft Annual Faculty Summit.  InformationWeek has a good summary of the meeting – and the issues – up on the web in an article titled “Funding Innovation Where It’s Incubated.” 

The basic message – as stated directly by Dan Mote (president of the University of Maryland) is that “”Students do not see opportunity in our field [IT and computer science]. And it’s not just kids in poor districts–even the rich kids don’t get jazzed about tech. That’s going to be a problem as computer companies hunt for the next generation of workers.”

Lucy – who is one of the most insightful and articulate people I know when discussing this issue – added “Part of the reason the U.S. isn’t grooming enough future computer jocks could be that the discipline mystifies lots of kids.  Computer science is a stealth profession – no one really knows what we do. Instead of teaching how computers can help solve practical problems, schools’ coursework couches things in terms of technologies – Java and C vs. business and medicine. That’s just the wrong way to approach it, [Education needs to get] away from the notion that computing equals programming.”

Google is having a similar summit in a few days.  I’m glad major software companies are thinking hard about this and getting engaged.  We’ve got to figure out how to get our kids to get re-excited about computer science. 

My friends at Slice of Lime just put up a website for the new Blink Gallery on 1011 Pearl Street in Boulder.  Clean, simple, and contemporary, just like the gallery.  We sure do miss Colorado art when we are up in Alaska.

Amy said a really nice thing to me the other day.  We were talking and she said “One of the things I really admire about you is that your work is play to you.” 

I’ve always loved what I do.  Yeah – I’ve had my share of really crappy days (and months, and even a crappy year or two – say around 2001) – but even when things are really rough, I treat the “work” part of it as indistinguishable from “play.”  As I’ve figured out more things about how I relate to the elusive notion of work life balance I’ve determined that “always being on” is not a requirement for effective work (nor is it sustainable.)  Once I’d finally decoupled the idea of work and play, it became easy to put them back together again since so much of what I work on is just a blast.

I was on a call earlier today and the person I was talking to said “sorry for interrupting your vacation in Alaska.”  I kindly responded that even though I was up in Alaska, this wasn’t vacation, this was life, and I just happened to be up here right now.  I’ve been in front of my computer or on the phone since early this morning (except for an hour when Amy and I wandered over to Cosmic Kitchen for lunch).  I’m jamming out to Cowboy Junkies, my favorite person in the world is at her computer five feet away, and it’s been a really fun day.  Even the garbage I had to deal with today was “fun” if you squint and look at it the right way.

I talk and email with a lot of “random” people.  I’ve blogged about my random meeting policy in the past – whenever I reflect on it I realize that it has served me well.  I never have any specific expectations for these meetings and almost always enjoy the people that I meet.  I have the same approach with email – I try to respond to everything I get (that’s not spam), even if it’s a short “sorry – I can’t be helpful” or “this isn’t interesting to me – good luck with things” type of message.  I’m sure I occasionally miss someone / something, but I try. 

I often get email thank you notes for helping folks out.  Since I started blogging, I get more of these that are random and unsolicited.  Often they turn into an email relationship; occasionally even a friendship or a working relationship.

One of these random meetings – which started out via email – was with John Minnihan, the creator of Freepository.  I poked around on the site, was interested in what he was up to, and offered to get together with him on a random day.  We had a good first meeting, I gave him some feedback, introduced him to a few other people in Boulder that I thought there was potential for him / Freepository to collaborate with, and we stayed in touch.  We’ve continued to email back and forth and had another call last week that resulted in some specific potential activity that could be helpful to his business.

A few days later I got a note from him that thanked me and told me he’d arranged for a gift certificate for me at the Homestead Restaurant.  This was completely unexpected and – in addition – required a little effort on John’s part since the Homestead is one of the nice restaurants up here in Homer.  To figure that out, he had to do a little bit of research on the web, pick up the phone, talk to the folks at the Homestead, and arrange for the gift certificate.

We took our neighbors The Schallock’s out to a delightful dinner at the Homestead on Friday.  Lo and behold there was the gift certificate waiting for us from John.  After the meal, when I settled the bill, we all thanked John for contributing to underwriting the dinner.  Now that’s class – not just the gift, but the effort to figure out an interesting and memorable one.  Thanks John.

Paul Kedrosky – the author of the excellent, informative, and often entertaining Infectious Greed blog – sent me a link to a fantastic post by Art De Vany on Elite Athletic Training and Disease.  It’s primarily a very thoughtful and insightful article by Mark Sisson on elite athletes, health, and overtraining.  It’s great stuff for anyone that is an endurance athlete.

I’m looking for ideas about different sources – online, books, and software – for helping a teenager learn how to program.  I’m looking for both introductory / early programming stuff as well as general computer science stuff.  The more interactive, the better.  If you have any ideas, please post your comments. 

EndurancePlanet put up an interview with me about running marathons.  If you are a runner, or just want to hear me talk about something different than entrepreneurship and venture capital, enjoy the roughly one mile (10:46) of interview.

Another GooglePark episode is up and it’s hilarious (as usual.)  And – as a special bonus – I discovered EllisonPark which I have no idea how I missed before.

If you haven’t tried Technorati in a while, go take another look.  At their birthday party, they rolled out a new major upgrade to the service.  Dave Sifry – the CEO / founder describes it in detail.  My quick scan around the blogosphere pundits showed consistently strong positive feedback.  I often get asked how I manage to keep up with as much information as I do – especially about the companies I’m involved with.  Part of my secret weapon is Technorati, NewsGator Online search feeds, and FeedDemon.  Plus – they all work really nicely together.

Happy birthday guys.