Amy started out my Sunday morning with the Select A Candidate Quiz from Minnesota Public Radio.  I’ll leave it to her to decide whether or not to say who she selected (but it was a surprise to me).  So – I figured I’d take it also. 

Given that I don’t know who Dennis Kucinich is, I was perplexed by how strongly I matched him.  Now that I’ve read his story, I get it.  My top five were Kucinich, Richardson, Gravel, Dodd, and Edwards.  Clinton and Obama were tied for #6 – I disagree with them on Iraq, Immigration, Social Security, Energy, and the Death Penalty.  It’s no surprise to me that the Indians (I mean Romney, McCain, Gilmore, Huckabee, and Brownback) are in the cellar. 

Go Red Sox.

The subtitle of this post is “Wow – that boy can write.”  If you found my post titled CTO vs. VP Engineering to be relevant to your universe, grab a cup of coffee and wander over to Niel Robertson’s post titled Do Programming Languages Matter Anymore. 

I’ve worked on various companies with Niel over the past decade, including NetGenesis, Service Metrics, and most recently Newmerix.  In addition to being a phenomenal CTO (confirmed by Tom Higley – Niel’s partner at Service Metrics), Niel can write an essay like very few others.  This one covers his view of programming languages, how they fit in SAP’s world, and why SAP (and others) should “integrate a CLR runtime engine native in the application server (or at least have a three legged stool of ABAP, Java, and CLR-based runtime).”

If you aren’t a software developer (or an exec at a software company), you probably won’t care – other than to get a sense as to how a CTO should integrate programming, english, reasoning, and writing skills (plus you’ll get to learn why CLR matters.  For the rest of you – especially those of you that think “Microsoft is dead”, this is an important essay that helps uncover one more reason why large parts of Microsoft’s long term technology strategy are brilliant (and possibly unassailable in the medium-term.)

John Markoff suggests there is a looming battle of semantics between Web 3.0 and semantic web.  Markoff summarizes by saying:

“There is no easy consensus about how to define what is meant by Web 3.0, but it is generally seen as a reference to the semantic Web. While it is not that much more precise a phrase, the semantic Web refers to technology to make using the Internet better by understanding the meaning of what people are doing, not just the way pages link to each other.”

I’ll take it up a notch.  Let’s toss “implicit web” into the mix and expand it beyond just “what people are doing” and “the way pages link to each other.”  It’s not only about people and pages – it’s about getting the computer to figure out a lot of stuff for you based on what you – and people that you “trust” or “find relevant” do.  You could be cynical and just assert that this is the way our friend the “social graph” finds its way into the mix of Web 2.0.  Or – you could keep playing – the way we are planning to at Defrag – and say something all encompassing like:

“Defrag is the first conference focused solely on the internet-based tools that transform loads of information into layers of knowledge, and accelerate the “aha” moment. Defrag is about the space that lives in between knowledge management, “social” networking, collaboration and business intelligence. Defrag is not a version number. Rather it’s a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, builders and thinkers that are working on the next wave of software innovation.”

It doesn’t really matter what you call it – a wave of startups tackling “the next problem” are starting to appear.  Look for a panoply of new and exciting buzzwords – and look past them to the meat.

Yeah – well – it’s always conference season in the tech business.  I’ve been enjoying Web 2.0 from a distance while getting reports from the field.  However, I will pop my head up above the surface at a few conferences in November.

We start with New New Internet conference on Nov 1 in DC followed by a quick trip to Chicago to judge the Global Student Entrepreneurs Awards.  Next up is Defrag on Nov 5 and 6 in Denver, which I’ve helped organize.  I then head to Las Vegas to play with Amy for a long weekend while doing a quick flyby of Blogworld on Nov 7.  Then on to NY for the week of Nov 12th for a bunch of stuff.

While not quite as fun as “Business Time”, I look forward to getting out and about again after spending October chilling in Colorado and catching my breath after a very intense year.

I get loads of questions throughout every day.  I try to be responsive to all of them – it’s just the way I am.  I have a saying which is “you can’t send me too much email” – for whatever reason I’ve figured out how to process it all quickly each day (zero inbox strategy.)

One of my capabilities is to know when I’m clueless.  Most VCs (and many entrepreneurs) have a hard time admitting they are clueless about something.  It’s a natural reaction of a smart, hard driving person who is constantly analyzing data and making decisions to have an opinion about everything, especially when asked politely by someone for advice.

I got an email from a friend with a set of specific questions in it this morning.  I read it, sat for a minute, and then read it again.  I thought for another few seconds and then sent the following note to him.

Ok – now you’ve entered into the “Brad is completely clueless zone.”  I don’t even have any opinion here – whatever I would say would be wrong.

Know when you are clueless.  It will save you – and your friends – a lot of time.

John Markoff has a fun little story about the origin of the phrase What-You-See-Is-What–You-Get in his article titled The Real History of WYSIWYG.  WYSIWYG appeared on the scene 30+ years ago – it seems like the wikipedia page on it needs a little updating.

Now that WYSIWYG is part of our collective consciousness (and a deep expectation of most computer users, even though there are many apps that don’t quite cut the mustard), I’m less concerned with WYSIWYG these days. I’m more intrigued with WYWIWYG – “What-You-Want-Is-What-You-Get.” 

Come to Defrag on Nov 5 and 6 in Denver and talk to me (and a bunch of other smart people including folks like David Weinberger, Clay Shirky, JP Rangaswami, Jerry Michalski, Ester Dyson, Doc Searls, Bradley Horowitz, Paul Kedrosky, Chris Shipley) and a long list of others about WYWIWYG.

You know you’ve been thinking about registering, but your computer won’t do it for you (at least not yet.)  You still have to click here and type some stuff in.  Maybe someday WYWIWYG.

I’m not at Web 2.0 (nor do I want to be, although I have field agents there), but I am intrigued with Microsoft Popfly.  I got a preview of it recently via Christopher Griffin at Microsoft and have been messing around with it a little (once we got past the badly formed email in the spam folder problem.)  I especially like the way David Utter reports on how the name came to be:

Q Why did you call it Popfly?

A Well, left to our own devices we would have called it “Microsoft Visual Mashup Creator Express, October 2007 Community Tech Preview Internets Edition,” but instead we asked some folks for help and they suggested some cool names and we all liked Popfly.

I assume this is either something Ballmer said during his presentation or it’s merely sarcasm.  Either way, it’s cute.  Microsoft is showing its range on the heals of their unified communications announcements.

Last night I attended the Boulder 2007 Esprit Entrepreneur Awards where I was honored to receive the Rob Planchard Award.  I shared the stage with two good friends – Tim Miller and Ryan Martens from Rally Software who won the Entrepreneur of the Year award.  To highlight the evening – Bill Perry of Softbridge Advisors won the Lifetime Achievement Award.

When I moved to Boulder in 1995, Amy and I only knew one person and he moved away six months later.  I had no expectations of doing any meaningful amount of business in Boulder – I moved here to live in a beautiful place that was between the two coasts (Boston and the Bay Area) that I was traveling between on a weekly basis.

In addition to being an amazing place to live, Boulder has been home to a superb entrepreneurial community in the area that I invest – namely software and Internet companies.  I won the Esprit Entrepreneur of the Year award in 1999 with Brian Makare and Andrew Currie for a company we co-founded called Email Publishing (which was acquired by and morphed into MessageMedia.)  By that point I realized (and was deeply involved) in some of the special stuff that was happening on the Colorado Front Range and knew that I’d call this place home for the rest of my life.

It’s very gratifying (and humbling) to be recognized again for my contribution to the entrepreneurial community in Boulder.  I don’t do it for awards or recognition, but it always feels good.  It was especially satisfying to look at the list of companies and entrepreneurs that have been recognized over the past 12 years since I moved here and see a number of companies that I’ve been involved with.  Rally is the latest, and I’m immensely proud of what Tim, Ryan, and their team are creating.

The line of the night goes to Bill Perry.  During his closing speech, Bill talked about his experiences since coming to Boulder 25 years ago (ironically, we are both MIT grads – there’s something about this place that attracts people from MIT.)  Bill reflected on several times when the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Boulder hit low points, and referred to companies around during those periods of times as “Slinky Companies.”  In his words, these are companies that “aren’t very useful but they are fun to watch as they tumble down the stairs.”  Brilliant – and I’ve had my share of slinkies.

Thanks to everyone that participated in the event last night – it’s a powerful thing to see so many local entrepreneurs in one place.  And a special thanks to everyone that organized and worked on the event.  Often I find events like this to be tedious but last night’s was extremely well done, funny, and paced nicely.

I’ve declared my SharePoint fanboy status in the past – most recently in my post titled SharePoint Magic.  Gone are the years where I’d tease my friends at Microsoft about giving away SharePoint by including it in EA contracts – the thing has evolved into a critical piece of software for me and my organization (oh – and a really big piece of business for Microsoft.)

Today, NewsGator and Microsoft announced a partnership around SharePoint.   As part of this, NewsGator announced general availability of the new NewsGator Social Sites product.  NewsGator Social Sites is tightly integrated with both SharePoint and NewsGator Enterprise Server (which you can also buy as a hosted product – ala NewsGator Enterprise On-Demand.)

Jeff Nolan – who recently joined NewsGator to run corporate development – has a concise post about the NewsGator Social Site Launch along with a handful of screenshots.  When I have some time, I’ll put up a more comprehensive explanation of how I use this stuff to manage the mass of stuff that flows through my computer.

If your company uses SharePoint, you have to take a look at this stuff.  And I’m not just saying that because I’m a NewsGator investor.