Category: Places
I am so totally, utterly, and completely sick of air travel. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve had to put up with me whining for the past week on my Denver to Seattle to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Denver travel fiasco (hint: not a single plane was on time.) I hurt my back playing tennis ten days ago so the extra stimuli of lower back pain made the experience extra-special enjoyable.
I fly a lot – mostly on United (for the compulsively curious, take a look at my Daytum page which lists all my travel from the beginning on 2009.) I usually refer to it as Untied. I’ve decided to start referring to it as United-Sucks.
As I sit in the San Francisco Red Carpet Club waiting for yet another three hour delayed flight (sorry – the airplane broke – but guess what – we found another one – just wait a while), I decided I’m not going to travel by air at all in August. I’m just worn out, cranky, and not doing anyone (especially my twitter followers) any favors by adding insult to injury.
Let’s see if a month of no air travel fixes my very bad attitude.
I’ve had a busy July – lots activity in my portfolio, travel, and interesting stuff to deal with. Most of the companies in my portfolio had solid Q2’s (recession? what recession?), I’ve watched the TechStars teams in both Boulder and Boston grow up quickly, and the tech M&A market has woken up nicely.
At the same time, I watch the mainstream press report on the same old nonsense, our government struggle with “big issues” that seem to polarize everyone, and I listen to chatter in trains, planes, and automobiles about all the problems that exist.
This weekend I went on my annual “Feld Men’s Trip”. This year we went to Chicago, ate at Mortons and Follia, went to a Cubs game, and had chocolate ice cream (twice) at Ghirardelli’s.
I was exhausted from the week so I slept a lot. But, I did notice an amazing amount of activity in downtown Chicago and on Michigan Avenue on Friday and Saturday night. Chicago was buzzing, everyone was enjoying the warm weather, and the mood was very positive.
There’s dissonance between the broad sentiment echoed by the mainstream media that seems to hang over everything and the energy and attitude “on the street.” I can’t decide if it’s me and my innate optimism, if there’s an illusion of progress, or if there’s a massive disconnect between reality and what mainstream media reports.
I’m going to be in Seattle, LA, and San Francisco this week; my antenna is going to be tuned to the tone of the cities.
I’m in LA today taking a break between a board meeting and a dinner meeting. I’ve got a few calls and am then going running somewhere, although I haven’t yet figured out where that’s going to be since I’m deep in downtown LA. While I was stalling before putting my running shoes on, I stumbled onto a video on ReadWriteWeb today that made me homesick.
Never Mind the Valley, Here’s Boulder from ReadWriteWeb on Vimeo.
I think I’m going to give Micah the new title of Ambassador of Boulder.
I suck at naming things. I named my first company “Feld Technologies” (yeah, that was super creative, but I bet it made my dad proud.) I learned an important lesson from that one – when things go wrong people call for Mr. Feld and yell at him. Better to name your company Costolo Technologies if your last name is Feld.
I then went on to name another company I co-founded – this one that was one of the first email service providers (in the mid-1990’s we referred to this as “publishing email”). Guess what we named it? If you guessed “Email Publishing” you are now demonstrating your strong deductive reasoning skills as they pertain to my completely lame naming skills.
At some point, I took myself out of consideration for naming things. I take no responsibility for any company names after 1997.
A year ago I learned that the “tech scene” in Colorado was referred to as “ICT” or “Information and Communication Technologies”. This happened during my activity with the Colorado Governors Innovation Council while we were trying to convince people (successfully) that the software / Internet industry is a key part of the economic activity in Colorado. A side note: we succeeded – as Governor Ritter has recently stated ICT is now the fifth pillar of economic development in Colorado, joining bio, aerospace, tourism, and the new energy economy.
As part of this, I discovered that ICT is a popular TLA in government for referring to software + Internet + communications. Fortunately, very few people outside of government (except for the government affairs people at tech companies) use the phrase ICT or even know what it means. I commented several times (especially after endlessly referring to it as CIT) that it was a terrible name. When asked what I’d call this sector, I responded with “I suck at naming things.” Kettle – pot – black.
Some of my friends have started talking about a better name for “the Colorado Tech Scene”. After encouraging them to please please please not use the word “Silicon” in the phrase, I proceeded to bow out of any real discussions about this as “I suck at naming things.” Recently a group of them got serious about figuring out a name and the guys at Rocky Radar agreed to take the lead on crowd sourcing suggestions.
So – if you have any ideas, send an email to nameCO@rockyradar.com or tweet it with the hash code #nameCO. Help us replace ICT with something other than CIT.
My friends at Rocky Radar have launched a Colorado Company Index. It’s a free resource designed to catalog the technology companies working within the state, from IT to Life Science to Clean Tech. Thanks also to the guys at SurveyGizmo for helping out here.
They are currently bootstrapping the index – submit your company info here.
I’m a big believer in super powers. Each human has at least one super power even if they haven’t discovered it yet.
I fly on planes a lot. While I’m looking forward to my own personal teleportation machine and that damn jetpack that I was promised in my childhood, I survive all the travel I do because of my airplane super power. I can go to sleep immediately upon sitting down in my seat and sleep until the plane begins its final descent, regardless of the length of the flight.
While not quite as good as a teleportation machine, it’s pretty close. I’m chronically sleep deprived because of my work and my running, so I get lots of catch up sleep on airplanes. I also don’t notice the time passing between “start” and “end” of a flight – I just go to sleep in Boston and wake up in Denver. Or go to sleep in Denver and wake up in Seattle. Or go to sleep in Seattle and wake up in San Francisco. Kind of like a teleportation machine. But without the nasty side effect of potentially leaving body parts in Boston.
As a result of this super power, I can fly on any plane in any seat. I usually spoil myself with first class (via an upgrade) if the flight is longer than three hours but for anything less I don’t really care one way or the other. And I have no need for private planes since I simply sleep through the experience.
I’ve got a bunch of other super powers, but this is one of my favorites. What’s your super power?
After Bill Ritter was elected governor of Colorado in 2006, I was asked to be a member of the IT transition team. We had about a month to review the current state of affairs with regard to broadband, the Colorado IT structure and strategy, and to recommend a CIO candidate.
I’d never been on a transition team before so I found it to be an interesting experience. I don’t remember the number of transition teams (I have the number 16 in my head) – they were all busy trying to collect, assimilate, and understand what existed, put together clear recommendations that the new Governor and his staff could build on, while trying to separate a bunch of signal from noise of the outgoing administration.
I was part of a group of about 30. I knew nothing about broadband policy (which I later found out was in the extremely capable hands of Phil Weiser) so I focused my energy on the State of Colorado IT systems and on recommending a CIO.
Both turned out to be easy to deal with. I was part of a task force that reviewed over 50 credible CIO applications, interviewed a dozen CIO candidates and had an easy choice in selecting Mike Locatis. Mike had previously been the CIO of the City of Denver and had plenty of private sector experience; he stood out as a uniquely qualified candidate.
Assessing the State of Colorado IT systems was equally straightforward – they were a disaster. The entire IT organization was completely decentralized by agency. Each agency had the equivalent of their own CIO that had purchasing authority up to $100,000. The was minimal central planning and coordination, no purchasing leverage, and no integrated strategy across all the agencies. I felt bad for the incumbent CIO – it was a classic case of all the downsides of decentralization with none of the benefits. Oh – and this was written into the law so you couldn’t just reorganize the IT organization – the law actually had to be changed to centralize the State CIO’s authority.
We recommended the obvious – change the law to centralize everything under a single CIO. Being government, this took a year, but it got done. Then the real work began as Mike and his team went from talking about IT consolidation to actually doing it.
They’ve got a bunch of it under their belt and are now looking forward to the next wave of ideas around modernization of many of the IT systems and approaches. Like most of the country, Colorado is working through their budget shortfalls to economic leverage on any level – including at the raw systems level – is a good thing. Mike and his team recently put out Solicitation RFI-TK-003-09 which is an RFI for Transforming the State of Colorado’s Common/Shared IT Services.
As the cliche goes, you need to walk before you run; this RFI gives companies developing innovative Cloud Computing approaches (e.g. Google and Amazon) as well as numerous entrepreneurial companies an opportunity to get in front of Mike and his team to weigh in on the forward directions of the State of Colorado’s IT infrastructure.
Next week is the first annual entrepreneurship week at CU Boulder. There is a full schedule of great events for anyone interested in entrepreneurship.
Monday 4/13: 11:30am – 2:00pm: Starting Companies at CU: Technology Entrepreneurship Luncheon @ University Memorial Center
Tuesday 4/14: 10:00am – 11:30am: Panel Discussion on Social Entrepreneurship @ University Memorial Center Room 247
Tuesday 4/14: 5:30pm – 8:30pm: Silicon Flatirons Center’s Entrepreneurial Mash-Up @ Dairy Center for the Arts
Wednesday, 4/15: 5:00pm: Feld-Weiser One-on-One: The Entrepreneurial Ecosystem @ Wittemeyer Courtroom, Wolf Law Building
Wednesday, 4/15: 6:00pm: Entrepreneurs Unplugged featuring Glenn Jones @ Wittemeyer Courtroom, Wolf Law Building
Thursday, 4/16: 3:00pm – 8:00pm: Putting The Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Perspective @ Wittemeyer Courtroom, Wolf Law Building
Friday, 4/17: 9:00am – noon: CU New Venture Challenge Semifinals @ Atlas
Friday, 4/17: 2:00pm – 5:00pm: CU New Venture Challenge Finals and Post-Challenge Reception @ University Memorial Center
Also, if you are in Boulder for lunch on Tuesday, come by Spud Bros at the Corner of 10th and Pearl behind Pasta Jay’s between noon and 2:00pm. I’ll be the “guest chef” (more like “guest spud slinger”); 50% of proceeds will go to The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County.
Anyone who has driven to DIA has seen the mysterious big blue horse. Yes – it has special powers. It has killed before (its creator – Luis Jimenez) and may kill again.
I’ve just joined the I am afraid of the big blue horse at DIA Facebook group. Here’s one of the best quotes from the wall.
Approaching DIA, my heart began to thump. Summoning all my resolution, I gave my Suby half a score of kicks to the gas pedal in an attempt to hasten my journey. At just that moment a splash of blue caught my eye. In the dark shadow of the field, on the margin of the airport, I beheld something blue, so blue, and towering, a gigantic monster ready to pounce upon this weary traveler. "What are you" I whispered, and received no reply. Agitated, I repeated my question. Pushing the gas pedal, I closed my eyes and uttered an involuntary psalm. I opened my eyes. The shadow took shape, a huge horse with powerful frame, whose eyes burned red and followed me, keeping pace. I rounded the curve, bringing the relief of the giant against the sky and I was horror-struck on perceiving it was…art? ~ Jenn Bma (Boulder)
I am – in general – afraid of horses so it’s appropriate that I am fucking terrified of the Big Blue Horse. I am so glad Facebook has provided me with a place to find some new friends. Thanks Jill for pointing this out to me.