Yesterday Brocade announced that it was acquiring McData for $713 million. McData is another of the long time Colorado storage technology companies – it’s now joining its friend StorageTek (now owned by Sun) as part of a California company (Brocade). Look for lots of layoffs from this one as there’s plenty of overlap between Brocade and McData. This is par for the course in Colorado and is actually part of the basis for the entrepreneurial activity here – the great people will cycle out of Brocade (either during the layoffs or after a little while when they get bored or frustrated) and join other startups. I’ve seen this over and over again in the 10 years that I’ve lived in Boulder – it’s an interesting and powerful phenomenon.
On April 7, 2007 I’m going to run the North Pole Marathon. I’ve increased my marathon in every state goal to include the Marathon Grand Slam Club which is a marathon on every continent and on the Arctic Ocean in the North Pole Marathon. I’m super excited – in my “you only get one shot at this life thing” philosophy, this is a trip.
Tom Heinrichs, the Associate Director of the GINA Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, is the instigator of this madness. I met Tom last year on my trip to Fairbanks to talk about venture capital and entrepreneurship. He’s been a regular reader of my blog and we’ve corresponded by email over the past year about a variety of things. A week ago Tom asked me if I was interested in having the University of Alaska Fairbanks send me to the North Pole to run this marathon as part of International Polar Year. After doing a little research, I determined that IPY is a huge deal in research for the issues surrounding the Earth’s climate and – given all the focus on global warming (scientific, political, entrepreneurial, and otherwise) – it’d be fun to dig into, learn about, and participate in the real research side of things. In addition to UAF, a number of research groups in Boulder are going to be involved in IPY, which makes it all the more exciting and relevant for me. Today, Tom sent me a note saying that UAF has approved doing this and I said I “game on.”
I get to exercise three parts of me with this experience. The physical is obvious – this is not a trivial marathon. However, I’m a good cold weather runner and I like running in / on snow. The intellectual is – in some ways – even more powerful. I’ve been looking for an intellectual connection to global climate issues – beyond the mainstream global warming rhetoric. While I’ve been impacted by a lot of what I’ve read, I’m still struggling with the lack of critical thinking in many aspects of the discussion – both regarding the problem, but more importantly – the proposed solutions. International Polar Year has an extensive reach, over several years, which gives me a lot of different ways to exercise my brain and engage in these topics in non-mainstream ways. Finally, the experiential part – especially as I sit here typing in Homer, Alaska – cannot be denied.
I’ll be talking a lot more about this over the next nine months, including what I’m learning through my involvement with International Polar Year. We’re starting to line up sponsors – while UAF is making this happen – we plan to have a variety of interesting people and companies involved. Of course, I’ll be blogging regularly about the experience (and maybe even doing a podcast or two.) If you want to be involved – in any way – drop me an email.
Amy grew up in Anchor Point, Alaska until she was 8 years old. We still own the land and make an annual pilgrimage when we are out here. Following is the view (of Mount Redoubt) from what used to be her living room window.
It’s 18 miles from our house in Homer. I know because it’s my run on Friday.
I grew up with tornados (I lived in Dallas) so I never experienced many earthquakes. My first one was in the middle of the night in Walnut Creek, CA while sleeping in a hotel in the late 1980’s (Ramada Renaissance, I think). I’d taken a late night flight from Boston to California and was sound asleep in preparation for an early morning meeting at one of my California clients (Contra Costa Endocrine Associates.) I woke up, noticed the ceiling moving in the opposite direction of the bed, then noticed it going the other way, then noticed it going the other way, and thought I was having a heart attack or an aneurysm. About 15 seconds later it stopped and I laid in bed for a minute or so trying to figure out what was going. “Earthquake?” popped into my head, I called down to the front desk, and got a busy signal. Yup. “Hmmm – what do I do?” I didn’t know, so I went back to sleep. The next morning I read in the paper that it was a 6–something and one person died when they got disoriented and jumped out a window.
Amy – on the other hand – grew up with earthquakes. So – tonight as we were both reading as she was finishing her tea – in advance of a trip to Anchor Point – she looked up and said “Earthquake!” It took me a few seconds to figure out what she meant. We went downstairs to our computers, went to the Alaska Earth Information Center site, and didn’t see anything. A few minutes later, an earthquake (3.97 – let’s call it a 4) was reported at 7:39 PM AKDT 52 miles from Homer. It was short (only a second or two) – but it was definitely an earthquake.
As we shift into full gear for the 2006 election cycle, I’ve teamed up with TiE-Rockies, VisiTechPR, Jack Tankersley (Meritage Funds), the Bill Ritter (Colorado Democrat Governor Candidate) campaign, and the Bob Beauprez (Colorado Republican Governor Candidate) campaign to put on a Technology Community Forum.
As a state, Colorado has the highest number of technology workers per capita. As a result, the health of the Colorado technology industry is an important issue to consider in the 2006 election for Governor. I believe that it’s important to explore where each candidate stands and what their thoughts and plans are for our state government’s involvement in the high tech community.
Jack Tankersley – who is a friend, co-investor in a few companies, and one of the founders of the Colorado venture capital community – is a Beauprez supporter. I’m a Ritter supporter. We intend to jointly facilitate a discussion that covers a range of issues and gives each candidate an opportunity to clearly express his point of view as well as respond to questions.
The event is being held on September 8th at the Brown Palace from 11am to 1pm. We’ll have limited space for attendees – some by invite only (CEO’s of Colorado tech companies) and some open to the community. Feel free to email me if you want to be put on the invite list. I’m planning to do a podcast of the event for folks that are interested and can’t attend.
A few weeks ago Witold Rybczynski panned the new extension to the Denver Art Museum (the Hamilton Building) along with two other contemporary buildings in the neighborhood. I panned Rybczynski’s review two weeks ago and yesterday David Harsanyi of the Denver Post spoke up and criticized Rybcynski’s criticism. Boys and girls – I implore you to visit this building when you swing through Denver – it is going to be amazing.
I put a webcam up at my place in Homer, Alaska. You can access it via my about me page or – thanks to Rob Shurtleff (who recommended the webcam to me in the first place) – on Zeitcam.com (it’s listed as the Homer Webcam and there’s a pretty neat time lapse option.) It turns out there’s a second webcam in Homer pointing at the Augustine Volcano. As you can see, it’s been a shitty weather day here, but I managed to pound out a 15 mile run, finish off The Stolen Child, and enjoy The Devil Wears Prada. In case you are curious, the camera is a StarDot NetCam Megapixel – it’s a remarkable device that includes a Linux server and an Ethernet Port.
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The sun does eventually start to set up here. Amy took a bunch of beautiful pictures tonight.
Good night.
Senator Ted Stevens – the senior ranking Alaska senator, longest serving Republican in the Senate, and king of Alaska pork – is regularly on the front page of the Anchorage newspaper (usually praising him for the great things he does for Alaska.) He made news of a different kind last week concerning his statements about net neutrality.
According to bLaugh, the Stevens development team is currently working on “an Internet Cerfboard.”