I’ve got another month before I have to send flowers, chocolate, and my other special mothers day stuff, but an email from my mom today prompted me to write an apology to all mothers everywhere.

I’ll attribute the condescending remark about me understanding Bob Garfield’s comments to your very long plane ride. Welcome home. We’ll call before we leave on our ” even longer than your” plane ride on Tuesday. So long, I don’t even want to think about it.

Love,

Your Phi Beta Kappa Mom (now where is that darn pin?)

Mom – I’m sorry – it was a careless throw away comment – think of it as a “metaphor” for “described in a way someone not in the media or technology industry could understand easily.” (yeah – I know you know that and are just giving me shit.)  I know I need to come up with a new metaphor, especially now that Larry Summers has been crucified for his comments about women in the sciences.  I should know better and be more “motherly correct.”  (Note to the world – my mom is extremely smart, understands technology (and lots of other things), has taught me all kinds of stuff (including how to apologize quickly when I make a mistake), and is an amazing artist who has somehow genetically (ok – environmentally) transfered her love of art to me.)

Sorry Mom(s) (and no – I’m not sucking up to you to get out of mother’s day).

There are an increasing number of high profile CTO bloggers appearing, including Adam Bosworth, Greg Papadopoulos, and Grady Booch.  Two close friends and CTO’s / founders of companies that I’ve funded have recently started blogging.  While they are not as high profile, they are intensely smart and articulate guys that have had a lot of success and a wide range of experiences.  Plus, they know each other, like each other, and have plenty of dirt on me.

Todd Vernon is the CTO of Raindance.  I was one of the seed investors of Raindance and on the board from inception until about two years after they went public.  Todd and his partners Paul Berberian and Jim Lejeal (now CEO of Oxlo – another company we’ve funded) were the architects behind the business. I’ll always treasure the first time I heard Todd refer to a major technical thing as “full of chocolately goodness.”

Tim Wolters was the CTO of Dante Group, which was acquired in 2003 by webMethods.  We were first round investors in Dante and were pleasantly surprised when webMethods acquired the company six months later.  Tim spent the last 15 months at webMethods insuring that the Dante technology and products were successfully integrated into webMethods and recently left to start working on his next big idea.  Tim just put up a post describing his desire to blog about the process of creating his new company – if you are an entrepreneur, it’s bound to be filled with plenty of good stuff.

Welcome guys.

I’m in Paris again this week spending time with Amy.  She’s basically stopped talking English, so I don’t understand anything she says to me anymore, which – while we have a fantastic relationship – also seems to work pretty well and is probably not that different from most male / female relationships. 

Unlike my last trip when I did my Q1 vacation, I’ve been working this week.  Last night we had drinks with Loic Le Meur, the Executive VP of Six Apart Europe.  Loic took us out to the Hotel Costes bar at 239 rue Saint Honore which is a place that easily exceeds my “hip factor.”  Loic was a gentleman, didn’t flirt with Amy too much (my core fear of interacting with any French man while in the presence of my wife), and we ate some good snacks together (which you must do when you have drinks at 7 followed by dinner at 9 somewhere else.)

Loic’s doing a great job with Six Apart in Europe, as they’ve already got many of the key portals as partners.  Loic’s got a major clue and it was great to catch up with him on what’s happening with RSS and blogging in Europe.  We discovered that we are both investors in Technorati (he’s an angel investor), I filled him in on Feedburner and NewsGator, and we talked about his upcoming European Internet 2.0 Les Blogs conference (that I can’t come to because of a couple of pre-existing board meetings, but I’ll likely send Amy as my delegate since it’s being held in the French Senate.)

We finished the evening off with a three hour dinner with some friends from Boston who happen to be bouncing around Paris.  Waking up this morning was difficult, but I smiled when I checked my email and had an onslaught of requests for the Buffett Letters.

Amy and I are huge supporters (and collectors) of the visual arts.  The Denver Art Museum is in the process of building an extension to the museum which is a revolutionary piece of architecture.  When completed in 2006, I predict it will do for Denver what the Guggenheim Bilbao did for Bilbao, Spain – namely transform Denver into one of the must-visit arts communities in the world.

I’ve been a member of the Denver Art Museum Technology Advisory Board for the past year, helping Bruce Wyman and his team think about how technology will be involved in the new art museum.  Tonight, I hosted 30 folks in the Boulder/Denver high tech / venture capital community for a tour of the new building (under construction), a presentation from Bruce on what he’s up to, and some time with Daniel Libeskind, the amazing architect behind The Denver Art Museum’s Hamilton Building.

I am in love with Daniel.  Amy and I got to have dinner with him last fall and I spent two hours watching the two of them rap about an incredible range of subjects.  I love the architect brain – it’s a complex combination of artist and engineer – and Daniel epitomizes what is great about it.  The Hamilton will be the first completed Libeskind building in the US, which is extremely cool for Denver.  Daniel is deeply engaged with the Denver community, very committed to the incredible building he has designed, and full of energy and vision for what it will be when it’s completed.

As we were touring the building, Dave Jilk made the comment to me that this building could not have physically been built 5 years ago.  Dave X – the site manager (I can’t remember his last name) told us that they couldn’t have built it 2 years ago as the architectural design requires an incredible amount of computer technology, 3D visualization technology, and significant spatial placement technology (everything in all three dimensions is exactly where it is supposed to be – there is no room for any margin of error or the building won’t physically work).  The detailed level of architectural design is unbelievable and simply awe inspiring.

The following anecdote will help, especially if you haven’t seen the building.  Last night, Daniel gave a presentation to 1500 museum members about the new building.  During Q&A, someone asked him how he felt about the fact that the 1776 Freedom Tower now has a right angle in it (I won’t go into the story of the new World Trade Center site – Daniel is the master architect for the site – but – as one could expect, there are incredible politics and contentious issues at play in the development of the site).  Daniel – who is known for avoiding using right angles in his designs, said something like “It’s not that I have issues with right angels, it’s just that I think we live in a democracy and there are 359 other angels that should get their chance.”

Bruce did great tonight.  His goal is to incorporate technology into the museum experience in a way that’s revolutionary – taking the best of what others have done, avoiding the typical traps and pitfalls, and trying to have the technology blend into the experience to be a complete part of it, rather than the appendage that technology often is in a museum setting.  It’s super fun to work with a blank slate on a canvas such as the Hamilton Building – and it’s great to see our local tech community getting engaged in the project.

I’m obviously extremely psyched about the Hamilton Building on many levels, including the positive impact I believe it will have on the Denver arts community and our standing as an internation destination site for more than just skiing and the Avs (if they ever play again).  Wow – tonight was fun.

If you thought it was challenging determining the quality of art these days (e.g. does it – or does it not – belong in MoMA), you apparently aren’t the only one.  The British graffiti artist Banksy pulled off a nice prank recently, installing his own art in four New York top museums in one day.  It “only” took MoMA three days to discover it.

I’ve been a Spencer F. Katt fan for as long as I can remember.  I even have a classic Spencer Katt t-shirt and a coffee mug somewhere for rumors I sent in to PC Week (back when eWeek was PC Week and rumors were about Novell – well before Al Gore invented the Internet).  Spencer just started a blog – hopefully he’ll start splicing in his Kattoon’s.

In this month’s Wired: Start: I Got Accepted at Google! article, the authors state that “for the classes of 2001 to 2004, getting into a corporate campus was harder than graduating summa cum laude from MIT.  No wonder Google has been having so much trouble hiring lately – there IS NO SUCH THING as summa cum laude at MIT so – if they are looking for MIT summa cum laudes, they are fishing in a pond of the empty set.

Yes – one more post on The Gates (but still in the humorous category).  My friend Doug DeAngelis, the CEO of Lynx System Developers, sent me this link to The Somerville Gates (an installation of The Gates in Somerville, MA).  Considering Somerville in relation to Manhattan, I think this is at an appropriate scale.

Dave Jilk forwarded me the Jon Stewart segment on The Gates (click on Piles of Sheet). “The Gates will do for New York what the West Wing did for Washington D.C.  Or – what the band Asia did for that continent.” (Stephen Colbert, aka Ted Hitler, Senior Conceptual Art Correspondent.)  Expectedly great stuff.  “I used to think $21 million dollars could be used to achieve something noble – like, um, I don’t know – build a hospital wing.  But The Gates has caused me to recontextualize my notion of what $21 million dollars can be used for – in this case redecorating a bike path.” (Ted Hitler again).