Brad Feld

If you love dogs, strong women, Colorado, hockey, ranches, complicated yet lifelike characters, and beautiful writing, Sight Hound is a must read.  I haven’t read Pam Houston’s other books, but they are also highly acclaimed.  It’s a little tough getting your bearings since each chapter is told in first person from a different character’s point of view, including several dogs and a cat, but once you put it together it’s a fast ski ride down a huge snow covered mountain on a warm spring day.

I’ve recently become obsessed with the notion that all my data should be integrated in one place and be able to be entered from one place.  Of course, this isn’t true, but as my compute infrastructure gets smarter, this will become a lot easier.

I’ve got three types of data: (1) the stuff I want the world to see, (2) the stuff I want certain people to see, and (3) the stuff that is just for me.  Logically, my blog (or “my website” – doh) should be the entry point for everything that I create that fits in category #1. 

On my main page, the right sidebar has a new item in it: Page Two.  This is my page for screwing around with integrating all the various web services available from sites that I current use to create stuff I want the world to see.  The first one I’ve integrated is Judy’s Book.  My good friend Andy Sack is the CEO – he and I have done several companies together, including Abuzz which was bought by New York Times Digital.  Judy’s Book is Andy’s newest venture and he’s starting to shift in beta mode, so take a look.

Integrating the two most relevant categories in Judy’s Book – “Latest Posts” and “Friends” was trivial – it took less then 5 minutes once I’d set the Page 2 page up.  For now, I’ll use Page 2 as a sandbox so as to not clutter up my main page.  Eventually, I’ll figure out a more logical page layout / menu system for the site that incorporates all of this data.

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).

I don’t write about broadcast media much – it’s not my thing.  I’ve definitely had my entertaining moments – including a very strange lunch at Blackrock with Mel Karmizan when he was the president of CBS pre-Viacom (“the Internet – it is irrelevant to us – you just can’t sell enough ads on it”) and a due diligence trip to a South Carolina radio station when I was at Ameridata in 1994 (“Maybe we should buy them and try to introduce computers into the radio business” – at least lunch was good).  However, I do like 24 (I plan to be Jack Bauer in my next life) and I thought last week’s West Wing was superb.

My trip home from the airport coincided with NPR so I listened to an hour of it.  Near the end, Bob Garfield had a fun piece titled An Impending Period of Transitional Chaos for Media.  He started out with the hypothesis – What if network broadcast media simply disappeared?  What if TV as we know it was replaced by something really cool (cut to the theme from The Jetsons).  Over the air network is gone, affiliates are gone, satellite radio is a 4 billion dollar eight track tape player pushed aside by free podcasting.  What if the old model collapsed before the new model was ready?

Now, I always find it mildly entertaining when mainstream media (e.g. NPR) talks about its impending demise (it feels so self indulgent in a sick, twisted way), but Garfield deeply believes disruption on a mass scale is coming.  He leads with the quote “I truly believe … that today’s marketing model is broken” by Jim Stengel, Global Marketing Officer of P&G telling ad agencies that network TV isn’t giving advertisers its money’s worth (and P&G – the biggest advertiser in the world – spends $5.5 billion per year on advertising).  Then – the facts:

• Network audience has eroded 2% a year for the past decade
• Advertiser cost of reaching consumer in the past decade has tripled
• This assumes that folks watching on Tivo are actually watching the ads (which of course, they aren’t)

Ok – so now that broadcast media is going to die – he goes on to talk about vLogs and how mass media will be overthrown by micromedia. Then – cut to the ubiquitous Jeff Jarvis for a sound bite on the public flogging of Tucker Carlson by Jon Stewart (400k viewers on CNN, 5m viewers on the Internet) and pithy quotes from Drazen Pantic at Unmediated.org about how chaos must ensue.

The last half of the broadcast loses some steam as it devolves into more lightweight banter about what’s going to happen, how it’s going to be a mess, how traditional media (e.g. CBS) thinks they must survive to uphold the American way, and how absurd that notion is.  But – overall – in 10 minutes – I thought Garfield did a good job of explaining what’s going on in a way that my mom could relate to.

I’ll end with my favorite West Wing quote of all time – when Josh is struggling with the NASA Mars chick that we think he’s going to have a romantic interlude with (but doesn’t – damn) and Leo is annoyed that Josh is wasting time on stupid NASA Mars stuff.  Leo turns to Josh and grumbles, “My generation never got the future it was promised… Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel’s exactly the same.  We don’t even have the Concorde anymore.  Technology stopped.”  Josh counters with “The personal computer,” but he can’t stop Leo who says “… Where’s my jet pack, my colonies on the Moon?”

Having spent the last 17 hours (door to door) getting from Paris to Boulder, all I can say is my teleporter can’t be ready too soon.

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.

Jason Calacanis just forwarded me a fun post he just put up titled Sparring with VCs & Associates to sharpen your skills.  While not all VCs are as clueless as the dmf that it appears Jason talked to, I’ve had plenty of conversations that resemble this one (where I’m on the receiving end – substitute “Brad” for “Me”) during “due diligence” calls with other VCs that are interested in companies I’m either looking at or already an investor in.

Someone (I can’t remember who – maybe my dad?) told me a long time ago that “the question is much more important than the answer.”  While this probably fits in “the journey is the reward” cliche category, Jason’s dialogue points this out in spades.

I recently made an angel investment in Jonathan Weber’s (the former editor of The Industry Standard) new publishing venture – New West Network.  I got turned on to Jonathan by Jerry Colonna who knew Jonathan well from the publishing business.  New West isn’t a “venture deal”, so we chose not to fund it as a venture firm, but I like to support interesting projects that impact my community and New West definitely fit the bill as it’s a network of online communities devoted to the culture, economy, politics, environment, and overall atmosphere of the Rocky Mountain West, and currently includes specific sites for Missoula, Boulder, Salt Lake City, and Northern Idaho.

Jonathan’s having his Boulder launch party at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art on 4/14 from 6pm – 10pm (and – Amy and I are trustees of BMOCA – so yes – we helped get a good rate for the evening).  If you are in town, come join us, enjoy BMOCA, listen to music from The Indulgers and The Ash Ganley Duo, and eat good Boulder food from New West’s event sponsors – Rhumba, Zolo Grill, Avery Brewery, Jax Fish House, West End Tavern, and booze from Superior Liquor.  And yes – it’s Boulder – so there will be prizes.

NewsGator recently announced a broad European partnership with VNU. The first fruit of their labors went live today – the French VNU / NewsGator RSS reader.  Coincidentally, I had breakfast with Dominique Busso who is in charge of this effort for VNU.  Not surprisingly, Dominique is friends with Loic Le Muir at Six Apart and has embraced Typepad as part of their infrastructure, including the very clever nanopublishing effort called VNUNet Blogs.  While I can’t understand much of the French on the blogs, it’s pretty impressive to see a mainstream publisher like VNU so aggressively embracing RSS, blogging, and nanopublishing. 

I’ve had many great meals in my life, but only a few that I’ll remember forever such as my first dinner at Tommy Toy’s (San Francisco) with Len Fassler or the first time Amy and went to Biba (Boston – now gone) together. 

Last night’s dinner at Le Cinq was legendary.  I don’t drink, so I’m usually ready to leave any meal (or party) after two hours and one minute, but I hung in for every delightful minute of last night’s five hour extravaganza.  We went with our friends – entrepreneurs Jeff Behrens and Lori Rutter (“The Jeff’s” – that was for Lori’s benefit) and their friend Nicolas Paulmier, a partner at Cinven, a large European private equity group.

Five hours, nine courses, five great friends, incredible restaurant staff, endless dessert, and a deep food coma afterwards.  Following is the menu (which they printed individually for each of us to take home!) for those of you that want to enjoy it vicariously.

Mercredi 06 Mars 2005
Diner au Restaurant Le Cinq
Philippe Legendre, Chef des Cuisines, Meilleur Ouvrier de France

Blanc et noir aux ecrevisses pattes rouges
Salade de morilles a l’araignee de mer et au vin jaune
Grosses asperges vertes au Parmesan et a la truffe, polenta et olives noires confites
Turbot de ligne au melon d’eau, nage aux epices et au citron vert
Langouste puce aux petits pois et aux oignons doux des Cevennes
Bar de ligne roti aux epices et aux artichauts poivrade
Le selection de nos Maitres fromagers
Granite d’ananas a l’hibiscus et parfum de litchi, emulsion coco
Du chocolat exclusivement …

Eric Beaumard, Directeur du Restaurant

or – in English – according to Babelfish

Wednesday 06 Mars 2005
Dinner at the Restaurant Five
Philippe Legendre, Chief of the Kitchens, Better Working of France

White and black with the ecrevisses red legs morel
Salade have the araignee sea and with the yellow wine
Grosses green asparaguses with the Parmesan and have truffle, polenta and crystallized black olives
Turbot of line to watermelon, swim with the epices and with the green lemon
Langouste chip with peas and soft onions of Cevennes
Bar of line roti to the epices and the artichokes poivrade
The selection of our Maitres Granite Cheesemongers 
Pineapple has the hibiscus and perfume of litchi, emulsion coconut
Of the chocolate exclusively…

Eric Beaumard, Director of the Restaurant