Education

I’m giving a presentation at my MIT Sloan 20th Reunion on June 7th. I’m part of the “Back to the Classroom” series and am giving a presentation titled Software Innovation – Do You Think The Last 20 Years Were Exciting? The Next 20 Years Will Blow Your Mind. The rest of the program includes several great MIT professors talking about the following: Prof. Roberto Rigobon The United States and the World’s Recession Prof. Anjali Sastry Projects for change: Bringing management tools and ideas, collaboration, and learning-by-doing to the challenge of global health delivery for tuberculosis, HIV/AIDs, and other diseases in resource-poor settings Prof. JoAnne Yates , CrackBerrys: Exploring the Social Implications of Wireless Email Devices Prof. Drazen Prelec , Neuroeconomics It should be a stimulating day. As a result, I’ve started working on my presentation, a full month before I have to give it. ...

I’m attending and speaking at TECH Cocktail in Chicago on May 29th. Since I’m not a conference guy, it’ll be entertaining to see if I can sit still the whole day since my panel isn’t until 3pm. If you are in the Chicago area, I encourage you to come to this event put on my Frank Gruber and Eric Olson. There are going to be some dynamite speakers that I expect will deliver something different than the typical Silicon Valley conference thing. Plus it’s at Loyola University, a place I’ve never been before which is always fun for me. ...

Loic Le Meur totally nailed why glue matters in his post My social map is totally decentralized but I want it back on my blog. Following is the defining image from Loic’s notebook. I’m not sure the answer (I want it back on my blog) is correct, but we are in the middle of yet another massive decentralization of data – this time very personal. Loic’s identity and content is spread all over the web (as is mine.) He wants it back in one place – one that belongs to him. ...

My partner Seth Levine just put up a post about our “Glue” theme on the Foundry Group blog. In our continuing series discussing some of our investment themes, we’d like to introduce a topic that we’re calling “glue”. Glue is our term for the web infrastructure layer that facilitates the connections between web services and content companies. As this ecosystem becomes increasingly complex and as web sites and web based applications rely on more underlying services, this “glue” layer of the Internet is becoming more and more core to overall web infrastructure. ...

Are you a Facebook developer? Do you live in Denver or Boulder? Do you like food? On Thursday March 27th, from 6pm to 9pm, there is a Facebook Developer Garage meeting. It’s happening at the TechStars office (also fondly known as “The Bunker”) is Boulder. Sign up via the Facebook Developers Boulder Denver site (recursive, I know) and then check out the meeting info . We (Foundry Group) are providing the food so there should be plenty of it.

Dave Drach from Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team has a nice post up titled Wow, Venture Capital in the Rockies, it gets better every year*.* I agree – I think year 25 was the best one yet.

The annual Venture Capital in the Rockies conference has been going on all day. I’m taking a short 30 minute break to recharge my “extrovert battery” which is basically used up and about to flip into introvert mode (kind of like a hybrid car.) The conference this year has been a blast and the Colorado weather gods have blessed us with two amazingly beautiful days. Several folks, including David Cohen (TechStars CEO), Todd Vernon (Lijit CEO), and Dan Primack (PE Hub) are liveblogging the events. Great stuff – including Dan’s analysis of the Best Conference Giftbag … Ever (and I’m sure he’s received a few.) ...

Eric Olson – who I got to know through FeedBurner – is bringing his TECH Cocktail event to Boulder on March 6th. If you are part of the Boulder tech / entrepreneurial community and around on 3/6, register and come to The Foundry (not our office – but the bar across the street) from 6:30pm to 9:00pm for a good time with a bunch of your local friends and colleagues.

On March 4th at the CU Boulder Law School, there is another great event on Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Entrepreneurship in the Information Industries. The panelists include folks such as: Don Elliman – Exec Director of Colorado Office of Economic Development Paul Jacobs – CEO of Qualcomm David Goodfriend – VP of Echostar Richard Green – CEO of Cablelabs Don Gips – GVP of Level 3 Jason Mendelson – Managing Director of Foundry Group Phil Weiser – who hosts these events – is really on a roll this year. ...

Yes – I know that phrase is yucky. That’s why Eric Norlin needs your help. He’s put out A Call for Ideas and Language surrounding Defrag 2008 . Enterprise 2.0 Online Collaboration The Implicit Web Semantic Tools Collective Intelligence Social software If any of the above phrases speak to you, go to Eric’s post and give him your thoughts.