Education

I got a note yesterday from David Abramson – an MBA student at Stanford – about The Cool Product Expo which is taking place from noon to 6pm on Wednesday (April 11th) at the Arrillaga Alumni Center (326 Galvez Street) at Stanford. Admission and parking is free – the event sounds very cool. Following is a description. The Cool Product Expo is an annual exposition celebrating innovative technologies and product design. An attendee walking through the Expo will encounter exciting demonstrations by budding startups, global manufacturers, local design studios, and university research projects. It is a great opportunity to learn about the latest technology advances, as well as interact with successful entrepreneurs and industry leaders. ...

Last year, Eric Norlin sent me an email in response to my post titled Intelligence Amplification which was an attempt to put a label on the theme for companies I’d been investing in that address the Trust / Attention / Relevance problem. Eric and I had crossed paths a few times around his involvement in the creation of Digital ID World . He proposed that we put together a conference that addresses this broad theme and I jumped at the idea to help. ...

NewWest.Net recently announced a new conference , the New West Summit on Transformation in the Rockies , which will be held June 6-8 at Big Sky, Montana. It’s an interdisciplinary event focused on the New West themes of growth and change in the Rocky Mountain West, with a special focus on four areas: political change, growth and development, energy, and entrepreneurship and the new economy. New West has put together a great line-up of speakers and an excellent schedule for this event. ...

Saul Klein of Index Ventures turned me on a few weeks to OpenCoffee Club – a new program he started in London that is quickly making its way across the world (including Palo Alto, Paris and Amsterdam. Sacramento, Dublin, Brighton and Zagreb .) Saul’s got a great overview of the first and second events on his blog. According to Saul, “the key is a regular place and a regular time – it’s not important who comes along, some days it might be no one – just that people know if they want to meet, this is the time and this is the place.” ...

Just a reminder that the MIT Enterprise Forum will be having an event tomorrow night in Boulder called “Ask the VC: Venture Capital Outlook for 2007.” The Forum will start with a 40 minute digital presentation from MIT/Cambridge with a panel of Boston VCs discussing the trends that ended 2006 and what they forsee for 2007. This will be followed immediately with a live panel of Colorado VCs ready to answer you questions and compare the scenes in Boston and the Front Range. ...

If you are a Second Life dude and live in Boulder / Denver, there is now a local Meetup for you. The organizer – Richard Hackathorn – who is the president of Bolder Technology dropped me a note about it. Apparently Richard’s son Eric has created a NOAA Island as part of NOAA’s (the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration – which every Boulderite knows as the folks that have a building on the best real estate in town) education outreach program. ...

The 24th annual Venture Capital in the Rockies conference is happening on February 20 – 22nd. In addition to showcasing a bunch of the emerging growth companies in the Rocky Mountain region, VCIR will feature keynotes from Greg Maffei, President and CEO of Liberty Media and Mark Heesen, President of the National Venture Capital Association. In addition to a couple of great parties and skiing (all day Thursday), there’s also a new poker event on the night of the 20th. The last few years of VCIR have been great – I’ve heard that this year’s lineup of companies is superb – so if you are a venture capitalist living outside the Rocky Mountain region that needs an excuse to ski (or if you just want to come see my smiling face), come join us.

In case you are really curious about what’s actually happening at Gnomedex, here’s Chris Pirillo thinking small*.*

After my enthusiastic Gnomedex post about the first half of the first day, things started to go downhill and most of the afternoon was disappointing to me. I had a fun dinner last night with some folks from Yahoo (and their friends), went home, got a good night sleep, and came back refreshed. This morning has been great again – some rambling nonsense, but that’s part of the experience. Interestingly, there aren’t many deep insights surfacing (at least to me), rather lots of good examples about how people are applying and dealing with issues and ideas and that have been bouncing around the past year. ...

On Thursday April 6, 2006, I’m on a panel at the final Silicon Flatirons conference called “Re-examining The Patent System.” The conference is from 3:30 to 7:30. My panel – titled “The Uses and Abuses of Intellectual Property: Facilitating Startups or Entry Barrier?” – is from 5:50 to 6:50. My co-panelists are Steve Halsteadt (Managing Director, Centennial Ventures), Tom McGimpsey (General Counsel, McData), and Steve Rodgers (Director of Litigation, Intel). ...