Philanthropy

I’m at Gnomedex . Rick Klau said it earlier today when he said that the Gnomedex theme song is “It’s Raining Men.” I’m in a room with 500 people and there are less than 10 women in the room. I’d better tell my friends a the National Center for Women & Information Technology that the RSS tech universe needs to be studied a little more. Remarkably, within the first hour of the conference, we destroyed the “newly amped up WiFi at the Bell Harbor Conference Center.” So – there you go – RSS Disconnected. We just sang the official Gnomedex theme song (led by Dave Winer) – “Yellow Submarine.”

As chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, I’m always on the lookout for real evidence that there is causal impact between various programs aimed specifically at women in helping with IT and entrepreneurship and long term competitiveness and economic development. The Center for Women’s Leadership at Babson College just released a study that shows that Women’s Business Centers (WBC’s) are driving entrepreneurship among economically disadvantaged women. WBC’s were created in 1988 through the federal Women’s Business Ownership Act – there’s some good stuff in the report summarizing the current state of play of WBC’s. ...

I spent a day in Washington DC last week on my continued mission to evangelize for the National Center for Women & Information Technologies . We had an evening event that was kindly hosted by the folks at McKenna Long & Aldridge with our local Colorado Congressman Mark Udall keynoted the evening . In between my normal daily email and phone calls, I had three completely fascinating meetings concerning women and information technology. The Honorable Paula Stern was my guide for the day (Paula used to be the chairwoman of the International Trade Commission and is a huge friend of NCWIT) and she generally kept me out of trouble. ...

While Amy and I are involved in and support a number of non-profits, I limit the number of non-profit boards I sit on at any one time to a total of three as I’ve seen way too many “passive non-profit board members.” While this might be good for the person’s resume, ego, or the non-profit’s external perception of involvement from meaningful people in the community, it’s just not my way – if I’m going to sit on a board, I take it seriously and give it the energy, time, and attention it deserves. ...

Last year at about this time I hosted a fundraiser for the Boulder Philharmonic and was the guest conductor. Prior to this I knew nothing about conducting and – while I like music – have no real musical aptitude beyond singing in the shower – so it was both a fun time and a good learning experience for me. In addition to conducting, I was also the guest auctioneer for the live auction (which was much easier). Amy and I chose the Boulder Phil as our major philanthropic initiative last year and our efforts (among others) at the fundraiser resulted in over $130,000 of additional contribution, helping the Boulder Phil land in the black for the first time in a while. ...

I’m chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology . A lot of my friends ask me why an organization aimed at women has a guy as chairman. I respond by telling them that NCWIT is not a women’s issue focused organization (although I’d still be supportive if it was) – it’s all about the long term negative impact on innovation of the gender imbalance that currently exists in the IT industry, especially on the technical side – which obviously involved both men and women. ...

I recently agreed to be chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology – an organization run by Lucy Sanders (ex-CTO Avaya Labs) – whose mission is to ensure that women are fully represented in the influential world of information technology. Lucy and NCWIT are the real deal – in its first year we’ve raised over $4.5 million from the National Science Foundation, Avaya, Microsoft, Google, and a number of other technology companies. Lucy has an ambitious multi-decade vision which – when you sit and listen – makes you say “wow – that’s perfect – yes – absolutely” and other unambiguous affirmative phrases. ...

I’m pleased to announce that the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra ended their fiscal year in positive net worth territory for the first time since 1996. The Boulder Daily Camera just ran a nice article about how it overcame its debt. Why should you care, you ask? My wife Amy and I pick one major non-profit to have as our “major initiative” for the year. We give to a wide range of organizations – both money and time – but pick one to “go over the top” with each year. Last year we gave a major “seed gift” to help jump start the The Community Trust of the Community Foundation Serving Boulder County . ...

Google just announced the 2004 winners of the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scolarships. The scholarship was awarded to female undergraduate and graduate students earning computer science degrees during the 2004-05 academic year, who were selected based on academic performance, responses to essay questions, and letters of recommendation. Eight received $10,000 awards; eleven received $1,000 award. The mission for the Anita Borg Institue for Women and Technology is to increase the impact of women on all aspects of technology, to increase the positive impact of technology on the lives of the world’s women, and to help communities, industry, education and government benefit from these increases. ...

I had lunch today with Gary Zeff who runs Boulder Open Studios . In addition to talking about Open Studios – which is a very cool thing for the local Boulder art community – we got into a long discussion about why my generation (Generation X – born between 1965 and 1980) is so light on the philanthropic scene. My wife Amy and I have been very active with our philanthropy for the past five years. At some point, we realized that – at least in our community (Boulder, CO) there was a surprising lack of philanthropic focus. This was even more ironic since Boulder County has a population of 300,000 yet purportedly has over 1,000 individual non-profits (or – one non-profit per 300 people). ...