I heard this phrase at about 75 minutes into my run this morning. It’s from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book I’ve read a half dozen times over the years. I decided to listen to it on my iPhone while training for an upcoming marathon, just to see what different things I’d pick up from listening to it read to me rather than reading it myself. The actual paragraph is in the middle of Chapter 11 as the narrator is discussing Phaedrus’ lateral drift. He shifts back to the present time and talks with some trepidation about heading up over mountain beyond Red Lodge. 

While the rest of the US is watching football, I thought I’d sit quietly at my house and catch up on some writing, most notably what David Cohen, Entrepreneur Magazine, and a few other special people are waiting for from me. However, before I dig into that, I thought I’d procrastinate by catching up on some reading from the week and, motivated by a few interesting things I came across, stall a little more by writing this blog post summarizing the interesting things I came across today.

My friends at NewsGator had a great 2009 – enterprise social computing came into its own and they were at the front of the pack. If an organization uses SharePoint and is interested in social computing, NewsGator Social Sites is a must have product. Yesterday, NewsGator acquired Tomoye. The two companies are highly complimentary – Tomoye adds a set of SharePoint related community and social computing products to the mix as well as a fantastic government-centric customer base including organizations like the Federal Reserve Bank, The United States Army, Defense Acquisition University, The United States Air Force, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and U.S. Agency for International Development. Eric Sauve, the founder/CEO of Tomoye, has built a really nice business that I’m excited to welcome into the NewsGator family.

I recently turned 44. As I was driving in to the office the other day, I was talking to my dad and we were reminiscing about something. He’s one of my closest friends and I’ve learned such an amazing amount from him over my 44 years on this planet. He’s been blogging for a while about Repairing the Healthcare System and periodically tosses in a personal blog post about one of his life experiences.

Amy Cosper, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, swung through Boulder recently and interviewed me, Scott McDaniel & Christian Vaneh of Survey Gizmo, Ari Newman of Filtrbox (recently acquired by Jive Software), Todd Vernon of Lijit Networks, and Tim Enwall of Tendril Networks. Unlike my two hour TWiST interview with Jason Calacanis, these are all short (less than three minutes each), punchy, and give you a great feel for some of my favorite Boulder entrepreneurs.

A few weeks ago Fast Company published an interview between me and Laura Rich titled Why You Should Start a Company in… Boulder*.* This morning I woke up to Fred Wilson’s discussion of his article Why You Should Start a Company in… New York. Fred and I did our interviews separately – there was no coordination between us. I was struck by a common theme – startup hubs take a while to develop. Fred says:

I’ve really enjoyed my time on this planet so far and look forward to many other years here. If Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, and Robert Heinlein are to be believed, I should be able to travel to other planets by now. Since I can’t, I’m limited to looking at really cool photos. Guess the planet. No clicking through to the APOD site until after you’ve made a guess. I’m 44 – wouldn’t it be cool if in my lifetime I could go to this planet? Oh – and where’s my jetpack – NASA promised me that when I was a kid.

I hate the telephone. I hate voice mail. I’ve tried hard to simplify how this works in my world. I only have two phone numbers (my cell phone and my work phone, which is an IP phone that rings in all the different houses / offices that I have), schedule all phone calls, and use PhoneTag as my voicemail transcription service (both my cell phone and my desk phone forward to it when I don’t answer.) I never listen to voice mails (everything is an email), rarely get phone calls during the day, and have done a pretty good job of getting rid of phone interruptions in my life given how busy I am.

On Friday I spent two hours at Mahalo headquarters in Jason Calacanis’ studio filming This Week In Startups Episode #35. Jason and I have known each other since the mid 1990’s – the last time he interviewed me was at Josh Harris’ Pseudo.com thingymabob as part of a roundtable with Fred Wilson, Jerry Colonna, and Matt Ocko (can’t find the audio on the web – I know it’s out there somewhere.) No – I wasn’t naked during the interview, but I was a lot younger and thinner. And I think there were some naked people wandering around. If you know Pseudo, you know what I’m referring to. If you don’t, then Steaming Video will give you a few hints.