In case you were wondering what the Boulder Snowstorm resulted in (so far – it’s still coming down) at my house in Eldorado Springs, here you go! So there is no ambiguity, my dog Kenai loves it. And – no surprise, so does Brooks!

Talking about scale and growth is hard. Many people talk in percentages in pre-determined time periods (e.g. let’s grow revenue 100% next year). I find this to be relatively useless. Instead, I like to challenge people to think on a bigger scale over a variable time period. My favorite line of late is “add another zero – you pick the metric and the time frame.” I used to call this “increase X by an order of magnitude” until I realized that lots of business people don’t actually know that an increase in an order of magnitude is equal to multiplying by 10. While it’s silly, there’s no ambiguity when you talk about “adding a zero to the end of a number.”

The Defrag Conference in Denver is just around the corner – November 11 and 12 to be exact. Eric Norlin has put together a remarkable agenda for this one including an incredible closing panel titled Cluetrain at 10 starring JP Rangaswami, Chris Locke, Doc Searls, and Rick Levine. This will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the The Cluetrain Manifesto and as far as I understand is the first time in a decade that Chris, Doc, and Rick have shared the stage. If we are lucky, Rick might even bring us some Seth Ellis Chocolates.

One of the challenges of living your life out in the open is signaling where you are going to be. I’ve struggled with this on and off, tried a bunch of different web services, and have never been happy with any of them. I’m going to keep trying, but in the mean time I’ve decided to put a calendar up on my blog using Google Calendar. It shows two things:

VCs say a lot of stupid things. I’m guilty of it plenty and whenever someone calls me on it I try to acknowledge and change. One that I try really hard not to do is say “my company” when referring to companies I’ve invested in – I think it’s one of the most annoying things a VC can say. I was talking to a VC the other day about a few companies he had invested in. By the third time he referred to one of the companies as “my company” (as in “My company is working on X”, “My company would like to talk to Company Z about thing Y”) I felt myself starting to react. I didn’t really have a relationship with this VC, but I knew that he had never run a company (investment banking post college, MBA, then VC). I realized I wanted to stop him at some point and say “dude – it’s not your company – you are merely an 18% shareholder in the business.” I bit my tongue and had the conversation, but I’ve been thinking about this in the back of my mind ever since.

On the heels of the FCC doing what everyone expected them to do today with regard to Net Neutrality, I thought I’d remind you of the awesome Ask a Ninja on Net Neutrality from 2006.

Yesterday I mentioned my strong support of Net Neutrality. As part of this, I signed on to a letter from a bunch of VC’s and entrepreneurs to Julies Genachowski, the chairman of the FCC. Fred Wilson reprinted the letter (he also signed it along with his partners at Union Square Ventures) in his post Net Neutrality. Not surprisingly I received some emails and had a few conversations with folks that amounted to “I don’t really know anything about this Net Neutrality thing – can you explain it.” I did my best but after the third time decided to pull together a few public posts that might provide some perspective on the debate.

Wow – I guess Web 2.0 is happening somewhere (fortunately I have a delegate there – my partner Ryan McIntyre). That not withstanding, the tempo of stuff going on today is staggering. I’m having a blast sitting here in Boulder just trying to stay mildly ahead of all the stuff flying around. I thought I’d share some of it with you in case you need a fifteen minute break like I do.

I’m getting three to five Startup Visa stories a week at this point. A few are straightforward but most are complex and intellectually frightening, including one I read through yesterday that almost caused my head to explode. When I was in Boston a few weeks ago I met with someone who told me their particular story very passionately and clearly. He then followed up with a short essay that he asked if I’d post publicly. While the story is a general one, it is short and sweet and nicely captures the sentiment that I’ve heard so many times since writing The Founders Visa Movement post.