On page 16 of the July 3rd BusinessWeek, I noticed a short article in the Wired Life section titled “Teaching The Press Release A New Trick.” I was kind of hoping it would say something like “don’t bother with press releases anymore.” Oh – how wrong I was. BusinessWeek was crowing about SHIFT Communications new “Social Media Press Release” template. At least Jack and Suzy Welch are podcasting – maybe the two things will balance themselves out (or not.) And – if you ask why I’m reading the paper copy of BusinessWeek – a guy has to have something to read in the bathroom.

Both Amy and I love to read. Normally, I read a book or two a week; when we are up in Alaska I usually get through four to eight per week. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I review a lot of books (or at least comment on them.) Rather than torture you with lots of posts, I figured I’d do a weekly summary of what I covered.

The very first angel investment I made after I sold my first company was in a company called NetGenesis. Will Herman and I were the initial seed investors; I was chairman of the company for the first couple of years. Eric Richard was one of the co-founders and one of the technical brains behind the company. Eric stayed actively involved with company for much longer than I did – through the IPO and then the ultimate sale to SPSS.

I’m in love with The Hamilton Building – the expansion to the Denver Art Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind. Not everyone is – Slate had a generally critical photo essay titled “The Mile-High Club: Why Experimental Architecture Isn’t Working Out For Denver” that was forwarded to me by my friend Ben. In it, the author Witold Rybczynski shows the three signature buildings that are clustered together with his commentary. He has great photos of The Hamilton Building, Gio Ponti’s original Denver Art Museum (built in 1971), and Michael’ Graves’ Denver Public Library (built in 1996). 

No – this isn’t going to be a post about the father, the son, and the holy ghost. I’ve done a number of investments in the past few years that have three possible constituencies: (1) subscribers, (2) publishers, and (3) advertisers. While I won’t try to map them to a particular member of the trinity, they share one thing in common with the trinity – if you believe in them, they are all critically important.

I’m trying to do a marathon in every state by the time I turn 50. I’ve got 7 down and 9.5 years to go. Today, I got an email from a reader named Gary that pointed me at Sam Thompson’s website describing his efforts to run a marathon in each state in the next 50 days. Sam has already nailed 12 of them (in the last 12 days) and is in Albuquerque as I write (probably recovering from the Duke City Marathon or on his way to Wichita, Kansas for tomorrow’s Wichita Marathon.) He’s doing this to donate to the Mississippi Coast Hurricane Relief efforts – my check is in the mail. Sam – you are a nut – a good nut.

I expect The Chairman post I just put up will be controversial. If you have a different perspective, or a bad experience with a board that has a chairman, please feel free to weigh in. Also – I’m still thrashing around a little with Writely and its blog posting feature, so if you got two copies of the post in your feed (one starting with the title “Rob Shurtleff – a”, please ignore that one – the correct post is “Board of Directors: The Chairman.”

Rob Shurtleff – a VC in Seattle with Divergent Ventures – whom I’ve gotten to know over the past year, dropped me a note with some ideas about a few posts in the Board of Directors series that Jim Lejeal and I have started writing. The first topic Rob suggested has evolved into the a post titled “The Chairman”. Through the magic of Writely, I’ve involved him into a group edit on this post – what has resulted is a collaboration between the three of us.

Every now and then someone asks why I spend a chunk of time in the summer in Homer, Alaska. Amy took a few pictures that tell most of the story. That’s the view from the living room. Now – turn your head right. On a clear day, you can see Mount Iliamna. That dude is 200 miles away and rises about 10,000 feet out of the ocean. Now – go left.