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| | [Actually 06/22/07]: The May Report: 06/22/2007: Kristen Nicole, the latest star on the tech event scene, successfully organizes a Mashables party drawing 200+ Weds. night with lots of out of town firms; PROPEL launches
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| | June 22, 2007
The May Report: 06/22/2007: Kristen Nicole, the latest star on the tech event scene, successfully organizes a Mashables party drawing 200+ Weds. night with lots of out of town firms; PROPEL launches
Editor and publisher: ron@themayreport.com, ronaldmay@aol.com, 773-525-3944.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Scoop section:
-- PROPEL Launch Sucessful!
-- Michael Poulos: The City that NetWorks
-- Once again, Where is Illinois??
-- Tuesday, June 26: ITDA: Business of Innovation seminar
-- Levin and Democrats Introduce Legislation to End Carried Interest Tax Advantage
-- Chicago could be the next major city to award a contract for a large municipal WiFi network, Unstrung has learned
-- Ron Kirschner: Praise for June 15th meeting in Skokie
-- Charles Stack: White Board Challenge
-- Briefly noted: Kristen Nicole of Mashables and 606Tech, a new star on the local tech scene, revels along with 200 people on Wednesday night and many out of town firms; the ITA mixer from May 30th, by Ron May
[Editor's note: May here. I have a lot of letters and other things that are not in this report due to time constraints. You will see it on Monday.]
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nanoTX’07
Dallas Convention Center
October 2-4, 2007
The Promise of Tomorrow - The Global Business of Nanotechnology
*** Announcing Our Newest Strategic Sponsor: Semiconductor Industry
Association (SIA) ***
Last year's event drew over 3,500 attendees. This year we expect to more
than double that number. Business, academic and government people with
nanotech interests from North America, Europe, and Asia are registering in
record numbers to converge on Dallas during International Nanotechnology
Week at nanoTX’07, being held at the October 2-4, 2007.
The conference provides a unique perspective on the current state of the
markets and technologies associated with nanotechnology, with particular
emphasis on those areas where clear trends and business opportunities are
emerging.
More than 125 world-class speakers and 250 exhibitors will be presenting
their perspectives on the current state and future of nanotechnology and its
impact on energy, electronics, consumer goods, biotech and medicine,
aerospace, transportation, manufacturing, advanced materials and more. Key
environmental, health and safety aspects will also be covered.
This year's program will feature an invitation-only reunion of the surviving
members of Dr. Richard Smalley's original "Buckyball" discovery team, which
led to a shared Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996.
Other announcements will be made highlighting major advancements in energy,
materials and amazing new products.
Participants at nanoTX’07 will learn:
* What NASA’s plans are for a permanent lunar base in the coming decade and
the role nanotechnology will play in its realization.
* What the key emerging nanotechnology trends are in energy, electronics,
robotics, life sciences, homeland security, materials, manufacturing, etc.
* Separating the hype from reality – what’s real? What’s not?
* What the most recent developments are in the US, Europe, Asia and other
countries around the world.
* How virtually every major industry will be impacted by the emerging
nanotechnology revolution
Sponsorships and exhibit space are still available but being booked quickly.
For more information and to register, please visit www.nanotx.biz
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PROPEL Launch Sucessful!
From: Snyder, Seth W. [seth@anl.gov]
To: ron@themayreport.com
Subject: FW: PROPEL Launch Sucessful!
Sent: Wed 6/20/2007 8:42 PM
fyi
______________________
Seth Snyder, Section Leader
Chemical and Biological Technology
________________________________
From: iBIO Announcement [mailto:ibioadmin@ibio.org]
Sent: Wed 2007-06-20 4:22 PM
To: Snyder, Seth W.
Subject: PROPEL Launch Sucessful!
If you have trouble reading this email, go to the online version.
This morning, iBIO and the iBIO Institute launched PROPEL(sm), a new program designed to help life sciences entrepreneurs refine business strategies through one-on-one and group coaching led by accomplished business professionals and serial entrepreneurs.
A Big Thank You! to all our speakers, special guests, and all of the 120 people who attended the event. We are thrilled by the response to PROPEL and eager to begin connecting life sciences entrepreneurs with the tremendous resources available in our community.
Now, it's time to get to work...
How does PROPEL work?
The PROPEL program provides entrepreneurs with experienced "coaches", seasoned startup veterans who have taken companies through initial public offerings (IPOs) or major acquisitions by global firms. The coaches work with entrepreneurs to refine business strategy and resolve high-level business issues and also provide input on the basics of starting a new life sciences firm. Coaches help entrepreneurs prepare for an intensive session where the entrepreneurs' business plans and presentations are reviewed by multi-disciplinary panels of judges. Entrepreneurs apply the lessons learned to developing their companies.
How do you get involved in the program?
Entrepreneurs interested in working with a PROPEL coach should visit www.iBIOPROPEL.org for more information about the program, its requirements and how to apply. Entrepreneurs may submit an online application (preferred) or download the .pdf application and fax it to 312.422.1145.
If you would like to participate as a PROPEL panelist, provide resources to start-up entrepreneurs, or have suggestions regarding additional resources that would benefit the life science community, please contact the Senior Director of the iBIO Institute Ann Reed at 312.422.1111 x3 or email ann.reed@ibioinstitute.org for more information.
For details on any part of the program please visit www.iBIOPROPEL.org .
If you were unable to attend this morning's event, you can click here to download a copy of the handouts from today's presentation.
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Michael Poulos: The City that NetWorks
From: mpaulos@cityofchicago.org
To: Michael Paulos
Subject: The City that NetWorks
Sent: Fri 6/22/2007 1:52 PM
Greetings,
You are receiving this email because you participated in the Wireless Community Network hearings held in the Summer of 2005 by a Joint City Council Committee on Economic, Capital and Technology Development and Finance.
Following in the footsteps of the original Wireless Task Force was the Mayor's Advisory Council on Closing the Digital Divide. The Advisory Council conducted another set of public hearing in the Summer of 2006 and has issued its report titled, The City that NetWorks: Transforming Society and Economy Through Digital Excellence. It is available for download at:
http://egov.cityofchicago.org/publicwifi
We are trying to keep the early participants up to speed with the latest developments.
Best regards,
Michael J. Paulos
Legislative and Policy Analyst to
Alderman Margaret Laurino (39th Ward)
Chairman of the Committee on Economic,
Capital and Technology Development
phone: 312-744-7242
fax: 312-744-0717
email: mpaulos@cityofchicago.org
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Once again, Where is Illinois??
EDA Announces 2007 Winners of EDA Excellence in Economic Development Awards
On May 31, Sandy K. Baruah, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic
Development, proudly congratulated the seven winners of EDA's Excellence in
Economic Development Awards 2007. EDA's annual competition is open to
nonprofit organizations, local, state and regional government entities,
universities and colleges. The winning nominations were evaluated for this
honor by a distinguished panel of economic development experts. The 2007
winners, listed by category, include:
Rural Economic Development
Ohio State University Endeavor Center
Piketon, Ohio
Urban or Suburban Economic Development
Gateway Park, LLC
Worcester, Massachusetts
Enhancing Regional Competitiveness
KCSourceLink
Kansas City, Missouri
Economic Adjustment Strategies
Regional Planning Commission of New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana
Technology-led Economic Development
Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
Pensacola, Florida
Community and Faith-Based Social Entrepreneurship
Pyramid Community Development Corporation
Houston, Texas
Innovation in Economic Development
Paulding County Board of Commissioners
Dallas, Georgia
The commemorative awards will be presented in each winner's community from
June through December 2007. The governor and congressional delegation of
each winner will be invited to present the award together with senior
officials of the Department of Commerce.
Congratulations to the 2007 winners!
________________________________________
Tuesday, June 26: ITDA: Business of Innovation seminar
From: John Noel [noel@itda.biz]
To: ron@themayreport.com
Subject: RSVP now! - Business of Innovation Seminar
Sent: Fri 6/22/2007 6:03 AM
UPCOMING EVENT
Business of Innovation Seminar
'Turning Your Innovations into a Successful Business:
Attracting Venture Capital and Business Partners
While Protecting Your Innovations'
Quick Links
Illinois Technology Development Alliance
The Innovators Network
Hopewell Ventures
Event Overview
Complimentary breakfast event will educate entrepreneurs on intellectual property strategies and how to turn innovations into successful business. Small business and technology entrepreneurs will benefit from attending, along with all local technology firms-whether patent ready, patent pending, or considering submitting
a patent application.
Hosted by The Innovators Network in conjunction with Hopewell Ventures and Illinois Technology Development Alliance
Feature Presentations:
Andre Carter -Author & President of Irimi Corporation ~ Business consultant and "serial entrepreneur" who shares the advice he gives to clients regarding building a culture of IP within their company. He is the president of Irimi, a management consulting firm for start-up information technology companies, and author of a book on IP strategies for small firms in the IT sector ttled, "Little Blues: Building a Culture of Intellectual Property Within a Small Technology Company."
Thomas Parkinson - Principal - Hopewell Ventures ~
Brought 20 years of venture capital, financial management and business incubation experience to the Fund. In addition to serving as a Principal of Hopewell Ventures, he also serves as a member of the general partner of Adena Ventures, L.P., a New Markets Venture Capital Company.
Jon O. Nelson ~ Practiced in the Chicago office of Banner & Witcoff, Ltd., for more than thirty-five years. Throughout that time he has been involved in the procurement of patents, trademarks and copyrights, advisory counseling, opinion preparation, contract negotiation and preparation, and extensive litigation related to patents, trademarks and copyrights. Mr. Nelson is known for his innovative approach to intellectual property problems.
Business of Innovation Seminar
DATE: Tuesday, June 26, 2007
TIME: 7:30am ~ 9:30am (Registration begins at 7:30 a.m.; Program starts at 8:00a.m.)
LOCATION:
University Center
525 South State Street
Chicago, IL 60605
click here to register online or contact Melissa Moskal at mmoskal@actonline.org or call 202.420.7484
Register Today! Space is Limited!
Best Regards,
John Noel
noel@itda.biz
Illinois Technology Development Alliance
___________________________________________
Levin and Democrats Introduce Legislation to End Carried Interest Tax Advantage
For Immediate Release
Friday, June 21, 2007
Levin and Democrats Introduce Legislation to End
Carried Interest Tax Advantage
Legislation seeks fairness in tax code
WASHINGTON - Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI), along with Chairmen Charles Rangel
and Barney Frank and Ways and Means Members Reps. Pete Stark, Jim McDermott,
John Lewis, Richard Neal, Earl Pomeroy, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, John Larson,
Earl Blumenauer, Ron Kind, and Bill Pascrell introduced legislation that
would ensure that investment fund managers who take a share of the funds'
profits as compensation for investment management services, known as
"carried interest" would be taxed at an appropriate ordinary income tax
rate. Currently, the managers of private investment partnerships are able to
receive compensation for these services at the much lower 15% capital gains
tax rate rather that the ordinary income tax rate by virtue of their fund's
partnership structure.
"Congress must ensure that our tax code is fair. We have to be sure that
the lower capital gains tax rate is not being inappropriately substituted
for the tax rate on wages and earnings," said Rep. Levin.
"Investment fund employees should not pay a lower rate of tax on their
compensation for services than other Americans," continued Rep. Levin.
"These investment managers are being paid to provide a service to their
limited partners and fairness requires they be taxed at the rates applicable
to service income just as any other American worker."
The legislation clarifies that any income received from a partnership,
capital or otherwise, in compensation for services is ordinary income for
tax purposes. As a result, the managers of investment partnerships who
receive a carried interest as compensation will pay regular income tax rates
rather than capital gains rates on that compensation. The capital gains
rate will continue to apply to the extent that the managers' income
represents a reasonable return on capital they have actually invested in the
partnership.
A fact sheet describing the legislation is attached.
The Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the issue of
tax fairness in July.
Below is a fact sheet on the legislation and attached is a pdf of the bill.
For further information or to speak to Mr. Levin, please contact Hilarie
Chambers (202) 225-4961 or at Hilarie.Chambers@mail.house.gov
Rep. Levin Proposal on Investment Management Services Taxation
Why is Congress concerned about this issue?
Many investment funds are structured as partnerships in which investors
become limited partners and the funds' managers are the general partner.
The managers often take a considerable portion of their compensation for
managing the funds' investments as a share of the funds' profits using a
mechanism called "carried interest." Partnership profits are taxed not to
the partnership; instead partners are taxed on allocations of partnership
income, and the nature of that income (capital or ordinary) "flows-through"
to the partners. As a result, the investment managers are able to have
income for performance of services taxed at the 15% capital gains rate.
Essentially they are able to pay a lower tax rate on income from their work
than other Americans simply because of the structure of their firm.
What does the legislation do?
It clarifies that any income received from a partnership, capital or
otherwise, in compensation for services is ordinary income for tax purposes.
As a result, the managers of investment partnerships who receive a carried
interest as compensation will pay regular income tax rates rather than
capital gains rates on that compensation. The capital gains rate will
continue to apply to the extent that the managers' income represents a
reasonable return on capital they have actually invested in the partnership.
What kinds of investment firms will be affected?
This part of a broad consideration of tax fairness. The principle at work
is that compensation for services should be treated as ordinary income and
taxed accordingly, regardless of its source. Any investment management firm
that takes a share of an investment fund's profits as its compensation (i.e.
in the form of carried interest), will be affected. This will apply to any
investment management firm without regard to the type of assets, whether
they are financial assets or real estate. The test is the form of
compensation, not the type of assets the firm is managing, its investment
strategy, or the amount of compensation involved.
Would this affect REITs?
To the extent that a Real Estate Investment Trust is receiving income in the
form of a carried interest in another real estate partnership, this would
affect the character of income received for purposes of determining the
character of income distributed to shareholders. The legislation would not
affect an entity's ability to qualify as a REIT.
Would this affect publicly traded partnerships?
Yes, if more than 10% of a publicly traded partnership's income comes from a
carried interest covered by the legislation, they will be taxed as a
corporation.
What is the effective date of the legislation?
This legislation is designed to create a structure under which this income
should be taxed. Decisions on the effective date will be made as part of
the legislative process.
_________________________________________
Chicago could be the next major city to award a contract for a large municipal WiFi network, Unstrung has learned
CHICAGO -- NXTcomm -- Chicago could be the next major city to award a
contract for a large municipal WiFi network, Unstrung has learned.
Industry sources at the NXTcomm show and elsewhere say the city is poised to
choose between the teams of AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T - message board) and Motorola
Inc. (NYSE: MOT - message board) or EarthLink Inc. and Tropos Networks Inc.
to deploy a 200 square mile WiFi mesh network in the city
From what I've heard, AT&T and Motorola have a slight advantage," says one
source familiar with the proceedings. It is not yet known when the deal will
be announced, but it is expected to be soon. All sources say the competition
for the contract is now between these two teams.
Motorola is actually collaborating with EarthLink and Tropos on deploying
mesh networks and associated infrastructure in five other U.S. cities,
including Milpitas and Anaheim in Calif. Our sources say, however, that
Motorola will be using its own mesh equipment if the AT&T-backed bid wins in
Chicagoland. (See The Milpitas Model.)
Chicago has had an RFP out for the deployment since September of last year.
Back in 2005, the city estimated that it might spend $20 million or less to
deploy a municipal WiFi network similar to the set-up in Philadelphia. (See
New Muni Models.)
Some of the bloom has come off the muni rose since 2005, however, with
politics, deployment delays, and technical issues plaguing some of the most
high-profile municipal rollouts in the U.S. EarthLink's flagship San
Francisco deal in particular is still bogged down with politics. (See What's
Muni Wireless Good For? and Mayor Cooks His Own Goose.)
None of which seems to have discouraged Chicago yet. Nonetheless, the price
of such a large deployment is expected to easily top the original $20
million or less estimate. One source takes an educated guess that this
project will cost "at least $30 million" for the mesh rollout with
supporting backhaul gear.
_____________________________________
Ron Kirschner: Praise for June 15th meeting in Skokie
From: Ron Kirschner [ron.kirschner@comcast.net]
To: Ron May
Subject: Fwd: Agenda for June 15th
Sent: Tue 6/19/2007 8:46 AM
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Meneses, Patricio" <patricio.meneses@rosalindfranklin.edu>
Date: June 19, 2007 8:35:20 AM CDT
To: "Ron Kirschner" <ron.kirschner@comcast.net>
Subject: RE: Agenda for June 15th
Dr. Kirschner,
I want to thank you, and the other organizers, for your invitation and for holding the meeting. It was very informative and I made good connections. It is a daunting task to start the effort you've begun, and it is impossible to meet everyone's needs. I think that the meeting worked well, and I'll do my best to get the word out for the next meeting.
Patricio.
Patricio I. Meneses PhD
Assistant Professor
3333 Green Bay Road
2.351 Dept. Microbiology and Immunology
Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science
North Chicago, IL 60064
ph: 847-578-8835
fax: 847-578-3349
http://66.99.255.20/cms/micro/Meneses.cfm
_____________________________________
Charles Stack: White Board Challenge
From: Charles Stack [cstack@2-ci.com]
To: ron@themayreport.com
Subject: Re: Hi, Ron! Whiteboard Challenge
Sent: Wed 6/20/2007 6:32 PM
Dear Ron, it was a pleasure seeing you at the MITEF Whiteboard Challenge! You are looking healthy and spunky as always. I agree with all of your very positive observations about the event, and as a presenter, I must say that the experience was very worthwhile! Even though we didn’t win, I shared the stage with a great field of presenters and some fascinating concepts.
This is the first time I’ve met the MITEF folks, and they were nice as could be, so I’ll look forward to future events. The networking opportunity was great!
Best Wishes, Chuck Stack, MPH, Vice-President of Constant Compliance Inc., www.2-ci.com
-- Charles R. Stack, MPH
Vice President
Constant Compliance Inc.
140 South Dearborn Street
Suite 411
Chicago, Illinois 60603 USA
Cell phone (630) 841-8706
Fax (312) 782-0936
Www.constantcompliance.com
__________________________________
Briefly noted: Kristen Nicole of Mashables and 606Tech, a new star on the local tech scene, revels along with 200 people on Wednesday night and many out of town firms; the ITA mixer from May 30th, by Ron May
* Lundin just called at 4:02pm Friday, June 22nd. He says that Andrew Keen answered a question he wrote to him this way: Question: Google and FeedBurner, good or bad?
The answer and I am paraphrasing was: Google may be good, but FeedBurner is a footnote to a footnote and it represents the end of the Web2.0 period. That is paraphrasing, but it is not far from what Keen actually said and he did use the exact words "footnote to a footnote." Keen is speaking at a Lundin organized event on July 10th. I can't wait. This should be interesting. All Web2.0 people are invited to throw rotten eggs and tomatoes at the guy. Anyway, Lundin will publish the interview on Monday and if you want to sign up for his newsletter, you can go to www.bigfrontier.org or just wait for me to reprint it. Keen should get some heat here.
* I am leaving now, at 4:15pm Friday for my 5th event of the week: MMM, MIT-EF, Pulver, Mashables and now the ITA, not to mention last Friday with the Wireless and Community Media conference and the SAB poker tourney on Saturday night. Quite a seven day period.
* The Mashables event held at Union Park Bar and Grill at 228 S. Racine in the up and coming West Loop area was great not only for who was there, but for who was not there.
Thank goodness, I did NOT see Sheldon Rosenfield, Irv Michaels, David Naylor, Bruce Montgomery, Rachel Patterson, Steve Susina, Rich Kooy, Rien Heald, Paul Davidovich, Fred Hoch, Terry Howerton, Sam Fallenbaum, Jacob Cynamon, David Weinstein, Frank Lucchese, Dick Mulvihill, Debra Kurtz, Cindy Bertram, Bill Houston, Dick Pilcher, Mary Bober, and of course Nik Rokop.
That list above could be much longer, but you get the general idea. There are too many people who go to events just for something to do. I see them way too much. We are tired of seeing each other. Many of them want to show their face so that people think they are where the action is. They want everyone to know or think that they are a mover and a shaker. They want to feel that they are important. All of those reasons of course apply to moi as well, so don't think I don't know that. Everyone wants to be where the action is or at least where it is perceived to be. When I miss an event, I always feel "Gee, what good stuff did I miss?"
A few of the people whom I see far too often were there, but thankfully only a few. Jason Jacobsohn, David Dalka (who told me about the event), Chris Rollyson. Rollyson, can't you take a break until I know what you do other than having a blog and taking notes assiduously at meetings? Chris, you are in real danger of becoming fodder for TMR. But we lack fodder since the glory days of Flip, Bernard, Thornton, Weinstein, Lederer, Chris Tomes, Slack, Moltz and a few others.
A few people I wish I would see more often like Jack Philbin from Vibes were there.
The fear I have is that by writing about this event, the denizens of other mass gatherings like our buddy from BOB, Richard Kingston, will find out how great it was and start to show up. That is what happened to Tech Cocktail and the first Tech Cocktail was still the best in many ways because it had the energy, the cachet, before it turned into a big thing.
When Sheldon and Nik show up at any event, I know it is over. The market has peaked at that point. At that point, the market is ready to crash and it is time to sell. The event will have to move or change its name. This is basic economic theory at work. A new event starts up and we can think of that as a very high pay-off job. People start to go into that field (or attend the event) because it has value to them, if for no other reason than that it is a novelty. Then as more people start to go, things start to reach an equilibrium and the value of the new event declines to reach the average of other events. Hence, it loses its allure and people are not in such a hurry to go.
How many other reports do you know where your name is mentioned for not showing up at an event?
So, let me get to it. The organizer of the event was a woman I have never heard of -- Kristen Nicole -- which is more evidence of how much I still have to get in touch with what is going on. Kristen gave me her name as I passed by with tape recorder in hand and she never mentioned that she was the "it" person. The woman who officiated was a lady from Edelman and of course, Edelman, not being a leader of any kind, saw something that someone else was doing and injected itself into the situation.
Kristen writes for Mashables, a blog site that deals with social networking sites. http://mashable.com/
They were just talking now (Thursday about 2pm) on CNBC about how the valuation of MySpace may be $10B!!! It was bought by NewsCorp for a mere $560MM. FaceBook is also seeing super high valuation numbers bandied about and Socializr, LinkedIn and Digg are three acquisition targets that may be bringing in big numbers. The whole social networking space appears as though it is about to explode. The VCs funded 79 internet firms in the last year (that number sounds low), I think they said.
When you add in the fact that YouTube is growing at 7% per week! and the upward price pressure on chip stocks like NVidia (NASDAQ NVDA) because of the need for more communication bandwidth, and the Blackstone IPO which is expected Friday morning, with oversubscription running in the 7x range, (scratch that, they are now saying 10x oversubscribed), adding in Congressman Henry Waxman's last minute request that the SEC delay the IPO and add to that the looming tax increase for private equity and hedge fund firms from the 15% capital gains rate to a new rate of 35%, we have quite a show in the works.
It is starting to feel a bit like 1999 again.
The Blackstone IPO happened on Friday and the stock closed up 13%, just about at $35 from a $31 start.
I am sure that Friday at the ITA kick-off summer party on the river, Terry Howerton will say something about how all of the hype is just a bunch of bs. And Terry, what will you say when FaceBook, MySpace and a few others are bought for gargantuan numbers? That was just a passing fad, and any of those firms won't be talking about their success stories at the ITA because they don't have a significant revenue history, right?
The climate for investing does seem to be changing again. We go through cycles. Venture was hot for a few years, and then it was not. But now, it may be coming back because it is the only way for some firms to scale up quickly. I sense that the market for venture in certain segments of the country and certain market sectors is getting and has been very hot for a while.
The Blackstone IPO will put 133 million units on the market, only 10% of the firm, and that will create a $40B market value. Peterson gets $1.8B with 4% of the firm and the founder Steve Schwarzman is getting 23% which will be worth what? --- well, a lot.
Here is my take on the Mashables party. I got there when things were in full swing about 7:35pm and my estimate is that there were 200 people there. Organizer Kristen Nicole told me Thursday on the phone that 250 pre-registered and 200 showed up, so my eyeball estimate was right.
One of the challenges that Tech Cocktail has faced from day one was that it had to keep from becoming just another big office party. The organizers wanted to avoid the problems of BIGFrontier and First Tuesday in the old days. If you recall, Lundin and Jacobson solved that problem somewhat by offering value add. Jennifer Filipowski did the same with the Pink Slip parties. They offered panels and Networlding. They had some educational value.
The carried interest issue is going to be key, by the way. That is a key part of the issue surrounding the proposed Grassley (R-IA) -Baucus (D-MT) bill which was introduced with the anticipation of the Blackstone IPO.
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=OBR&Date=20070620&ID=7063389
"CARRIED INTEREST
In related news, Baucus said he intends to hold two public hearings before Congress' August recess on the tax treatment of "carried interest," or the 20 percent cut of profits from the sale of companies by private equity firms that the firms' partners typically keep as compensation.
Under present law, carried interest is taxed at capital gains tax rates of 15 percent and not at higher income tax rates. The committee has been studying the carried interest issue for some time. Any hike in carried interest taxes would affect all private equity firms, not just those going public.
Finally, Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb on Wednesday asked the SEC, Treasury and Homeland Security Department to look into "national security implications" he said were posed by Chinese government involvement with Blackstone.
Webb wrote a letter to agency heads that said SEC records show Blackstone's holdings include military and satellite technology companies."
When the 1987 tax bill was passed, and the carried interest was treated as capital gains rather than as earned income, private equity was only 5% to 10% of what it is today. The issue seems to be that capital gains taxes apply when your own money is at risk and that is generally not the case in private equity. Is that correct?
So, if the earned income of the private equity firms, what is called "carried interest," does become subject to regular income taxation, that could have a huge impact on private equity firms and they may go offshore.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
May again. The latest speculation on CNBC Friday afternoon is that the private equity managers may raise their rates from 20% of profits to 25 or 30% as a response to any bill that raises their taxes from 15% to 35%. There is talk of a Republican filibuster in the Senate and passage in the House. But the bill has support from some big people in the financial world like former Treasury Secretary Robert Ruben. And there is already talk about a compromise rate somewhere between 15 and 35% which may be brokered in the end. The increasing of rates for the private equity guys from 20 to 25 or 30% may meet with resistance, but there is precedent for this in the VC world and the buyout world, they were saying -- at least by the top performers.
BTW, the chip stocks got wiped out today (Friday), unlike yesterday (Thursday).
I digress. Anyway, back to the Mashables party and Tech Cocktail and other Web2.0 type gatherings. Both Mashables and Tech Cocktail have transformed the Chicago high tech social scene. Two years ago, the ITA rooftop party had the potential to do it, but when the ITA moved, the chemistry changed, but as of last July, the energy and momentum palpably shifted to Tech Cocktail and now we can add Mashables to that list. Both Tech Cocktail and Mashables are given to the attendees at no charge and are sponsor driven, which distinguishes them from many other events.
Second, they are not formally organizations with a structure and membership and board, but they are organically evolving groups with a website, a mailing list and communications set up for the folks who are involved. I am now finally on the Tech Cocktail mailing list and I get regular notices about jobs and other matters.
Both Tech Cocktail and Mashables are also informal gatherings with casual dress held in places that encourage socializing and networking.
Once you start the party machine up, you have to add value or the thing drifts off into just a big party. The Tech Cocktail organizers, Frank Gruber of AOL and Eric Olson of FeedBurner (now of Google) decided to head that problem off at the pass by adding booths and tables for sponsors and exhibitors to show their wares. That was good, but at the first Tech Cocktail and the second Tech Cocktail, those exhibitors were right there with the partier crowd. They were right next to each other.
But for the third Tech Cocktail, they did a smart thing. They separated the exhibitor tables and booths from the partier crowd. That issue has always plagued these big events. When The May Report had one of its only events, we fouled up on that. People were standing in the back of the room drinking at our event at Dave & Busters while people in the front of the room were speaking. It was too noisy for the speakers and it was too formal for the party mingler crowd that wanted to drink and eat.
You have to find a venue where there is some separation between the minglers and the people who want to hear speeches, presentations, panels, etc. They did it at Tech Cocktail for Tech Cocktail #3 in January at NBC Tower and I don't know if they did it at Tech Cocktail #4 at John Barleycorns. Oh, I found out, they had the exhibitors at Tech Cocktail #4 on the periphery in one big room.
I want to be clear here. This is not a criticism of any event. This is analysis and that is what people expect with this report --- some thought. Tech Cocktail got things going and now Mashables has chimed in.
Kristen Nicole spoke to me Thursday afternoon for a few minutes. David Dalka patched her in for me. Dalka is fast becoming a resource for me in the Web2.0 world. I have a few others like Jason Rexilius who was there Wednesday night but J-Rex as I should call him and I talk on a more theoretical level. Dalka and I "gossip" more.
Anyway, Kristen told me that she is paid by Mashables to work full-time for them. She has never thrown an event on this scale until yesterday. She has hooked up with other events in the past, but this was her baby. The sponsors which included Edelman and Media River, and the other sponsors which you can see on the webascentevent site, paid $1,000 each for the Platinum sponsorship. The other sponsors paid less. Kristen told me that the separation of the space for minglers vs. listeners was intentional but that they originally planned to have the presentations in the big room and when they had technical problems, they moved it to the smaller space. I think it worked out better that way. Kristen said that the sponsors are happy with how things turned out.
The event was a success for three reasons, I think. First and most important, they gave some thought to whom they invited to attend, present and have display tables.
Second and closely related to the first point, they brought in hot companies and they got out-of-town firms. There were companies from New York City, Switzerland, Indianapolis, Scottsdale, Arizona, Madison, Wisconsin, and St. Louis. That really contributed to making the event a success. Third, the people there were not the usual crowd, not usual for most Chicago events. I met firms that I have never seen before and for me, almost as important was the fact that the event by and large did not get the usual crowd. So, it hit big on both fronts: it avoided the usual crowd and on the flip side, it got an interesting and unusual crowd.
I think everyone had a good time and they stayed quite late. I left about 10:30pm and there were still at least fifty hardy partiers left. Phil Tadros just got there as I was leaving.
Here are my notes from my tape:
eCrush has 10 people, Gibby is CEO, owned by Herst Magazine.
vleung@hotmail.com, with ProjectElliot.com
Ham from MediaRiver manning the store.
ImThere.com is an online social site which is now launching. They have a beta at http://beta.imthere.com and the site will be up and running "this week," I was told. The regular URL is www.imthere.com
Co-founder David Gorman, and Ben Roodman. The site will allow people to post pictures from events and build communities around them, etc.
Tom Sherman from WindyBits. WindyBits just has a couple hundred subscribers, he said.
Jack Philbin from Vibes Media was there.
Dmitris Haramoglis and his wife of two years went to Kellogg. I gathered they may be looking to start a company. Dmitris did not want to give me his email and he was hiding his name tag at first.
Jellyfish, a comparison shopping engine, got funded in Madison, CEO is Brian Wiegand, company has been around a year and a half, and they got $6.5MM. The funding came from a seed round from the co-founders and then an angel from Madison, Wisconsin.
Fuzzycorp., Layton Wethorpe, not giving his email.
Genevieve Thiers, wants me to refer to her as "The delightful and lovely Genevieve Thiers"
I asked Michael Quintos of MediaRiver why they did not get covered by the Wall Street Journal and he mentioned "the fact that it was an hour late." I never did get an understanding of how that would effect national mainstream media coverage.
Joyce Park of Renkoo (www.renkoo.net) is speaking now and she is hard to hear -- not holding the microphone close enough to her mouth. Larry and Sergey could not buy a house at first. There are some VCs who will give loans against a future IPO, she said. Joyce left Chicago about ten years ago, I believe for Silicon Valley and she is glad she did. There are people who give loans to people who want to go public, she said. Co-founders of Renkoo came from Seattle, I think she said.
She mentioned a number of organizations such as Dealmakers Forum, Web2.0 Bowling League, and a few others that I could not hear.
"It is essential to go to events like this every night," she said. Joyce, do you really think there are events like this EVERY night?
When you are talking to VCs, you have to talk about your record and if you can't do that, you better have traction.
Then she talked about blind references. The VC asked for blind references and they checked with everyone they had done business with. It is a two way street, Joyce said. The entrepreneur needs to do blind references on the VCs too.
You should go out to Silicon Valley three to four times a year, she said. "Come party with us," she advised. Don't just go out there to do pitches, she said. "We want to meet you, we want to help you. You need to know us, we need to know you," she said.
I was confused at first and after Joyce spoke, I asked her if she was a VC. She used to work for Neodesic here in Evanston with Charlie Quan. She asked me if I remembered her from ten years ago.
I vaguely recall her. But this is why the archives of TMR are so valuable as a resource. I looked up "Joyce Park" in my archives and indeed, I wrote about her on September 10, 1999.
We met at a LOLA party and here is what I wrote and I include it because I think it is very revealing:
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Troutworks and mysteryguide.com seeks funding for expansion into other product areas.
Troutworks and shopping recommendations.
Another firm I talked to at the LOLA party was started by Tim Converse who studied under Kris Hammond at the U. of C. in the computer science area and his wife, Joyce Park. I have to make a comment about Joyce. My first encounter with her was a case of Ron May getting a taste of his own medicine. I am so used to dishing it out, I am not sure I know how to take it. Anyway, later in the evening, I thought about how genuine Joyce is. She is the real thing. Says what is on her mind, plays no games, actually she is quite endearing.
They have developed software that works well for making recommendations to shoppers. Thus far, they have used it for mystery books and their site has been in operation for some time, I believe since 1995. It is called mysteryguide.com. I think they are also launching a site in October called sciencebookguide.com. Anyway, they are looking to expand the use of the technology well beyond the mystery book world. Other book genres are fine, but they want to use it for things like ties and artwork. Any product can fit into their system.
If you are buying a tie, for example, you can ask for something "more urban" or "more vivid," or "more conservative." While I asked Tim if this is an AI (artificial intelligence) system and what the engine is, he seems to be a bit uncomfortable about calling it an AI system. He said it is more like a smart data base.
The software turns low value data into high value data. In the tie example, it is basing its navigation on the colors of the ties. Now, Joyce says it works best with 1,000 to 10,000 inventory items, what she called SKUs. Obviously, they are not giving away the store. How it goes from indexing product data to making a recommendation for something "more urban" or "more mellow" is still a mystery to me.
Tim and Joyce are looking for funding, primarily for the purpose of expanding into other product areas. Their mystery book site gets 50 thousand page views a month. I introduced Joyce to Gian Fulgoni who was also at the party. Gian does not look like the heavy hitter he is, but I explained to Joyce that a person who might fund you could be standing right next to you in an Hawaiian shirt having a jolly good time. The lesson here is "don't judge a book by its cover" and stop going to these events for the purpose of complaining how you can't get money in Chicago. That will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Seek out the hidden value that is there.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Joyce, are you and Tim still married? I just got Joyce on the phone at 4:30pm Friday, the last thing I am doing before hiting send. Tim and Joyce are still married and Tim works for PowerSet and he used to work for Yahoo! Search. She did the mystery book thing while she was working at Neodesic back in the late 1990s here. So, it is great to stay in touch.
Back to Mashables. Michael Quintos is now speaking about MediaRiver. He shows how MediaRiver works. They are not just getting bloggers to put widgets on their sites that will drive traffic to the digital media clients of MediaRiver, but it is also, and more importantly, to help media companies keep people on their site. So, CNN, for example, if they were to become a client of MediaRiver, could use ClickSurge to keep people on their site longer by showing them articles of interest on similar topics to what they are reading about.
There has been $6.5MM invested in the technology, Quintos said. MediaRiver is the fourth name of the firm after Intellext, Open Road Technologies and initially DevLab. I know that Bob Geras put in $1.5MM of that and $800K recently. They have 17 employees and will have nine more by October, Quintos said.
Michael said that they are splitting revenue with the digital media clients and that MediaRiver getting a 35% revenue share and right now; it is "about two cents a click" he said. From June 1st to June 13th, they had a 6% click through for their two main clients, Motley Fool and Club Planet, I believe he said. A 6% click through is pretty good and "this is very exciting for our customers," he said. I believe Michael said that the normal rate is 1%.
The next speaker was from www.iqzone.com. Their site populates classified ads for people using camera phone. Send an ad to ad@iqzone.com with the text of what you are selling. They have an intelligent agent data base that will classify the ad you are selling so you don't have to say that an S-80 is a camera and not a car. They are connected in real time and you have immediacy of classified ads. The speaker took pics of the bar and the specials and all the cars in the lot. You can advertise right on the spot. I believe he said that there was going to be a drawing for a Play Station 3 in the next 24 hours. Now, if the card from the guy I got a card from is right, these guys are in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Ben Kartzman is the president of www.spongecell.com from NYC. After he gave the talk he gave me an idea of what this is about. Let's say that NASCAR is They got a couple of million dollars as a first round from the InterPublic Group, Halo Venture Partners and they have been around for
Mark Guildmann is the CEO; the CTO is Chris Hobbs; and the VP of Engineering, Anthony Yam, is a genius, he said.
Mark Hediger is from Switzlerland. His firm is www.Actionize.com. Essentially, this site helps bring good project management techniques to managing events and other activities.
I am noting that not many people are wearing jackets and even fewer are wearing ties. Michael Quintos and Bob Brill were possibly the only two tie wearers all night. Some others had jackets like Rollyson.
Joe Piekarz of www.timeXchange.net which is also Actus Technology, announced that they have now come out of public beta as promised and released the first time reporting platform in the Web2.0 space. The platform is designed to allow for any size organization down the individual worker to organize teams to allow them to track time, expenses and invoices online. Their system is agnostic with respect to back-end systems and they work with Oracle, SAP, and Peoplesoft and Great Plains. They eliminate licensing fees for Oracle Forms and any other licensing fee per seat which is an enterprise way of doing things. Their system makes time sheets obsolete because it can be done online and approved and aggregated and routed online. Everyone generates their own content. "This has turned into something so cool," Jim Figliulo said. It is really a project management tool and it can work outside the usual boundaries of corporations. It can be used for work groups of any kind, often informally organized. For example, Kristen Nicole can use it for the Mashables activities and Jim told me that she is also, in addition to working at Mashables, the author of a blog called 606tech, a social networking blog in Chicago. http://www.606tech.com/
You can also attach payment with timeXchange.net, Jim explained on the phone Friday morning. You can send the money through timeXchange.net, but that would be possibly version 3, Jim said.
ChaCha is in Indianapolis. They got initial funding from Jeff Bezos. They seek to hook you up with an expert on any subject at any time. They do this with a list of 30,000 guides which are broken down by expertise. http://www.chacha.com/
ImThere is from St. Louis and they create communities around events. David Gorman is 22 years old. Ben Rootman is his partner. He is from St. Louis too. Another site they had is ModBlog.com. One of them went to Parkway Central. Take note, Adam Fendelman.
Bo Hurd is at bo@ecrush.com
John Sidline is from Mobility PR, jsidline@mobilitypr.com
Dave Van de Walle is also wearing a jacket. He is from Usphere.com and we have covered him in the past. He was mentioned in TechCrunch recently.
Bob Brill said that he is wearing a tie because he always does as a lawyer.
The layoffs at Molex were only 60 people, Dean Richardson told me. I heard about them for the first time at the poker tourney on Saturday night and at that time I thought they could have been 500 or more. So, that is relatively good news.
David Glick from the ITA was there. I told him that Elliott from SwapSimple -- at least I am almost certain that it was Elliot Hirsch -- said to me that he was not going because you have to contact Terry Howerton to get in and he thought it was for members only. I told David that this is a communication problem that the ITA seems to have. They are putting too many obstacles in the path of people just showing up. Glick said that if you got a note from Howerton you are on the list.
Friday night's event is a members' event, he said, but it should not be a problem if you are not a member, I gathered.
Patrick O'Neil is at pboneil@gmail.com.
Daniel X. O'Neil is at danielx@gmail.com
Paul Smith brings back memories of wi-fi. He used to work at a Center for Neighborhood Technology in Lawndale and he also helped out setting up wi-fi for the victims of Katrina. paulsmith@gmail.com
nsanghani@yahoo.com
I talked to Joyce Park and asked her why she left Chicago. "No venture creation community in Chicago," she said.
Amy Hamers is a cutie. She is with a marketing firm which I found out a lot about later. ahamers@interactivemediums.com
Jim Figliulo from www.timeXchange.net, your sister just walked in. Her name is Sharon Figliulo and she is a med malpractice on the defense side; and then his other sister Sarah Figliulo was also there and she does planning strategy for Leo Burnett. TimeXchange has five people now.
I talked to a guy named Harper who is with Threadless.com, one of the most successful dot coms in Chicago. They got $20MM. Naturally, he asked me why he has to go to the TMR site. "Why in the name of blogging are you using a mailing list?," he asked.
Harper lives in Lincoln Square. "All you gotta do is publish your newsletter to a blog," he said. He will come over on the 4th of July weekend and set me up.
I balled Jason Jacobsohn out. He missed MIT-EF and he mooched a ride out to the ITDA Monday Morning Meeting from Sheldon Rosenfield. Jason is moving to Vernon Hills. He has small children. We talked about Velocent and Jason had worked with them a few months back. Jason did not refer them to the ITDA for a presentation. Jason did say that some of the people who attend the MMM are not really qualified to give feedback.
Jason felt that it took Joel Dryer, the moderator of the MMM, a bit of time to find his groove on Monday.
Look, I have heard this before. Not all the presenters at these meetings are easy to work with and when the presentations don't go well, the "helpers" almost always say that they offered help but it was either not taken or not listened to. They say that often the presenters don't take advice well. That is a trait that many entrepreneurs share. But I have to interview the guys on the other side to get the full picture and I will do that.
Another guy from Interactive Mediums was Jeff Judge.
I just called Scott Van Den Plas Friday morning before 10am) whose card jumped up and smacked me in the face. It has his name and underneath his name, it has a simple word: Philosopher. Well, you know that I had to find out more. Scott is an IT guy who worked for a mortgage bank and he is now working with non-profits to help with their membership and operations side. I think he said he works with East Village. He is working on a CiviCRM system which is a constituent management system.
The title "Philosopher" is because of all the tech events he has gone to and it is a response to "going to tech events and all the bullsh** titles that people have, and it communicates a bit more about me," he said.
Scott would like a job doing work with non-profits on the operations and business side and implementing.
Scott explained to me that the reason Intel is competing with MIT and losing money on the one laptop per child initiative is that MIT's $100 computer uses AMD chips which is a direct competitor to Intel. That explains that.
I asked Scott to send me a note about his language training ventures and here it is:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: falloutcorp and tinylanguage
Date: 6/22/2007 10:12:22 A.M. Central Daylight Time
From: scottv@falloutcorp.com
To: ronaldmay@aol.com
Hi Ron,
As I was saying on the phone, Fallout Corp is an umbrella organization that I use to work on a number of projects. Some of these include working with local community organizations to manage their constituents (via CiviCRM), advising local politicians on technology projects and campaign strategy, and a new project that I have picked up recently called TinyLanguage.
There are 2 primary schools of thought in language learning methods, the communication and comprehension approaches. The communicative approach involves learning a foreign language via examples in your native tongue. The comprehension approach lends itself better to creating a universal language tutor; it relies upon using demonstrations and games within the foreign language, with no native language instruction. In this approach, the student goes through a silent period where they learn listening and reading comprehension prior to attempting to speak, mimicking the way a child would a first language.
TinyLanguage uses a unique approach to create these language games. We use public domain and creative commons images, tagged with written and verbal phrases, to create language games for the students. Each student starts at the same difficulty level, but this level adapts based on the students performance. The difficulty of the questions also adapt based on how large groups of students respond. The end result is a very fluid language learning tool that can be used cross culturally with no native language translation necessary. With English as the internet's lingua franca, a tool like this is absolutely necessary for areas where English instruction is lacking.
The collateral damage of the project is in machine learning and image segmentation. We will be creating a massive library of images, correlated by phrases in multiple languages and in multiple combinations. We don't know what the impact of that will be, but it is information that has never been collected or researched before.
Thanks, and let me know if you need any more information!
Scott Van Den Plas
(847) 736-4990
scottv@falloutcorp.com
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I spoke to the woman from Edelman and she said that they just got involved as a sponsor.
Auriane somebody, but she is a cutie. She said she works in staffing. Here it is: auriane.derudder@ajilonoffice.com
Jeff Judge says that Michael Sands left Orbitz sometime in 2006 and he started a firm called Ascenda Partners. They are a group of investors. Todd Curry is also an investor, Jeff said. Michael is the president of the firm and Jeff stays in touch with him. Ascenda is just getting started, Jeff said.
His firm, Interactive Mediums, is a smaller and younger version of Vibes Media. Jeff was reluctant to say who his clients are and when I did get a name from him, I told him I would not print it because that organization could make them a target. It's politically charged. They do global messaging. Jeff seemed rathe3r nervous that I would mention client names. He does not want to seem to be small. I can understand that.
Jeff is the co-founder of the firm.
Pannsy Henry is 24, very cute and single. She may live in Ohio based on her card. www.acewerks.com
Jeff Judge used to work at Diamond Technology Partners, he said.
Peter Meyers is at www.TMinus2.com
Mike Carruth was there and he was talking to the same woman I saw him cornering at FastPitch back in February. I wonder what's up.
Will Al Wasserberger show at BARcamp?, I asked Michael Quintos. Well, we don't know. Someone said that Al toes the party line. What that means, I do not know. Quintos said that they will announce about three new clients in the next week or so and he also said that they have about 200 widgets downloaded from the blog world. That is not such a great number, I said, and he agreed, but he added that they are just starting out. I pointed out that this is their third attempt at finding a workable business model with the same technology.
We then discussed Wasserberger's propensity to emphasize media coverage. "Why wasn't there more national press?" I asked Michael.
"We're not focused on press, we're focused on clients," Michael said and I responded that Al is focused on press. Michael said, "Al likes to think that but that is not what he is doing today. He is meeting with one of the largest media publishing companies." That is why Al was not there, BTW. He was in NYC.
I have to say that 27 plus days ago, Al was all about national press and not getting much must have been a rude awakening within MediaRiver. I am sure that they have had time to digest the less than pleasant reality and are now putting their heads down. It was really just Al who was dealing with the media, although Jay Budzik also played a role, especially with bloggers. I suspect that they must be very disappointed but as Quintos essentially said, get clients first, talk about new products later. Maybe Quintos took Big Al to the woodshed for a little reality check. It does appear that Al has brought on some seasoned people who have battle scars and who may keep things on the planet Earth.
I continued to press the issue of why they did not get more national press, like in the Wall Street Journal. Michael said that they got some press, but not much national mainstream and he said that they got some bloggers. "We have a choice to make: focus on public relations or signing customers."
"Al knows that and that is why he hired me," Michael said. Michael's title is VP of Media Services. "Make the stuff work and have the media companies adopt this in the way that they want in the design that they want, then it won't matter."
"Branding and all that stuff is important, but if you don't have the customer, it does not matter," he said.
"The average blog is boring," Michael said. "What if you had a widget on the side that said, 'I know what you wrote about and here is some very recent and relevant stuff --- right on the side bar.'" Club Planet is one of their clients, he said.
Phil Tadros is still working on ChicagoProper.com and MetroProper.com, etc.
I asked Michael if I have Al's number at this point. He said that if Al succeeds, then I am wrong. I am not saying he will not succeed. I just question all the fanfare. This is a Chicago problem in general --- too much bs associated with announcements which should be low key and when you have real results, talk about it.
Quintos has a quasi-military background by way of his step-father, so he was wearing a suit and tie.
Ryan Westman is at ryan@2m3c.org which is the Second Millennium Third Century.
Here's what their site says:
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Who: 2m3c is the collective for industrialist intellectuals. If you consider yourself worthy of the cause, you may want to consider joining. If your a dynamic thinker and have a broad skill-set with expertise in a few areas, your probably someone we want to talk to.
What : Unlike tradtional organizations, we strive to maintain our flat status. The collective is based on egalitarianism principles and provides a conduit for concepts, thoughts, and ideas to be leveraged towards the common good without fear of reprisal from perceived powers within the organization. If we can't like ourselves, how can we expect others to like us?
When : The collective has been limited in growth as it's initial foundations were established. We are now ready to extend the offer to join to additional members. The goal is to provide a functioning economy so that these new members can eventually sustain life under any political or social structures. This will be done by working outside of, but living within the constraints of any particular environment. We believe that this is the next step towards a truly globalized structure where traditional constraints no longer place limits on the standing one has in society.
Where : Recent communications advances have enabled us with the opportunity to extend the collective across all political and legal borders. Ironically, these same communications advances are the ones largely responsible for what's broken with our current systems today. If we had to pick our primary location, it would be the former building of the now defunct Putnam County Bank which currently serves as a temporary office and manufacturing space.
Why : To establish an ecosystem where ideas and information can flourish. In this way we can begin to tear away at the protectionist infrastructure in place. This infrastructure is directly responsible for the largely negative impact on society as we continue to advance into the age of information. The natural outcome of the collective will be the redefinition of copyrights, patents, and other tools which are used with largely detrimental effects.
+++++++++++++++++
May again. Anand Danakm, a technical whiz, Phil Tadros says, is working with him on the MetroProper.com site.
I got a call from Dalka and he and Tom Sherman were talking about the women from www.MyOpenBar.com which provides weekly listings of where you can get free booze. They cover NYC, Chicago, LA and San Francisco with Seattle, Boston, and DC coming soon. Be sure to click at the top on Chicago.
Last night, Dalka went to a launch party at Debonaire (spelling?) at 1575 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Wicker Park for a firm called www.going.com. The site says that they are having a launch party in Chicago in early July, but maybe it happened already. Tom Sherman of Windy Bits knew about it, but Dalka told me that Tom was the only person he knew at the party. The site also handles other major cities like NYC, Boston and San Francisco.
The following is part of the Kristen Nicole's blog 606Tech, and you should also check out the interview and special reports section on her site: http://www.606tech.com/interviews.html and http://www.606tech.com/interviews.html
Here are some of the firms that presented Wednesday night.
http://www.606tech.com/fullarticle.php?artid=528
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Web Ascent Event - Meet our Presenters submitted by Kristen Nicole 17 days ago 1Comments Here's the latest update on Web Ascent Event Chicago. We've got a great line up of presenters, so take a look below to get an idea of who's going to be in town for this Mashable-sponsored event. And be sure to support our wonderful sponsors. Because of their ongoing interest in recognizing tech communities, we'll be giving a prize pack to the winning presenter, which includes free advertising on Mashable, and a ticket to the next SXSW!
Share this event with your friends!
MyStrands - the social music discovery site that has recently launched its Social Player, making its service available through its Symbian mobile platform. A good portion of its core functions found on its website have been optimized for its mobile website. MyStrands will announce its latest feature at Web Ascent. http://www.mystrands.com/
ImThere - created by University of Missouri-Rolla student Benjamin Roodman, connects members around events like concerts, film festivals and parties. Users start by completing a profile page, and ImThere helps you meet new friends by showing you local users with similar interests. You can then build a network of friends, list events, post reviews on venues, artists and post pictures and comments to the site via your mobile phone. IMThere will have a big announcement for Web Ascent as well. http://imthere.com/... read more
timeXchange - the Chicago-based service provides free online time tracking. It's scalability allows for small and large businesses to easily utilize their tools, from independent contractors to entire teams within a corporation. timeXchange enables you to record and report time and expenses, and collect and improve team reporting. timeXchange will be announcing its new business strategy at Web Ascent. http://timexchange.net/ ...
Spongecell - is showcasing its Promote features, which enables Event Promoters to increase event attendance while maximizing ROI by encouraging users to share event information through email, web, social and mobile media. Promoters can track and calibrate the speed and profusion of the event as it spreads, and Spongecell will deliver real-time awareness metrics, allowing event promoters to identify and re-connect with consumers who have shown a proven interest, helping to effectively target spend. https://spongecell.com/promote ...
Actionize - Switzerland-based Actionize is a web-based, highly integrated team, task, and contact manager and is ideal for both recurring business processes as well as time-constrained projects. Actionize automates and tracks all team interaction while simultaneously keeping you completely up-to-date on if, when, and why you’re meeting your goals on time, to specification, and on budget. http://actionize.com/
iqzone - Take a photo or video clip of any product, service, or stuff around your house, text a description and upload to iqzone. It's just that simple. iqzone allows anyone with a camera phone to take a photo or video clip of anything to post a classified ad in less than 60 seconds. Sellers can broadcast their mobile ad to a universe of free online classifieds, paid sites and print publications. iqzone will have an exclusive announcement at Web Ascent. http://iqzone.com/
++++++++++++++++++++++
May again.
So, here is the list of the cards I collected real quick because I want to get this out. There is no question that the out-of-towners made the evening. We got new blood and here are some of the cards I collected.
Pannsy K. Henry, Ace Werks, LLC out of Dublin, Ohio
Jeff Judge, InteractiveMediums, www.interactivemediums.com
Scott Van Den Plas (a north of France or Belgium name), scottv@falloutcorp.com
Joyce Park, CTO, Renkoo, jp@renkoo.net
John Kuolt, IV, iqzone, www.iqzone.com
Genevieve Thiers, OperaModa, www.operamoda.com
Andy Angelos, American Venture Network, www.americanventurenetwork.com
Mark Hediger, Actionize, www.actionize.com
Ben Kartzman, www.spongecell.com
Chris Watland, www.interactivemediums.com
No name, www.haztechnologies.com
No name, www.myopenbar.com
Aza Raskin, President, Humanized, www.humanized.com. Aza will be at BARcamp on Saturday. He was pre-registered to go to the ITA mixer on May 30th, but he did not show.
Dean Richardson, Molex, Senior Optical Engineer, www.molex.com
John Sidline, Mobility PR, www.mobilitypr.com
Tim Courtney, Marketing specialist, XNet, www.xnet.com
Michael Quintos, MediaRiver, www.mediariver.com
Craig Andler, Jellyfish, www.jellyfish.com
Aaron Everson, Jellyfish, www.jellyfish.com
Tom Sherman, WindyBits, tom@windybits.com
Ben Roodman, ImThere, www.imthere.com
Dan Wellisch, President, www.wellsoftware.com
Genevieve Thiers, oh, I'm sorry, the lovely and delightful Ms. Thiers, www.sittercity.com
Maurice Cheeks, McAB, LLC
Nick Schmidt, Producer, www.schmult.com and Nick has a YouTube video and a yoga instructor named Elise on his site
Chantelle Brown, CrossCap Media Services
Holly Rotman, www.eCrush.com, www.espinthebottle.com, www.lookuphookup.com, www.surveys4teens.com, and www.truthquiz.com
Todd McClamroch, VP of Client Services, www.swayonline.com
Jason Weaver, www.swayonline.com
Harper Reed, harperr@skinnycorp.com, and Threadless, www.threadless.com and www.nata2.org
Slava Kovelman, Arroweye, www.arroweyesolutions.com
Yan Pritzker, CEO, CTO, Planypus, www.planyp.us
Jose Gonzalez, National Securities, www.nationalsecurities.com
Suzette Webb, Executive Director, The Runner's Club, suzette@chicagolandec.org
Amy Hamers, www.InteractiveaMediums.com
Tyler Stock, www.interactivemediums.com
Yogeswaran Linga Devaraj, Developer, SwapSimple, www.swapsimple.com
Phil Gomes, VP, Edelman, me2revolution, www.edelman.com
Ola Ayeni, Business Development Manager, www.text2store.com
Ian Sklarsky, producer, BusinessPOV, www.businesspov.com
Elena Haliczer, NIU Outreach, www.outreach.niu.edu
Ben Roodman, www.imthere.com and www.ramped.com
Brad Bostic, President and COO, www.chacha.com
Dale Miller, Miller Creative Partners, www.millercreativepartners.com
Mike Maddaloni, Dunkirk Systems, www.dunkirksystems.com
Dr. Peter J. Meyers, President, www.tminus2.com
David Van de Walle, President and CEO, www.usphere.com
Nancy Lai, Director, Strategic Market Development, www.fastsearch.com
Lisa Ghisolf, www.ideasthatinspirebusiness.com, lisa@gizmo-design.com
Eric Haszlakiewicz, SwapSimple, erh@swapsimple.com
Auriane de Rudder, Staffing manager, Ajilon Office, www.ajilonoffice.com
Andrea Churchill, Account Exec., Ajilon Finance, www.ajilonfinance.com
So, to sum up on the Mashables party organized and run by Kristen Nicole, a new (at least from my point of view) celebrity in Chicago high tech, was excellent. It was first rate and what made it so good was firms like Jellyfish, iqzone, Spongecell, Actionize, ChaCha, and many others who came from such far flung places as Switzerland. We had Indianapolis, Madison, St. Louis, Scottsdale, Switzerland, New York City and more. That was great! It was also good to see people from firms we often don't see like eCrush, Vibes Media (and they are doing well, I hear), USphere, Planypus, Threadless, and many other firms.
One thing happening here is that the gatekeeper culture is eroding very quickly. You don't need to go through lawyers, brokers and accountants as much as you used to in this town to get to the VCs and other funding sources. We even had a few VCs from MK Capital (Sabinay Berry and Neil Patel) at the Mashables event. They work with Bret Maxwell. Matt McCall, where were you?
I still have questions about whether Chicago has moved any closer to a more investment and entrepreneur friendly culture. Are you any more likely today to go to an event like this and have it result in getting funded? I don;t think so even though Matt McCall and a few other VCs and investors are showing up at these parties and gatherings. One interesting thing to watch over the next year or so is what happens to Tech Cocktail now that FeedBurner is part of Google and what happens to attendance at Tech Cocktail and similar events by guys like Matt McCall. We will have to observe it over time.
One of the reasons I mentioned Chris Rollyson, whom people generally like, is that he is tied into that whole Melissa G. affiliated marketing schtick, as I understand it, and I do have questions about that. But let's leave that for another day.
Another issue I have is all the fanfare in general tied to launches of products. A little less fanfare and a little more in the way of results first would help. And that does not just go for Al Wasserberger and MediaRiver, but also for firms like Cleversafe which are so precious that they won't even say how much money they got. Weinstein defends the way Cleversafe has operated aggressively. He told me on Tuesday at MIT-EF that the idea of bringing Zakin on was planned from the start and he was an initial investor. The plan was for Gladwin to take it to 30 people and then bring Zakin on. They are co-pilots, David said, just as he claims that Jason Felger is a co-pilot with him at the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center, Weinstein says. Do you believe that? OK, say it is true that this was the plan. Then what do we make of it. At the Jeff Pulver party one guy told me that Zakin is a real heavyweight, and he was basically the number two man at US Robotics under Casey Cowell. They should be ecstatic to have him on board, this guy told me. Anyway, just a bit more humility, a bit more transparency and a bit less posturing would be nice.
Trivia question: Do you know what investing according to Islamic principles is? Basically, no interest related investments. Just heard that on CNBC.
Here are some other people whose names I got at Mashables:
Rob Shimp, JT Laubach, Joseph Matthews, Neil Patel, Jennifer Giese, Dave Suchland, Sbernan@homescape.com, Joseph Coralli, Tony Gibbons who is with Jane Burke's old firm, Endeavor Systems, now called ExLibris. He is a business analyst and he might be looking, I sensed. ExLibris does library systems.
AKautylo@homescape.com; Muhammad Saleem from Pronet Advertising,
Elliott Hirsch from SwapSimple said that they have nine people now, and that shocked me. Two years ago, I met them at the ITA rooftop party. Here is what I wrote on 9/3/2005:
+++++++++++++++++++++
Eric Haszlakiewicz, Systems Architect, Co-founder, SwapSimple, Inc. and Elliot Hirsch, Pres., Co-founder, SwapSimple, Inc.
I am not sure if I was talking to Eric or Elliot. I interviewed both of them at the same time. The company is only about two months old and it provides an online exchange for textbooks, CDs and DVDs. Students can trade them for other textbooks, CDs and DVDs. "It's open to everybody, whether you're a college student or not," one of them said. They connect to universities through student government and college administration. "You're gonna take your book to the website, you're gonna list it, and when you list it, and when you list it, we figure out what its current market value is, using methods that we think are pretty reasonable and accurate. We'll give you trade credits immediately up front before you have even turned it over. You can use those trade credits." They charge $2 for the exchange. I asked the number of trades they have had. They had to think about that, but it was thirty eight individual trades so far. They have 300 users though. They have a lot of users who are setting up accounts with the anticipation of trading, but they have to find something to trade for with their credits. It is a two sided deal, after all. "It's a catch-22," one of the partners said. "Our whole focus is the idea of instant credits, so that when you list you get credits right away," he said. They have three guys in the company and one could not make it to the party. If I may comment a minute. This reminds me somewhat of iBart with Chris Sweis since it is a barter exchange. The thing that always bugged me about Sweis' setup was that he charged people the minute they had barter dollars to use even if they had not purchased anything. When you are making a market, you have to get both sides, so I can have twenty used textbooks to sell, but if I can't find others to buy, what good does it do me? Sweis wanted to collect before you had the things to buy. These guys appear to be charging the $2 only when there is a transaction which I think is a better way. Having said that, I think I am not alone in saying that Eric and Elliot have a tough road to hoe ahead.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
May again. Back to Wednesday and Mashables. Well, they now have nine full-time people and they have revenues. They are doing about 100 trades a week and they make $2.00 a trade, so that is not putting the food on the table, but it helps. They are mostly licensing their technology so that other sites can use them as an add-on and the exchange will be powered by SwapSimple.
Elliot said that they are working on one licensing contract and I sensed that it could be a big one.
* Here is the long-promised write up of the May 30th ITA mixer which had 250 or so pre-registered. About 150 showed up and that was not all from the pre-registered, of course. Some of them did not show and others who were not pre-registered did show as it is always. I wtote most of this on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 12th and 13th.
Jim Adderton, AMCORE Bank
Mike Agnew, Trading Technologies
Rasheed Ahmed, Exensys Software Solutions
Reggie Allen, Mergis Group
Mike Alsip, Organizational Development Consultant
Patricia Anderson, apartsment.com
Patrick Anderson, ITQ Lata
Steve Anderson, Fast Servers
Robert Anders, Smart Signal Corp.
Jack Birdsall, William Blair
Steve Benton, UBS Investment Bank
Chris Benevich
Michael Bailey, Neighborhood Technology Resource Center
Irfan Aziz, Exensys
Matt Atkinson, Hub International
Linda Arquilla, i5 Wireless, LLC
Carol Ante
Ginnie Angona, AccessTek
Ian Andrusyk, Fast Servers
Erika Blackwell, Front Door Productions
Guy Blaszek, Heil and Heil Insurance Agency
Howard Blietz, Fujitsu Consulting
Jeff Bloom, BeyondAllSpace.com
Stuart Booden, VisaNow, that's news, he must have just joined them
Andrew Borgstrum, Raffi Diamond Corp.
Spacek Boris, AccessTek
David Bozeman, Hilb Rogal & Hobbs
Angelo Bravos, Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings
Eugene Breger, DARC Corporation
Michael Brett, Gartner, Chicago
John Chemers, Time Warner
John Casiello, CTH Technologies
Tom Campbell, InfoStewards
Tom Burrell, Roy Talman & Associates
Asha Buchner, Hyde Park Systems Group
Richard Buchner, Hyde Park Systems Group
Gary Buchanan, Expetec Technology Services, and note, this is not Expectec. I looked it up and this is a franchise owned by Ken Gaebler, who is a VC and MarComm guy, formerly of BeautyJungle and that 3D firm that was bought by Platinum technologies years ago. Here's the link: http://www.gaebler.com/Expetec-Technology-Services.htm
Roscoe Brown, Gartner Chicago
Mark Brown, i.c. stars
Brian Briggs, Kinetic Wisdom
Matt Bringas, Chicago Networks
Justin Dearborn, Merit Ventures
Paul Davidovich
Michelle Davies, Superna Energy
Craig Dalkert, IDC Global Networks
Timothy Curley, Merrill Lynch
Bob Crowe, Advantage Global Solutions
Kathleen Coughlin, Lyons Consulting Group
Colleen Conway, Aladdin Knowledge Systems
Robert Conroy, Cyprus Communications
Collin Conright, Conright Communications
Ray Comas, CSW Solutions
Ahil Chopra, Integro Insurance
Andrew Favro, Edelman PR
Jennifer Evans
Brandies Dunuagan, Hewitt
Michael Dunlap
Bob Duggan, B2B Computer Products
Dennis Dubois, Selling Dynamics
Henry Dorbes, Acting Finances
Bill Doran, Reed Smith Sachnoff Weaver
Maha Devan, Maha Consulting
Elliot Dennis, Business Wire
Carol Delaney
Lanny Feder, Proactive Intellectual Property Services
Mark Ferry, SpringCM
Jim Figliulio, TimeXhange
Michael Flannery, Business Only Broadband, BOB
Rex Fritschi, AskRex, LLC
Josh Galecki, Scheer's, Incorporated
Marie Gaudette, MLG & Associates
Stefanie Geitner, Business Only Broadband
Keith Gerald, BPSciences, Inc.
Chris Gladwin, Cleversafe
David Glick, ITA
George Halas, Cause:Success
Victoria Halas, Cause:Success
Michael Guzan, Medco Systems
Gheorghe Gruia, Consulate General of Romania in Chicago
Frank Gruber, Fifth Third Bank
Mark Griesbaum, Career Education Corp, CEC
Shelly Greco, IDC Global Networks
Carrie Genado, The Judge Group
Glenn Gottfried, Infolure
David Goodman, City of Chicago
Avrom Goldstein, Prudential Capital Group
Andrew Goldstein, Freeborn & Peters
SuAnn Goldman
Scott Goldberg, Edelman Public Relations
Pat Johnson, Great Bear
Jennifer Johnson, Spherion
Tim Hunnewell, Marketer Net
Mark Huber, 2Bridge2
Randy Horton, National Opinion Research Center
Kevin Hogan, Computer Professionals
Gerald Hoffman, Gerald Hoffman Co.
Jeffrey Hill, Defacto Networks
Jeanne Elise Heydecker, Graphic Awareness
Tom Heusuk, DataLink Corporation
Ken Hetlinger, Trillium Solutions Group
Jessica Henry, University of Chicago GSB
Rien Heald, How To Open Things.com
and that would appear to be a new job or Rien who was consulting. He had been with Performics which was sold to DoubleClick
Marcus Stephen Harris
Bob Hardin, JCB Partners
Kris Hammond, Northwestern University
Tom Haldes, Trading Technologies International. Now, here is a question. One of the first people I placed in the Unix world, way back in 1984, was Tom Haldes. We put him into AT&T (fka Westinghouse) out in the western burbs. Tom had just graduated at the time from the University of Chicago and he came out of DayStar, I think. Anyway, that Tom Haldes was quite sharp. I wonder if it is the same guy.
Well, well, well, that Tom Haldes is the same guy.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: RE: Are you the same Tom Haldes who worked for AT&T in 1984?
Date: 6/13/2007 1:38:19 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: Tom.Haldes@tradingtechnologies.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
Hi Ron,
This is a remarkable note, it’s been close to 21 years, and yes I am the same Tom Haldes you placed at AT&T. Since then, I have worked for Reuters in their trading systems division, ran global market data operations for Citadel and currently am responsible for Trading Technologies’ automated trading software. I do remember both Sam and Wally, although I’ve lost touch with both of them.
I would be happy to have lunch some time and catch up. I am in New York through the end of this week, but should be in town all of next week.
Feel free to give me a call, my office number is [number withheld because he may not realize that I am printing his note.].
Thanks for reaching out after so may years (decades).
Tom
---------------------------
From: RONALDMAY@aol.com [mailto:RONALDMAY@aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 8:16 PM
To: Tom Haldes (TT)
Cc: thomas.haldes@tradingtechnologies.com
Subject: Are you the same Tom Haldes who worked for AT&T in 1984?
June 12, 2007
Tom,
I was going over the list of people who were pre-registered for the ITA mixer on May 30th. I taped the names onto my recorder from the name tags. When I saw your name, I immediately wondered if you are the Tom Haldes that I know -- from 1984 and I believe Day Star. I placed you at AT&T. Remember Sam Phelps? Also, your buddy, Walter Behrend (spelling?)
If you are not the same guy, sorry to have bothered you.
Tom, if you are, how the heck are you? And let's have lunch sometime. By the way, I write a newsletter now called The May Report, www.themayreport.com.
Ron
ronaldmay@aol.com
or ron@themayreport.com
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=
May again. Let me make a guess. In the 17 years that I was an IT headhunter or recruiter, I probably was involved in placing about 250 people or more, either on the candidate or the account side. I certainly worked with many more than that, easily over 3,000 people. If I had to say where Tom Haldes fits, he is right up there. He was very sharp and for the Chicago market that I worked in, one of the best, certainly top few percent. So, thanks to ITA for holding an event and putting out name tags, even if all the people did not come. Finding an old and really good guy after all these years warms my heart and makes me feel good about what I did for years before this little report.
I wrote and thought about much more having to do with Tom Haldes but not for today. Some day when I feel like grousing. The problem is that the Ron May that Tom knows is not same person in many ways as the one today. I was not a mean and nasty person back then or at least not so much. Tom does not know me as person who destroys companies and people, just as a nice guy who tries to help them. The thoughts about how I have changed got me going into a depressed state for a few days and I would have to add to that the Erika and Lori Blackwell thing and a few other matters, like the guy who had the "wrong" nametag. He was still working for one firm and starting another under his employer's nose without his boss's knowledge. More on that another time. I considered not printing Tom's note because he has no idea what he is getting into and once they read the note at TT, they will probalby tell him not to have lunch with me. But maybe we can anyway. I just don't feel like being sneaky here. I would rather have it on the table.
Let's continue.
Bryce Levine, Paylocity
Christine Lane, Lyons Consulting Group
Tony Kvitek
Fred Kush, Cypress Creek
Mike Kreuger, The Latte Group
Bob Krohn, Makro Partners
Mike Krawchuk
Cate Kosnik, Terabite Solutions
Steve Kosanovich, Original Software Inc, USA
Anaf Koppikar, NORC
William Knowles
Jonathan Kingsepp, Northbound Solutions
Gary King, WorkNet
Jeff Kincaide, West Monroe
Gauray Khurana, Intellitech Concepts
Markus Ketel, Anjoka, Inc.
Stephen Jones, Capable Networks
Spencer Maus, JASEConsulting
Paul Moherer ??
Shiva Mathur
Thomas Marthens, CDW which was just bought by Madison Dearborn for $7.3MM
David Marr, BCBS IL
Katrina Malone, CitiGroup
Ryan Maley, Software Technologies Group
John Mahady
Mike Maginity, MaKro Partners
Ray Ludwig, apartments.com
Ray Lucek, G2Switchworks
Anthony Lopez, Equivus, Inc.
Elan Long, SpringSmart
Rose Lockwood, Mesirow Financial Holdings
Christopher Pinto, Judge Technology Staffing
Aaron Lindsey, Fujitsu Consulting
Mike Levinson, AskRex
Bruce Montgomery, Technology Access Television
Paul Meussig, Leo Software
Molly Meuller, Lyons Consulting Group
Brittany Morris, Edelman Public Relations
Jacquelyn Moon, BeyondAllSpace
Mike Montgomery, liQuid Print
Irv Michaels, Administaff
Troy Moffitt, Paylocity
Dirk Meuzelaar, Bit Factory, USA
Patty Meuris, FastRoot Technology
Andrew Menascoe
Svetlana Mefford, American Ukranian Chamber of Commerce
Tom McGrath, Hub International
Gretchen McGinn, SpeakerBus
Jennifer Piazza, Visionary Marketing
Jordan Rittenberry, Eloqua Corp.
Steve Reiss, Nu_Way Search, Inc.
Mark Pfeiff, CDI IT Solutions
Milton Peterson, Neal Gerber Eisenberg
Rob Reynolds, RRR Capital
Sara Schmidt, liQuid Print
John Scheer, Harris Bank
Ramsey Regaldo, PM Alliance
Richard Pauley, Intersect Solutions
Greg Padovani, PENS Communications
Jeffrey Reid, Consolidated Trading
Robert Sansome, Optimized Telecomm Solutions
Gina Sandon, Initiate Systems
Aza Raskin, Humanized, Inc.
Joe O'Malley,
Katherine Odell, Sales-on-site
Tom Quinlan, Paylocity
Paul Sand, Salare Security Corporation
Steve Russell, CDW
Rob Rousseau, The Synergy Company
Chris Rollyson, CSRA, Inc.
Ron Rody, Panduit Corp.
Shana Robinson, ThoughtWorks
Steve Potts, ForceLogix
David Nanberg, Communications and Training Consultants
Jeff Naugle, Career Concepts
Justin Nemeth, CIT Equipment Leasing
Douglas Obermeyer, Judge Technical
Kelly Muldoon, Silver T Technologies
Thomas Piette, Cypress Communications
Dick Mulvihill, Hexistor
Seth Pomeroy
Ed Schmoeller,
Lanny Feder was there. This was the first time I have seen him in months
Derrick Sorles, Networlding Leadership Resource Center
Yoel Sommer, CSW Solutions
Michael Stell, Networlding
Tracy Simms, Century 21
Edward Schuman, Nexum
Alex Schekin, Intergam Technologies Corp.
Chad Sewell, Wright Line
Ural Sekendour, ToothLabs
Telon Scigouski, HRH
Don Sorter, Motorola
Boris Spacek, AccessTek
Patrick Stakenas, ForceLogix
Rich Saleka, Mar'age
Donny Stasch, DP Sciences
Troy Steele, Robert Half
George Stephen, Innovation Advisors
Jeffrey Stricker, SunGard Availability Services
Steve Susina, UT StarComm, Inc.
Jim Vaselopoulos, TSC Group
Deborah Valella Smith, CT Tymetrix
Art Tortorelo, Innovation Software
Monica Toporkiewicz, U.S. Department of Commerce
Walt Tolson, The Boeing Corp.
Peter Tessler, Independent technical consulting
Michael Scymanski, Trillium Solutions Group
Tom Cszmananda, AMCORE Bank
Imran Syed, Extensys Software
Edward Swederski, Magenic Technologies
Sandy Weissent, Management Consulting
Robert Weiss, Neal Gerber Eisenberg
Thomas Weber, Alcyon Consulting Group
Douglas Watt, Metronome Labs
Hazel Wagner, B2B (?)
Cathy Wang
Michael Volpe, Pan American Mortgage
Peru Venkat, CNA Insurance
Hani Zughayer, Infogix
Alyidar Zyadeh, The Mergis Group
Ella Zibitsker, Computer Systems Institute
Andrew Wright, Neuberger Berman
John Wondrasek, Anjoka
Nate Williams, Kirix Corporation
David Willeumier, UBS
Aside from Lanny Feder, who was there, that was the list of pre-registered people for the event. Now, let me go to my tape and tell you what I ran into from that. Some of tbese names are misspelled and I have the list of the actual cards that I collected, but let me get this out now. It is 3pm and an hour to go before the ITA summer kick-off party. The point is that comparing the lists of the attendees at the ITA, even the pre-registereds and the attendees at the Mashables party can answer a lot of questions. Are they really two different groups? What is the overlap? How are they different?
I confronted Fred Hoch about why FeedBurner was not even nominated for an award at CityLIGHTS. I told him to give me his opinion and not to just echo Howerton's opinion. Well, he did. He said that he had grown the membership 275% in 18 months. I told him that this is a company you can't ignore. It is known worldwide and not just by technologists. Fred said that I am looking at the periphery and that I think they are the greatest thing since sliced bread and he added "you're ridiculous." He continued that he has only been at it for two years. He said, "You really expect me to come in and get 3,000 member companies and maybe change the face of the industry in two years?"
No, Fred, I don't. It may not be your job to change the industry, it may be your job to catch up with it. Frankly, the ITA is behind the cutting edge of the industry.
I told Fred that even Howerton has said that the Web 2.0 crowd is not the ITA's primary market focus and Fred said that it depends on where they are. This was probably a reference to revenues, although he did not say. I asked him if he feels that they have a lot to offer them [being the Web 2.0 crowd]and he said that yes, they do.
Comment: No, Fred, I don't expect you to get three thousand firms in two years. But here's the point. Your organization wants to reflect what is going on in Chicago, right? And what is hotter than FeedBurner to reflect what is going on in Chicago? NOTHING. We have some great companies like Navteq, but FeedBurner is like the 800# gorilla that can't be ignored.
I just wish that rather than being defensive about it, Fred and Terry would just say, "You know what, we fu**ed up. We missed the boat on this and have had our heads in the wrong place. Maybe we need to re-evaluate our thinking and our model. Also, maybe we need to think about what we offer that may attract these firms." I am not hearing that kind of self-reflection from them. All I hear is that I am expecting too much and that they will get around to it and they can't do everything. That's right, they can't, which is one of my issues with the awards program. It is not supposed to be Members' Night anymore, Fred told me. It is supposed to be a community wide recognition of great companies, member or not. And that is where the rhetoric and the reality do not match up.
There are really two separate issues here. First is the question of membership. The ITA may not be able to get FeedBurner as a member even if they try or tried. That is quite possible. So, I can't blame them for that. I can blame them for not trying, but they can't guarantee that FB will go along.
The second issue is the awards program and they should be accountable for that. They have stated clearly and flatly, and this is what Fred told me directly, that this is not a Members' Night. It is a community wide celebration which purports to be reflective of the whole community, not just members. He stressed not just that non-members were eligible, but that they would be sought out. It is also not supposed to be a fundraiser so that the ITA can sell seats. It is supposed to be a highly respected award. They could give an award to a person or a firm that does not even show up to receive it. J.B. Pritzker was not there but he was nominated. If he had won, someone would have had to accept the award in absentia. In my view, if you want a legitimate program that is held in high esteem, you have to earn that esteem. You cannot just assert that it exists. Unlike the way economists work, you cannot hypothesize a can opener.
I would like to make a study of the previous awards and the judging panels they have had and determine if the awards mostly went to existing members.
And by the way, Terry, anticipating your pat response, this is constructive, not destructive. You don't want me to blindly accept what you do, do you? I should challenge you, right? And the challenge is a good one because it helps bring out what you really think and what your perspective on the ITA is. I believe that this is precisely the kind of discussion we should be having.
The only cutting edge firm that Fred mentioned specifically was Cleversafe and I agree with him on that. They are a member of ITA and they won the award -- and they should have been up against FeedBurner for that same award. Then, if Cleversafe still won, it would have meant something. It means little to win an award when there is no competition.
But Fred, look at your own list of pre-registered people for the ITA mixer. You have cutting edge firms that you don't even seem to be aware of. Actually, I have no idea of what you are aware of. Kirix with Nate Williams was pre-registered; and also Aza Raskin was listed as a pre-registrant. I don't know if Humanized is a member and Aza did not show up to my knowledge, but at the margins, the ITA has some touch points with the Web2.0 folks. They may just not even be cognizant of it; they may not be focused on it and they may not care. That is the view that I got from David Smith at the SurePayroll talk when he stressed "significant revenue history."
And if the revenue requirement is applied, you may want to send Jeff Bloom over to BARcamp. That was not a cut on either the ITA or BARcamp. It was a statement that "goodness of fit" matters. Jeff Bloom has no real site, no working voice mail, and no email that I can send to without it coming back. That is not a ready for prime time firm. See below for more on Mr. Bloom.
BTW, here is the latest sign-up sheet for talks at BARcamp on the 23rd and 24th.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
BARcamp - Chicago
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12:00
Chicago Linux: Advanced Photography On Linux (Jordan Wilberding)
12:30
Mass Customization: The Next Revolution in Software is Hardware (Ziad Hussain)
Old Technology: Not a formal talk, but a discussion of all things Low Tech, from steam engines to dripping water clocks. I just want to see how many other people are fascinated by this. Look for the guy with the Ballista. (TimSaylor)
13:00
Kirix: Strata Code Sprint -- building dynamic web mash-ups with RSS and a data browser (Aaron Williams)
F%#$ TechCrunch: Why most businesses fail, most businesspeople are miserable, and why you'll be different. (http://www.sean-johnson.com|Sean Johnson)
14:00
Cleversafe, Inc.: Global Data Dispersal (John Quigley)
15:00
Chicago Linux: Brewing Beer at Home (Tristan Sloughter)
hostedlabs Jason Rexilius - Building Geo Distributed Web Applications
16:00
Chicago Lisp: Anatomy of Lisp (John Quigley)
17:00
Developing cross-platform applications using wxWidgets (Dave Williams)
18:00
Ruby on rails deep dive (ActiveRecord internals) (Mike Mangino)
19:00
Rich applications with Groovy and Swing (James Williams)
19:30
20:00
A.I.: Learning coding libraries through operator learning and representation. Practical methods of extending complex systems (FRDCSA).
21:00
Getting started in F/OSS software projects. (Freddy Martinez)
22:00
23:00
Perry spins de trax.. ;-)
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SundaysAgenda
Last modified 2007-06-22 11:23.23.
Current Time 2007-06-22 14:13.01
00:00
Perry still spins de trax till the break o dawn.. ;-)
01:00
02:00
03:00
04:00
05:00
06:00
07:00
08:00
09:00
10:00
Mobile Web 2.0 ideas and brainstorming session
11:00
Mobile Web 2.0 MobHackaThon (go live by the end of the day)
12:00
Entrepreneur's Circle Of Progress - what are you getting done?
Web App Security analytics for session management - Jason Rexilius
13:00
Foresight Linux, don't you want your desktop to be cool and intro to Conary packaging Ken VanDine
Domainer's Swap Meet. Buy/sell/trade with other domainers. One man's trash is another man's $100/day AdSense play. Michael Carruth
14:00
Conary packaging and a demo of a MythTV Appliance Ken VanDine
15:00
Chicago Gnome User Group Meeting
16:00
Jason Jacobsohn - Discussion of Business Resources for Entrepreneurs: Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center, 12A Investment Fund, and The Big Idea Forum
17:00
Humanized - Tales from developing Enso
18:00
Gizmometer: Keeping Tabs On Your System When You've Got Other Things To Do (Conrad Albrecht Buehler)
19:00
Chicago Beta Meetup
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May again. I notice that Jason Jacobsohn is signed up to speak, Fred, but you are not signed up yet. This information is current as of 2:30pm Friday afternoon. Jason Rexilius told me he thought that Fred might show up but who knows if he will speak, and it would be better perhaps if he just listened and learned as I will do. Learning is a two-way street and we all have understanding that can be useful to each other but for BARcamp but business guys will have to take a back seat to the techies because it is usually the other way around and for once the J-Rex's of the world reign. Hey, how about that alliteration?
Continuing on my tape now.
Thomas Tiette, with Cypress Communications used to be with 1-800-LIMO.com. Thomas mentioned Frank Mostack and Joe Ensomo (sp.?) who ran the firm.
Ron Cichon from DayStar (ron@daystar.com).
Jonathan Kingsepp from Northbound Solutions, jon@northboundsolutions.com
I talked to Andy Goldstein about why the Freeborn & Peters folks have not merged with a larger firm like Gardner Carton, Sachnoff & Weaver, McBride Baker & Coles, Gordon & Glickson have done. "We have evaluated this over years and we think there is a market for where we're at and we're growing from within. Our firm is heavily litigation oriented but we've got a full array of business services. We're one of the first law firms that has a technology practice."
Andy, that may be true in the grand scheme of things, but there are at least five or six local firms that are pretty heavily involved in technology.
I would name Bell Boyd, Reed Smith, McGuire Woods, Drinker Biddle, KMZR, Holland & Knight, Baker McKenzie, Brinks Hofer, Neal Gerber Eisenberg, and of course Freeborn. All the biggies like Mayer Brown or Sidley & Austin and to some extent Kirkland have some tech practice. I don't know about Jenner & Block.
Mark Huber was at the MIT-EF and he is from Milwaukee. As of today, Wednesday, June 13th, I have now seen him at three events: MIT-EF, ITA and MEF this Monday night. So, he is making the rounds. Without going into details on this, Mark, the reviews I got on you from the MEF were that you need to say more clearly what you want. Stop telling people that you have international experience without saying where. Stop saying that you want to work on "projects" without making it clear what type of projects. You have to be specific. If I harken back to my headhunting days, detail sells. Vagueness and generalities do not.
Michael Tai, Classified Ventures, apartments.com, mtai@apartments.com
Steve Susina, Chris Rollyson, Len Bernick, NIE, LLC; Linda from i5 Wireless provides internet service to apartment and condo buildings and they do some government buildings, she said.
Dave Salander wants off the list. He is signed up on multiple addresses.
I commented into my tape at this point that it is an old fogey crowd here. My estimate is that the average age is early 40s. Say 42. That is not terrible but you have old fogies like Ron Kirschner, Irv Michaels, Lanny Feder, and others.
David Namberg, Communications Training Consultants and this is the guy I saw last summer but he still denies that he has ever been to a technology event. I talked to him several times and finally, he somewhat admitted that he did not want to say that he recognized me because he was with people and I got the impression that he did not want to say what he does. I could be misreading this entirely.
Ron Kirschner, Bill Waas, and some guy looks very much like Bob Bernard. Bruce Montgomery, Brad DeSent, Howie Blietz, and the guy he was standing next to, David Bozeman from Hilb Rogal & Hobbs has done a good job over the years, Howie said, as their insurance agent. Howie is with Fujitsu, formerly Greenbrier & Russel.
I went up to the Bob Bernard look-alike and he had met Bob, it turns out.
Kirschner says he will have something to report in five weeks, so that should be about the 10th of July. Presumably an angel funding deal.
Monica Toporkiewicz was at the EDC talk by Patrick Ryan also earlier in the day. I hung out at Lundin's office after the Ryan talk and came to the ITA mixer early -- that is how I had all the name tags. Monica is quite attractive, by the way. She is with the U.S. Department of Commerce.
I challenged Jim Figliulo on why the press for the new product, ClickSurge, from MediaRiver was not that great, and Jim disagreed. He said that he thought that they did get good press and he mentioned the Trib. article. Jim also said that they got good press on the West Coast. Jim, I don't get that at all. But Jim said that Al is at an undisclosed location in the Pacific [remember that this was on the 30th of May] flying a plane off of an aircraft carrier. Can that be? Al has not responded to my email yet. Actually Al did respond and he told me that his personal life is private and I told him that his personal life is my business and that is where it stands until I bug him at the SAB Charity Poker event Saturday night. I would like to know about this flying thing. Here is an update on thie from Friday, June 22nd. Jim told me today that he can't discuss anything other than timeXchange.net with me. I gathered that he got heat from Big Al on this. Al, lighten up, buddy. I am doing what I should do which is check things with you for your commentary. If you are going to intimidate youngsters like Jim as a result, I will go back to my old ways of not checking with you on stuff. As you said to me, you can't have it both ways. But Al, that cuts both ways.
Continuing on. Tierney from CSC. Mary Conley Eggert, still with Nikolich at TechImage; Rien Heald started his own firm, www.HowToOpenThings.com. You can create a contest on anything, how to open a conversation, for example. I believe that Tom Sherman of WindyBits used Rien's website for a contest on who open a conversation. He sent us a letter on that.
http://www.windybits.com/articles/2007/04/27/howtoopenthings-interview
Tom Sherman is a good guy, it sems and I would like to meet with him and find out more about what he is doing. This is written at 3pm on Friday, the 22nd.
Rien says he has had this going for about a month now and he has a silent partner.
Someone who has not been at MIT-EF meetings lately told me that he moved to a new house so he has been busy. Sorry, I don't know who it was.
Gary Buchanan of Expetec Technologies. Geary King of WorkNet, Melanie Stevers from Ceridian, Doug Obermeyer, Judge Technical; The Sandler Sales Institute woman is attractive -- oh yes, that is the same woman I talked to at the MEF 12 days later. She is Susan Smith and she and Kevin Gross went out to dinner after the MEF party (they know each other from networking years ago). Susan is a class act.
And speaking of hot women, Erika Blackwell is right up at the top. She is in business with Lori Blackwell, who turns out to be her mother, and they are called Front Door Productions. The firm offers a different view, she says, from the typical home viewing software out there. You can go online and take videos of your home, I think she said, and they are doing it differently from others. Erika's email is lazer22@ameritech.net. Everything about the Blackwell women has the number "22" in it somehow. They are located on the Gold Coast which is no surprise to me now, after I talked to her quite a bit on Monday night at the MEF. Erika said that they have a PPM and are looking to raise $5MM. Dinner with her will be steak or sushi. Well, not getting adequate information from Erika, I tracked down and called Lori Blackwell whom I found at http://loriblackwell.com/. The PPM is for $3MM to $5MM, she told me. The site, [name withheld upon their request], will launch in mid-July -- hopefully. They are in beta right now. I have much more on the Blackwell site but that will wait for the next report. Lori spoke to me quite openly and expressed some strong opinions on the development and programming work, but then did not want to be quoted after she had told me what she thought. We went back and forth for a bit, and she threatened legal action and I told her to "go right ahead" and finally Erika called me and we settled down. I will bet you that Lori Blackwell is successful at what she does. She has that "take charge" demeanor about her and she talks like you would expect a Gold Coast real estate maven to talk. But I hate when that happens. If I go out of my way to get the info. which I did by tracking down Lori Blackwell (through Google of course) and then if I get the info. and then if I have to hold back on printing it, that always creates internal conflict as you know. But I am looking at this long term and the site sounds quite interesting, so I'll keep mum for a while.
Paul Sand tells me that mVerify has been doing well and has raised some funds in the last few months.
Paul Davidovich was there, and he was talking to guy who wanted to throw beer on me, the guy whose name I still don't know, a balding guy, somewhat overweight and wearing a black jacket. The same guy was at the ITA on June 6th for SurePayroll.
Marilyn Torres, another cutie, is 32 and unmarried and never married. I was surprised that she does not have a line of guys after her. Billy from AMCORE Bank is 30 and also very cute. In point of fact, there were quite a few hot women at this event.
John Wondrasek said that he has two firms, Anjoka and Wondrasek Creative. Anjoka has four and Wondrasek has one.
BOB is doing well, so says my buddy Richard Kingston, the garrulous, cigar chomping and slightly plump CEO. But he won't say how many people they have.
BeyondScreens.com is a universal content saver/player, and an online bookmarking tool that allows you to bookmark content from webpages as opposed to just webpages. You can then post it from a screener like a TV station and view it on any web page. I think I get it. Here is what their site says:
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www.beyondscreens.com/research
How do we find the one thing that we are looking for? How do we find just one scrap of information amongst the estimated 150 million catalogued books, millions of online journals, billions of web pages, countless radio and TV shows, RSS/RDX feeds, broadcasts, or printed media?
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This question is both an important and awkward problem to solve. The aim is to identify the most universal and flexible methods for finding, viewing, keeping, and sharing information wherever it is found and in whatever media form it presents itself.
A term like 'the Semantic Web'
that allows you
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May again. If you go to their home page, they will notify you when they are ready.
BeyondAllSpace is the parent company of BeyondScreens.com. The founder is Jeff Bloom, who worked at CBOT for seven years. He is 26 now. His girlfriend was there and she is helping out. I think she said that she does PR. I told her that was a bs discipline.
Anyway, Jeff needs some marketing therapy as John Follis said at the Social Media 2007 conference. Jeff's business card is the goofiest thing I have ever seen. It looks like a card sitting on a card, but it is not pasted on, however it is made to look like it is just paperclipped on. But you can't lift up the paper to see what is underneath since it is not clipped on, it is just a picture of a card on a card, covering up key info. On the "top card," you have the Latin and the mathematical lingo to go with Beyond ALL Space and it shows an indefinite integral we all recall from calculus and a greater than sign and the sign for ALL and the sign for infinity. Now, the problem is that the phone number is "below" this card, but it is a picture and not pasted on. So, the best I could do is get that his email is jeffb@beyondallspace.com and his phone is 773-477-4750. Email bounces back and phone, the VM is full.
The website for the parent firm is www.beyondallspace.com Take a look, it is not ready -- and for what. The site says that "beyondallspace is a Chicago born company that specializes in High-Technology Engineering and was organized in October of 2005. Our managing officers have come from working alongside executives from noteworthy companies such as, but not limited to, Fusicology, HBO, Red Bull, Lexus, Astralwerks Records, BoostMobile, Frank151, and Scion. ⇒ For more information email » operator [at] beyondallspace.com"
Once again. No names on the site. I am always worried when I see that.
On to other things.
Now, I am through with my tape and here are some people who were there and not necessarily pre-registered, in fact, most of them were not.
Dick Mulvihill told me that "if we win this [the 2016 Olympics] it is because of his [Patrick Ryan's] leadership. He looks the part, he is the part. His leadership got it to where we are today, he and the Mayor, but he's the front man."
Joe somebody, maybe Chan, works for Oracle and I think he is looking to bolt out of the firm to start his own biz. I think I am wrong here. I think the guy I am talking about may have been Eugene Breger who works for DARC, which is owned by Oracle.
Avrom Goldstein is now with Prudential Capital. They threw him out of Pitney Bowes. No, actually, Pitney was sold. "Don't you be writing that I was fired, that's not correct," he said. Pitney Bowes was sold to a private equity fund.
As I was standing outside the bank on the way out, I saw Bob Krohn who is with MaKro Partners and he's a recruiter who lives in Orland Park -- like my brother. Bob seems to have that class look with the starched white shirt, those stylishly thin Moore cigarettes. Bob works with Mike McGinity who does know my brother.
I just called Ryan Maley at Software Technologies Group (remember that this was written on Wednesday, June 13th) to tell him to get his boss Chris Herzog to send me the letter he promised me on June 6th at the ITA. Chris is the CEO and the firm has 20+ employees and has been around since 1990. But, alas and sadly, Ryan has been put on the disabled list for the week due to a bike accident. Hope he is better soon. That call was made at 11:45am Wednesday, June 13th.
Terry Doheny just called at 5:25pm Wednesday. He is in the dog house for not showing up at events in quite a while. Well, he is busy --- with business, it turns out. Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and Hong Kong. All security related things. He said that because of the time differences, he is not getting a good night's sleep. Switzerland is the easiest to deal with and they are only seven hours, but they are very prompt, so a 3:15am call is 10:15am in Switzerland. So Terry, good luck.
I asked Dick Mulvihill what he thought about Patrick Ryan's talk at the EDC about the Olympics. Dick said that the question was about the venue for the rowing which was supposed to be two miles covering Monroe and DeSable Harbor. Dick said he is a sailor. Anyway, Columbia Yacht Club would have to be moved and it would have to be moved. Dick's issue is the money it costs to move it and where will they put it? Ironically, I just heard on the local news at 6:59am that there is some plan to put in several new harbors on the lake in planning for the 2016 Olympics. They said that there are 5,000 boats in the harbors on the lake now. Now they are reporting that the new harbors will be at 31st Street and at 87th Street and at Navy Pier, I believe they said. So, today, June 13th, Dick's issue is being addressed.
Monday you will have the list of the people who actually attended from whom I got cards, MIT-EF, Pulver, ITDA MMM, MEF and more.
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