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| | 04/24/2007
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| | Scoop
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| | [Actually 04/27/07]: Briefly noted: IFOPE explored, Neil Gershenfeld and personalized fabrication; Ray Pimentel; ITA, MIT-EF and more, by Ron May
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| | Briefly noted: IFOPE explored, Neil Gershenfeld and personalized fabrication; Ray Pimentel; ITA, MIT-EF and more, by Ron May
* IFOPE: I had planned to send this report sometime during the day Tuesday during the IFOPE conference on printed electronics. I had such a busy day Tuesday and the program was so tightly constructed that there was no "free time" to work on the report. I got home Tuesday night at 8:30pm, went to sleep about 10pm and woke up after 9am Wednesday morning. I was wiped out. For someone like me who is new to the PE field, it was a lot to take in and try to absorb. I am now learning such things as P-type, different kinds of conductors, transistors, viscosities, a myriad of concepts and terms with which I am just now becoming familiar.
I think everyone would agree that it was a very good conference. At a conference like this, you are always balancing between the needs of different audience members. There were a fair number of scientists and engineers, but also managers and business people. That is always the trick. The talks did have technical and scientific content, but it was presented, for the most part, in a way that was understandable to the layman.
Lawrence Gasman of NanoMarkets, which does research on this field among others, gave a pretty good overview of the field and the business opportunities in Printed Electronics. I wish that for each of the areas discussed, such as the digital-direct write printing story which had panelists each showing a different printing technology (ink jet, tone jet, and M(3)D, we had also a had a Lawrence Gasman type discussion about the market opportunities and the likely demand for each of these techniques. Quite frankly, too many speakers. Each speaker got 15 minutes and they usually went a bit over which left precious little time for Q&A and discussion. The two panels at the end of the day, run by Matt Timm of Soligie and then by Peter Balbus, the host, did have more time for discussion and I found that very useful.
So, some of the blanks were left to be filled in, but as one speaker pointed out, they did cram an awful lot into one day, and ordinarily this type of conference would be two days.
The thing about printed electronics is that it is here and now. It is a nascent field with a take-off point in the next two years, according to Lawrence Gasman, one of the speakers from NanoMarkets, an industry analysis organization. In the last six months, there are actually a number of Printed Electronics applications that have been commercialized and are making it to market. Plastic Logic, the flagship PE firm, has gotten $100MM in venture funding. Nick Stone's firm, Novalia, just got $800K in venture. NanoIdent, Xaar and other firms have started to take off.
Here are some practical, everyday uses of Printed Electronics technology:
Printed electroluminescent instrument panels for automobiles and aircraft – significantly reduces weight and improves performance of instruments for military aircraft.
Printed light emitting diodes
Sensors – gas, toxins, bacteria, organic compounds
Electronic printed maps
Printed antennae for supply chain tracking, component tracking which would be the successful implementation of RFID in a random environment, getting you away from the need for scanners. It is still radio frequency as all antennae are by definition, but you have much lower cost. RFID is passive today and has not lived up to its promise. The readers and scanners have to be in certain places. With printed electronics, various components of an automobile in an assembly plant can tell each other where they are. Or you could use it to find a car in a parking lot.
Smart packaging – detects moisture, temperature extremes, air penetration, spoiled contents; advanced RFID capabilities, enables smart refrigerators that know what’s in them and can track volume of package contents remaining and expiration dates
Airport passenger and baggage security/tracking
Another application for printed electronics is authentication which is putting in an encrypted code that proves that an item is what it says it is. We say, this is a serial number that we recognize as authentic, not counterfeit. This latest pet food scandal out of China, where there is melamine in the food, melamine could have been picked up at multiple points in the supply chain by chemical sensors which could pick up the presence of the melamine. A local firm, GSI Technologies, may be producing these sensors in the next half year. Melamine is a polymer that gives false readings for the presence of protein. The Chinese did not realize that it was toxic, let us hope, and frankly, this could have a huge effect on US-China trade. There will be a huge consumer backlash, quite possibly, and here is a concrete way that printed electronics could make a big splash.
One example that was given by one of the speakers, I believe it was a grad student at Berkeley who is working under Dr. Vivek Submaranian, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, University of California/Berkeley, was cans of Campbell's soup. They are putting real time labels on the cans which can tell you when they are spoiling, etc. That can be done for all time sensitive goods in grocery stores, I presume. Also, this same group is telling a wine manufacturer in France when their wines are bad, but that company does not want their name known.
One of the problems I have with printed electronics is that a lot of things are lumped into printed electronics which can at times be like the latest buzz word. RFID is a good example. RFID is in need these days of some rejuvenation since it has been sagging a bit in adoption. So, when someone throws something out there, I hesitate to say it has printed electronic components until I know for sure. The example that they gave at the conference of a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) detection device was a good one. This device is currently being developed at Cenamps in England.
Another application mentioned was a Deep Vein Thrombosis detection device that is currently being developed and which has some Printed Electronics componeents. For the record, PE does not equal nanotech and visa versa. Some PE technology is just MEMS.
If you want to read about some of the practical applications of printed electronics technology, here are a few links:
http://www.polyic.com/en/applications.php
This table of contents from another PE conference has a pretty good list of topics:
http://www.intertechpira.com/publicationsearch.asp?step=3&ecommproductid=4F6F1B919F009578A1E619F009510E1C219F009510E1C219F009%7C350791%7C1B1788&
Here is a table which lists the contents of a report from NanoMarkets that deals with different types of inks, potential for metallic inks, different types of substrates, etc. A substrate is just what you print on -- it has usually been glass, but it is now considered to be plastic and other materials. :
http://www.nanomarkets.net/products/prod_detail.cfm?prod=6&id=224
I spent some time talking to Nick Stone who was one of the first employees of Plastic Logic in Cambridge, England. Nick is a Ph.D. in Physics and most of the Plastic Logic people came out of the physics lab in Cavendish which is part of Cambridge University, I believe.
Not all applications of printed electronics are big picture, transformational stuff. Some of them are quite mundane, simple or cute. Nick had a cigarette box on which one of his students, an artist, had painted the outline of a cat in silver (although the color was gold), and there was a tiny battery powering it at the bottom of the box and there were tiny LED lights for the cat's eyes. This was a simple thing, but Mary Bradley, the receptionist of many years at Drinker Biddle, told Nick that she thinks teens would love something like this.
The five big areas of opportunity in the field of Printed Electronics are 1. Displays; 2. RFIDs; 3. Signage; 4. Backplanes; and 5. PV (Photo Voltaics), this according to Lawrence Gasman of NanoMarkets.
There is no question in my mind, and frankly, I think in the minds of many people there, that Neil Gershenfeld of the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT (under the rubric of the MIT Media Lab run by Nicholas Negroponte) took the place by storm. He was one of the most interesting people I have ever heard. In fact, I started to think about other fascinating speakers I have encountered and it is a short list. If I include all thinkers who would be considered interdisciplinary, it is a longer list, but I am not just thinking here of people who have crossed over disciplinary boundaries but whose passion and excitement about their work shines through and infuses their listeners with the very enthusiasm that they have.
The original plan, it turns out, was to give Neil a full hour to talk, and remember that he had time constraints, but there was quite a bit of push back -- or so I hear. Some of the speakers complained that they were traveling from California or from Britain and that it would not be right or fair to give Neil all that much more time.
The lesson I take away from this is that conferences can be hard to plan because of the egos involved.
The other lesson is that Chicago high tech gossip is boring compared to what guys like Gershenfeld are doing. Neil told us that there will be a fab week later this summer and it involves the Museum of Science and Industry. I need to find out more specifics on this and will keep you posted.
Here are some links on Gershenfeld:
If you do nothing else today, listen to the following 17 minute and 30 second video of Neil at TED. This is essentially the same talk he gave at IFOPE, except IFOPE got a bit more technical and conceptually more somersaults were both done and needed. It is 17 and a half minutes, but it gives a good outline of the issues that Gershenfeld and his colleagues at the MIT Media Lab and at the Center for Atoms and Bits struggle with.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/90
For a discussion of personalized fabrication which Neil has taken world wide, literally, to third world countries. He is doing a lot in rural India, all over, in Ghana. He has ten fab labs in South Africa. The idea is that just ordinary people can create rather than consume technology. Machines that make machines need businesses that make businesses, hence micro-financing of business. We are going up from top down to bottom up. It is the ultimate form of empowerment, Neil says. It is not just five guys in an MIT lab anymore. "The other five billion people on the planet are not just sinks, they are sources," he says. The hardest part is the social engineering. The killer app for the rest of the planet is.... [you know what, listen to and watch that video which I provide the link to in a paragraph or two].
The general theme of Neil's comments was essentially many variations on the idea of less is more. But it is more complex than that. He turns conventional thinking on its head. Bugs become features. Also, this fits in with the whole trend in the third world toward micro-financing of businesses.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gershenfeld03/gershenfeld_index.html
Other Gershenfeld links:
His home page: http://web.media.mit.edu/~neilg/
My brain started to hurt. To really understand what Neil is saying you have to understand a few things. The analogue to digital revolution in communications pioneered by Claude Shannon; the analogue to digital revolution in computing pioneered by John Von Neumann; and now, the analogue to digital revolution in fabrication. You have to understand a bit about noise and signal which is also known as information. The idea is essentially, in plain English, that you reach a threshold where the signal is reliable and can be repeated and replicated with reliability. Under the old analogue system, where everything is mechanical and hence susceptible to breaking down, the longer you compute, the worse it gets. In the old days, a phone call had to be rejuvenated, so to speak, every hundred miles or so. The example that Neil Gershenfeld used was the pentium chip. The billionth chip is just as reliable as the first, regardless of what you have to say about Microsoft. There is no degradation.
Let me say this. I think I have half of what he is saying or maybe a third. The rest has to do with using the model for protein fabrication to understand how human computing can work. Consumers become producers and we are all empowered. I probably have my understanding of the threshold theorems wrong somewhat, but I spent a half hour or more today just trying to grasp this one concept. I hate writing about something that I don't understand well enough to explain it somewhat. The part I am not getting is how bad info equals good info. There is a counterintuitive twist that I am not getting, not yet anyway. Time to hit the books on this.
A big part of his theoretical framework is the idea of threshold theory and this is where Claude Shannon and Von Neumann come into play.
Threshold refers to signal or information and noise where we are able to distinguish the signal or information from the noise.
We are now integrating bits and atoms. Neil said that we have had three analogue to digital revolutions. First, in 1945, Claude Shannon gave us the move from analogue communications to digital. Then in 1955, the work of Von Neumann took computing from analogue to digital and in 2005, fabrication has gone from analogue to digital. Gershenfeld likens our current phase in the analogue to digital transformation to the mini computer phase in the development of computers from mainframes to PCs.
Here is where my brain starts to hurt. A key term here is threshold theory. As I understand what Neil is saying, all the intelligence is external to the system. Precisely the same concepts that Shannon and Von Neumann advanced have not made it to the physical world.
As Neil explained it, "if you add information and remove it to a signal you can compute perfectly with an imperfect device and that's where we got the internet." Shannon took us from a telephone that degraded with distance to the internet and he proved the first threshold theorem which shows that if you add information and you have a signal... Von Neumann showed that "you can compute perfectly with an imperfect device." Gershenfeld mentioned the differential analyzer which I think applies to Von Neumann. He showed the same thing that Shannon showed for communications, except for computers in the 1950s. They lead to the following recognition. "You can have an unreliable computer but restore it to a state to make it perfect." Now we have the pentium where the billionth chip is as reliable as the first. Under analogue computer processing, the longer you did it, the worse it got.
It gets pretty lofty. Material itself codes for its structure. Computers don't use tools, computers are tools. Integrating bits and atoms. Neil said that the personalized fabrication process is stuff that village artisans understand, "You spread stuff around and you bake it."
Intelligence is external to the system, Gershenfeld said. "Computer science is one of the worst things that ever happened to computers or science because the canon of computer science prematurely froze the model of computation by technology that was available in 1950."
Gershenfeld is essentially talking about a biological model for fabrication. The same ways protein is fabricated. Self replication templating, nine orders of magnitude, etc. Building buildings by having the parts code for the structure of the building, not by blueprints.
Gershenfeld prefers the biological model where control is localized. There is no external control. It is similar to DNA -- but is it the DNA for an ear or for the whole body? The controls are not external but are embedded in the object itself. The acorn knows how to make itself into an oak tree. There is no need for an external control in the world that Gershenfeld is proposing. The object itself knows how make itself. The information needed to manufacture the car is contained in the components themselves, say in the ink. The ink knows how to make the fender. Does that make sense? More to the point, is that correct? I know it is a bit hard to grasp at first, and I still don't really get it, but I sense it is worth the time to try to understand.
Neil's current kick is what he calls personalized fabrication. We are all our own manufacturing plant, for a modest sum, say $20K to $50K rather than $3B to $5B for a chip fab plant where clean technology is paramount, etc. Personalized fabrication can be spread all over the world and one theme of Neil's comments was that the consumers become the producers. The people using innovation become the innovators themselves. It is turning everything on its head.
Here Neil says that we have had a digital revolution and we don't have to keep having it. He talks about "internet zero" and devices where the bits are bubbles or stored quantum mechanically.
Neil says he never understood the boundaries between computer science and physics. We are now in a world with Gershenfeld that a web server has the cost and complexity of an RFID tag, the whole idea of the internet and bring it down to devices.
For the heck of it, here is a list of the big thinkers at the Media lab:
Each Media Laboratory faculty member and senior research scientist leads a research group that includes a number of graduate student researchers and often involves undergraduate researchers.
Dan Ariely eRationality
How we can understand human behavior (rationality, semi-rationality, bounded rationality, and just plain irrationality) in day-to-day behaviors, and in particular in electronic environments.
Walter Bender Electronic Publishing
How to distill meaning from complex everyday experiences. Walter Bender is currently on leave.
V. Michael Bove Jr. Object-Based Media
How to create communication systems that gain an understanding of the content they carry and use it to make richer connections among users.
Ed Boyden Neuroengineering and Neuromedia
How to engineer intelligent neurotechnologies to repair pathology, augment cognition, and reveal insights into the human condition.
Cynthia Breazeal Robotic Life
How to build cooperative machines that work and learn in partnership with people.
Chris Csikszentmihályi Computing Culture
How artists can refigure technology to address the full range of human experience.
Glorianna Davenport Media Fabrics
How people and objects can tell tales of their experience and learn from others as they navigate through the vast media fabric made up of intertwining storied threads.
Judith Donath Sociable Media
How to create better online environments and interfaces for human communication.
Neil Gershenfeld Physics and Media
How materials and mechanisms integrate the bits of the digital world with the atoms of our physical world.
Hugh Herr Biomechatronics
How technology can be used to enhance human physical capability.
Henry Holtzman Physical Language Workshop
How simplifying the basic tools for digital expression will lead to a new creative digital economy.
Hiroshi Ishii Tangible Media
How to design seamless interfaces among humans, digital information, and the physical environment.
Joseph M. Jacobson Molecular Machines
How to engineer logic and machines on the molecular scale.
Kent Larson Changing Places
How new technologies, materials, and strategies for design can make possible dynamic, evolving places that respond to the complexities of life.
Henry Lieberman Software Agents
How software can act as an assistant to the user rather than a tool, by learning from interaction and by proactively anticipating the user’s needs.
Andy Lippman Viral Communications
How to construct agile, scalable, collaborative systems.
Tod Machover Opera of the Future
How musical composition, performance, learning, and expression can be facilitated for professionals and amateurs through the design of new interfaces.
John Maeda Physical Language Workshop
How simplifying the basic tools for digital expression will lead to a new creative digital economy.
Pattie Maes Ambient Intelligence
How ubiquitous, personalized interfaces can be responsive to our interests and expand our minds.
Marvin Minsky Society of Mind
How various phenomena of mind emerge from the interactions among many kinds of highly evolved brain mechanisms.
William J. Mitchell Smart Cities
How buildings and cities can become more intelligently responsive to the needs and desires of their inhabitants.
Seymour Papert Future of Learning
How to redefine and expand the conceptual framework and language of learning by creating new technologies and spheres of practice.
Joe Paradiso Responsive Environments
How sensor networks augment and mediate human experience, interaction and perception.
Alex (Sandy) Pentland Human Dynamics
How to make mobile devices socially aware.
Rosalind W. Picard Affective Computing
How computational systems can sense, recognize, and understand human emotions and respond.
David P. Reed Viral Communications
How to construct agile, scalable, collaborative systems.
Mitchel Resnick Lifelong Kindergarten
How to engage people in creative learning experiences.
Deb Roy Cognitive Machines
How to build machines that learn and use language in human-like ways.
Chris Schmandt Speech Interfaces
How speech technologies and portable devices can enhance communication.
Ted Selker Context-Aware Computing
How to design machines that use what we do, where we are, and how we feel to add to our social, educational, and functional success.
Barry Vercoe Music, Mind and Machine
How to build intelligent music systems out of interacting audio-processing agents.
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May again. Makes your head spin, doesn't it? This is more than cutting edge, it is more than bleeding edge, "it's on another planet," as Nick Stone put it to me. Stone himself is a Ph.D. in physics from Cambridge. But there is physics and then there is Gershenfeld. I am not trying to idolize this guy. It is just that he crosses over so many areas and sees so many connections that calling him a physicist is really too limiting. Neil even said that they are challenging some of the basic assumptions of computer science. And he harkened back to the masters, Jon Von Neumann and Claude Shannon.
Here is a little on Shannon:
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Claude Shannon graduated from the University of Michigan, where he took a
course that introduced him to the works of George Boole. He graduated in
1936 with two bachelor's degrees, one in electrical engineering and one in
mathematics, then began graduate study at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, where he worked on Vannevar Bush's differential analyzer, an
analog computer.
While studying the complicated ad hoc circuits of the differential analyzer,
Shannon saw that Boole's concepts could be used to great utility. A paper
drawn from his 1937 master's thesis, A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and
Switching Circuits, was published in the 1938 issue of the Transactions of
the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. It also earned Shannon the
Alfred Noble American Institute of American Engineers Award in 1940. Howard
Gardner, of Harvard University, called Shannon's thesis "possibly the most
important, and also the most famous, master's thesis of the century".
In this work, Shannon proved that Boolean algebra and binary arithmetic
could be used to simplify the arrangement of the electromechanical relays
then used in telephone routing switches, then turned the concept upside down
and also proved that it should be possible to use arrangements of relays to
solve Boolean algebra problems. Exploiting this property of electrical
switches to do logic is the basic concept that underlies all electronic
digital computers. Shannon's work became the foundation of practical digital
circuit design when it became widely known among the electrical engineering
community during and after World War II. The theoretical rigor of Shannon's
work completely replaced the ad hoc methods that had previously prevailed.
Flush with this success, Vannevar Bush suggested that Shannon work on his
dissertation at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, funded by the Carnegie
Institution headed by Bush, to develop similar mathematical relationships
for Mendelian genetics, which resulted in Shannon's 1940 PhD thesis at MIT,
An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics.
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May again. Anyway, Peter Balbus and Ray Pimentel wanted to have Neil Gershenfeld talk for an hour and they wanted Ray to run that panel. They also had a time constraint to work with, which was that Neil was traveling from Vegas to Cambridge, Mass., with a three hour window to attend the conference. It was obvious to me that Neil was the outlier on that panel. He spoke last out of six speakers and each speaker was given 15 minutes, but Neil was given a bit more time, more like 25 minutes. What he said and how he spoke was so engrossing and mentally stimulating that I said publicly that they should have forgotten the other panelists and just had Neil.
Well, Neil's talk was not tied into ink jet printing, tone jet printing and M(3)D printing which were the topics of the other speakers on the panel in any way that I could figure out. When I heard Neil, I did not understand why he was put on the program in that spot since he seemed to me to be a fish out of water. As I understand it, the tie-in between Neil and the other panelists was that they were going to discuss personalized printing and the Neil connection would then be the personalized fab lab. But that was not be the case.
One thing I am honestly curious about is Dr. Raymond Oliver's view of Gershenfeld. It struck me that Oliver was mocking Gershenfeld and making fun of him when he read the introduction to Neil. I will have to go back over the tape, but he was clearly being snide towards Neil in my mind. Later, Dr. Oliver told me that at other conferences, Gershenfeld is challenged by people at schools like Columbia University who are working on bio-modeling. Dr. Oliver told Peter Balbus that he has seen Gershenfeld challenged at other conferences and Oliver himself is in the Royal Academy. Was this just professional jealousy or was there more to it? Gershenfeld may have a big ego -- I really don't know. I did hear that he insisted on flying first class, but that is not such an unusual thing.
I think that a guy like Gershenfeld naturally brings out mixed emotions on the part of the other participants in a conference like this. If he is not the keynoter and if he is just speaker #6 on a panel of 6, he can have a strange effect. On the one hand, he upstages his colleagues which may engender some resentment. On the other hand, he gets their respect, with alacrity or begrudgingly. But once more, we have the 1776 issue again. The British Consulate was paying for this microphone, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan. And Neil Gershenfeld was an American and the only super star at the conference. Granted the other speakers were world class and they were stars, but Gershenfeld was a super star. So, the folks who made the final decisions about the conference after Ray was canned had to be tuned into these issues and to some extent, the lack of understanding was really just that the Brits did not want some guy from Cambridge, Mass. upstaging their people from Cambridge, England. And at the end of the day, it was their conference.
Can I digress a minute on the subject of titles, especially the use of the term "doctor"? One thing about the University of Chicago. The only people they call "Dr." are real doctors -- as in M.D.s. They do not use the term "doctor" for just a Ph.D. or a professor. That person is called "Mr." or "Professor" and I liked that. The "doctor" title is in deference to the German academic system and its overblown influence which the Brits have never liked, by the way. You could write a book on the differences between the Germanic notions of "university" and their emphasis on departments (which are, I believe a German invention) and scholarship contrasted to the more gentlemanly, liberal (as in education, not politically) and historically aristocratic British system. The only person who likes to be called "Doctor" who is not actually an M.D. is Henry Kissinger and it is so affected when he does it, but it fits his Herr Doctor "Bismarck" Kissinger image.
Look, this is The May Report which is in many ways just like the British tabloids, as I told Brendan Doyle of the British Consulate. On April 17th, at the MIT-EF meeting, I heard from Paul Fricke that the San Francisco chapter of the MIT-EF was no longer a sponsor for the IFOPE conference. Recall that the MIT-EF had passed on sponsoring the conference and in the interim Peter Balbus had left the MIT-EF as president. I wanted to find out why the San Francisco folks had pulled out so I called Ray Pimentel. His voice mail was working, but he was not around. Well, unbeknownst to me, Ray had been fired from his job, as I said, on Friday the 13th! I noticed that Ray was at the IFOPE conference, but quite noticeably he said nothing to me all day. It was clear to me when I saw from the attendee list that his affiliation was SciReality and not the British Consulate that he had been avoiding me all day. The attendee list had him with SciReality, a firm I have never heard of.
Anyway, it was close to 4pm in the afternoon on Tuesday and not having heard word one from Ray and not having heard anything from anyone he knows like Peter Balbus, that I finally decided to confront the issue.
I was told that Ray's contract was not going to be renewed and that there is a lot of bureaucracy. That lame explanation finally gave way, bit by bit, to a closer approximation of the truth.
Here is the best approximation I have at this time, which is 7:35pm on Wednesday night. Since I wrote this Wednesday, I have much more information, but this is all still valid. First of all, Ray was not the only person fired. The other person was Craig Heyl, a colleague of Ray's at the Consulate. Second, Ray's dismissal was dictated, from what I am hearing, by the Washington office of the Consulate which is in fact the British Embassy and it was specifically the HR folks who demanded it. Third, it was really a procedural and bureaucratic action as I understand it. By that I mean that Brendan Doyle, to whom Ray reported here, and Andrew Seaton, who runs the
Consulate here, had their hands tied and were not the prime movers behind Ray's dismissal. In fact, I am hearing that Ray had a very positive performance review. Fourth, it is my understanding that Ray's departure had nothing to do with the IFOPE conference.
And that is my only comment. Why couldn't they have just waited until after the conference instead of firing Ray eleven days before a conference he had been planning for months?
And as far as Craig is concerned, my information is that he was canned for insubordination. I have some details and they are good ones, but I want to give Craig a chance to call me back and tell me his side of it before I publish what I have heard.
Having spewed all of this verbiage, the question for our tech community is this: What will Ray Pimentel do now? As I understand it, Ray plans to take his printed electronics rolodex and relationships established over the last four years during his tenure at the British Consulate and start up an organization which puts on printed electronics events. Peter Balbus plans to work with Ray on this. For his part, Balbus has a very cute girlfriend, Stephanie, whom I met and Stephanie lives in Dallas. Balbus has gotten a private sector client now. His contract with UT-Dallas is now over (in February, I believe) and he plans to live in Dallas for the foreseeable future. That is a clear reversal from what he was spouting in February when he quit the MIT-EF.
But the printed electronics events will probably take place in Chicago. Ray can be reached at 312-852-5000. Ray has a virtual address at the offices of the ITA at 200 S. Wacker. That is just an address for which he pays $75 a month. I believe that they are filing papers for an organization, maybe a 501{c)3 or 4 or 6 or whatever. It may be a for-profit organization for all I know. But one thing is clear to me. Peter and Ray have been talking about doing this for a living for a long time. Peter wants to focus more on thought leadership and innovation and Ray is pretty committed to printed electronics. Both will probably work together and maybe the British Consulate will sponsor future events as well.
The Ray Pimentel, and the Craig Heyl story has nothing to do with the IFOPE conference and Ray was not fired because of IFOPE. He was also not fired because Brendan Doyle, Andrew Seaton or Gail Nicoll had an issue with him. I want to be clear about that.
And my information at 6pm Friday night is that Ray has no plans to take legal action against the Consulate or the British Government. He is in negotiations with the consulate, my sources say, on his severance agreement. And furthermore, my information is that Ray does not want to accept the one month severance pay that he has been offered. Ray would prefer at this time to move on, and his wife would prefer that I not write about any of this and I told her that my feeling is that because Ray's departure was so publicly known, it is a legitimate story. Neither Ray nor his wife will comment here.
But the consulate, by not having Ray maintain the facade of being with the consulate at the event and fooling everyone, made it a public matter.
My only comment to the consulate is that they could have fired Ray and still had him participate on the podium and by moderating a panel, but they chose not to do that, probably because of HR rules set by the Embassy in Washington.
As I have been able to piece the story together from several sources the story is that a grievance was filed against Ray informally on March 30th and formally on April 2nd, and the HR department of the British Consulate got involved. Ray and Craig met back to back with the folks from the HR department of the British Embassy. Bureaucratic rules governed the process and lots of activities continued from April 2nd until Ray was dismissed on April 13th, Friday the 13th! And Craig was fired too on that day.
I have managed to find out more now and will have for you on Monday. I want to make sure what I write is correct and I also don't want to rain on the well deserved parade for the IFOPE conference. Ray Pimentel put it together but the Consulate as a whole has plenty of reason to take a congratulatory bow. They were heavily involved and all of the Consulate people should be proud of the conference. The Consulate also put up quite a lot of money for the event.
After he was fired, Ray stayed behind the scenes and worked through Peter Balbus to keep the conference going. He could have walked away but he did not to his credit. He remained a team player. Soligie, Thin Battery Technologies, Aveso and Novalia considered pulling out when Ray left. I know that Soligie was quite unhappy about Ray's departure and considered withdrawing. And Matt Timm from Soligie headed the panel after Raymond Oliver's panel, so the other firms on that panel were also considering withdrawl. But beyond that, Ray's firing did not have an effect on the conference in any material way, and in the end, everything worked out just fine. Ray was there and the conference went well.
So, what happened with Ray and Craig?
I decided to hold that part of the story until Monday. How's that for a teaser?
And this, my friends, brings me to my story. Talk about burying my lead! Well, TMR is actually famous for that. We don't want to make reading this easy for you. This is case where I un-rain on the parade. I started today with the "scandal" and worked backward to the sunshine.
I learned a lesson on April 2, 1998 when Neoglyphics was sold to Renaissance Worldwide for $63MM in stock and Alex Zoghlin got a lot of flack at the time from readers who had their own professional jealousies. What I realized that day is that one must separate clean and dirty laundry. Both have an honored place. But not on the same day at the same time. I feel that what I have said today about Ray and Craig is enough for now and we will continue it.
It takes a while for things to percolate in my mind. We obviously had a successful conference here on Tuesday, and I wanted to be positive about this, but first I had to get the story out.
Couldn't IFOPE have been held in some other city? Well, maybe, but not so fast. There are in fact some pretty darn good reasons that the conference was held here and why future conferences will also probably be here.
And that is the story which will take a few reports to develop. It has several components. Chicago's diverse business structure makes a conference like IFOPE not only possible, but desirable. Also, the silos here and the non-connection between different industry sectors actually demands that we bring those folks together.
The field of printed electronics is a combination of several things. One is printing technology and another is electronics. Believe it or not, Chicago has major firms in both areas. I saw quite a number of folks from Motorola. I talked to one person from Motorola who told me that the labs under Dr. Iwona Turlik which has about a hundred people and Dan Gamota's group which is dedicated to printed electronics has twenty people. Now that is twenty people at the forefront of research. There were at least six or seven Motorola people at the conference.
There were, as I wrote, three firms on the roster of speakers that hailed from Chicago: Motorola, GSI Technologies, and Polyera. But there were also senior management (including C-level execs) in the audience from Fortune 500 and high-growth businesses (Boeing, Motorola, Kraft, Baxter, ITW). Other major non-Chicago based participants included BASF, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, Mitsubishi, 3M, LORD Corporation, Mark Andy, NASA.
In fact, I have a little news for you. Polyera has very recently undertaken a joint project with BASF. Henry Yan mentioned it in his talk and we discussed it a bit later. Polyera is a materials firm in the nanotech field which comes out of the work of Tobin Marks from Northwestern. They now have about ten employees. I think the fact that Polyera is experimenting with materials is one reason it was cited so frequently by other speakers at the conference.
The British government perceives Chicago to be a major business and high-tech
center (high-tech in the true sense of the word, not just Internet-related). That is why they don't just have a consulate here, they also have permanent representation from the North of England Inward Investment Agency which is represented by Sonya Knox right here at 444 N. Michigan Avenue. There are actually four offices in the states and Chicago was traditionally the headquarters. The reason they are here is to get in touch with companies here that may want to augment their businesses somehow by connecting to the North of England region. The two major cities in that North of England region are Newcastle upon Tyne and Manchester. The North of England region, historically an industrial center (as in "coals to Newcastle") is becoming increasingly high tech.
A major center is being built and will be open in about a year called PETeC, standing for the Plastic Electronics Technology Centre. This is under the auspices of Cenamps, www.cenamps.com and information on PETeC is available on that site. Also, if you specifically want to know more about that site, contact Andy Bateman at andy.bateman@cenamps.com.
Sonya Knox is in Chicago and she answered the phone directly when I called Friday morning. Notice that I have stopped writing "last night" or "this morning" because it takes me so long to get a report out, that reference will probably be wrong by the time the report comes out. Sonya's email is sonya.knox@northengland.com and her number is 312-379-5383. Sonya says that they deal with certain sectors here: IT, Financial services, some advanced engineering, bio-fuels, and energy.
The conference did draw big and little companies from all over the United States and England. I believe there was also a Belgium firm as well (Umicore). About an hour after it started, I counted 83 people in the room, including the panelists, and about seven people out in the lobby. Mary Bradley of Drinker Biddle told me that there were 100 people or more, and I believe that since some people came for a while and left. Matt McCall was there, but he left before lunch. There were a number of DBGC people, including Darren Cahr and Ed Goetz who circulated in and out throughout the day.
Just thumbing through my cards, I see:
Matt Johnson from Trabon Printing in Kansas City and he is a Prepress Manager
Ken Postema from Color Home Graphics in Grand Rapids, Michigan and he's the president
And from a little further away, Kevin Robinson from Lockheed Martin who is a senior staff engineer in advanced sensors
Matthew Timm, president of Soligie in Minnesota, www.soligie.com
R. Bruce Morgan, CEO of Imaging Technology International, located in Boulder, www.iticorp.com
Emily Selene de Rotstein of Aveso (long "e"), www.avesodisplays.com, in Findlay, MN. Emily is the VP of Marketing.
David Zoba is Group Leader, Electronic Materials Electronics Technology at LORD, www.lord.com
David Orgill, president and CEO of Litrex in Pleasanton, CA, www.litrex.com
Timothy Fahey, VP of Bus. Dev., Five Star Technologies, Cleveland, Ohio, www.fivestartech.com
Peter Smith, Display Business, Leader, Specialty Materials, Honeywell, peter.smith@honeywell.com. Peter got a lot of audience feedback to his talk on the idea of using printed electronics for RFID. Honeywell studied the feasibility and even though audience members, myself included, took shots at the idea, Peter said that we had not found the holes.
Devin McKenzie, Ph.D., Director of Technology, Add-Vision, Inc., www.add-vision.com in Scotts Valley, CA.
Paul Fisher, Director of Thin Film Technology, CCC International, LLC, in Alpharetta, Georgia, www.cccintl.com
David Fries, University of South Florida, who is the organic microsystems director. David makes devices to study oceanic organisms. http://cot.marine.usf.edu
Michael Lawrence, Custom Applications Manager at Mark Andy, in Milford, Ohio. www.markandy.com
Greg Scott is founder of Clicker Company, www.clickerco.com in Neshkoro, Wisconsin.
Dan Lawrence is the VP of Business Development at ID TechEx in Ann Arbor, www.idtechex.com
I don't have a card, but I know that a guy from 3M was there too.
Chicago area firms represented included and I will have a more complete list for you on Monday since it is getting rather late (2:53pm Friday):
Methode Electronics, Inc., with Emil Millas, sales manager. www.methode.com
Jie Zhang is the principal staff engineer in Printed Electronics Technology at Motorola, jie.zhang@motorola.com
Paul W. Brazis, Jr. is a senior staff engineer in that area and in physical realization research at Motorola, paul.brazis@motorola.com
Brian Sobecks, Ph.D. is Innovation Manager, Global Information Systems at Kraft in Northfield.
Nancy S. Schmelkin, Director of Business Innovation at Baxter was there. Baxter is doing very well these days, as you probably know.
Applied Thin Films in Evanston had three people there: Jeffrey Donelan, Todd Gudgel and Katherine Ann Gudgel who is a consultant with Applied Thin Films. www.atfinet.com
Two people that I saw were from Nanophase, including R.W. Brotzman, Jr. who is the VP of R&D.
Walt Sloan was there from JJL Technologies, LLC. I have known Walt for many years. He goes back to the MIT-EF in the Jerry Mitchell days, way back to 1992 or before.
Jack Curley and Keith Brumbaugh from the ITDA were there. Bruce Montgomery, Bob Brill, Robert Jordan of Nomad Venture Capital, Matt McCall, Steve Johns of Ardesta. Steve said that they are doing no new investing, just nursing their portfolio firms and that they had two liquidity events in 2005. Eighty percent of the $100MM fund is invested now and the rest is being preserved for follow-on investing. They are coming to the end of the fund, Steve said. I was surprised that Steve and Matt have not seen each other in about three years and they were chatting quite a while catching up.
And here is a lead for you, Keith Waxelman, for your Below the Radar program at the MIT-EF, and guess what, Nik Rokop does not even work for them. By the way, John Muntean from Bias Power where Nik spends two days a week, when he is not galevanting around Florida or visiting Portland, was there.
The company used to be called Graphic Solutions, Inc. and it was bought out by some private equity guys who changed the name to GSI Technologies. They are located in Burr Ridge. www.gsitech.com. Adam Laubach, CTO and GM, Functional Printing spoke. One of the things they did was provide the back light for cell phones and the specifically, the back lit electro-lumenescent membrane had to be much thinner and brighter. If I understood Adam correctly, they did this for the Motorola RAZR. And if I understood correctly, it was tricky because the
electrical device was right next to an RF antenna. The membrane under the keyboard had to be very thin, Adam said.
One of the things GSI did was the calendar they passed out. While simple looking, these calendars were kind of a big deal. It was the first time that a printed electroluminescent display of this complexity has ever been publicly distributed.
Incidentally one of the attendees, Jim Parker, was CTO of the old Graphic Solutions and when the private equity boys bought out Graphic and changed it to GSI Technologies, Jim was nuzzled out. Adam took his place. Jim was active in Elmhurst politics for years and knows Mark Tebbe pretty well. He thinks Tebbe is one of the smartest people he has ever known and he said that Tebbe is on par with Gershenfeld. Well, hardly, but Mark is smart. Anyway, Tebbe lost his election bid in Elmhurst partly because of questions involving one of Tebbe's previous firms. Could that have been Divine, even though Tebbe never worked there? Jim can be reached at 630-742-5756 and his email is jimparker@ameritech.net.
Getting back to my point about Chicago being a key to a conference like this. Look at it very simply: Chicago is in some ways a major crossroads for converging industries
As a related point, Chicago is a source for significant investment and business activity in the UK. A full 30% of U.S investment in Europe is in the UK.
Back in the days of Flip we heard that Chicago was going to be strong in B2B market makers because of the all industries we have. In part, a conference like this one aimed to break down silos and provide
a environment that fostered cross-industry connections -- even among
industries that have never been aligned before, like printing, publishing,
solid state electronics, consumer packaging, textiles, apparel and fashion,
aerospace and manufacturing.
Think about it. We really have all those industries here. Everything from meat packing to tool and dye and vending machines. Chicago's great width and breath of industry sectors rarely come together but IFOPE is trying to correct for that.
I will continue this story about Chicago and IFOPE in the context of change agents. And maybe we can talk about some of our local change agents like Dick Reck from his day.
Local media were conspicuously absent: Tribune, Crain's, Sun Times,
e-Prairie, BusinessPOV. I know that Mark Scheffler from BusinessPOV was invited and he committed to going, but he no-showed. It turns out that Crain's sent him to India, but he could have at least notified IFOPE that he was not coming. Mark, that sort of thing does your reputation no good for future assignments. A thirty second email to IFOPE would have solved the problem, Mark. It seems like Mark is getting tired of doing this work for so little pay, but he was offered pay by the IFOPE organizers. I was very surprised when Mark told me tht for the three minute video on Liquid Talk, it took them seven hours! Now it was only an hour in David Peak's office, but they had drive time, and editing time, etc. The media lack of participation for a national conference like this is symptomatic of what is wrong with Chicago and its inability to corral itself as a cohesive technology community.
* On Monday, I will have the story of Steve Rubel of Edelman and PC Week and the apology that Rubel had to make.
Also, Andrew Keen and The Cult of the Amateur, a popular new book which attacks the Web 2.0 crowd. You can see this video about user generated content here which covers some of the issues: http://zdnet.com.com/1606-2_2-6179822.html
* Continuing on, this time from my tape from the ITA dinner on April 12th. This is from my tape.
John Borse, Sky Road, they do ASP systems for hedge funds (www.skyroadasp.com). The firm is a year and a half old and they have ten people. John is CEO and founder. The firm is in Downer's Grove. Sky Road was also nominated in the Newcomer category, the one in which Cleversafe won.
Russ Bostick seemed rather reluctant to talk and I wondered why. I know him from the ITRC where he's a regular at their annual awards dinner. I don't recall the new name for the IT Resource Center right now.
Don Bussell says he had lunch with me about ten years ago. His firm is Omicron.
Tom O'Sullivan (tom@microsystems.com) from Microsystems Engineering Company. I have not seen him in years! I used to have Tom and his colleague, John Rigas, as a client back in the mid 1990s. I was actually somewhat surprised that they are still ticking. One of the investors in Tom's firm was Terry Kirch who owned a firm called RIMS and who was the VP of the Chicago Software Association under Mike Blair. I always really likes Terry Kirch. He was a very personable and outgoing guy and it is a shame that he has not been to meetings lately. Terry has not been seen much lately because, as you may know, he spent about six month up in a facility in Wisconsin for insider trading. But Terry visited Tom at Microsystems a few weeks ago, Tom said. Terry, you should come to an ITA meeting. You know, Martha Stewart had a similar problem and it has not slowed her down one bit.
Don Hinman used to be with Axciom and he is now with AllantGroup.
Jeff Stricker from Sungard Availability Services (jeff.stricker@sungard.com)
Steve McNamara from Aladdin Knowledge Systems (sjm@aks.com).
Bill Edwards (aedwards@devry.edu).
Sean Chou with Fieldglass is the CTO. Jim Holstein is the CFO. Deanna Freise is a product manager with Fieldglass. Mitch Baliga is in product development at Fieldglass.
Paul Colman from VisaNow (colman@visanow.com)
Bill Lada, World Trade Center of Chicago.
Mike Profita is now with Thincsoft.
Lynne Baker was there. She is still with that Career Education place.
Brad and Katie Spirrison. Now, here is what dawned on me right away. Brad is nominated for an award and he does not have the support at the dinner of his colleague at Midwest Business, Adam Fendelman or Lou Calamaras, his own cousin. Where were they, Techcocktail? Well, it turns out that Lord Fondleman or is that Fendelmeier? seems to have taken up a recent interest in the actor Adam Brody. I have never heard of Adam Brody, but I thought that Adam eschewed such stories years ago for much meatier stuff. Well, it turns out that, and this is just my supposition, that Adam may be fuming that Brad has upstaged him on the local tech scene. Add two and two. Adam no shows at the ITA dinner, as does Josh Metnick, by the way; and Adam starts writing about Hollywood movie stars --- granted B level stars.
Scott Glickson, Bob Geras. Adarsh Arora just ran off when I got near him. Memories of Gary Slack here. Adarsh, the worst thing you can do is run off when I come around. A few minutes later Adarsh was standing there going out of his way to laugh with the people he was with. An odd change in behavior. I guess he must have rethought his Ron May strategy. Next week I will make clear what issues I have with Adarsh, and we still have his business, AthenaVerify, to discuss and review. Adarsh should call his buddy Jerry Mitchell for advice on how to deal with Ron May. "Ban him from meetings!" That's the ticket, but you know what, Adarsh, Mitchell does not buy into that despite the fact that I continue to report the facts on how many people show at Mitchell's meetings or that I report that a speaker no-showed at his last meeting on Tuesday of this week (April 24th). And I paid for a one year membership just last month. And besides, Adarsh, if you did not have me to complain about, what would you complain to Jerry about when you drive him to your meetings? What is chauffeur's pay these days anyway?
Bob Geras was cracking that old joke: Do you know what the richest country in the world is? Ireland, because its capital is always Dublin. I think that is now the fourth time I have heard Bob tell that joke. But it is good.
Bret Maxwell from MK Capital.
Todd Pauli from Authentify. John Zurawski gave me a great post card. Authentify has not wasted money on brochures. They have a postcard with 28, yes 28 different people and positions on it, which appear distinctly as you move the card. You have to see it, but it is great. John, can you send me more of those cards? Anna wants one, Julia wants one. Julia loves Portland and she is coming back for a week in May. "Keep Portland weird" is the way one bumper sticker she saw read.
I talked to a Motorola guy who was in enterprise security which used to report to Greg Brown. The new head of that group is Triplett, I think he said.
Mark Menarik is still with J4 Ventures which looks for seed capital deals, wireless, global and content .
Craig McCrohon is another lawyer I should add to my lawyer list.
Bret Johnson of the Homeland Security offices of DCEO.
Geary King from WorkNet --- is that right?No, it is not. I googled him. It is gearyking1@yahoo.com and he is Director - National Accounts, USMotivation
+++++++++++++++++++++++
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Management Consulting industry)
November 2001 – Present (5 years 6 months)
Engage top management at clients to understand their business issues and challenges in order to develop business process improvement, utilizing application software to engage channel partners to achieve business metrics, apply "best in class" processes and employ enterprise software applications as part of the solution. Generate new business at new accounts. Develop strong personal relationships with clients. Experience in High Tech, Financial Services, Pharmaceutical, Telecommunications, Petroleum, Distribution of Medical Supplies and Heavy Equipment
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
May again. Brenda Lee Johnson was there, accompanied to the best of my ability to discern such things by Dick Reck. They were standing together. I also saw them together at Bob Bernard's wake. I tease Brenda about whom she chooses to hang out with. Brenda used to be with divine and she is now with the University of Chicago, I believe in alumni development. (brendaleejohnson@hotmail.com). Now, I am trying to avoid comments about hot babes today, but we have to make an exception in Brenda Lee's case, of course. Reck himself says that he was just recently with Emily Shagley in Utah, was it?
John Lenz.
Entrepreneur: Kathryn Odell from Sales Onsite.
Jim Duggan from OCA Ventures.
Jack Lavin, the director of DCEO.
Lawrence Buechner from Merrill Lynch.
Kristi Lafleur who is number two at DCEO.
Bruce Montgomery.
Jason Heltzer from OCA Ventures.
David Jennings from Fujitsu and he comes from Rapidigm in Pittsburgh. Fujitsu is the new name for Greenbrier & Russel which was sold.
Jerry Rozmiarek is with nobody, he says. I googled him and he is Jerry Rozmiarek, VP Information Systems, CCC Information Services.
Melissa Bolek is with Business Only Broadband.
Christopher Morgan from Lantern Partners.
David Benjamin, formerly of Tartar Consulting.
Christine Mason, of SpringCM, but that was April 12th. Since then they hired her replacement for the CEO position.
Ed Longanecker, Dick Reck, Alex Jarett.
Alex says that the Technology Executives Club is flourishing. They have 324 corporate members, 6,900 subscribers to their newsletter, 8,500 visitors to the website and "things are going great" www.technologyexecutivesclub.com
Ellen Carnahan said that she left William Blair in August and she and George Spencer are raising a fund. That is the reason Ellen says she can't talk about it -- a kind of quiet period. The new firm is called Seyen Capital. Ellen's partners came from JKB and Adams Street, I believe she said.
David Smith, Art Roldan, Chris Gladwin.
Art sold SecurePipe in December and he has left.
Bart Carlson. We talked about how he sold Newswire One to ENR and I told him that my story is that ENR is now ruined.
I saw the AdGooroo guys. "We're the Bloomberg of search. We're a marketing measurement firm. If you are advertising on Google, Yahoo!, or MSN, what we do is collect your exposure [and something] data and sell it back to advertisers. We're an audit."
Rob Reynolds.
Al Wasserberger of Intellext. I haven't talked much to my bud Al since Bob Bernard's funeral and the Super Bowl. I owe him a call to see what's up.
Howard Blietz from Fujitsu, fka Greenbrier & Russel.
Dick Reck says that he saw Emily Shagley last week in Utah.
Bill Merchantz of Lakeview Technologies.
Matt Schmeltz is a partner at Acquity Group with Business Development and Marketing.
Gary Keller from Xomix. Keller is active with bioinformatics and the center down at the IMD focused on that.
David Baker, David Weinstein, Kristi Lafleur, Adarsh Arora all at one table and that is where I sat.
Dave Baker told me that he guided the tour on March 20th for the EDC. He showed them the incubator at IIT and I asked him how many square feet are currently being occupied. He said that 15 companies have signed leases and are moved in. Four more are negotiating right now. There is a much bigger market for software and IT that he did not know about, David said. Total employees for a dozen firms is 52 employees, averaging between four and five per firm. Cleversafe has 26 people, he said.
Mary Eggan from TechImage.
Terry Doheny of BeyondIF Solutions
David Naylor of StarThis
I wrote about Peter Desjardins and his partner but did not name his partner. That person was at the dinner, it turned out on my tape, and his name was Bob Tricarico. I sent a note to Peter (see below) and it turns out that Bob gave me an inactive email address.
++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: OK, Bob and Pete, you were not staying incognito very well, it turns out.
Date: 4/23/2007 10:31:28 A.M. Central Daylight Time
From: peted35410@ameritech.net
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
CC: triusservices@sbcglobal.net
Hi Ron;
Sorry I didn't respond to your email (Saturday) quicker...I took the weekend off and enjoyed the weather. (And to see my Boston Red Sox sweep the Yankees)
Thanks for an accurate representation of our conversation in The May Report Saturday. I've spoken with Bob and we're both appreciative of your thoughts and interest.
Re: Bob, I wasn't being evasive or "in cognito" when we spoke, I just wanted to extend Bob the professional courtesy of touching base with him before I gave out his contact info.
Re: our names not being on the website: We both like to view ourselves as "king makers" NOT "kings", thus the low key nature of our web presence.
Bob's phone number is 312 519-1420
Bob's email (the one you have listed below is inactive, from what I understand) is triusservices@sbcglobal.net
We've gotten several website "hits" since your report broke, and we're in the process of updating the content, so to be more descriptive.
I enjoyed our discussion, and appreciate your interest and diligence, both in our company(s) and the Chicago IT industry. Please let either one of us know if we can do anything to help you out in the future.
Pete Desjardins
YOEX LLC
pete@yoexllc.com
847 909 3642
----- Original Message -----
From: RONALDMAY@aol.com
To: pete@yoexllc.com
Cc: bob@triusexecutives.com
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 8:11 AM
Subject: OK, Bob and Pete, you were not staying incognito very well, it turns out.
Bob Tricarico with Trius Services, bobt@triusexecutives.com. Now, if I only had this information, I would easily be able to add two and two since Bob, it turns out, is Peter Desjardins' business partner. I wrote about Peter in the April 20th report. He and Bob have the business to help increase the efficiency of sales and marketing operations. Well, Trius Services is listed on the site that is mentioned on Peter's card: www.yoexllc.com. Pete was somewhat reluctant for me to mention Bob's name when we spoke and Bob's name does not appear on the site, and neither does Peter's name, but putting two and two together makes it obvious to anyone who is paying attention. Bob handles the buy side, the market research into what buyers want and Peter handles the sell side. Bob said that he is a sales and marketing executive and has five people. Pete's email is pete@yoexllc.com.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
* More on the MIT-EF meeting from April 17th.
My list of attendees includes:
Mari Franklin, Charles Dreher, Bill McDonald, Valerie Pajak (the moderator), David Naylor, Tim Curley, Zane Cohn, Kristi Lafleur (a panelist and speaker); Bill Hartzell, Bret Johnson, Irv Michaels, Sam Fallenbaum, Sheldon Rosenfield, Adina Gwartzman, Neil Wyant, Mary Bober, Terri Neubauer, Rich Kooy, Phil Shane (a speaker and panelist), Joel Berez, Bruce Montgomery, Ted Wallhaus, Frank Lucchese, Steve Susina, Lou Celli from Allstate, Chris Gaddis from Nanosphere, Venkat, Sid Bennett, Zenah Khawaja, Ashley Harris is the manager of business development for a ten year old firm, Avocet Polymet Technologies (www.avocetcorp.com), which provides treatment for scars -- they are in Plainfield, Illinois -- see below in this section for more detail on them); Daniel Bangser, Trade Commissioner from the Swiss Business Hub. In answer to my trivia question in the last report: Romansch is the fourth language of Switzerland after French, German and Italian. It is spoken at places like San Moritz and Davos. "It is an old Latin language, almost back to the times of Rome," Daniel said. The German in Switzerland is called Schweizerdeutsch which is different from German.
Continuing on. Dick Mulvihill, Robert Sansome, Byron Miller (speaker and panelist); Spencer Maus, Gerald Murphy, Jim Bray (but no Jeff Coney); John Mascarenhas, Monica Metzler, Ray De Both, Bob Lepkowski, Paul Fricke, Nurul Eusufzai, Nancy Munro, Rachel Patterson, Danny Fisher, Evita Vulgaris, Keith Karasek, Josh Kurutz is a Ph.D. is biophysics and director of a research center at the University of Chicago; Joe O'Malley from Administaff; Greg Hultman, Michael Feldman, George McArdle from Lenticular Research Group which does research on the eye for the onset of Presbyopia. The firm has been around for three years and they have some IP with patents. George is a clinical optometrist with 23 years experience. See below in this section for more.
More attendees: Mike Fekety from Performance Technologies, www.pt.com; Jason Tyszko from DCEO and he is Kristi's right hand man; Praveen Gupta, Gus Glyptis; Doug Wilson of Breakthrough Technologies (www.breaktech.com) and see below in this section for more; Vince Yeh who is new, I believe, and he has a Ph.D. in chemistry; Michele R. Davies, www.supernaenergyllc.com; Mark Huber, Willy Li of Life Rising Corp., Gerald Murphy of GM Commercial Properties; Michael Z. Pierce who appears to be new; David A. Hills from Harris Roselle; Gopal Gehi from Cognizant (www.cognizant.com); James Breen from Adelphi Capital; Emily Miao from McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff, LLP; Michael Femal from Schwartz Cooper; Dwaine Speese from Chase (Small Business Banking); Sarah Caldicott from Star Wave (www.starwave.net) and author of a book about Thomas Edison -- oh, here is where googling helps out. Sarah Miller Caldicott is descendant of Thomas Edison. See below in this section for more.
Continuing on with attendees: Roger Rhodes, Director of IS, www.cte.aecom.com; Monica Metzler, Blanche Smith, Peter Fong of JPMorgan Chase, Keith Waxelman, Kent Vincent, Gary Roediger, Ron May, Steve Swibel, and I am probably missing a very few, no more than six or seven. There were 84 or 85 and I got about 77 here, so it's a pretty good list. Darren Cahr of Drinker Biddle was not there and when I saw him at the IFOPE conference, he said that he had not been involved with this last MIT-EF meeting.
Blanche (Mika) Smith is with Jackson and Echols, LLC. She is a consultant in alternative energy (Blanche_echols@yahoo.com). She spent time in Zimbawe and she went to Carnegie Mellon. She was an IT intern with Dowd & Wescott and she has an English degree from 1993.
Here is a blurb I found:
+++++++++++++++++++
Sarah Miller Caldicott is the Founder and President of StarWave Associates. A great grandniece of Thomas Edison and his second wife Mina Miller Edison, Sarah Miller Caldicott has been engaged in creativity and innovation throughout her life. Motivated by a family history of invention dating back to the 1850's, Sarah began her 20-year career as a Marketing executive in the Fortune 500, working with major brand-driven firms including Quaker Oats and Unilever.
++++++++++++++++++++
A really side story here is something mentioned by Phil Shane in his presentation about how M&Ms are (or as it turns out, used to be) covered with shellac that comes from Lac Beetle, officially Laccifera lacca, at least that is what Phil Shane says. But I googled it which means nothing. It could be urban myth. The rumor about the shellac on M&Ms and on Junior Mints has been circulating a long time. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_118.html
But a more formal article says that M&Ms used to use the lac beetle juice for shellac, which has been used for many things. In the confectionary category, Reese's, Junior Mints, etc. There are issues here for Orthodox Jews and Vegans.
http://antiquerestorers.com/Articles/jeff/shellac.htm
Back to the attendees at the MIT-EF meeting.
Who was not there (to jog my memory here I went back to my list of attendees of the December networking party which I published on 1/8/07): Adam Hartung, Greg Morse, Peter Sturdivant, Paul Davidovich, John Muntean, David Smith, Todd Allen, Kathy Morrissey, Jason Jacobsohn, Stuart Booden, Brian Glibkowski, Mingde Hong, Dick Pilcher, Chris Rollyson, Terry Doheny, Doug Seville, Art Brown (Art, where are you these days?); Michael Bredahl, Ada Nielsen, Scott Miller, Peter Spevacek, Mark Steiner, Mark Villazon, Bill Houston, Melissa Kauck who is on the operations committee (and I don't know what her reason for not attending was); Nik Rokop who has been out of town; Andrew Wright, Justin Townsley -- or is it Townsend?, George Stephan, Brian Farrar, Phil McGuigan, Adam Boris, Guy Blaszak, and Scott Oldach who was on the executive board but has been MIA since the February meeting.
David Naylor, Byron Miller and I discussed Bill McDonald's question to Phil Shane about how the ethanol industry is just welfare for farmers. Naylor said, "It's a question that deserves a respectful answer if the person asking has got decent information. He [Bill McDonald] was a shill for the oil industry with bogus information."
McDonald tells me that years ago he worked for Amoco. Bill says that he also used to work for the dairy industry. Bill's issue with Phil Shane's numbers is that the 1.65 energy transfer is not correct, he says. He said that the biggest he has seen is 1.15.
That transfer figure means that one gallon of petroleum products (including natural gas) or equivalents equals 1.65 gallons of ethanol. But he admits there may be an improvement in productivity. "There is a 54 cent a gallon subsidy," Bill said.
I have Anna typing up Phil Shane's slides and I will have those for you so the discussion Shane and ethanol is by no means over.
One of the controversies surrounding ethanol from corn revolves around an article written by a Cornell researcher, ecologist David Pimentel, who argues that producing ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops is not worth the energy. See the article at the bottom of this section.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/altfuel/eth_energy_bal.html
http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/12/08/philpott/
Cornell ecologist's study finds that producing ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops is not worth the energy
By Susan S. Lang
Chris Hallman/University Photography
Ecologist David Pimentel, shown here pumping gas, says that his analysis shows that producing ethanol uses more energy than the resulting fuel generates. Copyright © Cornell University
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates, according to a new Cornell University and University of California-Berkeley study.
"There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel," says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. "These strategies are not sustainable."
Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley, conducted a detailed analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switch grass and wood biomass as well as for producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants. Their report is published in Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14:1, 65-76).
In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production, the study found that:
corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
In terms of energy output compared with the energy input for biodiesel production, the study found that:
soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and
sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
In assessing inputs, the researchers considered such factors as the energy used in producing the crop (including production of pesticides and fertilizer, running farm machinery and irrigating, grinding and transporting the crop) and in fermenting/distilling the ethanol from the water mix. Although additional costs are incurred, such as federal and state subsidies that are passed on to consumers and the costs associated with environmental pollution or degradation, these figures were not included in the analysis.
"The United State desperately needs a liquid fuel replacement for oil in the near future," says Pimentel, "but producing ethanol or biodiesel from plant biomass is going down the wrong road, because you use more energy to produce these fuels than you get out from the combustion of these products."
Although Pimentel advocates the use of burning biomass to produce thermal energy (to heat homes, for example), he deplores the use of biomass for liquid fuel. "The government spends more than $3 billion a year to subsidize ethanol production when it does not provide a net energy balance or gain, is not a renewable energy source or an economical fuel. Further, its production and use contribute to air, water and soil pollution and global warming," Pimentel says. He points out that the vast majority of the subsidies do not go to farmers but to large ethanol-producing corporations.
"Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's energy security, its agriculture, economy or the environment," says Pimentel. "Ethanol production requires large fossil energy input, and therefore, it is contributing to oil and natural gas imports and U.S. deficits." He says the country should instead focus its efforts on producing electrical energy from photovoltaic cells, wind power and burning biomass and producing fuel from hydrogen conversion.
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May again. I talked to Doug Wilson of Breakthrough Technologies (www.breaktech.com). They now have 16 people and has been around three years. CEO Doug Wilson says that they have had no outside funding in their history. They do medical devices, logistics software, high stakes content delivery; content management systems. I don't know if they're in the Evanston Incubator but their address is 820 Davis Street in Evanston.
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Subject: Re: Are you in the Evanston Incubator? Who are your clients? Custom or packaged sw?
Date: 4/23/2007 2:28:58 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: wilsond@breaktech.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
Hey Ron-
We are not in the incubator, although they are in the same building.
You can go on our website to see many of our clients, although they break down as follows:
15% medical systems and devices
40% education, publishing, and assessment
45% small to medium businesses
Almost all of our clients are in Chicago / Midwest
We are technology agnostic - we help our customers with .NET, Java, PHP and open source technology solutions.
Because of our engineering expertise, and our great visual design partners, most of our clients use us for revenue-generating software, that is, software their customers will pay to use. (As opposed to software you pay your employees to use)
We do some integration but stay away from large packaged implementations like Great Plains, ERP, etc. We do use open source, reporting tools, and other packaged solutions to deliver a lot of value with our custom development services.
We do all of our work onshore with a mixed team of junior and senior level developers.
We are self-funded. I have one partner - Randy Knapp. We have 16 employees and have been running Breakthrough for 8 years.
We also have a marketing partnership with Chamerlik Communications (A terrific local Marcom firm) where we sell their graphic design and marketing communications, brochure sites coupled with our custom and integrated solutions in the SMB space. You can see more info at http://www.breakthroughchicago.com.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any more questions.
Doug Wilson
Managing Partner
Breakthrough Technologies, LLC
847.864.0033 x201
http://www.breaktech.com
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Here's some info. on Lenticular Research Group and George McArdle.
http://www.lrgllc.org/
Lenticular Research Group LLC. is a limited liability corporation located in Naperville, Illinois. The mission of LRG LLC is to formulate and fund research on the crystalline lens of the eye. The goal of this work is to develop processes, procedures and products that will effectuate the prevention or delay of presbyopia and age related cataracts.
The founder of LRG LLC is Dr. George McArdle. Dr. McArdle is a clinical optometrist and has been in practice for 29 yrs. LRG LLC has been involved in ongoing research with Rush University Medical Center for the past year and plans ongoing work on its current project for one more year.
LRG LLC submitted the first patent application in November of 2004 and plans to submit its second patent application in February of 2005.
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Monica Metzler said that she has quite an interest in biotech. I asked her if she was filler or if she had a biotech connection. I told Monica to look at the ads they ran in February and how they just copied the ad for April and she said that I am so cynical. It is so hard to put on monthly events. This is a volunteer non-profit organization producing a new event every single month. I said that I know it is a lot of work. And I added that they get credit for a lot of new faces tonight. "I think people want to learn..." I brought up Peter Balbus and said he was more professional about it. Monica said: "Nobody's more professional, he worked his a** off for it, and some would say that it should be more democratic."
In going over the tape, Bob Lepkowski started off the meeting thanking the sponsors, "Drinker Biddle for the lovely venue and the scrumptious refreshments, to Mitsubiishi Corp., to Gateway, to Schwartz Cooper, all of our sponsors, up and coming sponsors as well and to our team..."
Bob, FYI, it is Hostway, not Gateway.
Bob did mention that Adam Hartung's wife had a stroke last week, so we should keep her in our thoughts, he said. Adam, I know that all who know you wish you and your wife the best.
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May again. And here we have more information on Avocet and the CEO of that firm, Dr. Raphael Lee.
Ashley Harris of Avocet found out about the meeting because their CEO, Dr. Raphael Lee, Professor of Surgery and Anatomy at University of Chicago Hospitals who specializes in plastic surgery is connected to MIT in that he earned a doctorate in EE there -- again, see his bio below in this section. Another little tidbit about Dr. Lee is that he is the founder and innovator for Maroon Biotech, Inc., a company thad develops surfactant chaperones to restore structure and viability to cells disrupted by physical and chemical trauma. Maroon Biotech is in the Illinois Medical District and I mentioned them in March when we wrote about them.
http://www.avocetcorp.com/about_us.html
Devoted to scarless and pain-free wound healing
Avocet Polymer Technologies, Inc. is a biotechnology and pharmaceutical company founded in 1996, which is devoted to the goal of making scarless and pain-free wound healing a reality for people around the world. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, the company designs, develops and markets medical therapeutics and devices for the non-invasive treatment of scar conditions. Avocet was formed to bring the polymer science of strategic partner Shearwater Polymers, Inc. together with anti-scar drug therapy discoveries at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago. Avocet's proprietary technologies are based on the well-established principles that:
Early scar tissue production is primarily controlled by tissue inflammation, wound hydration and temperature. Avogel® is designed to reduce inflammation while increasing temperature and hydration;
Mechanical tension is another major factor leading to scar growth. Several clinically accepted anti-hypertension drugs can be used to block the effect of tension on scar formation leading to reduced scar production. These drugs are the only drugs known to reactivate and soften older stable scars.
Avocet holds exclusive, worldwide licenses for the use of hydrogels in the treatment of scars, a position that provides near total control of any effective drug delivery system that can be designed for scar care. In June 2000, Avocet entered the US market with its first FDA-approved product, Avogel®, a biocompatible hydrogel sheeting designed to reduce scars by topical application. Avocet has licensed several other patents that cover the use of novel and powerful drugs for scar control.
Avocet currently has two products on the market, Avogel and Avosil, which are currently used by patients around the country who desire to reduce the appearance of unwanted scars. Avocet is committed to bringing these effective and affordable products into a greater number of hospitals, pharmacies, and homes across the country. In order to expand the market for Avogel and Avosil, Avocet is seeking to partner with companies who would be interested in distributing and marketing our products to hospitals, pharmacies, burn care centers, and other healthcare centers. If you would like more information about partnering with Avocet, please feel free to contact out Business Development Team.
Avocet's management staff and Board of Directors consist of experts in wound healing science, medicine and surgery, biopolymer technology, government regulation of medical products, and the cosmaceutical and medical products industries.
Raphael C. Lee, MD, ScD. Inventor, Founder & Director
Professor of Surgery and Anatomy at University of Chicago Hospitals, Dr. Lee is the inventor of Avocet's core technology. He performed his residency at Harvard (Mass. General), interned at the University of Chicago and earned his MD at Temple University. In addition, Dr. Lee earned an electrical engineering doctorate (ScD) at MIT prior to joining the University of Chicago full—time in the 1980's. Dr. Lee has been researching novel uses of biocopatible polymers for cellular wound healing for the past 17 years and is currently the preeminent researcher in this field. He is the recipient of more than 25 scientific awards including a MacArthur Fellowship and the Searle Scholar Award. He is also the founder and innovator for Maroon Biotech, Inc., a company thad develops surfactant chaperones to restore structure and viability to cells disrupted by physical and chemical trauma.
Avocet is a privately financed company. For more information about investor opportunities or to obtain a copy of our Business Plan, please contact Avocet Polymer Technologies, Inc. at 23560 W. Main St., Suite 2, Plainfield, IL 60544 USA. (Telephone:
1-815-609-2170 or toll-free 1-888-352-SCAR). Avocet is a class C corporation, and is incorporated in the State of Delaware.
* Next week: Neil Kane and tech transfer issue, scientists vs. entrepreneurs, Adarsh Arora, finish up ITA dinner, finish Phil Shane and ethanol, finish or really get into the Calamos speech, the TiE panel reviewed (in time for the next meeting), Michael Rosen, eNR, ANET, more on Ray Pimentel and Craig Heyl's dismissal; a few Fast Pitch firms; finish Padovani, the Social Media 2007 conference from April 5th and 6th which I am having Anna type slides from and more. Don't forget, Jeff Meredith has promised on penalty of death -- or we'll sick Dever on him -- that he will do real reporting, not editorialzing at BIO 2007 next week. He is going on a press pass provided through TMR, so he better do the reporting.
* Last point. Dever is clearly not in the pic for Liquid Talk and probably never was. As David Peak said to me, that was what Dever said. Liquid Talk has some impressive advisors including a VP from Ovation. See the whole list here: http://www.liquidtalk.com/pp/company.html#goble
And their PR/marketing advisor is Mark Goble whose bio is here:
Mark Goble
Mark has over a decade of marketing and branding experience he brings to LiquidTalk Networks. In conjunction with his agency, Goble & Associates, Mark and his team will provide a complete set of marketing services to enable LiquidTalk to successfully get its message out to prospective clients.
Mark Goble is the Executive Vice President and one of the principals of Goble & Associates a Chicago based Marketing Agency. In his 11 years with Goble & Associates Mark has been instrumental in growing business to $100+ million of capitalized billings and becoming one of the largest independent Marketing firms in the US. Managing its 50 + employees and providing focus on clients is the driving strategy that Mark reinforces every day at the agency.
Mark is instrumental in guiding the agency to handle the strategic, tactical and executable marketing needs of its clients. Mark is also considered at the forefront of crafting innovated interactive solutions for Goble & Associates clients including internet, intranet and portable selling solutions. This passion for interactive solutions stems from Mark’s prior experience selling solutions for technology companies large and small like Apple Computer.
Mark participates in many industry organizations including: Healthcare Marketing Communications Council, The Executives’ Club of Chicago, and The American Marketing Association. In addition Mark consults with a select group of start-up companies regarding their communication and marketing needs. |
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