|
|
 | |
| | Back to List
|
| | 07/26/2010 |
| |
|
| | Companies and Organizations |
| | |
| | The May Report: 7/26/2010: Is Flip back -- better yet, did he ever really leave?; So, why is Chicago tech over and other musings.
|
| | July 26, 2010
The May Report: 7/26/2010: Is Flip back -- better yet, did he ever really leave?; So, why is Chicago tech over and other musings.
Editor and publisher: ron@themayreport.com, ronaldmay@aol.com, www.themayreport.com , 773-525-3944.
If you missed an article, go here: http://www.tmronline.com/A55951/tmrarticles.nsf/vwFullNewsletter
_______________________________________
*********************************************
GP Ventures provides mergers and acquisitions advisory services for technology companies in sectors such as Electronics, Equipment, IT services, EMS, Software, PCBs, Defense, and Distribution.
Some current programs include an acquisition search for Chicago-area IT services companies and the sale of a 40 million euro fiber-optic components company.
Please contact Tom Kastner at GP Ventures (www.gp-ventures.com) for more information:
mail@gp-ventures.com, 847-431-3993
***********************************************
___________________________________
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Scoop section:
-- Briefly noted, by Ron May
-- John Katsantonis: "Chicago tech is over."
-- Last Week for Chicago Innovation Awards Nominations
-- Tuesday, July 27: 2010 Great American Artist Search in Chicago
-- Aug. 14-15 at the Illinois Institute of Technology:
-- SocialDevCamp Chicago Returns!
-- A refresher course: Divine Inc. Company News
-- Darrell Dvorak
-- Tarkus Murphy: Word from the Information Superglacier(TM)
-- Tom Johnson: I think this event already took place
-- Mark Williams
-- Irfan Ahmad
-- Thursday, August 5: Chicago's largest data center executives social event!
-- FCC's "Third Way" Endangers Internet Freedom
-- Wednesday, Aug. 11: Wisconsin Security Research Consortium, the
Wisconsin Technology Council and the UW-Madison College of Engineering, will
be held 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
-- Jeffrey Meredith: Krugman: "The notion that tax cuts pay for themselves has no empirical support"
-- Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Monthly Luncheon: Challenges and Opportunities for Business and Economic Growth in the Midwest
-- Musings on health care delivery, or how I almost bought the farm, by Ron May
[Editor's note: May here. There is much more to come, so hang on to your hats.
This is all I could pull from Crain's.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
By: John Pletz
Divine evangelist Andrew 'Flip' Filipowski returns to Chicago with InterAct
Andrew "Flip" Filipowski, Chicago's pied piper of the Internet, who burned through $1 billion at the peak of the dot-com bubble, is back. Mr. Filipowski, 60, recently returned from North Carolina to set up shop at 20 W. Kinzie St., in the same building as Google Inc.'s Chicago...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Interact's website? Does anyone know what it is?]
______________________________
**********************************
Special HR Technology® Conference Rate Just for You
May Report Readers:
This is your chance to save BIG on the world's largest and best HR technology event, the 13th Annual HR Technology® Conference & Exposition. As a May Report subscriber, you save $500.00 off the on-site rate simply by registering with Promo Code MAY (all caps) at www.HRTechnologyConference.com.
Come learn how HR technology can benefit your organization. Use this incredible discount to join us Sept. 29 - Oct. 1 at nearby McCormick Place, and take advantage of more than 40 session choices including 3 expert debates, 6 panel discussions, 5 Q&A sessions and much more.
If you can't make the entire conference, be sure to stop by the Expo and see firsthand the latest HR technology products and services from more than 200 exhibitors - the world's largest Expo of its kind. Plus, qualified professionals get FREE admission (a $35.00 value) when pre-registering online!
And there's plenty more to look forward to. Download the conference brochure and see all of the exciting events you can be a part of.
Sincerely,
Bill Kutik
Co-Chair, HR Technology® Conference & Expo
Technology Columnist, Human Resource Executive® Magazine
LRP Publications
360 Hiatt Drive
Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418
1-800-727-1227
**********************************************************
__________________________________________
Briefly noted, by Ron May
The reason "Chicago tech is over" as one person put it to me, is that Tim Courtney has organized his annual social media Web 2.0 get together, but this year, it has changed. No longer an open forum for anyone who wants to to speak.
The format this year is Andrew Mason of Groupon being interviewed. That is all very well and good.
But which of Tim's buddies is leading the charge on this one?
None other than the informal leader of Courtney's gang, John Dallas, Jr.
John Dallas is a fine man and a jolly good fella, but he is not an expert on the latest internet trends. I happened to see Dick Costolo on a panel on CNBC with Maria B. Dick is now the COO of Twitter, a firm he invested in.
We can do better. Why do we always settle for the guy whose "turn" it is or who is just handy?
The six ]sic: seven] biggest problems with our culture in tech in Chicago are:
1. The stigmatization of failure.
2. Resources and goodies are distributed not on merit, but on clubby connections -- witness the way Weinstein operated. In this sense, our system is corrupt.
3. We have conflated just about everything else with what we don't have: namely, a true standard of excellence. Consulting is a substitute -- a poor one at that -- for getting results; brokering deals, the same; setting up meetings is another, and perhaps most pernicious of all is an idea which I have contributed to is that the best way to get things done is bring people together in a networking event and then measure the success of that by counting heads.
[Editor's note: At 4:43am on July 27, 2010, this paragraph was moved up from its original position in reason number 4] The turnout at the Tech Cocktail Mobile 2 event on June 24th at John Barleycorn's was nothing to write home about but it was reasonably high quality. Frank Gruber swears it was 250, but Bert who worked the door says 150, 175 tops. Smaller groups allow more networking. The initial show-ups were there for the drinks, and then it settled down when those folks left. When I arrived, the dynamic foursome of Fred, Terry, Mary Pat and Sarah were leaving. Fred, as usual, was off in his own world.
We have so many good people with good track records that we should be able to do better. The moderator need not have $40MM in the bank. He or she could be someone like Jed Abernethy (or Peter Tapling, Dave Smith, Andrew Taylor or a Ted Greene) who ran the TBIF Soap Box event on the 21st. I pick these guys because they are not fiefdom or empire building chest pounders, they are not all about self-aggrandizement or self centereds who want to tell us how it was "back in the day" -- what I will call the nostalgic types -- rather, and they are sharp, keep your eye on the ball guys. They are not trying to build resumes or kiss up to the VCs either, which helps.
Unfortunately, we generally end up with the guys who want to be editor of the school paper, president of the student council or editor of the year book.
4. Our tendency to react to funding in the same way we react to attendance at meetings. It must always be quality over quantity.
Compare Groupon's fundraising strategy to that of FeedBurner. FeedBurner ran lean and mean and only took the money it really needed. There was no game playing as there may be with Groupon -- and I am over my pay grade on this one -- where they are taking large sums of money and recycling it by refunding it to the founders before there is an exit. This approach has been articulated by Eric Lefkofsky whom I believe he said he wanted to get 10% back per year. Lesson not learned. Don't judge a book by its cover.
5. Empires and fiefdoms have been a persistent problem, but there are signs of improvement. New people to the scene are helping to make that happen. Witness Geoff Domaracki and Jonathan Pasky. They are connecting with everyone.
6. By far the biggest problem is lack of spin-offs, spin-outs and the fact that the trapeze bar does not swing far enough. Yes, there are some more angel deals, but do they translate into Series A, Series B, etc. Plenty of firms get that first jolt or two of funding and then fizzle out.
7. Where is the sense of noblesse oblige here?
+++++++++++++
Main Entry: noblesse oblige nO-!bles-u-!blEzh
Pronunciation: \ nÅ-ˈbles-É™-ˈblÄ“zh \
Function: noun
Etymology: French, literally, nobility obligates
Date: 1837
Results
1837the obligation of honorable, generous, and responsible behavior associated with high rank or birth
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In the era of the robber barons, you made your money and then gave it away philanthropically to good causes (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbuilt, Mellon, Ford, etc.)
In the new money era of tech we still have that with Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, but we don't have the hands on mentoring of start-ups not by economic development types like Kapil, but by guys who have actually successfully built businesses. Somehow, those guys always seem to slip away. Dick Costolo is a great example.
Let me get this out.
I got out of the hospital on Monday night, the 19th, but I am by no means back. Very low energy, hemoglobin has dropped again, drainage tube in abdomen, daily visits by nurses to show me how to administer the IV antibiotics, etc. Today, at 2pm, a CT scan. The goal here is to get rid of the abscess in my liver without having to do surgery.
TMR averages 13 reports a month. Not counting this one, we have had three this month. I can't give you ten reports this week, but I think I can give you six.
__________________________________
John Katsantonis: "Chicago tech is over."
From: "John P. Katsantonis" <jpkattt@att.net>
Subject: USE THIS ONE INSTEAD...
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:30:22 -0500
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com, The May Report <ron@themayreport.com>
....noticed some typos, but more to the point, somehow one key phrase got deleted that makes no sense without it. (Not that that should be a dealbreaker, but....)
thanks~jk
"Chicago tech is over."
Ron, hello. Sorry about your continuing medical travails. MRI's suck, fastidious bacteriological thingies suck, and being not-well sucks. So let me make your job easier by providing you the next 1,200 words or so explaining (what it is that I've observed) RE: the "Chicago tech is over" statement, from whomever, at least in my non-humble opinion/observation:
1) As discussed many moons ago, the Chicago business vibe = "Parochial." I kept hearing that word when I moved back here from Dallas 11-1/2 years ago, hoping to be able to extend my high-tech PR practice (now in its 23rd year, btw) here. Mind you, I was not expecting bur rather hoping to get local clients. My practice has never been based on geographic proximity: since even prior to the Internet's universal acceptance, our clients have been as far away as Vancouver, BC, Germany, and the Philippines.
2) Of course, being a good Chicago boy albeit non-Catholic (Greek Orthodox is close enough), I tend to associate the word "parochial" with things churchy. And no one really defined what that word meant. There is of course "The Chicago Way," popularized in Brian DePalma's film version of THE UNTOUCHABLES (which was adapted for the screen by Chicago uber-scribe David Mamet, btw) by Scottish actor Sir Sean Connery's Oscar®-winning Irish cop character of Jimmy Malone: "They bring a knife to a fight, you bring a gun. They put one of ours in the hospital, we put one of theirs in the cemetery. THAT's the CHICAGO way." More to the point, The Chicago Way is best summed up in one of Mamet's other lines, from THE SPANISH PRISONER: the character played by Mamet's real-life wife (actress Rebecca Pidgeon), in explaining why the protagonist is about to be shot after a maze of intellectual property theft and intrigue (surrounding a proprietary high-tech biz formula for semiconductor patent and development, btw) utters the words "because money makes the mare go." And the 'mare' of Chicago (pun intended) operates no differently. Witness our stunning "upset" in the 2016 Olympics debacle, when untold millions went into "cinching" that event. Why??? As I wrote in these pages, because Chicago did NOT do what the other cities in contention did: Tokyo focused on selling Japan as a destination, Madrid focused on Spain, and Rio on Brazil. Chicago focused on Chicago, while sending the U.S. President...to sell Chicago. How parochial can ya get????
3) All that aside, in defining some words and phrases, I must often try and find their functional opposites: if I can figure them out, then I can figure out the original word. In this case, when I began writing my weekly "Raising Minnesota" tech-biz column for the late ePrairie/MidwestBusiness.com e-zine, it brought me electronically and in-person to the gopher state, and how they do business. It's called "Collaboration." What in software terms is called open-sourcing. As in, whomever wants in "within reason" gets in. This was a revelation, an epiphany, and a resurrection for me RE: how we should be operating here in Chicago, in order to develop the high-tech community into what it should and hopefully could be...we don't lack the talent or the will, or even the money. We just don't play all that nice, together. Mostly because it's like The 3 Stooges: "All for one!!" "One for all!!!!" "Every man for himself...nyuk, nyuk, nyuk."
4) I assembled (at the risk of forwarding another Connery reference) a League Of Extraordinary Technology Gentlemen ---- one incubator guy who was highly visible as such, one tech-biz journalist, one serial entrepreneur, one first-time entrepreneur, one investment broker based in Silicon Valley, and one local, highly visible mentor type ---- to examine the possibility of creating an organization that could umbrella, ameliorate and "collaboration-ize" the disparate elements of the Chicago Software Association, the long-detoothed DCCA, and other functions that Filipowski had ransacked earlier this century. Our purpose was to identify what was wrong with Chicago tech, and what (if anything) could be done.
5) Our "a-HA!!" consensus was that there has never been an entrepreneurial community here, in any literal sense. Dollars fly around, some people get them, and that's that. But there has never been a mentoring or networking strategy or "chain of command," whereby entrepreneurs are found, nurtured, developed, funded, incubated, etc., again in any collaborative or integrated manner. King Flip Da Great aside, you can count on one hand the number of highly visible tech entrepreneurs in this town, the low-profile ones on the other hand, and have enough fingers on each to flip (as it were) "the bird" with both.
6) The Chicago business community operates much like city hall and personified by our former Governor's amazing, baffling, insatiable quest for riches and fame, even ---- especially ---- post mortem, defined as you will: "favors," "patronage," "nepotism," "partisan politics." It is that elegant, unstoppable, ubiquitous it-ain't-what-you-know-it's-who-ya-know mindset (in tandem with/as exemplified by, once again, THE UNTOUCHABLES as well, for the record) which is how the world at large sees us, regardless of whatever other realities we may attempt to enlist, to the contrary. In other words, "Money talks and b*llsh*t walks." Just ask our buddy Dever. If you can find him. (And if you can, please remind him that he still owes me $1,600 for back rent and an apology for punching me in the mouth, going back five years.)
6) All that aside ---- which of course is a punch-in-the-mouthful ---- we here are nothing more nor less than what's wrong with everything. We're just blatant enough to say and do this stuff out loud. (To which there may actually be some type of redemptive quality.) But here's the real kicker, that's now bigger than all of us: the world and the U.S. economy are themselves "over." Period. End of story. The old ways of doing business are, fundamentally, history. Look the guaranteed moneymakers: medicine/healthcare, banking, the stock market, real estate, oil (oh yes, boys and girls: "oil" dead), and the music/entertainment business. DEAD. Click-bang, what hang!!! At least, on the scale we've become used to seeing.
Locally and everywhere in the U.S., boomers and every subsequent generation has been raised on unfettered Birnhamism, i.e., "you're not thinking big enough." The ultimate logical extension of that? Bernie Madoff.
But petty larcenists and above are jailed for that by the hundreds, on a daily basis. Now, people properly are reevaluating everything. Especially themselves and their beliefs. (Well,the ones who have hearts and minds are.)
There is no middle class, its having begun dissipate some time in the 1980s under Reagan and Bush 1. And, oddly enough, the Clintonian era put the final bullet in all of us, by selling us out to the Chinese, with the help of Sam Walton and company, whose money funded the Clinton campaign and machinations. (Just follow the money. It's The Arkansas Way, as well...and the Texas way, and the California way, and the Arizona Way, and the New York Way, and the.....)
So them that's got, are trying to keep.
And them's that's not, are sucking air.
This is not going to change unless and until the entire method of ownership, including that of companies wanting to launch, is changed. And the only way to do that, at this point, is to begin to think SMALL. (Not in terms of vision or strategy, just in terms of dollar quantities.)
Picture being able to take that $1.38 in change you just got at the Panera Bread cash register and depositing it either through the piece of flat plastic you just used, or by texting with a secret PIN number into your portfolio. And picture that same $1.38 buying another 20 shares of your favorite startup(s). The technology is all there. Picture the phrase "I lost everything" totaling no more than $100.
All that needs to happen (....yeah: "All.....") is the will to do so, and those of us who share this vision to build an infrastructure based on mass participation rather than the tuggable shirt sleeve of the guy wearing the pinkie ring sitting next to you.
We know the model works: witness texting "90999" to Haiti. And yes, SEC regulation comes into play here, somewhere.
So what?
peace/out~jk
__________________________________________
Last Week for Chicago Innovation Awards Nominations
Last Week for Chicago Innovation Awards Nominations
This is the last week to nominate a new product or service for the 2010 Chicago Innovation Awards. Send in your nominations before the deadline this Saturday, July 31st!
Nominees can be high-tech, low-tech or no-tech; for-profit or not-for-profit; big products from large companies or small products from small companies. The key is innovation. There is no cost to enter one or more nominations.
Learn more at www.chicagoinnovationawards.com.
____________________________________
Tuesday, July 27: 2010 Great American Artist Search in Chicago
Subject: Re: Lyn, your event notice and Naylor info. please.
Date: 6/29/2010 8:08:15 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: lyn@mysoiree.net
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
HI Ronald,
Thank you for taking my call today. Here is the company that David Naylor is currently working for, he is Principal Architect at Grid Dynamics.
Here is the information for our event coming to Chicago.
2010 Great American Artist Search in Chicago
July 27th, 2010 8:00 PM @
Reggies Rock Club
2109 South State St
Chicago, IL
2010 North American MySoirée <http://mysoiree.net/> .net Art Tour brought to you by
Soirée International Inc.
8pm-12am
Host LynE Williams, West Coast's Finest DJ Lamont Young, and a multi media show
including Chicago's Celebrity Visual artists.
The worlds most amazing visual art is brought to you with the hottest music where you connect!
Get Tickets at http://Mysoireechicago.eventbrite.com
Celebrity visual artists take center stage, fans will vote at the event for their favorite artist, the winner will represent Chicago at the 2010 North American Mysoiree.net Art Tour in Las Vegas.
Artists Participating
Jack Siegel
Diana Arand
Neeka Allsup
Jennifer Hines
Inna Deriy
Fred Deasis
Anastasia Mak
Anne Elisabeth Hogh
2010 North America Mysoirée Art Tour Cities
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
Portland, OR
San Jose, CA
Chicago, IL
Los Angeles
Laguna Beach, CA
San Diego, CA
Santa Fe, NM
Phoenix, AZ
Austin, TX
Las Vegas
Sincerely,
Lyn E. Williams
CEO
Soirée International Inc.
2010 North American Mysoiree Art Tour
Chicago, IL July 27th http://mysoireechicago.eventbrite.com/
San Francisco, CA
http://MySoiree.net
tw: @Mysoireenet
330-831-9593
On 6/29/10 8:42 PM, "RONALDMAY@aol.com" <RONALDMAY@aol.com> wrote:
______________________________________
May here. David Naylor is behind this thing. His friend Lyn from California called a few weeks ag before I got sick. David has moved to San Francisco and he is doing e-commerce for Macy's if I heard correctly. He also attends singles events in the Valley which surprised me since I thought he was married. But David, if you did throw your wife under the bus or if she threw you under it -- I hope you at least still read The Economist. I guess I am getting back to normal. We did not have such a great track record with three of the four firms funded by the federal program Naylor's firm was in (Ed Bachner, Bob Binder, and David Naylor) and I can't recall the name of the forth firm which was biotech.
________________________________________
Aug. 14-15 at the Illinois Institute of Technology: SocialDevCamp Chicago Returns!
http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=8746c0404defd1a3e34eec248&id=b25b105180
SocialDevCamp Chicago
SocialDevCamp Chicago Returns!
Dear <<First Name>>,
You're invited to participate in SocialDevCamp Chicago, the Midwest's premier event for social app and platform developers. This year's expanded event will be held Aug. 14-15 at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
For this third installment, we're packing two days with must-hear speakers, cutting-edge technical tutorials, business insights and, of course, plenty of networking opportunities. The Hackathon is back with $3,000 in prizes. Or choose your own adventure via a running "Unconference" that truly puts the "Social" in SocialDevCamp.
Session Highlights
You're in for a treat with keynote speaker Chris Messina of Google, BarCamp co-founder and one of the leading advocates of the open web. Groupon CEO Andrew Mason will be interviewed by business leader John R. Dallas, Jr. and a panel of expert questioners.
You'll also hear from:
* O'Reilly author Jeff Siarto on jumpstarting app development
* Paypal's Sudha Jamthe on trends in social payments
* siliconANGLE News Editor Kristen Nicole on the business of behavior
* KeyLimeTie CIO and Hackathon evangelist Peter Morano on how to use Hackathons for innovation & social change
* Former Threadless CTO Harper Reed on cloud computing and general awesomenes
...and much, much more.
Stay tuned on the SocialDevCamp Chicago website and by following @SDCChi for continued updates.
Hackathon
The hack is back and on the attack. You'll again get the opportunity to build the best social app and compete for your share of $3,000 in cash and prizes. The Hackathon kicks off the night before the event, lasting until Sunday morning when the teams face off in the presentations. For more details on prizes, pre-event locations, and competition rules see the Hackathon page.
Unconference
You have the opportunity to shape the content of the event with the Unconference. Here you can join your peers in an exciting series of unstructured and semi-structured sessions that turn the traditional conference on its head. Learn more on the Unconfernece page and raise your virtual hand with any suggestions to make this part of the event spectacular.
Register Today
We sold out before the event last year, so register now to secure your spot!
We look forward to seeing you in August!
Tim Courtney & Andy Angelos
Co-Chairs, SocialDevCamp Chicago
Sponsors
This event is made possible thanks to our awesome sponsors including:
Premier Sponsor
Hackathon Sponsor
Unconference Sponsor
Gold Sponsors
Additional Sponsors
You are receiving this email because you registered to attend a past SocialDevCamp Chicago event.
Unsubscribe <<Email Address>> from this list.
Our mailing address is:
SocialDevCamp Chicago
1133 N. Dearborn St.
Suite 3008
Chicago, IL 60610
Add us to your address book
Copyright (C) 2010 SocialDevCamp Chicago All rights reserved.
Forward this email to a friend
Update your profile
Email Marketing Powered by MailChimp
___________________________________
A refresher course: Divine Inc. Company News
Divine Inc. Company News
Chase sues tech exec Flip over $7M loan
(Crain's) - J. P. Morgan Chase & Co. is suing Andrew "Flip" Filipowski, a former Chicago tech entrepreneur, claiming he's failed to pay back a $7-million loan. In a breach of contract suit filed April 1, Chase says Mr. Filipowski failed...
Parlano lands $4.5 mil. investment
Parlano Inc., the instant messaging company that rose from the ashes of dot-com flameout Divine Inc., secured $4.5 million in combined investments from Boston-based Longworth Venture Partners and Calif.-based Oak Investment Partners. The proceeds...
Court hires CEO to shutter Divine
A Massachusetts Bankruptcy Court has appointed James Boles, a principal with Houston-based WoodWay Associates LLC, as liquidating CEO of Chicago's Divine Inc. Under contract terms that pay him $225 to $250 per hour, Mr. Boles is winding down the...
Flip in new venture with old firms
Embattled technology entrepreneur Andrew "Flip" Filipowski has emerged with a new company, SilkRoad Technology Inc., and a handful of software products formerly owned by his Divine Inc.SilkRoad is based in North Carolina, where Mr. Filipowski...
Divine fighting Flip's severance
Divine Inc. has asked a Boston Bankruptcy Court to nullify a 2001 employment contract that entitles founder and CEO Andrew "Flip" Filipowski to collect $6.5 million in severance payments from the company over five years. Chicago-based Divine also...
Founder revives WhittmanHart
Tech impressario Robert Bernard is getting back in touch with his roots. After acquiring the remnants of his former information technology consulting business last month from Chicago's Divine Inc., the defunct software and services firm, Mr...
Investors angry over Flip's flops
The first time Andrew "Flip" Filipowski lost a company, his ouster played out as farce. When an estranged business partner appeared at Naperville-based DBMS Inc. on a March morning in 1987 with armed security guards to eject Mr. Filipowski from...
'Flip' not a bidder for Divine assets
After blowing through more than $1 billion on acquisitions and ill-fated operations, Chicago's Divine Inc. is being auctioned for $57.1 million in cash and assumed liabilities. Andrew "Flip" Filipowski, Divine's controversial founder and...
Equity firm bids for Divine assets
Golden Gate Private Equity Inc. was the winning bidder for the bulk of Divine Inc.'s assets at an auction held Monday and Tuesday, court documents show. However, a Boston Bankruptcy Court overseeing the bankruptcy of Chicago-based Divine has...
School opposes RoweCom sale
Tufts University is suing to block the sale of Divine Inc. subsidiary RoweCom Inc. to Alabama-based Ebsco Industries Inc. until a Boston Bankruptcy Court resolves the fate of $1.5 million related to its periodical subscriptions for 2003.Medford...
'Flip' partnership seeks back rent
Habitat-Kahny LLC is suing Divine Inc., the troubled Chicago software and services company, for failing to pay $74,063 in rent on its 1301 N. Elston Ave. headquarters and for failing to repair and replace a crumbling seawall on the property, which...
Divine gets creditors committee
The creditors committee for Divine Inc. established last week by a Boston Bankruptcy Court includes some names that are well known in Chicago business circles. The group was selected by the court to represent the interests of all who hold...
MarchFirst trustee reclaims unit
Andrew Maxwell, MarchFirst Inc.'s bankruptcy attorney, would essentially take control of Divine Whittman-Hart Inc., the consulting subsidiary of troubled Divine Inc., under an agreement approved by a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago last week. The...
Divine under federal investigation
A federal grand jury in Chicago has launched a criminal investigation into Divine Inc., to find out what happened to $65 million it collected from libraries last year to pay publishers for magazine and journal subscriptions, the Chicago Tribune...
Real estate eases Divine collapse
Not everyone suffered equally in the meltdown of Chicago's Divine Inc. While investors ranging from small public shareholders to Chicago's business elite saw the value of their holdings wiped out during the company's three-year stumble from Internet...
Divine says buyout in works
As expected, Divine Inc. on Tuesday said it would file for protection from creditors in a Boston Bankruptcy Court where its troubled RoweCom Inc. subsidiary filed a separate Chapter 11 petition earlier this month. The Chicago-based Internet...
Divine set for Chapter 11
Divine Inc., Chicago's fallen Internet star, is expected to file for protection from creditors in a Boston Bankruptcy Court this week. Sources say that only an unlikely, last-minute intervention from a white knight acquirer could forestall the...
Divine stock falls as worries grow
Shares of Chicago's Divine Inc. tumbled 53% last week to 35 cents as financial turmoil raised concerns about the prospects of the Internet incubator-turned-software firm.Divine's stock has dropped 99% from a 52-week high of $18.75 reached March 16...
Divine plans sale of RoweCom
Divine Inc. on Monday said it has reached a deal to sell its troubled RoweCom Inc. subsidiary for an undisclosed sum to Alabama-based information management firm EBSCO Industries Inc. RoweCom, which provides magazine and journal subscriptions...
Divine/Faxon creditors join forces
Some of the nation's leading libraries and publishers have banded together to protect their interests in the wake of the collapse of Divine/Faxon Library Services, which handled orders for thousands of magazine and journal subscriptions.Representativ...
______________________________________
Darrell Dvorak
From: Darrell Dvorak <d5547k@yahoo.com>
Subject: "I am complicated and interesting."
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:46:54 -0700 (PDT)
To: Ron May <ron@themayreport.com>
Physically perhaps, but more so emotionally, intellectually and collegially. Would it help if I wish you better health without also wishing you better judgment?
__________________________________
Tarkus Murphy: Word from the Information Superglacier(TM)
From: "Tarkus" <tarkus@ripco.com>
Subject: Word from the Information Superglacier(TM) - GET BETTER SOON
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:06:11 -0400
To: "'The May Report'" <ron@themayreport.com>, <RONALDMAY@aol.com>
Ron,
Get better soon. Then get well!
Sounds like it may be a two stage process.
I thought I'd be going to Chicago this Summer until I saw what it costs to
fly from the Information Superglacier(TM) to Chicago!
Tarkus
_________________________________
Tom Johnson: I think this event already took place
From: "Johnson, Tom" <tom.johnson@cityofchicago.org>
Subject: RE: The May Report: 7/14/2010: The longer you live, the stranger things get
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:01:15 -0500
To: 'The May Report' <ron@themayreport.com>
Ron
We hope that everyone with the desire to market and network and do business in Chicago will join us and enjoy the 9th annual City Treasurer's Small Business Expo this Friday at the UIC Forum. While our whole list of workshops and event details are on the net at www.chicagocitytreasurer.com
As successful business owners can tell you - the true secret of social media is being social. Step away from the mouse - and join us at the UIC Forum all day Friday at Halsted and Roosevelt - Did we mention we work months in advance to provide EVERYTHING FREE!
Happy Summer
Tj
______________________________________
Mark Williams
From: Mark Williams <williams@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: The May Report: 7/14/2010: The longer you live, the stranger things get
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:12:33 -0400
To: The May Report <ron@themayreport.com>
Hi Ron,
I had to smile when I read this:
``I am being used as a case study by Dr. Malow and his students from Chicago Medical School and UIC because "I am complicated and interesting.""
Hang in there and get better fast,
Best,
Mark
______________________________________
Irfan Ahmad
From: "Ahmad, Irfan S" <isahmad@illinois.edu>
Subject: RE: The May Report: 7/14/2010: The longer you live, the stranger things get
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:14:49 -0500
To: The May Report <ron@themayreport.com>
Dear Ron
Get well soon, best wishes for quick recovery.
Thanks for keeping the light on!
Best wishes,
Irfan
Irfan Ahmad
University of Illinois
Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology
www.cnst.illinois.edu
_______________________________________
Thursday, August 5: Thursday, August 5: Thursday, August 5: Thursday, August 5: Chicago's largest data center executives social event!
From: "Steven E. Manos" <smanos@leetechnologies.com>
Subject: Chicago's largest data center executives social event!
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:10:49 -0400
To: "ron@themayreport.com" <ron@themayreport.com>
Ron-
I hope you are currently improving and that everything is on the upswing. I wanted to make those readers of yours in the data center/critical facility world aware of what I believe to be the largest monthly social event for this group in Chicago. I have included the formal invite below but please note that space is limited to 130 attendees (capacity of the room) so RSVP's are essential for admittance. This is not a sales-centric event but a venue for senior level data center execs to discuss innovation, war stories and to network with their peers. Should any of your readers be interested, please have them contact me at smanos@leetechnologies.com or 312-515-7386.
All-
Please join us for our next data center executives social (Lee Tech on Tap) on Thursday, August 5th 2010 in Downers Grove. (Please contact me for location and time) Drinks and hors d' oeuvres will be provided and we look forward to having yet another great event. For those who haven't attended one of our events in the past, Lee Tech on Tap was started under the auspices of creating a very informal venue where data center executives in the Midwest can come together to discuss issues, innovations and war stories with other peers in the industry. I started this group roughly seven months ago with 11 members and we have grown to well over 200 members with last month's event cresting 100 attendees.
We will likely have 1-2 additional industry bloggers in our midst so please feel free to seek those folks out as they will likely be posting on our event later in the month. I have included a link to Dave O'Hara's GreenM3 blogpost (www.greenM3.com) on our June event. Dave has one of the most widely read blogs in the industry and I recommend you make this one of your key RSS feeds for information on all aspects of our industry.
http://www.greenm3.com/2010/07/why-lee-technologies-on-tap-event-works-a-declaration-of-independence-from-typical-data-center-events.html
As always, please feel free to share this invite with fellow peers within the industry and bring others from your perspective companies as we are always looking to grow the group and increase mindshare. If you do intend on bringing others, please just let me know how many so I can plan accordingly. As usual, we are looking to keep vendors at a bare minimum at this event so if you have a vendor suggestion as a participant, please let me know ahead of time to see what event may be applicable to have them attend.
Thanks again everyone for your continued support and look forward to seeing you on August 5th!
Steven E. Manos
Manager | Central Region
smanos@leetechnologies.com
leetechnologies.com
2082 Jolly Roger Drive Edwardsville, IL 62025
312-515-7386
______________________________________
FCC's "Third Way" Endangers Internet Freedom
From: "Richard Morrison" <rmorrison@cei.org>
Subject: FCC's "Third Way" Endangers Internet Freedom
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:11:38 -0400
To: ron@themayreport.com
Contacts:
Richard Morrison, 202-331-2273
Ryan Radia, 202-331-2281
FCC's "Third Way" Endangers Internet Freedom
Commission Urged to Lift Legacy Rules on Telecom Providers
Washington, D.C., July 16, 2010-In regulatory comments submitted yesterday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute warned the Federal Communications Commission against imposing new regulations on broadband Internet providers and instead called on the agency to focus its efforts on reducing regulatory burdens on telecommunications networks.
The FCC's proceeding seeks comment on a proposal to reclassify the transmission component of broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service, governed by Title II of the Communications Act. But according to Ryan Radia, CEI Associate Director of Technology Studies, reclassifying Internet access would harm consumers and undermine the FCC's own public policy goals.
CEI's filing identifies several reasons why reclassifying broadband service is both unnecessary and destructive to consumer welfare, including:
A majority of Congress opposes broadband reclassification.Three separate letters to the FCC, signed by a combined 291 member of Congress, warn the agency against broadband reclassification. Instead of haphazardly imposing obsolete regulations on advanced telecom networks, the FCC should wait for Congress to clarify the archaic provisions of the Communications Act.
Broadband reclassification would undermine voluntary, private institutions capable of addressing network management tensions as they arise. Providers, content companies, and other stakeholders have a vested interest in working together to resolve disputes over network access and develop industry standards that foster innovation and predictability. These emerging market institutions are far better equipped than the FCC to maximize consumer welfare in the dynamic and rapidly evolving Internet ecosystem.
Competition among broadband providers is intensifying. Disruptive, cutting edge technologies are enabling new models of delivering Internet access to consumers. Subjecting nascent Internet entrepreneurs to rigid FCC rules would limit consumer choice, relegating users to today's established providers and foreclosing the emergence of firms that are yet to exist.
Regulatory uncertainty chills investment, which is especially harmful in the fast-growing world of high-speed Internet service. Reclassification paves the way for a future Commission to rigidly regulate nearly every aspect of broadband service and pricing, discouraging investors from placing rational bets on broadband infrastructure. The FCC's pledge to forbear from the most onerous aspects of Title II is hardly reassuring to investors given the notoriously fickle and unpredictable nature of bureaucracies.
###
CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest group that studies the intersection of regulation, risk, and markets. For more about CEI, visit www.cei.org/about-cei
________________________________________
Wednesday, Aug. 11: Wisconsin Security Research Consortium, the
Wisconsin Technology Council and the UW-Madison College of Engineering, will
be held 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
From: MEF@mail-list.com
Sender: mef@mail-list.com
Subject: The Midwest Entrereneurs Forum
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:44:36 -0500
To: ron@themayreport.com
This is from our friends up North It is not limited to Wisconsin companies
Jerry
Companies should apply now to showcase ideas
to feds during 'Skunk Works Olympics'
Early stage companies in Wisconsin and beyond will have an opportunity to
make presentations and meet with key people from federal agencies during the
Aug. 11 Skunk Works Olympics during the fourth annual Resource Rendezvous.
The conference, produced by the Wisconsin Security Research Consortium, the
Wisconsin Technology Council and the UW-Madison College of Engineering, will
be held 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 11 at the UW-Madison College
of Engineering, 1415 Engineering Drive.
Early-bird registration is $75 through July 18 and $85 thereafter and $40
for students; all register at www.wisecurity.org. Look under "Featured
Events."
About half a dozen companies will be selected to present in the Skunk Works
Olympics. Companies must register for the Resource Rendezvous and apply to
present by 5 p.m. CST Wednesday, July 28 through the website listed below.
Selected Skunk Works Olympics presenters will give a three-minute pitch to
showcase their research and product development ideas to federal science and
technology directors who will attend Resource Rendezvous. Participants will
have only three minutes and up to three PowerPoint slides to share
information; there will be ample networking time before and after formal
presentations.
"Presenters at past Resource Rendezvous events have established enduring
connections with federal science and technology directors, and in many cases
have won contracts and grants," said Jack Heinemann, director of the
Wisconsin Security Research Consortium.
To apply for the Skunk Work Olympics, you must do two things after
registering for the conference at www.wisecurity.org.
1) Submit an executive summary through the Wisconsin Angel Network
Deal-flow Pipeline. Click here for a direct link to the Deal-flow Pipeline.
You will create a user profile and submit your executive summary directly to
the website. Summary requirements are on the website. All bold fields are
required.
2) After submitting your executive summary through WAN's DFP, e-mail
Jodi Hoeser at jhoeser@wisconsintechnologycouncil.com and confirm that you
are applying to present at the Resource Rendezvous and if your submission
can be activated, allowing WAN's investor-members to view your submission.
For many firms, participation in the conference has led to growth and new
revenues. Companies selected for the Skunk Works Olympics will have many
opportunities to interest science and technology managers from federal
agencies. Companies will also receive space in our exhibit area.
The Resource Rendezvous will also feature opportunities for researchers,
grant writers, business leaders and other professionals to learn about the
R&D interests and related funding opportunities of participating agencies.
Speakers include: Jim Grove, Department of Homeland Security; Michael Hoard,
Marinette Marine; Greg Milman, National Institutes of Health; Ron
Marchessault, U.S. Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research
Center; Eric Ness, U.S. Small Business Administration; Larry Pollack,
Defense Threat Reduction Agency; George Solhan, Office of Naval Research;
and Dr. Renee Wagner and others from U.S. Agricultural Research Service.
To register and learn more about the Resource Rendezvous visit
www.wisecurity.org or contact Jodi Hoeser at 608-442-7557 ext. 26 or
jhoeser@wisconsintechnologycouncil.com.
Having trouble with the link? Simply copy and paste the entire address
listed below into your web browser:
http://guest.cvent.com/i.aspx?1Q,P1,46838E96-ED1D-4F9E-9582-6AE8E0AD404E
__________________________________
Jeffrey Meredith: Krugman: "The notion that tax cuts pay for themselves has no empirical support"
From: Jeffrey Meredith <jeffmere@gmail.com>
Subject: Krugman: "The notion that tax cuts pay for themselves has no empirical support"
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:46:09 -0400
To: ronaldmay@aol.com, ron@themayreport.com
Invincible Ignorance
Just in case you had some lingering notion that anyone in the Republican party was fiscally responsible, Mitch McConnell has weighed in in support of Jon Kyl:
[T]here?s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.
In a way you have to wonder what point there even is in trying to argue here. But anyway, look: it?s been a long time since Morning in America. We?ve now been through two two-term administrations, one of which raised taxes, the other of which cut them. Which looks like it presided over a more vibrant economy?
And who in their right mind would describe the Bush economy as ?vibrant?, anyway? Even during the peak of the housing bubble, it never achieved the kind of job growth that was routine in the Clinton years.
Oh, and as for revenue: we have a growing economy, which means that revenue tends, other things equal, to rise over time. But here?s what real federal revenue looked like since 1992:
Rapid, steady growth in the Clinton years; much less thereafter, even if you stop the clock just before the housing bubble burst.
In short, the notion that tax cuts pay for themselves has no empirical support. And yet the GOP leadership ? which claims to be oh so worried about the deficit ? is willing to stake America?s solvency on its belief that tax cuts are free.
Update: Also, for those readers who complain that I?m too partisan, that I should admit that there are two sides to the issues, this is a prime example of my problem. How am I supposed to pretend that these are serious people? The facts really do have a well-known liberal bias.
for themselves has no empirical support"
____________________________________
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Monthly Luncheon: Challenges and Opportunities for Business and Economic Growth in the Midwest
From: "EDC Chicago" <edcchicago@ameritech.net>
Subject: July 28 EDC Luncheon
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:26:54 -0500
To: "EDC Chicago" <edcchicago@ameritech.net>
July 28, 2010 Monthly Luncheon
Challenges and Opportunities for Business
and Economic Growth in the Midwest
Edward E. Gordon, Ph.D.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
The Tower Club
20 North Wacker Drive, 39th Floor
Chicago, Illinois
In the midst of widespread unemployment the U.S. and world economies still have a shortage of skilled talent. Increasingly complex technologies continue to set the pace of change as the baby boomer segment is moving into retirement. Succeeding generations have very different views of the work - life culture and are generally less educated particularly in technical areas. In Japan, Korea and many European nations, populations and workforces are shrinking. Even India and China cannot produce enough qualified talent to meet the demands of their rapid economic development.
Edward E. Gordon Ph.D is an internationally recognized author, researcher and speaker on the future of America's and the world's workforce. His is President of Imperial Consulting in Chicago and Palm Desert , California . His books include Winning the Global Talent Showdown, The 2010 Meltdown: Solving the Impending Jobs Crisis, Skills Wars and FutureWork. His research has appeared in numerous national newspapers and he has appeared on CBS, CNN and NPR.
Dr. Gordon will present real life examples of how business people, educators, government officials, union leaders, parents and activists are now partnering though community-based organizations (CBOs) to craft new education-to-employment systems for the 21st century technology-based economies.
The luncheon is at noon at the Tower Club, 39th floor, 20 North Wacker Drive, Chicago. The cost of the lunch and program is $40 for EDC members and $65 for non-members. There is no charge for EDC Corporate and Sustaining Members.
Reservations are mandatory. Reply to this email to make your reservation, call our office or prepay online via our website.
Click here to prepay online for the July 28, 2010 luncheon.
http://www.edcchicago.org/
Join us for our 30th Anniversary Celebration and Gala Dinner
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
The Cliff Dwellers Club, 200 South Michigan Avenue, The Penthouse, Chicago
Click here to learn more
Become an EDC Member
Membership provides the resources to organize & implement our programs. We have three levels of membership:
Individual, Sustaining and Corporate.
Join the EDC today! Simply click here
Upcoming Events:
Wednesday, August 25, 2010, Noon
Monthly Luncheon
"Midyear Economic Update - View from the Midwest"
Bill Strauss, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
.................
Tuesday, September 14 - 15, 2010
Midwest Clean Tech 2010 Conference
Sponsored by the Midwest Global Alliance
.................
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
30th Anniversary Celebration and Gala Dinner
The Cliff Dewellers Club, 200 South Michigan Avenue, The Penthouse, Chicago
.................
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monthly Luncheon
Neil Kane, Advanced Diamond Technologies, Inc,
From: "EDC Chicago" <edcchicago@ameritech.net>
Subject: July 28 EDC Luncheon
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:26:54 -0500
To: "EDC Chicago" <edcchicago@ameritech.net>
____________________________________
Musings on health care delivery, or how I almost bought the farm, by Ron May
I almost bought the farm from 1:50pm till 3:30pm last Thursday, the 15th. Severe shortness of breath, rapid breathing, combined with pulmonary adema and a weird heartbeat known as ventricular tachycardia, worse than and different from A-fib. Dr. Gill, the cardiologist, says that it lasted only two seconds and they know that from the heart monitor I was wearing. I don't think the irregular heart beat was the central problem.
It was touch and go for about 1 hr. 40 minutes. I could not have been on the verge of death for that long, but that was the length of time that elapsed from the start of the problem until its apparent resolution. They put me on the oxygen mask (known as a venti-mask) with 15 liters of pure 100% oxygen and that did help but it was a scary situation. Those nose canulas are only about 20% oxygen. At one point there were twenty people in my room, and they were talking about slitting my throat.
I heard from the nurse at my clinic that I "coded" but that is not confirmed and there are different levels of codes. Not all codes are blue. I did find out that code blue is when the heart stops; code gray is when the patient is out of control, and I was what they call RRT (Rapid Response Team)
used for cases where an emergency is developing.
They did what is called an ABG to determine blood gas. EKG, of course other tests.
Here is something interesting. I have been oozing like crazy with blood leaking out all over until Friday. They had me on the anti-biotic Zosyn four times a day until the 14th. One side effect of Zosyn: it causes your platelets to drop and mine went from 130 to 80. Your platelets help the blood to clot and they are your white blood cells.
Another drug they had me on which contributes to pletelets dropping is Protonix and they have taken me off of that.
Two hematologists have been in to see me several times, Dr. Ann Mauer who was at The University of Chicago and is now here at Masonic, and Dr. Paola Alvarez, a hematology resident who is a serious looker. I mean it. Rarely do you see a female doctor with those looks. She is from El Paso, which she told me has no illegal immigrant problem because they are "mean down there" and she went to med school in Mexico.
I was also told that I have anti-phospholipid syndrome which I will have to look up.
Just for kicks, I tried ro figure out how many docs I have seen this stay. Nephrology: Vohra and Rao; IR: Sakar; Surgery: Adajar; Internal Medicine: Badlani, Hussein, and Rodrieguez (she is a 2nd yr. resident who went to med school in the Dominican Republic); Infections diesase: Stake and Lisowski; Hematology: Mauer and Alvarez; Pulmonary: Kachru; Cardiology: Gill and I am sure I am missing one or two residents.
So, I should be out of here on Monday, the 19th, knock on wood. Dr. Rao (kidney) and I had a long talk today. One of the big reasons people who get transplants go back on dialysis is that they stop taking their meds. Those anti-rejection meds must be taken for the rest of your life after a transplant -- every single day, no exceptions. But sometimes people get lulled into as false sense of complacency or they cannot afford the meds. Why on earth is that? Well, it turns out that Medicare only covers the drugs for three years after the transplant! And they are horribly expensive. My cardiologist at Northwestern has a more hard line view. One transplant and that's it. She feels that this business of people getting two or three transplants is just not realistic.
Forget about the human factor, let's do the math. To keep a person in Dialysis for one month runs about $15K to $20K and that is not counting any hospitalizations which commonly go with dialysis (fistula and permacath problems, etc.) That is about $200K a year.
The cost of a transplant is $200K to $300K, and that does not include the drugs or the follow-on visits.
Clearly, in two years on dialysis, the cost exceeds that of a transplant.
Nephrologists and patients have been lobbying to get the Medicare to cover the meds well beyond the three years post transplant.
There are 500,000 people in the U.S. on dialysis yet only 80,000 on the transplant list. We have five transplant centers in Chicago: Rush, UIC, Northwestern, University of Chicago and Loyola. I have a bit of breaking news. Another dialysis transplant center is now Christ Hospital.
If there are so many people on dialysis, why are relatively so few on the transplant list?
Dr. Rao says that some are too old for it and some don't pass or want to go through the pre-qualification tests of which there are many. But he blames his fellow nephrologists as well!
Some of it is economic interest. When a patient has a transplant, he or she is taken over by the hospital doing the transplant for six months to a year and then in theory the transplant center gives that patient back to their doctor.
Whatever the reason, Rao says that his colleagues in nephrology don't push the patients hard enough to get the transplant. Very interesting.
But there is another social psychological factor that I know to be true from my own experience. A clinic is like a family and many patients become friends with each other and the staff.
Patients worry that if they go off dialysis, they will have no social life, they won't see their friends, and they won't know what to do with the "extra" time.
About a year ago, there was a great article in The New Yorker Magazine about the psycho-social aspects of living donors. The article really delves below the surface and talks about feelings of resentment, guilt and shame on both sides. The fabric of the family can be torn asunder.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/07/27/090727fa_fact_macfarquhar
This shortened version of the original New Yorker article is well worth reading. It appeared in The Week Magazine.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://theweek.com/article/index/104040/The_last_word_A_gift_from_the_gut
The last word: A gift from the gut
Paul Wagner donated a kidney to a stranger. Why, asks Larissa MacFarquhar, are we not sure he's a hero?
posted on December 11, 2009, at 9:05 AM
IT WAS THE day before Thanksgiving and Paul Wagner was on his lunch break, reading the paper. He worked as a purchasing manager at Peirce-Phelps, in Philadelphia, a wholesale distributor of heating and air-conditioning products. He was 40 years old and lived with his partner, Aaron, in a small apartment. He was pale and slightly built. He smoked and had a smoker's porous skin. His mother had died six months before, in her late 50s, of sarcoidosis. They had not had a good relationship, but her death had affected him quite deeply.
Wagner considered himself a "dry person"-curt, moody, sometimes rude.
He believed that, to people who didn't know him, he came off as an unsentimental type, possibly even a bit mean, though in fact he was not like that at all. He owned two cats and two elderly cocker spaniels that he had rescued from a shelter. He ran the United Way fundraising campaign at work for three years and organized food drives for local soup kitchens. He regarded these acts not as virtuous but as duties. He believed that if his needs were met and he found himself in possession of a surplus-of money or time or wherewithal-he was obliged to share it. Share it, not give it all away: He liked nice things-he wasn't going to become Amish. But it was very, very important to him that when he met his Maker he could say that he gave more than he took.
Reading the paper, Wagner noticed an article that described a website named MatchingDonors.com, where people who needed a kidney transplant could post a message describing themselves and their situation, perhaps appending a photograph. The hope was that a stranger would see the posting and be moved to donate. Wagner typed the name of the website into his computer. He clicked on the "search patients" box and typed in "Philadelphia." The first patient he saw was Gail Tomas. He enlarged her photograph on his screen so that he could examine every detail. She was a woman of mixed race in her late 60s. He stared at her, searching for clues to her personality in her hairstyle and how she wore makeup. Almost immediately, he felt that she was the one. He knew that his blood and her blood would match and that he would donate a kidney to her.
He went home and told his partner, "Aaron, there's this lady I read about that's going to die if she doesn't get a new kidney and I've decided to give one to her." Aaron said no. Wagner told him sorry, but he was going to do it anyway. Talking to his father was more difficult. Some years before, his father's second wife had had kidney disease. Wagner had offered to donate to her, but she and his father had felt that it was against their principles to ask so much of a person, even a son. So they refused his offer, and, waiting for a cadaver kidney, she died.
Wagner assumed that he and Tomas would not become friends after the surgery. He had given the matter some thought. How could they possibly have a healthy relationship, he reasoned. It would be bad for her to feel beholden to him, and it would be bad for him to have her believing that he was some kind of saint. The whole thing would just be way too freighted and creepy and was better avoided. Tomas, however, had other ideas.
Tomas was a retired opera singer. If Wagner was dry, she was the opposite-vivacious, chatty, candidly emotional. For her, their first meeting, in the hospital waiting room, was wonderful: She felt that they'd known each other all their lives.
Wagner managed to be friendly when Tomas introduced herself, but he was all churned up afterward. He didn't know what to make of this exuberant lady he was giving his kidney to; he couldn't figure out what emotions he should allow himself to experience. His mother had died less than a year before, and now here he was potentially entangling himself with another very sick older woman, and what did that mean? Donating a kidney to find yourself a new mother, what could be more obviously twisted than that? He was also worried that he'd done a bad thing by allowing himself to meet Tomas at all. It made him feel guilty. Did it diminish the value of his deed to accept her gratitude? Wouldn't he be a better person if he hadn't met her and had received no thanks? Had his donation now become just a matter of gratifying his ego?
The transplant surgeon was puzzled by Wagner. He wasn't sure that he was willing to do the surgery-he was concerned that it might be a violation of his Hippocratic oath to operate on a healthy person who wasn't even related to the recipient. They met and talked for more than an hour. Near the end of the conversation, Wagner was astonished to see that the surgeon was crying.
Doctors tend to be deeply suspicious of altruistic donors. Especially in the early days of kidney transplants, in the late '60s and early '70s, many doctors saw altruistic donation through the lens of psychoanalysis, and, viewed thus, it looked troubling indeed. What was "altruism," after all? A motive so much in conflict with primary instinct had to represent some kind of pathology. Was it masochism? Unresolved guilt? Donating an organ to a stranger was not just not admirable, doctors felt-it was perverse, it offended the conscience. It was against human nature. Surgeons and psychiatrists went to heroic lengths to draw out the conflicts and ambivalence that lay hidden beneath donors' supposed willingness to undergo surgery.
Even the recipients of organs were ambivalent. One man was so overcome by a feeling of obligation toward his donor sister that he couldn't stand to look at her. A son refused a kidney from his mother because, he told his surgeon, "She's devoured enough of me already." The force of gratitude could be dreadful with the gift of an organ, when no thanks seemed adequate and reciprocation was impossible. Doctors began to realize that to transplant an organ was to stir up the muck of familial emotions, with consequences that could not be predicted. Donation tended to bind the donor and the recipient together, sometimes with love, sometimes with guilt, or gratitude, or a feeling of physical union due to the presence of the organ of one in the other's body. The strength of these new bonds could weaken other bonds and leave families strained and distorted. If a person donated to a sibling, for instance, might he not become too close to that sibling, at the expense of his relationship with his spouse? One transplant physician believed that, after a sister donated to her brother, the sister "felt absolute control over her brother, as if she had castrated him." After the surgery, instead of going home to his wife and children, he moved into his sister's house to recover.
Transplants have become more commonplace, and attitudes toward donation of organs have become somewhat less fraught. Potential donors register on MatchingDonors.com almost every day. Either through MatchingDonors or through a hospital, about 600 have gone through with surgery. But the change in attitude is mourned by those who feel that it signals an encroaching spiritual callousness. To the ethicist Gilbert Meilaender, for instance, the reluctance that many feel toward donating organs, even after death, is not selfishness or superstition but a sign that our sense of the body as something whole, something human, something sacred, has not yet withered. A society in which everyone in cheerful rationality signed his donor card without a qualm would be, to Meilaender, a horror. The giving of an organ, by the living or the dead, should not be purged of anguish. For him, the tyranny of gratitude is not a perversion of love but the prototype of love: the bond between parents and children.
AFTER THE SURGERY, Wagner started feeling very sad all the time. He admitted to himself that it was difficult to come down off the high of being a hero. Worse, Tomas had suddenly stopped returning his phone calls. Was she angry with him? he wondered. Looking for advice, he started posting on a website, Living Donors Online, and he discovered that many donors had to deal with peculiar emotions after surgery. He read about one case in which a woman had donated to her sister, but the kidney was rejected and her sister died; after that, the rest of the family stopped speaking to her. One spouse donated to the other, then the recipient spouse left the donor, perhaps because the burden of gratitude had left the marriage irredeemably distorted. That had happened quite a few times, it seemed.
Finally, worried, Wagner started calling hospitals, and he found Tomas. She'd been very sick and hadn't wanted to scare him, but now she was better, and she wanted Wagner in her life. Still smarting, he wasn't sure. She invited him to her son's wedding. He declined, several times, until finally she got angry and yelled at him, and that, somehow, for Wagner, made everything all right. If she could yell at him, then he was not always perfect in her eyes and they could have a normal friendship. She wasn't his mother, he knew that; it would be fine. In fact, Tomas did consider herself his mother, more or less. She wanted him at her house on holidays, she hounded him about smoking and taking his blood-pressure medication. But it was fine anyway.
So what do you make of Paul Wagner? Do you find the idea of donating a kidney to a stranger noble? Or freakish? If the latter, is it the extremity of the act that baffles you? Does it seem crazy, giving something that precious to someone for whom you have no feeling, and whom, if you knew him, you might actually dislike?
Perhaps it's not quite as crazy as it sounds. Kidneys are now often extracted laparoscopically, which leaves only tiny scars. A donor usually feels normal again in two to four weeks, the remaining kidney growing to compensate. And the risk of complications is low. If a person gets kidney disease, it affects both kidneys, so as far as that goes, a donor is not giving away his spare (though a spare kidney is useful if the other is damaged in a car accident, say, or if a person develops kidney cancer). Still, the carnality of the act, the violation of the body, stops people. Its moral logic seems, to some, inhumanly rational, suicidally so: If we're going to start thinking of bodies as repositories of spare parts for other people, why not donate all our organs and save many lives?
Most people find it uncomplicatedly admirable when a person risks his life to rescue a stranger from fire, or from drowning. What, then, is it about saving a stranger by giving a kidney, a far lesser risk, that people find so odd? Do they feel there is something aggressive about the act, as though the donor were implicitly rebuking them for not doing it, too? (There is no rebuke in saving a stranger from drowning-you weren't there, you couldn't have done it. And you can always imagine that you would have if you had been.) Or perhaps it's that organ donation, unlike rescue, is conceived in cold blood, and coldblooded altruism seems nearly as sinister as coldblooded malevolence.
From a story originally published in The New Yorker. ©2009 by Larissa MacFarquhar. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In our continuing quest to understand how the health care delivery system can be so irrational, stick this feather in your cap.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my hemoglobin is dropping like a rock again. It was at 12.5 a month ago, high enough to satisfy three women at once (in my dreams), but as of today, it is back down to 9.6. Below 8 and we are back to transfusion time. It is no doubt because of the infection which Dr. Baldani said yesterday to me was bad.
I guess it is a little late for me to complain about a massive digression.
_________________________________________
END OF REPORT
July 26, 2010
The May Report: 7/26/2010: Is Flip back -- better yet, did he ever really leave?; So, why is Chicago tech over and other musings.
Editor and publisher: ron@themayreport.com, ronaldmay@aol.com, www.themayreport.com , 773-525-3944.
If you missed an article, go here: http://www.tmronline.com/A55951/tmrarticles.nsf/vwFullNewsletter
_______________________________________
*********************************************
GP Ventures provides mergers and acquisitions advisory services for technology companies in sectors such as Electronics, Equipment, IT services, EMS, Software, PCBs, Defense, and Distribution.
Some current programs include an acquisition search for Chicago-area IT services companies and the sale of a 40 million euro fiber-optic components company.
Please contact Tom Kastner at GP Ventures (www.gp-ventures.com) for more information:
mail@gp-ventures.com, 847-431-3993
***********************************************
___________________________________
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Scoop section:
-- Briefly noted, by Ron May
-- John Katsantonis: "Chicago tech is over."
-- Last Week for Chicago Innovation Awards Nominations
-- Tuesday, July 27: 2010 Great American Artist Search in Chicago
-- Aug. 14-15 at the Illinois Institute of Technology:
-- SocialDevCamp Chicago Returns!
-- A refresher course: Divine Inc. Company News
-- Darrell Dvorak
-- Tarkus Murphy: Word from the Information Superglacier(TM)
-- Tom Johnson: I think this event already took place
-- Mark Williams
-- Irfan Ahmad
-- Thursday, August 5: Chicago's largest data center executives social event!
-- FCC's "Third Way" Endangers Internet Freedom
-- Wednesday, Aug. 11: Wisconsin Security Research Consortium, the
Wisconsin Technology Council and the UW-Madison College of Engineering, will
be held 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
-- Jeffrey Meredith: Krugman: "The notion that tax cuts pay for themselves has no empirical support"
-- Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Monthly Luncheon: Challenges and Opportunities for Business and Economic Growth in the Midwest
-- Musings on health care delivery, or how I almost bought the farm, by Ron May
[Editor's note: May here. There is much more to come, so hang on to your hats.
This is all I could pull from Crain's.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
By: John Pletz
Divine evangelist Andrew 'Flip' Filipowski returns to Chicago with InterAct
Andrew "Flip" Filipowski, Chicago's pied piper of the Internet, who burned through $1 billion at the peak of the dot-com bubble, is back. Mr. Filipowski, 60, recently returned from North Carolina to set up shop at 20 W. Kinzie St., in the same building as Google Inc.'s Chicago...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Interact's website? Does anyone know what it is?]
______________________________
**********************************
Special HR Technology® Conference Rate Just for You
May Report Readers:
This is your chance to save BIG on the world's largest and best HR technology event, the 13th Annual HR Technology® Conference & Exposition. As a May Report subscriber, you save $500.00 off the on-site rate simply by registering with Promo Code MAY (all caps) at www.HRTechnologyConference.com.
Come learn how HR technology can benefit your organization. Use this incredible discount to join us Sept. 29 - Oct. 1 at nearby McCormick Place, and take advantage of more than 40 session choices including 3 expert debates, 6 panel discussions, 5 Q&A sessions and much more.
If you can't make the entire conference, be sure to stop by the Expo and see firsthand the latest HR technology products and services from more than 200 exhibitors - the world's largest Expo of its kind. Plus, qualified professionals get FREE admission (a $35.00 value) when pre-registering online!
And there's plenty more to look forward to. Download the conference brochure and see all of the exciting events you can be a part of.
Sincerely,
Bill Kutik
Co-Chair, HR Technology® Conference & Expo
Technology Columnist, Human Resource Executive® Magazine
LRP Publications
360 Hiatt Drive
Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418
1-800-727-1227
**********************************************************
__________________________________________
Briefly noted, by Ron May
The reason "Chicago tech is over" as one person put it to me, is that Tim Courtney has organized his annual social media Web 2.0 get together, but this year, it has changed. No longer an open forum for anyone who wants to to speak.
The format this year is Andrew Mason of Groupon being interviewed. That is all very well and good.
But which of Tim's buddies is leading the charge on this one?
None other than the informal leader of Courtney's gang, John Dallas, Jr.
John Dallas is a fine man and a jolly good fella, but he is not an expert on the latest internet trends. I happened to see Dick Costolo on a panel on CNBC with Maria B. Dick is now the COO of Twitter, a firm he invested in.
We can do better. Why do we always settle for the guy whose "turn" it is or who is just handy?
The six biggest problems with our culture in tech in Chicago are:
1. The stigmatization of failure.
2. Resources and goodies are distributed not on merit, but on clubby connections -- witness the way Weinstein operated. In this sense, our system is corrupt.
3. We have conflated just about everything else with what we don't have: namely, a true standard of excellence. Consulting is a substitute -- a poor one at that -- for getting results; brokering deals, the same; setting up meetings is another, and perhaps most pernicious of all is an idea which I have contributed to is that the best way to get things done is bring people together in a networking event and then measure the success of that by counting heads.
We have so many good people with good track records that we should be able to do better. The moderator need not have $40MM in the bank. He or she could be someone like Jed Abernethy (or Peter Tapling, Dave Smith, Andrew Taylor or a Ted Greene) who ran the TBIF Soap Box event on the 21st. I pick these guys because they are not fiefdom or empire building chest pounders, they are not all about self-aggrandizement or self centereds who want to tell us how it was "back in the day" -- what I will call the nostalgic types -- rather, and they are sharp, keep your eye on the ball guys. They are not trying to build resumes or kiss up to the VCs either, which helps.
Unfortunately, we generally end up with the guys who want to be editor of the school paper, president of the student council or editor of the year book.
4. Our tendency to react to funding in the same way we react to attendance at meetings. It must always be quality over quantity. The turnout at the Tech Cocktail Mobile 2 event on June 24th at John Barleycorn's was nothing to write home about but it was reasonably high quality. Frank Gruber swears it was 250, but Bert who worked the door says 150, 175 tops. Smaller groups allow more networking. The initial show-ups were there for the drinks, and then it settled down when those folks left. When I arrived, the dynamic foursome of Fred, Terry, Mary Pat and Sarah were leaving. Fred, as usual, was off in his own world.
Compare Groupon's fundraising strategy to that of FeedBurner. FeedBurner ran lean and mean and only took the money it really needed. There was no game playing as there may be with Groupon -- and I am over my pay grade on this one -- where they are taking large sums of money and recycling it by refunding it to the founders before there is an exit. This approach has been articulated by Eric Lefkofsky whom I believe he said he wanted to get 10% back per year. Lesson not learned. Don't judge a book by its cover.
5. Empires and fiefdoms have been a persistent problem, but there are signs of improvement. New people to the scene are helping to make that happen. Witness Geoff Domaracki and Jonathan Pasky. They are connecting with everyone.
6. By far the biggest problem is lack of spin-offs, spin-outs and the fact that the trapeze bar does not swing far enough. Yes, there are some more angel deals, but do they translate into Series A, Series B, etc. Plenty of firms get that first jolt or two of funding and then fizzle out.
7. Where is the sense of noblesse oblige here?
+++++++++++++
Main Entry: noblesse oblige nO-!bles-u-!blEzh
Pronunciation: \ nÅ-ˈbles-É™-ˈblÄ“zh \
Function: noun
Etymology: French, literally, nobility obligates
Date: 1837
Results
1837the obligation of honorable, generous, and responsible behavior associated with high rank or birth
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In the era of the robber barons, you made your money and then gave it away philanthropically to good causes (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbuilt, Mellon, Ford, etc.)
In the new money era of tech we still have that with Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, but we don't have the hands on mentoring of start-ups not by economic development types like Kapil, but by guys who have actually successfully built businesses. Somehow, those guys always seem to slip away. Dick Costolo is a great example.
Let me get this out.
I got out of the hospital on Monday night, the 19th, but I am by no means back. Very low energy, hemoglobin has dropped again, drainage tube in abdomen, daily visits by nurses to show me how to administer the IV antibiotics, etc. Today, at 2pm, a CT scan. The goal here is to get rid of the abscess in my liver without having to do surgery.
TMR averages 13 reports a month. Not counting this one, we have had three this month. I can't give you ten reports this week, but I think I can give you six.
__________________________________
John Katsantonis: "Chicago tech is over."
From: "John P. Katsantonis" <jpkattt@att.net>
Subject: USE THIS ONE INSTEAD...
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:30:22 -0500
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com, The May Report <ron@themayreport.com>
....noticed some typos, but more to the point, somehow one key phrase got deleted that makes no sense without it. (Not that that should be a dealbreaker, but....)
thanks~jk
"Chicago tech is over."
Ron, hello. Sorry about your continuing medical travails. MRI's suck, fastidious bacteriological thingies suck, and being not-well sucks. So let me make your job easier by providing you the next 1,200 words or so explaining (what it is that I've observed) RE: the "Chicago tech is over" statement, from whomever, at least in my non-humble opinion/observation:
1) As discussed many moons ago, the Chicago business vibe = "Parochial." I kept hearing that word when I moved back here from Dallas 11-1/2 years ago, hoping to be able to extend my high-tech PR practice (now in its 23rd year, btw) here. Mind you, I was not expecting bur rather hoping to get local clients. My practice has never been based on geographic proximity: since even prior to the Internet's universal acceptance, our clients have been as far away as Vancouver, BC, Germany, and the Philippines.
2) Of course, being a good Chicago boy albeit non-Catholic (Greek Orthodox is close enough), I tend to associate the word "parochial" with things churchy. And no one really defined what that word meant. There is of course "The Chicago Way," popularized in Brian DePalma's film version of THE UNTOUCHABLES (which was adapted for the screen by Chicago uber-scribe David Mamet, btw) by Scottish actor Sir Sean Connery's Oscar®-winning Irish cop character of Jimmy Malone: "They bring a knife to a fight, you bring a gun. They put one of ours in the hospital, we put one of theirs in the cemetery. THAT's the CHICAGO way." More to the point, The Chicago Way is best summed up in one of Mamet's other lines, from THE SPANISH PRISONER: the character played by Mamet's real-life wife (actress Rebecca Pidgeon), in explaining why the protagonist is about to be shot after a maze of intellectual property theft and intrigue (surrounding a proprietary high-tech biz formula for semiconductor patent and development, btw) utters the words "because money makes the mare go." And the 'mare' of Chicago (pun intended) operates no differently. Witness our stunning "upset" in the 2016 Olympics debacle, when untold millions went into "cinching" that event. Why??? As I wrote in these pages, because Chicago did NOT do what the other cities in contention did: Tokyo focused on selling Japan as a destination, Madrid focused on Spain, and Rio on Brazil. Chicago focused on Chicago, while sending the U.S. President...to sell Chicago. How parochial can ya get????
3) All that aside, in defining some words and phrases, I must often try and find their functional opposites: if I can figure them out, then I can figure out the original word. In this case, when I began writing my weekly "Raising Minnesota" tech-biz column for the late ePrairie/MidwestBusiness.com e-zine, it brought me electronically and in-person to the gopher state, and how they do business. It's called "Collaboration." What in software terms is called open-sourcing. As in, whomever wants in "within reason" gets in. This was a revelation, an epiphany, and a resurrection for me RE: how we should be operating here in Chicago, in order to develop the high-tech community into what it should and hopefully could be...we don't lack the talent or the will, or even the money. We just don't play all that nice, together. Mostly because it's like The 3 Stooges: "All for one!!" "One for all!!!!" "Every man for himself...nyuk, nyuk, nyuk."
4) I assembled (at the risk of forwarding another Connery reference) a League Of Extraordinary Technology Gentlemen ---- one incubator guy who was highly visible as such, one tech-biz journalist, one serial entrepreneur, one first-time entrepreneur, one investment broker based in Silicon Valley, and one local, highly visible mentor type ---- to examine the possibility of creating an organization that could umbrella, ameliorate and "collaboration-ize" the disparate elements of the Chicago Software Association, the long-detoothed DCCA, and other functions that Filipowski had ransacked earlier this century. Our purpose was to identify what was wrong with Chicago tech, and what (if anything) could be done.
5) Our "a-HA!!" consensus was that there has never been an entrepreneurial community here, in any literal sense. Dollars fly around, some people get them, and that's that. But there has never been a mentoring or networking strategy or "chain of command," whereby entrepreneurs are found, nurtured, developed, funded, incubated, etc., again in any collaborative or integrated manner. King Flip Da Great aside, you can count on one hand the number of highly visible tech entrepreneurs in this town, the low-profile ones on the other hand, and have enough fingers on each to flip (as it were) "the bird" with both.
6) The Chicago business community operates much like city hall and personified by our former Governor's amazing, baffling, insatiable quest for riches and fame, even ---- especially ---- post mortem, defined as you will: "favors," "patronage," "nepotism," "partisan politics." It is that elegant, unstoppable, ubiquitous it-ain't-what-you-know-it's-who-ya-know mindset (in tandem with/as exemplified by, once again, THE UNTOUCHABLES as well, for the record) which is how the world at large sees us, regardless of whatever other realities we may attempt to enlist, to the contrary. In other words, "Money talks and b*llsh*t walks." Just ask our buddy Dever. If you can find him. (And if you can, please remind him that he still owes me $1,600 for back rent and an apology for punching me in the mouth, going back five years.)
6) All that aside ---- which of course is a punch-in-the-mouthful ---- we here are nothing more nor less than what's wrong with everything. We're just blatant enough to say and do this stuff out loud. (To which there may actually be some type of redemptive quality.) But here's the real kicker, that's now bigger than all of us: the world and the U.S. economy are themselves "over." Period. End of story. The old ways of doing business are, fundamentally, history. Look the guaranteed moneymakers: medicine/healthcare, banking, the stock market, real estate, oil (oh yes, boys and girls: "oil" dead), and the music/entertainment business. DEAD. Click-bang, what hang!!! At least, on the scale we've become used to seeing.
Locally and everywhere in the U.S., boomers and every subsequent generation has been raised on unfettered Birnhamism, i.e., "you're not thinking big enough." The ultimate logical extension of that? Bernie Madoff.
But petty larcenists and above are jailed for that by the hundreds, on a daily basis. Now, people properly are reevaluating everything. Especially themselves and their beliefs. (Well,the ones who have hearts and minds are.)
There is no middle class, its having begun dissipate some time in the 1980s under Reagan and Bush 1. And, oddly enough, the Clintonian era put the final bullet in all of us, by selling us out to the Chinese, with the help of Sam Walton and company, whose money funded the Clinton campaign and machinations. (Just follow the money. It's The Arkansas Way, as well...and the Texas way, and the California way, and the Arizona Way, and the New York Way, and the.....)
So them that's got, are trying to keep.
And them's that's not, are sucking air.
This is not going to change unless and until the entire method of ownership, including that of companies wanting to launch, is changed. And the only way to do that, at this point, is to begin to think SMALL. (Not in terms of vision or strategy, just in terms of dollar quantities.)
Picture being able to take that $1.38 in change you just got at the Panera Bread cash register and depositing it either through the piece of flat plastic you just used, or by texting with a secret PIN number into your portfolio. And picture that same $1.38 buying another 20 shares of your favorite startup(s). The technology is all there. Picture the phrase "I lost everything" totaling no more than $100.
All that needs to happen (....yeah: "All.....") is the will to do so, and those of us who share this vision to build an infrastructure based on mass participation rather than the tuggable shirt sleeve of the guy wearing the pinkie ring sitting next to you.
We know the model works: witness texting "90999" to Haiti. And yes, SEC regulation comes into play here, somewhere.
So what?
peace/out~jk
__________________________________________
Last Week for Chicago Innovation Awards Nominations
Last Week for Chicago Innovation Awards Nominations
This is the last week to nominate a new product or service for the 2010 Chicago Innovation Awards. Send in your nominations before the deadline this Saturday, July 31st!
Nominees can be high-tech, low-tech or no-tech; for-profit or not-for-profit; big products from large companies or small products from small companies. The key is innovation. There is no cost to enter one or more nominations.
Learn more at www.chicagoinnovationawards.com.
____________________________________
Tuesday, July 27: 2010 Great American Artist Search in Chicago
Subject: Re: Lyn, your event notice and Naylor info. please.
Date: 6/29/2010 8:08:15 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: lyn@mysoiree.net
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
HI Ronald,
Thank you for taking my call today. Here is the company that David Naylor is currently working for, he is Principal Architect at Grid Dynamics.
Here is the information for our event coming to Chicago.
2010 Great American Artist Search in Chicago
July 27th, 2010 8:00 PM @
Reggies Rock Club
2109 South State St
Chicago, IL
2010 North American MySoirée <http://mysoiree.net/> .net Art Tour brought to you by
Soirée International Inc.
8pm-12am
Host LynE Williams, West Coast's Finest DJ Lamont Young, and a multi media show
including Chicago's Celebrity Visual artists.
The worlds most amazing visual art is brought to you with the hottest music where you connect!
Get Tickets at http://Mysoireechicago.eventbrite.com
Celebrity visual artists take center stage, fans will vote at the event for their favorite artist, the winner will represent Chicago at the 2010 North American Mysoiree.net Art Tour in Las Vegas.
Artists Participating
Jack Siegel
Diana Arand
Neeka Allsup
Jennifer Hines
Inna Deriy
Fred Deasis
Anastasia Mak
Anne Elisabeth Hogh
2010 North America Mysoirée Art Tour Cities
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
Portland, OR
San Jose, CA
Chicago, IL
Los Angeles
Laguna Beach, CA
San Diego, CA
Santa Fe, NM
Phoenix, AZ
Austin, TX
Las Vegas
Sincerely,
Lyn E. Williams
CEO
Soirée International Inc.
2010 North American Mysoiree Art Tour
Chicago, IL July 27th http://mysoireechicago.eventbrite.com/
San Francisco, CA
http://MySoiree.net
tw: @Mysoireenet
330-831-9593
On 6/29/10 8:42 PM, "RONALDMAY@aol.com" <RONALDMAY@aol.com> wrote:
______________________________________
May here. David Naylor is behind this thing. His friend Lyn from California called a few weeks ag before I got sick. David has moved to San Francisco and he is doing e-commerce for Macy's if I heard correctly. He also attends singles events in the Valley which surprised me since I thought he was married. But David, if you did throw your wife under the bus or if she threw you under it -- I hope you at least still read The Economist. I guess I am getting back to normal. We did not have such a great track record with three of the four firms funded by the federal program Naylor's firm was in (Ed Bachner, Bob Binder, and David Naylor) and I can't recall the name of the forth firm which was biotech.
________________________________________
Aug. 14-15 at the Illinois Institute of Technology: SocialDevCamp Chicago Returns!
http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=8746c0404defd1a3e34eec248&id=b25b105180
SocialDevCamp Chicago
SocialDevCamp Chicago Returns!
Dear <<First Name>>,
You're invited to participate in SocialDevCamp Chicago, the Midwest's premier event for social app and platform developers. This year's expanded event will be held Aug. 14-15 at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
For this third installment, we're packing two days with must-hear speakers, cutting-edge technical tutorials, business insights and, of course, plenty of networking opportunities. The Hackathon is back with $3,000 in prizes. Or choose your own adventure via a running "Unconference" that truly puts the "Social" in SocialDevCamp.
Session Highlights
You're in for a treat with keynote speaker Chris Messina of Google, BarCamp co-founder and one of the leading advocates of the open web. Groupon CEO Andrew Mason will be interviewed by business leader John R. Dallas, Jr. and a panel of expert questioners.
You'll also hear from:
* O'Reilly author Jeff Siarto on jumpstarting app development
* Paypal's Sudha Jamthe on trends in social payments
* siliconANGLE News Editor Kristen Nicole on the business of behavior
* KeyLimeTie CIO and Hackathon evangelist Peter Morano on how to use Hackathons for innovation & social change
* Former Threadless CTO Harper Reed on cloud computing and general awesomenes
...and much, much more.
Stay tuned on the SocialDevCamp Chicago website and by following @SDCChi for continued updates.
Hackathon
The hack is back and on the attack. You'll again get the opportunity to build the best social app and compete for your share of $3,000 in cash and prizes. The Hackathon kicks off the night before the event, lasting until Sunday morning when the teams face off in the presentations. For more details on prizes, pre-event locations, and competition rules see the Hackathon page.
Unconference
You have the opportunity to shape the content of the event with the Unconference. Here you can join your peers in an exciting series of unstructured and semi-structured sessions that turn the traditional conference on its head. Learn more on the Unconfernece page and raise your virtual hand with any suggestions to make this part of the event spectacular.
Register Today
We sold out before the event last year, so register now to secure your spot!
We look forward to seeing you in August!
Tim Courtney & Andy Angelos
Co-Chairs, SocialDevCamp Chicago
Sponsors
This event is made possible thanks to our awesome sponsors including:
Premier Sponsor
Hackathon Sponsor
Unconference Sponsor
Gold Sponsors
Additional Sponsors
You are receiving this email because you registered to attend a past SocialDevCamp Chicago event.
Unsubscribe <<Email Address>> from this list.
Our mailing address is:
SocialDevCamp Chicago
1133 N. Dearborn St.
Suite 3008
Chicago, IL 60610
Add us to your address book
Copyright (C) 2010 SocialDevCamp Chicago All rights reserved.
Forward this email to a friend
Update your profile
Email Marketing Powered by MailChimp
___________________________________
A refresher course: Divine Inc. Company News
Divine Inc. Company News
Chase sues tech exec Flip over $7M loan
(Crain's) - J. P. Morgan Chase & Co. is suing Andrew "Flip" Filipowski, a former Chicago tech entrepreneur, claiming he's failed to pay back a $7-million loan. In a breach of contract suit filed April 1, Chase says Mr. Filipowski failed...
Parlano lands $4.5 mil. investment
Parlano Inc., the instant messaging company that rose from the ashes of dot-com flameout Divine Inc., secured $4.5 million in combined investments from Boston-based Longworth Venture Partners and Calif.-based Oak Investment Partners. The proceeds...
Court hires CEO to shutter Divine
A Massachusetts Bankruptcy Court has appointed James Boles, a principal with Houston-based WoodWay Associates LLC, as liquidating CEO of Chicago's Divine Inc. Under contract terms that pay him $225 to $250 per hour, Mr. Boles is winding down the...
Flip in new venture with old firms
Embattled technology entrepreneur Andrew "Flip" Filipowski has emerged with a new company, SilkRoad Technology Inc., and a handful of software products formerly owned by his Divine Inc.SilkRoad is based in North Carolina, where Mr. Filipowski...
Divine fighting Flip's severance
Divine Inc. has asked a Boston Bankruptcy Court to nullify a 2001 employment contract that entitles founder and CEO Andrew "Flip" Filipowski to collect $6.5 million in severance payments from the company over five years. Chicago-based Divine also...
Founder revives WhittmanHart
Tech impressario Robert Bernard is getting back in touch with his roots. After acquiring the remnants of his former information technology consulting business last month from Chicago's Divine Inc., the defunct software and services firm, Mr...
Investors angry over Flip's flops
The first time Andrew "Flip" Filipowski lost a company, his ouster played out as farce. When an estranged business partner appeared at Naperville-based DBMS Inc. on a March morning in 1987 with armed security guards to eject Mr. Filipowski from...
'Flip' not a bidder for Divine assets
After blowing through more than $1 billion on acquisitions and ill-fated operations, Chicago's Divine Inc. is being auctioned for $57.1 million in cash and assumed liabilities. Andrew "Flip" Filipowski, Divine's controversial founder and...
Equity firm bids for Divine assets
Golden Gate Private Equity Inc. was the winning bidder for the bulk of Divine Inc.'s assets at an auction held Monday and Tuesday, court documents show. However, a Boston Bankruptcy Court overseeing the bankruptcy of Chicago-based Divine has...
School opposes RoweCom sale
Tufts University is suing to block the sale of Divine Inc. subsidiary RoweCom Inc. to Alabama-based Ebsco Industries Inc. until a Boston Bankruptcy Court resolves the fate of $1.5 million related to its periodical subscriptions for 2003.Medford...
'Flip' partnership seeks back rent
Habitat-Kahny LLC is suing Divine Inc., the troubled Chicago software and services company, for failing to pay $74,063 in rent on its 1301 N. Elston Ave. headquarters and for failing to repair and replace a crumbling seawall on the property, which...
Divine gets creditors committee
The creditors committee for Divine Inc. established last week by a Boston Bankruptcy Court includes some names that are well known in Chicago business circles. The group was selected by the court to represent the interests of all who hold...
MarchFirst trustee reclaims unit
Andrew Maxwell, MarchFirst Inc.'s bankruptcy attorney, would essentially take control of Divine Whittman-Hart Inc., the consulting subsidiary of troubled Divine Inc., under an agreement approved by a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago last week. The...
Divine under federal investigation
A federal grand jury in Chicago has launched a criminal investigation into Divine Inc., to find out what happened to $65 million it collected from libraries last year to pay publishers for magazine and journal subscriptions, the Chicago Tribune...
Real estate eases Divine collapse
Not everyone suffered equally in the meltdown of Chicago's Divine Inc. While investors ranging from small public shareholders to Chicago's business elite saw the value of their holdings wiped out during the company's three-year stumble from Internet...
Divine says buyout in works
As expected, Divine Inc. on Tuesday said it would file for protection from creditors in a Boston Bankruptcy Court where its troubled RoweCom Inc. subsidiary filed a separate Chapter 11 petition earlier this month. The Chicago-based Internet...
Divine set for Chapter 11
Divine Inc., Chicago's fallen Internet star, is expected to file for protection from creditors in a Boston Bankruptcy Court this week. Sources say that only an unlikely, last-minute intervention from a white knight acquirer could forestall the...
Divine stock falls as worries grow
Shares of Chicago's Divine Inc. tumbled 53% last week to 35 cents as financial turmoil raised concerns about the prospects of the Internet incubator-turned-software firm.Divine's stock has dropped 99% from a 52-week high of $18.75 reached March 16...
Divine plans sale of RoweCom
Divine Inc. on Monday said it has reached a deal to sell its troubled RoweCom Inc. subsidiary for an undisclosed sum to Alabama-based information management firm EBSCO Industries Inc. RoweCom, which provides magazine and journal subscriptions...
Divine/Faxon creditors join forces
Some of the nation's leading libraries and publishers have banded together to protect their interests in the wake of the collapse of Divine/Faxon Library Services, which handled orders for thousands of magazine and journal subscriptions.Representativ...
______________________________________
Darrell Dvorak
From: Darrell Dvorak <d5547k@yahoo.com>
Subject: "I am complicated and interesting."
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:46:54 -0700 (PDT)
To: Ron May <ron@themayreport.com>
Physically perhaps, but more so emotionally, intellectually and collegially. Would it help if I wish you better health without also wishing you better judgment?
__________________________________
Tarkus Murphy: Word from the Information Superglacier(TM)
From: "Tarkus" <tarkus@ripco.com>
Subject: Word from the Information Superglacier(TM) - GET BETTER SOON
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:06:11 -0400
To: "'The May Report'" <ron@themayreport.com>, <RONALDMAY@aol.com>
Ron,
Get better soon. Then get well!
Sounds like it may be a two stage process.
I thought I'd be going to Chicago this Summer until I saw what it costs to
fly from the Information Superglacier(TM) to Chicago!
Tarkus
_________________________________
Tom Johnson: I think this event already took place
From: "Johnson, Tom" <tom.johnson@cityofchicago.org>
Subject: RE: The May Report: 7/14/2010: The longer you live, the stranger things get
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:01:15 -0500
To: 'The May Report' <ron@themayreport.com>
Ron
We hope that everyone with the desire to market and network and do business in Chicago will join us and enjoy the 9th annual City Treasurer's Small Business Expo this Friday at the UIC Forum. While our whole list of workshops and event details are on the net at www.chicagocitytreasurer.com
As successful business owners can tell you - the true secret of social media is being social. Step away from the mouse - and join us at the UIC Forum all day Friday at Halsted and Roosevelt - Did we mention we work months in advance to provide EVERYTHING FREE!
Happy Summer
Tj
______________________________________
Mark Williams
From: Mark Williams <williams@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: The May Report: 7/14/2010: The longer you live, the stranger things get
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:12:33 -0400
To: The May Report <ron@themayreport.com>
Hi Ron,
I had to smile when I read this:
``I am being used as a case study by Dr. Malow and his students from Chicago Medical School and UIC because "I am complicated and interesting.""
Hang in there and get better fast,
Best,
Mark
______________________________________
Irfan Ahmad
From: "Ahmad, Irfan S" <isahmad@illinois.edu>
Subject: RE: The May Report: 7/14/2010: The longer you live, the stranger things get
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:14:49 -0500
To: The May Report <ron@themayreport.com>
Dear Ron
Get well soon, best wishes for quick recovery.
Thanks for keeping the light on!
Best wishes,
Irfan
Irfan Ahmad
University of Illinois
Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology
www.cnst.illinois.edu
_______________________________________
Thursday, August 5: Thursday, August 5: Thursday, August 5: Thursday, August 5: Chicago's largest data center executives social event!
From: "Steven E. Manos" <smanos@leetechnologies.com>
Subject: Chicago's largest data center executives social event!
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:10:49 -0400
To: "ron@themayreport.com" <ron@themayreport.com>
Ron-
I hope you are currently improving and that everything is on the upswing. I wanted to make those readers of yours in the data center/critical facility world aware of what I believe to be the largest monthly social event for this group in Chicago. I have included the formal invite below but please note that space is limited to 130 attendees (capacity of the room) so RSVP's are essential for admittance. This is not a sales-centric event but a venue for senior level data center execs to discuss innovation, war stories and to network with their peers. Should any of your readers be interested, please have them contact me at smanos@leetechnologies.com or 312-515-7386.
All-
Please join us for our next data center executives social (Lee Tech on Tap) on Thursday, August 5th 2010 in Downers Grove. (Please contact me for location and time) Drinks and hors d' oeuvres will be provided and we look forward to having yet another great event. For those who haven't attended one of our events in the past, Lee Tech on Tap was started under the auspices of creating a very informal venue where data center executives in the Midwest can come together to discuss issues, innovations and war stories with other peers in the industry. I started this group roughly seven months ago with 11 members and we have grown to well over 200 members with last month's event cresting 100 attendees.
We will likely have 1-2 additional industry bloggers in our midst so please feel free to seek those folks out as they will likely be posting on our event later in the month. I have included a link to Dave O'Hara's GreenM3 blogpost (www.greenM3.com) on our June event. Dave has one of the most widely read blogs in the industry and I recommend you make this one of your key RSS feeds for information on all aspects of our industry.
http://www.greenm3.com/2010/07/why-lee-technologies-on-tap-event-works-a-declaration-of-independence-from-typical-data-center-events.html
As always, please feel free to share this invite with fellow peers within the industry and bring others from your perspective companies as we are always looking to grow the group and increase mindshare. If you do intend on bringing others, please just let me know how many so I can plan accordingly. As usual, we are looking to keep vendors at a bare minimum at this event so if you have a vendor suggestion as a participant, please let me know ahead of time to see what event may be applicable to have them attend.
Thanks again everyone for your continued support and look forward to seeing you on August 5th!
Steven E. Manos
Manager | Central Region
smanos@leetechnologies.com
leetechnologies.com
2082 Jolly Roger Drive Edwardsville, IL 62025
312-515-7386
______________________________________
FCC's "Third Way" Endangers Internet Freedom
From: "Richard Morrison" <rmorrison@cei.org>
Subject: FCC's "Third Way" Endangers Internet Freedom
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:11:38 -0400
To: ron@themayreport.com
Contacts:
Richard Morrison, 202-331-2273
Ryan Radia, 202-331-2281
FCC's "Third Way" Endangers Internet Freedom
Commission Urged to Lift Legacy Rules on Telecom Providers
Washington, D.C., July 16, 2010-In regulatory comments submitted yesterday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute warned the Federal Communications Commission against imposing new regulations on broadband Internet providers and instead called on the agency to focus its efforts on reducing regulatory burdens on telecommunications networks.
The FCC's proceeding seeks comment on a proposal to reclassify the transmission component of broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service, governed by Title II of the Communications Act. But according to Ryan Radia, CEI Associate Director of Technology Studies, reclassifying Internet access would harm consumers and undermine the FCC's own public policy goals.
CEI's filing identifies several reasons why reclassifying broadband service is both unnecessary and destructive to consumer welfare, including:
A majority of Congress opposes broadband reclassification.Three separate letters to the FCC, signed by a combined 291 member of Congress, warn the agency against broadband reclassification. Instead of haphazardly imposing obsolete regulations on advanced telecom networks, the FCC should wait for Congress to clarify the archaic provisions of the Communications Act.
Broadband reclassification would undermine voluntary, private institutions capable of addressing network management tensions as they arise. Providers, content companies, and other stakeholders have a vested interest in working together to resolve disputes over network access and develop industry standards that foster innovation and predictability. These emerging market institutions are far better equipped than the FCC to maximize consumer welfare in the dynamic and rapidly evolving Internet ecosystem.
Competition among broadband providers is intensifying. Disruptive, cutting edge technologies are enabling new models of delivering Internet access to consumers. Subjecting nascent Internet entrepreneurs to rigid FCC rules would limit consumer choice, relegating users to today's established providers and foreclosing the emergence of firms that are yet to exist.
Regulatory uncertainty chills investment, which is especially harmful in the fast-growing world of high-speed Internet service. Reclassification paves the way for a future Commission to rigidly regulate nearly every aspect of broadband service and pricing, discouraging investors from placing rational bets on broadband infrastructure. The FCC's pledge to forbear from the most onerous aspects of Title II is hardly reassuring to investors given the notoriously fickle and unpredictable nature of bureaucracies.
###
CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest group that studies the intersection of regulation, risk, and markets. For more about CEI, visit www.cei.org/about-cei
________________________________________
Wednesday, Aug. 11: Wisconsin Security Research Consortium, the
Wisconsin Technology Council and the UW-Madison College of Engineering, will
be held 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
From: MEF@mail-list.com
Sender: mef@mail-list.com
Subject: The Midwest Entrereneurs Forum
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:44:36 -0500
To: ron@themayreport.com
This is from our friends up North It is not limited to Wisconsin companies
Jerry
Companies should apply now to showcase ideas
to feds during 'Skunk Works Olympics'
Early stage companies in Wisconsin and beyond will have an opportunity to
make presentations and meet with key people from federal agencies during the
Aug. 11 Skunk Works Olympics during the fourth annual Resource Rendezvous.
The conference, produced by the Wisconsin Security Research Consortium, the
Wisconsin Technology Council and the UW-Madison College of Engineering, will
be held 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 11 at the UW-Madison College
of Engineering, 1415 Engineering Drive.
Early-bird registration is $75 through July 18 and $85 thereafter and $40
for students; all register at www.wisecurity.org. Look under "Featured
Events."
About half a dozen companies will be selected to present in the Skunk Works
Olympics. Companies must register for the Resource Rendezvous and apply to
present by 5 p.m. CST Wednesday, July 28 through the website listed below.
Selected Skunk Works Olympics presenters will give a three-minute pitch to
showcase their research and product development ideas to federal science and
technology directors who will attend Resource Rendezvous. Participants will
have only three minutes and up to three PowerPoint slides to share
information; there will be ample networking time before and after formal
presentations.
"Presenters at past Resource Rendezvous events have established enduring
connections with federal science and technology directors, and in many cases
have won contracts and grants," said Jack Heinemann, director of the
Wisconsin Security Research Consortium.
To apply for the Skunk Work Olympics, you must do two things after
registering for the conference at www.wisecurity.org.
1) Submit an executive summary through the Wisconsin Angel Network
Deal-flow Pipeline. Click here for a direct link to the Deal-flow Pipeline.
You will create a user profile and submit your executive summary directly to
the website. Summary requirements are on the website. All bold fields are
required.
2) After submitting your executive summary through WAN's DFP, e-mail
Jodi Hoeser at jhoeser@wisconsintechnologycouncil.com and confirm that you
are applying to present at the Resource Rendezvous and if your submission
can be activated, allowing WAN's investor-members to view your submission.
For many firms, participation in the conference has led to growth and new
revenues. Companies selected for the Skunk Works Olympics will have many
opportunities to interest science and technology managers from federal
agencies. Companies will also receive space in our exhibit area.
The Resource Rendezvous will also feature opportunities for researchers,
grant writers, business leaders and other professionals to learn about the
R&D interests and related funding opportunities of participating agencies.
Speakers include: Jim Grove, Department of Homeland Security; Michael Hoard,
Marinette Marine; Greg Milman, National Institutes of Health; Ron
Marchessault, U.S. Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research
Center; Eric Ness, U.S. Small Business Administration; Larry Pollack,
Defense Threat Reduction Agency; George Solhan, Office of Naval Research;
and Dr. Renee Wagner and others from U.S. Agricultural Research Service.
To register and learn more about the Resource Rendezvous visit
www.wisecurity.org or contact Jodi Hoeser at 608-442-7557 ext. 26 or
jhoeser@wisconsintechnologycouncil.com.
Having trouble with the link? Simply copy and paste the entire address
listed below into your web browser:
http://guest.cvent.com/i.aspx?1Q,P1,46838E96-ED1D-4F9E-9582-6AE8E0AD404E
__________________________________
Jeffrey Meredith: Krugman: "The notion that tax cuts pay for themselves has no empirical support"
From: Jeffrey Meredith <jeffmere@gmail.com>
Subject: Krugman: "The notion that tax cuts pay for themselves has no empirical support"
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:46:09 -0400
To: ronaldmay@aol.com, ron@themayreport.com
Invincible Ignorance
Just in case you had some lingering notion that anyone in the Republican party was fiscally responsible, Mitch McConnell has weighed in in support of Jon Kyl:
[T]here?s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.
In a way you have to wonder what point there even is in trying to argue here. But anyway, look: it?s been a long time since Morning in America. We?ve now been through two two-term administrations, one of which raised taxes, the other of which cut them. Which looks like it presided over a more vibrant economy?
And who in their right mind would describe the Bush economy as ?vibrant?, anyway? Even during the peak of the housing bubble, it never achieved the kind of job growth that was routine in the Clinton years.
Oh, and as for revenue: we have a growing economy, which means that revenue tends, other things equal, to rise over time. But here?s what real federal revenue looked like since 1992:
Rapid, steady growth in the Clinton years; much less thereafter, even if you stop the clock just before the housing bubble burst.
In short, the notion that tax cuts pay for themselves has no empirical support. And yet the GOP leadership ? which claims to be oh so worried about the deficit ? is willing to stake America?s solvency on its belief that tax cuts are free.
Update: Also, for those readers who complain that I?m too partisan, that I should admit that there are two sides to the issues, this is a prime example of my problem. How am I supposed to pretend that these are serious people? The facts really do have a well-known liberal bias.
for themselves has no empirical support"
____________________________________
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Monthly Luncheon: Challenges and Opportunities for Business and Economic Growth in the Midwest
From: "EDC Chicago" <edcchicago@ameritech.net>
Subject: July 28 EDC Luncheon
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:26:54 -0500
To: "EDC Chicago" <edcchicago@ameritech.net>
July 28, 2010 Monthly Luncheon
Challenges and Opportunities for Business
and Economic Growth in the Midwest
Edward E. Gordon, Ph.D.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
The Tower Club
20 North Wacker Drive, 39th Floor
Chicago, Illinois
In the midst of widespread unemployment the U.S. and world economies still have a shortage of skilled talent. Increasingly complex technologies continue to set the pace of change as the baby boomer segment is moving into retirement. Succeeding generations have very different views of the work - life culture and are generally less educated particularly in technical areas. In Japan, Korea and many European nations, populations and workforces are shrinking. Even India and China cannot produce enough qualified talent to meet the demands of their rapid economic development.
Edward E. Gordon Ph.D is an internationally recognized author, researcher and speaker on the future of America's and the world's workforce. His is President of Imperial Consulting in Chicago and Palm Desert , California . His books include Winning the Global Talent Showdown, The 2010 Meltdown: Solving the Impending Jobs Crisis, Skills Wars and FutureWork. His research has appeared in numerous national newspapers and he has appeared on CBS, CNN and NPR.
Dr. Gordon will present real life examples of how business people, educators, government officials, union leaders, parents and activists are now partnering though community-based organizations (CBOs) to craft new education-to-employment systems for the 21st century technology-based economies.
The luncheon is at noon at the Tower Club, 39th floor, 20 North Wacker Drive, Chicago. The cost of the lunch and program is $40 for EDC members and $65 for non-members. There is no charge for EDC Corporate and Sustaining Members.
Reservations are mandatory. Reply to this email to make your reservation, call our office or prepay online via our website.
Click here to prepay online for the July 28, 2010 luncheon.
http://www.edcchicago.org/
Join us for our 30th Anniversary Celebration and Gala Dinner
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
The Cliff Dwellers Club, 200 South Michigan Avenue, The Penthouse, Chicago
Click here to learn more
Become an EDC Member
Membership provides the resources to organize & implement our programs. We have three levels of membership:
Individual, Sustaining and Corporate.
Join the EDC today! Simply click here
Upcoming Events:
Wednesday, August 25, 2010, Noon
Monthly Luncheon
"Midyear Economic Update - View from the Midwest"
Bill Strauss, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
.................
Tuesday, September 14 - 15, 2010
Midwest Clean Tech 2010 Conference
Sponsored by the Midwest Global Alliance
.................
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
30th Anniversary Celebration and Gala Dinner
The Cliff Dewellers Club, 200 South Michigan Avenue, The Penthouse, Chicago
.................
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monthly Luncheon
Neil Kane, Advanced Diamond Technologies, Inc,
From: "EDC Chicago" <edcchicago@ameritech.net>
Subject: July 28 EDC Luncheon
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:26:54 -0500
To: "EDC Chicago" <edcchicago@ameritech.net>
____________________________________
Musings on health care delivery, or how I almost bought the farm, by Ron May
I almost bought the farm from 1:50pm till 3:30pm last Thursday, the 15th. Severe shortness of breath, rapid breathing, combined with pulmonary adema and a weird heartbeat known as ventricular tachycardia, worse than and different from A-fib. Dr. Gill, the cardiologist, says that it lasted only two seconds and they know that from the heart monitor I was wearing. I don't think the irregular heart beat was the central problem.
It was touch and go for about 1 hr. 40 minutes. I could not have been on the verge of death for that long, but that was the length of time that elapsed from the start of the problem until its apparent resolution. They put me on the oxygen mask (known as a venti-mask) with 15 liters of pure 100% oxygen and that did help but it was a scary situation. Those nose canulas are only about 20% oxygen. At one point there were twenty people in my room, and they were talking about slitting my throat.
I heard from the nurse at my clinic that I "coded" but that is not confirmed and there are different levels of codes. Not all codes are blue. I did find out that code blue is when the heart stops; code gray is when the patient is out of control, and I was what they call RRT (Rapid Response Team)
used for cases where an emergency is developing.
They did what is called an ABG to determine blood gas. EKG, of course other tests.
Here is something interesting. I have been oozing like crazy with blood leaking out all over until Friday. They had me on the anti-biotic Zosyn four times a day until the 14th. One side effect of Zosyn: it causes your platelets to drop and mine went from 130 to 80. Your platelets help the blood to clot and they are your white blood cells.
Another drug they had me on which contributes to pletelets dropping is Protonix and they have taken me off of that.
Two hematologists have been in to see me several times, Dr. Ann Mauer who was at The University of Chicago and is now here at Masonic, and Dr. Paola Alvarez, a hematology resident who is a serious looker. I mean it. Rarely do you see a female doctor with those looks. She is from El Paso, which she told me has no illegal immigrant problem because they are "mean down there" and she went to med school in Mexico.
I was also told that I have anti-phospholipid syndrome which I will have to look up.
Just for kicks, I tried ro figure out how many docs I have seen this stay. Nephrology: Vohra and Rao; IR: Sakar; Surgery: Adajar; Internal Medicine: Badlani, Hussein, and Rodrieguez (she is a 2nd yr. resident who went to med school in the Dominican Republic); Infections diesase: Stake and Lisowski; Hematology: Mauer and Alvarez; Pulmonary: Kachru; Cardiology: Gill and I am sure I am missing one or two residents.
So, I should be out of here on Monday, the 19th, knock on wood. Dr. Rao (kidney) and I had a long talk today. One of the big reasons people who get transplants go back on dialysis is that they stop taking their meds. Those anti-rejection meds must be taken for the rest of your life after a transplant -- every single day, no exceptions. But sometimes people get lulled into as false sense of complacency or they cannot afford the meds. Why on earth is that? Well, it turns out that Medicare only covers the drugs for three years after the transplant! And they are horribly expensive. My cardiologist at Northwestern has a more hard line view. One transplant and that's it. She feels that this business of people getting two or three transplants is just not realistic.
Forget about the human factor, let's do the math. To keep a person in Dialysis for one month runs about $15K to $20K and that is not counting any hospitalizations which commonly go with dialysis (fistula and permacath problems, etc.) That is about $200K a year.
The cost of a transplant is $200K to $300K, and that does not include the drugs or the follow-on visits.
Clearly, in two years on dialysis, the cost exceeds that of a transplant.
Nephrologists and patients have been lobbying to get the Medicare to cover the meds well beyond the three years post transplant.
There are 500,000 people in the U.S. on dialysis yet only 80,000 on the transplant list. We have five transplant centers in Chicago: Rush, UIC, Northwestern, University of Chicago and Loyola. I have a bit of breaking news. Another dialysis transplant center is now Christ Hospital.
If there are so many people on dialysis, why are relatively so few on the transplant list?
Dr. Rao says that some are too old for it and some don't pass or want to go through the pre-qualification tests of which there are many. But he blames his fellow nephrologists as well!
Some of it is economic interest. When a patient has a transplant, he or she is taken over by the hospital doing the transplant for six months to a year and then in theory the transplant center gives that patient back to their doctor.
Whatever the reason, Rao says that his colleagues in nephrology don't push the patients hard enough to get the transplant. Very interesting.
But there is another social psychological factor that I know to be true from my own experience. A clinic is like a family and many patients become friends with each other and the staff.
Patients worry that if they go off dialysis, they will have no social life, they won't see their friends, and they won't know what to do with the "extra" time.
About a year ago, there was a great article in The New Yorker Magazine about the psycho-social aspects of living donors. The article really delves below the surface and talks about feelings of resentment, guilt and shame on both sides. The fabric of the family can be torn asunder.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/07/27/090727fa_fact_macfarquhar
This shortened version of the original New Yorker article is well worth reading. It appeared in The Week Magazine.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://theweek.com/article/index/104040/The_last_word_A_gift_from_the_gut
The last word: A gift from the gut
Paul Wagner donated a kidney to a stranger. Why, asks Larissa MacFarquhar, are we not sure he's a hero?
posted on December 11, 2009, at 9:05 AM
IT WAS THE day before Thanksgiving and Paul Wagner was on his lunch break, reading the paper. He worked as a purchasing manager at Peirce-Phelps, in Philadelphia, a wholesale distributor of heating and air-conditioning products. He was 40 years old and lived with his partner, Aaron, in a small apartment. He was pale and slightly built. He smoked and had a smoker's porous skin. His mother had died six months before, in her late 50s, of sarcoidosis. They had not had a good relationship, but her death had affected him quite deeply.
Wagner considered himself a "dry person"-curt, moody, sometimes rude.
He believed that, to people who didn't know him, he came off as an unsentimental type, possibly even a bit mean, though in fact he was not like that at all. He owned two cats and two elderly cocker spaniels that he had rescued from a shelter. He ran the United Way fundraising campaign at work for three years and organized food drives for local soup kitchens. He regarded these acts not as virtuous but as duties. He believed that if his needs were met and he found himself in possession of a surplus-of money or time or wherewithal-he was obliged to share it. Share it, not give it all away: He liked nice things-he wasn't going to become Amish. But it was very, very important to him that when he met his Maker he could say that he gave more than he took.
Reading the paper, Wagner noticed an article that described a website named MatchingDonors.com, where people who needed a kidney transplant could post a message describing themselves and their situation, perhaps appending a photograph. The hope was that a stranger would see the posting and be moved to donate. Wagner typed the name of the website into his computer. He clicked on the "search patients" box and typed in "Philadelphia." The first patient he saw was Gail Tomas. He enlarged her photograph on his screen so that he could examine every detail. She was a woman of mixed race in her late 60s. He stared at her, searching for clues to her personality in her hairstyle and how she wore makeup. Almost immediately, he felt that she was the one. He knew that his blood and her blood would match and that he would donate a kidney to her.
He went home and told his partner, "Aaron, there's this lady I read about that's going to die if she doesn't get a new kidney and I've decided to give one to her." Aaron said no. Wagner told him sorry, but he was going to do it anyway. Talking to his father was more difficult. Some years before, his father's second wife had had kidney disease. Wagner had offered to donate to her, but she and his father had felt that it was against their principles to ask so much of a person, even a son. So they refused his offer, and, waiting for a cadaver kidney, she died.
Wagner assumed that he and Tomas would not become friends after the surgery. He had given the matter some thought. How could they possibly have a healthy relationship, he reasoned. It would be bad for her to feel beholden to him, and it would be bad for him to have her believing that he was some kind of saint. The whole thing would just be way too freighted and creepy and was better avoided. Tomas, however, had other ideas.
Tomas was a retired opera singer. If Wagner was dry, she was the opposite-vivacious, chatty, candidly emotional. For her, their first meeting, in the hospital waiting room, was wonderful: She felt that they'd known each other all their lives.
Wagner managed to be friendly when Tomas introduced herself, but he was all churned up afterward. He didn't know what to make of this exuberant lady he was giving his kidney to; he couldn't figure out what emotions he should allow himself to experience. His mother had died less than a year before, and now here he was potentially entangling himself with another very sick older woman, and what did that mean? Donating a kidney to find yourself a new mother, what could be more obviously twisted than that? He was also worried that he'd done a bad thing by allowing himself to meet Tomas at all. It made him feel guilty. Did it diminish the value of his deed to accept her gratitude? Wouldn't he be a better person if he hadn't met her and had received no thanks? Had his donation now become just a matter of gratifying his ego?
The transplant surgeon was puzzled by Wagner. He wasn't sure that he was willing to do the surgery-he was concerned that it might be a violation of his Hippocratic oath to operate on a healthy person who wasn't even related to the recipient. They met and talked for more than an hour. Near the end of the conversation, Wagner was astonished to see that the surgeon was crying.
Doctors tend to be deeply suspicious of altruistic donors. Especially in the early days of kidney transplants, in the late '60s and early '70s, many doctors saw altruistic donation through the lens of psychoanalysis, and, viewed thus, it looked troubling indeed. What was "altruism," after all? A motive so much in conflict with primary instinct had to represent some kind of pathology. Was it masochism? Unresolved guilt? Donating an organ to a stranger was not just not admirable, doctors felt-it was perverse, it offended the conscience. It was against human nature. Surgeons and psychiatrists went to heroic lengths to draw out the conflicts and ambivalence that lay hidden beneath donors' supposed willingness to undergo surgery.
Even the recipients of organs were ambivalent. One man was so overcome by a feeling of obligation toward his donor sister that he couldn't stand to look at her. A son refused a kidney from his mother because, he told his surgeon, "She's devoured enough of me already." The force of gratitude could be dreadful with the gift of an organ, when no thanks seemed adequate and reciprocation was impossible. Doctors began to realize that to transplant an organ was to stir up the muck of familial emotions, with consequences that could not be predicted. Donation tended to bind the donor and the recipient together, sometimes with love, sometimes with guilt, or gratitude, or a feeling of physical union due to the presence of the organ of one in the other's body. The strength of these new bonds could weaken other bonds and leave families strained and distorted. If a person donated to a sibling, for instance, might he not become too close to that sibling, at the expense of his relationship with his spouse? One transplant physician believed that, after a sister donated to her brother, the sister "felt absolute control over her brother, as if she had castrated him." After the surgery, instead of going home to his wife and children, he moved into his sister's house to recover.
Transplants have become more commonplace, and attitudes toward donation of organs have become somewhat less fraught. Potential donors register on MatchingDonors.com almost every day. Either through MatchingDonors or through a hospital, about 600 have gone through with surgery. But the change in attitude is mourned by those who feel that it signals an encroaching spiritual callousness. To the ethicist Gilbert Meilaender, for instance, the reluctance that many feel toward donating organs, even after death, is not selfishness or superstition but a sign that our sense of the body as something whole, something human, something sacred, has not yet withered. A society in which everyone in cheerful rationality signed his donor card without a qualm would be, to Meilaender, a horror. The giving of an organ, by the living or the dead, should not be purged of anguish. For him, the tyranny of gratitude is not a perversion of love but the prototype of love: the bond between parents and children.
AFTER THE SURGERY, Wagner started feeling very sad all the time. He admitted to himself that it was difficult to come down off the high of being a hero. Worse, Tomas had suddenly stopped returning his phone calls. Was she angry with him? he wondered. Looking for advice, he started posting on a website, Living Donors Online, and he discovered that many donors had to deal with peculiar emotions after surgery. He read about one case in which a woman had donated to her sister, but the kidney was rejected and her sister died; after that, the rest of the family stopped speaking to her. One spouse donated to the other, then the recipient spouse left the donor, perhaps because the burden of gratitude had left the marriage irredeemably distorted. That had happened quite a few times, it seemed.
Finally, worried, Wagner started calling hospitals, and he found Tomas. She'd been very sick and hadn't wanted to scare him, but now she was better, and she wanted Wagner in her life. Still smarting, he wasn't sure. She invited him to her son's wedding. He declined, several times, until finally she got angry and yelled at him, and that, somehow, for Wagner, made everything all right. If she could yell at him, then he was not always perfect in her eyes and they could have a normal friendship. She wasn't his mother, he knew that; it would be fine. In fact, Tomas did consider herself his mother, more or less. She wanted him at her house on holidays, she hounded him about smoking and taking his blood-pressure medication. But it was fine anyway.
So what do you make of Paul Wagner? Do you find the idea of donating a kidney to a stranger noble? Or freakish? If the latter, is it the extremity of the act that baffles you? Does it seem crazy, giving something that precious to someone for whom you have no feeling, and whom, if you knew him, you might actually dislike?
Perhaps it's not quite as crazy as it sounds. Kidneys are now often extracted laparoscopically, which leaves only tiny scars. A donor usually feels normal again in two to four weeks, the remaining kidney growing to compensate. And the risk of complications is low. If a person gets kidney disease, it affects both kidneys, so as far as that goes, a donor is not giving away his spare (though a spare kidney is useful if the other is damaged in a car accident, say, or if a person develops kidney cancer). Still, the carnality of the act, the violation of the body, stops people. Its moral logic seems, to some, inhumanly rational, suicidally so: If we're going to start thinking of bodies as repositories of spare parts for other people, why not donate all our organs and save many lives?
Most people find it uncomplicatedly admirable when a person risks his life to rescue a stranger from fire, or from drowning. What, then, is it about saving a stranger by giving a kidney, a far lesser risk, that people find so odd? Do they feel there is something aggressive about the act, as though the donor were implicitly rebuking them for not doing it, too? (There is no rebuke in saving a stranger from drowning-you weren't there, you couldn't have done it. And you can always imagine that you would have if you had been.) Or perhaps it's that organ donation, unlike rescue, is conceived in cold blood, and coldblooded altruism seems nearly as sinister as coldblooded malevolence.
From a story originally published in The New Yorker. ©2009 by Larissa MacFarquhar. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In our continuing quest to understand how the health care delivery system can be so irrational, stick this feather in your cap.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my hemoglobin is dropping like a rock again. It was at 12.5 a month ago, high enough to satisfy three women at once (in my dreams), but as of today, it is back down to 9.6. Below 8 and we are back to transfusion time. It is no doubt because of the infection which Dr. Baldani said yesterday to me was bad.
I guess it is a little late for me to complain about a massive digression.
_________________________________________
END OF REPORT |
|
|