back in the saddle

Wow! It has been a while since my last post. A LOT has happened. On the positive side, I have started work on a new product (little premature to get into it now) but that is not insignificant. I tend to float a lot of ideas but actually undertaking one...well, that is pretty infrequent. It seems that I am interested in nexus events (where a bunch of interesting things intersect). Open Innovation, for example, was what I was involved with at NineSigma. Speaking of NineSigma, they picked-up $4 million (or so) recently of fresh funding. They seem to be making solid progress...

Anyway, I will be head-down for a while getting this rolling...

Rick

Interviewing Entrepreneurs

Over the last couple of months I have been interviewing dozens of entrepreneurs. We are starting to post the interviews on Cisco eTube in the Program Guide under Entrepreneurial Mindset. We will also be adding videos to the elientrepreneur website. And, finally, I will start posting some of the interviews here and discussing what I thought was useful or interesting...

Stay tuned...
Rick

Canadian University Puts IT Whiz Kids in 'Dormcubator'

The University of Waterloo is turning one of its residence halls into a think tank, where students can collaborate on Web, mobile, and other apps. The University of Waterloo is giving over one of its residence halls to Velocity, a new incubator where students can collaborate on Web, mobile, and digital media applications with their fellow budding tech entrepreneurs and perhaps help breathe some life back into the incubator model. Velocity will be housed in the 72-bed Minota Hagey dormitory on campus and will house 70 upper-level students per term who will work together on creating viable products and brushing up on their business skills, according to project leader, Sean Van Koughnett, who manages the university's Media & Mobility Network Project. http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/03/068203

A big Peak Mojo out to U of Waterloo

(Thanks Thom for the link)

The old Cleveland death ray...

Boing Boing has a reference to the old cleveland death ray pictured here:

The old death ray is in a box in my basement here in Cleveland:

Vivek Wadhwa on Entrenpreneurship, Innovation, Education and Immigration

Vivek spoke recently at the City Club in Cleveland. I highly recommended the podcast if you have any interest in entrepreneurship, innovation, education, and/or immigration.

DirectCap

I recently set up a wiki and have added a couple of items:

-DirectCap - a lightweight investment vehicle for microenterprises (specifically startups) to raise capital

-a way to teach STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) using interactive digital media

These are both works in progress and are open to collaboration.

All that latent talent...

This piece by Paul Graham nicely sums up what Peak Experience is all about. While our approach may be a little different, the objective is the same.

"There is an enormous latent capacity in the world's hackers that most people don't even realize is there. That's the main reason we do Y Combinator: to let loose all this energy by making it easy for hackers to start their own startups."

We will also be doing this at Peak...