Special Speaker: Paul Brainerd - 5:45pm Monday Nov 19, 2007
November 5th, 2007The Green Entrepreneurship Group and the Social Entrepreneurship Group are co-sponsoring a very special event for our entire network:
Paul Brainerd, noted Northwest Entrepreneur to speak on the UWB campus - Monday November 19 5:45 PM – in room 041 in the UW1 Building.
Paul Brainerd - founder of Aldus Corporation (now part of Adobe Systems), developers of the first desktop publishing program Pagemaker - head of the Brainerd Foundation will be speaking at the Center for Student Entrepreneurship at UW Bothell. The session is open to our entire network and friends. Paul will be talking about the rising interest in ecologically friendly businesses and the growth of sustainable business communities in the Pacific Northwest.
If you’d like to be electronically invited to this special event, please notify either the Green Group Chair Chris Geddes (cjgeddes@msn.com) or the Social Entrepreneurship Chair Loc Le (loc.ngoc.le@gmail.com).
Mid-Summer Meet and Greet
August 18th, 2007August 24, 2007
Mid-Summer Arts Festival
ENventure
The Network for Entrepreneurs
This is it! Our big summer networking event! You’re invited to the 2nd Annual Summer gathering for the ENventure network. It’s a meet and greet, but also a mini-arts festival at the Country Village in Bothell. There’s a full roster of activities to go along with your networking.
When: 5:00 to 9:00 pm Friday, August 24, 2007
Where: Country Village in Bothell
* A dessert table at Papa’s Place It acts as a gathering place! It’s air conditioned. You may consider throwing in $5 or $10, or even something small to defray the costs. If you can’t, we’d rather you come anyways and sample the desserts and enjoy the networking.
* A “Meet the VIP” program over the dessert tables at Papa’s Place; we’ve asked a number of experienced business professionals as well city and university officials to make an appearance. We’ve published a tentative schedule but we’ll be adding more VIPs after the weekend.
* Silent Auction – Items and Services of all kinds are being auctioned. There are valuable and light-hearted items. All proceeds to go the Center for Student Entrepreneurship. The Fund’s intent is to award grants to support student startups.
* Wine Tasting – Country Cottage Wines is sponsoring a wine tasting. They have also donated a wine tasting event to the silent auction. They have also donated their facility for many of our meetings. After your sip of wine, please be sure to thank the owners: Rudy and Betty!
* Special Art Show – The Art & Soul Gallery is showing paintings by talented female artists. These artists will be present to answer your questions. The Gallery will have some wine and chocolate to complement your viewing. It’s the annual “Wine Woman & Chocolate” affair.
* Native American Flute Quest – You’ll hear flute performances as well as view some of the “flutes” being used by local artists.
* Late Night Merchants – Because of the strong turnout to last year’s event, some of the merchants are doing extended hours and have also donated items to the event.
We’d love it if you can RSVP. If you can’t RSVP, come anyways. A headcount helps. Just email Dave Thomson (david@designer-web.com) or Alan Leong (aleong@gmail.com) for an evite.
Warmer Experience but is it Entertainment?
February 17th, 2007Last night, I participated in a fascinating discussion of Second Life with performer George Michael. George performs concerts on Second Life, connects with fans, cells CDs, and gets tipped in Linden Dollars.
With over 3M registered accounts and 30K concurrent users online, Second Life has become a phenomenon.
“People want their personal experiences captured and shared”
From Wikipedia”
“The Medium is the Message” is a phrase meaning that the generic form of media is more important than any “meaning” or “content” that the media conveys. For Marshall McLuhan, the content of media is irrelevant. The form of the medium itself is what changes our consciousness.
McLuhan examines television as an extension of the movie, with the exception that the visual quality of television as a medium is much less resolute than a movie as it would be seen in a theatre. Whereas a movie extends man’s vision to a high degree and is thus “hot,” a television image with less detail requires the viewer to fill in more details with their imagination and is therefore a “cool” medium.
Things have changed since McLuhan made that quote. Home entertainment systems have become warmer mediums, but what is second life? For audio concerts, it’s hotter and colder than traditional audio mediums. It captures a “virtual audience” and thus creates a shared experience.
Rebecca Nesson, an instructor at Harvard who brought her Legal Studies class to Second Life in the second half of 2006. “Normally, no matter how good a distance-learning class is, an inherent distance does still exist between you and your students,” she says. “Second Life has really bridged that gap. There is just more unofficial time that we spend together outside of the typical class session.” (Lagorio, Christine. “The Ultimate Distance Learning“, New York Times, 2007-01-07.)
Now here’s the rub. Is Second Life entertainment? It certainly encompasses it, but it’s something more. It’s not just recreation because some people are generating regular income from it. What is it? (in one sentence please).
And what does the entertainment in Second Life represent?
Topher’s Proposition 1
February 16th, 2007So proposition 1: technology is neither increasing nor decreasing span of control in any significant way, but is rather shifting the loci of the spheres of control, taking over some aspects and losing control of others.
Questions to Ponder (Topher White)
February 11th, 2007Questions to ponder:
Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, said in the Wall Street Journal that there is not enough talent in Hollywood to produce even half the content we’re currently producing. What does this mean to alternative media? Does 6 minutes of 8mm fame on YouTube really translate into 22 episodes of 44 minutes each?
Last week I went to a small club concert for Daughtry (AWSOME BAND!). Everyone in the audience had their camera phones out snapping shots, and I knew they were going to be up on blogs the next day. But the phones and
blogs are distantly secondary to the live show itself. How does technology contribute to non-electronic experiences?
How do art and commerce mix? See -
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7213219 and
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7248869
Think about it!
Topher White
Worshipful Master, Kirkland Lodge 150, F&AM of Washington
Author, Technologist, Visionary, Inventor and Really Good Cook
Redmond, WA
The Future of Entertainment
January 13th, 2007- Guest Expert: Topher White, ABC/Disney
- Guests: By Invitation Only (see the evite)
- When: 4:00 pm, Friday, Feb 16, 2007 to Sunday Morning Feb 18, 2007
- Location: Holmes Harbor (Freeland), Whidbey Island, WA
- Cost: $150 per person (Double occupancy per room)
Description
Youtube, IPtv, mobile broadband, iPhones, Home Entertainment systems, Lost and Heroes online. Where is entertainment headed?
Topher White led justification and implementation (of the infrastructure portion) of the first advertiser supported network television episodes put online: “Lost”. Topher will open the retreat with the future trends that drive the entertainment industry. The conferees will then informally hash out the implications in small discussions.
Conferees are asked to skim over “The Long Tail” or “Blue Ocean Strategy“. After a brief executive presentation on the books, we’ll also begin hashing this out. The concepts will thread through our next few thinking retreats.
The retreat site is a new 2-story, 6-bedroom house. The accommodations and setting are luxurious; it’s conducive to vigorous discussions or quiet meditation.
Welcome to enVenture, the Entrepreneurs Network Venture
January 13th, 2007The Entrepreneurs Network had its origins out of student and alumni entrepreneurs from the University of Washington, Bothell. The network grew to include professional friends and key “entrepreneurial-minded” employees of these companies.
The network is about to incorporate as enVenture and among other things, will offer group health insurance to member companies. At its core, however, is an educational and networking program that caters to members at differeing experience levels.