It is difficult to escape our day-to-day lives but it is important that we do. I love spending time in environments where people just know me as Tom rather than in my professional roles.

The geek-life is fun but it's not enough. Understanding the culture of our times is important to every business, to every startup--but you won't get it unless you go out and get it. No TechCrunch, no Giga, no Twitter, know tech-nothing--just getting out into a wider culture is important.

Here is one way to do that...

Here is an event, the 11 day Hornucopia music festival in San Francisco, a celebration of any music with horns-- that deserves support--especially the upcoming Saturday show with the Jazz Mafia Summit at the Rickshaw Stop in Hayes Valley.

Allison Lovejoy from Lovejoy Lowdown has the details . . . She interviews Sol Crawford, one of the more interesting of San Francisco's young music promoters. He is a co-partner at Amnesia, which has earned a stellar reputation as one of the best live performance rooms in the Mission district.

Click To Play

http://blip.tv/file/1218918

The Hornucopia Festival is also a non-profit effort to benefit community organizations through a free music workshop, an educational presentation on the provocative history of brass and horn music, and as a fundraiser for two worthy causes: delivering new instruments into the hands of beleaguered youth second line bands in New Orleans and raising money for a humanitarian circus that presents free shows and workshops to refugee children in Kosovo.

http://www.hornucopiafestival.org/