Silicon Valley Watcher - reporting on the business of technology and media

The best panel (by far) I saw at Fortune Brainstorm was "2018: Life on the Net." It was moderated extremely well by Quincy Smith, CEO of CBS Interactive. On the podium was Lawrence Lessig, professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Joichi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons and Chairman of Six Apart Japan, and Philip Rosedale, founder and chairman of Linden Lab, (Second Life.)

I'm currently editing the video of the panel and all were very good but wanted to pull out this segment featuring Mr Ito, who is one of my new favorite people to watch. He has some very original insights. During this segment, Vint Cerf, (Father of the Internet) calls out that he is a "venture communist!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ox02qM_yuc

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Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, has ignited some interesting debates on the subject of media versus PR. I posted about it yesterday, in "Long Tail of Bad PR" in which he calls out by name more than 370 PR people that have sent him bad pitches, and then bans them from his inbox, forever...

Wednesday evening I couldn't avoid the subject, and someone asked me if they were on Chris Anderson's blacklist, and I didn't know. I was chatting about this with my friend Heddi Cundle, and it struck us that there were some wonderful opportunities here.

For example:

1- If you aren't on Chris Anderson's blacklist we can get you on it. For just $75 we will send a press release in your name that has absolutely nothing to do with "Wired" magazine. It is guaranteed to land you at the top of his list or your money back.

Plus, you get a T-Shirt: "I'm on the Wired list how about you?" on the back is your name and several hundred others (only available in black.)

And you get a coffee mug with "Chris is steamed" (copyright: Heddi Cundle.)

2- Coming to Facebook very soon, when you get the invitation please join the group: "Keep Chris Anderson's knickers out of a twist." (Generously sponsored by Fruit of the Loom.)

3- Also, please join: "Don't pitch anything to Wired for six months and see how they do" which was a popular sentiment among my PR contacts.

I'm sure SVW readers are brimming with suggestions, don't be shy, Chris likes it, it shows humility :-)

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Technorati Tags: wired

It was an interesting turnout at the Social Media Club Tuesday evening. Social Media Club is run by my friends Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells.

Tuesday's theme was introduced by Raines Cohen and the subject was:"Saving the Earth through Social Media: Public Education about the Global Climate Crisis through Blogging and Web Publishing."

Not surprisingly, we barely scratched the surface, which is good because there are many ways to scratch this theme, especially since our tools are so new.

I didn't catch everybody's name but here are some of the web sites associated with the people at Tuesday's event, or recommended by them:

• Kari Daniels and her documentary "Voices of Dissent."
• Raines Cohen
• Greener.com - a green search site.
• Freecycle Changing the World One Gift at a Time
• Podaddies - Dynamic Video Ads
• Yahoo! Answers - How can the human race survive the next hundred years
• Justin.tv
• Tracked in America
• The Digital Tipping Point the culture of freedom in cyberspace
• SOMAcast - South of Market in San Francisco
• mp3death.com
• my-currency knowledge is currency
• Jyte Spread the Cred
• GUBA - Enjoy, upload, and share free videos.
• Webstrategy, Inc

My apologies if I missed anyone. There was lots of great conversation, Chris will post the podcast.

What struck me about the evening was something that I noticed when I first arrived here in 1984--how little debate there is between groups of people. We spend way too much time with people we agree with most of the time.

The culture here rewards agreement but not debate. Americans tend to view debate as a disagreement and therefore it should be avoided. But in the UK, debate and disagreement are considered to be part and parcel of an excellent conversation.

Here, there is a strong tendency to only speak with like-minded people.

I'd love to know how we can use all these wonderful collaborative, social tools to engage in a conversation about global warming that is not parochial. Surely this is an issue that transcends Republican or Democrat labels? How do we get involved in debate rather than grandstanding?

If you rise late in the morning you look to the future, if you rise early in the morning you look to the past.

This is not a saying from Confucius, but it does refer to the region of Confucius. It is my way of saying: are you looking east or west?

Is your day 5 to 11 or is it 11 to 5?

By which I mean do you rise at 5am and sleep at 11pm? Or do you rise at 11am and sleep at 5am?

Are you on East Coast time or are you on Asian time?

This point came up in a fascinating conversation with the remarkable Selina Lo, President and CEO of Ruckus Wireless, a leading IPTV startup. More on that conversation later...

I keep Asian times, although for different reasons than Ms. Lo. [I like to joke that crypt space is cheaper than crib space :-)]

BTW take a look at the Ruckus Wireless logo. . . that is certainly a good omen for 2006, the Chinese New Year of the Dog.

It's been a hectic week and it's not even half-over (and I'm backed up on my emails...)

I caught up with M.R. Rangaswami Monday, and M.R. is definitely in my top ten list of VCs. He also publishes one of the best darn enterprise software publications out there: Sandhill.com.

And he also puts together one of the best enterprise software conferences in Silicon Valley. This year's two-day conference: Software 2006 begins April 4 and promises to build on the momentum of the prior two conferences.

This year, Ray Lane (one of SVW's top people of 2005) is one of the keynote speakers. BTW, check out Ray Lane's freshly published column on Sandhill.com, called "The Innovate-Dominate Imperative."

I'll be writing more about M.R. and the software conference later this week.

. . .

It was also good to catch up with my friend Annie Kim, who used to work at RightNow Technologies, the CRM on-demand company. She is in the middle of her MBA studies at MIT.

This is one of the toughest business programs in the world and that's why its MBA graduates are among the most sought after by leading corporations. Annie and her classmates last week toured and met with many of the top Silicon Valley companies such as Google, Nvidia, and SAP's large, local organization.

Here is Therese Poletti's news story from the San Jose Mercury: Scouting out Silicon Valley.

. . .

Take a look at The Ruckus Room from Ruckus Wireless as a good example of a corporate blog with lots of the right bits. It is graphically simple, sophisticated, and clever. Plus it has some attitude; take a look at this post about Selena the ceo. (I've been promised an interview...if I suddenly disappear without trace you'll know where to ask questions first :-)

I give The Ruckus Room seven out of ten clicks in the corporate blog category.

Here are some of my top people of the year....more to come... :-)

James Hong, one of the founders of Hot or Not (absolutely brilliant idea) asked me if I could draw attention to a new project, an old idea, but made new.

What this also shows is that the new generation of young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are not as tight with their money as the old lot of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, who have given this region a reputation for stinginess while they made out like bandits (John Doerr et al)

Yes, big grants to endow seats of learning in your name are all very well, but it ain't nothing as a percentage of your wealth. Let's see our Valley elite step up to the plate on this scale:

From James's Blog:

"10 Over 100 has launched!

I'd recently been wondering how much I should be giving to charity. What's too much, what's too little? Not belonging to a religion that tells me how much to tithe, it's a big question.

Josh and I started a website called 10 over 100 where we make the promise to give 10% of whatever we make over $100k to charity. So like if I make $150k a year, I would give 10% of $50k, which is $5,000 (pretax, so it really amounts more to being out of pocket maybe $3k)

ANYONE can make the promise no matter how much you make (if you don't make $100k yet, you are promising to start it once you DO make over $100k, and hopefully you will give whatever you can in the meantime). So all you princes and princesses out there, make the promise now!!

The hope is that by creating a rule about how much to give, it will become standard practice and will increase overall giving.. kind of how we have rules for how much to tip in the US. If those rules of social etiquette didn't exist, there would be a lot less tipping going on!"

Do it for Thanksgiving:

http://www.10over100.org/

Carly Fiorina is now on the speaking circuit and you can book her from the Washington Speakers Bureau.

Jack Welch was on Charlie Rose recently and he said good things about Carly. He said the HP board behaved badly in meddling with the company and that "her numbers weren't bad."

Here is an excerpt from Carly's page at the Washington Speakers Bureau.

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

While Larry has been busy purging the executive ranks of PeopleSoft, Jennifer Glass, vice president of communications at Oracle for nearly seven years has slipped away to become vp of communications at Sony USA.

I’m hearing that it’s not just Jennifer that Sony has snagged—it’s quietly building up a formidable comms and exec team and seems to be gearing up for a big push this year. And why not? Everybody is chattering about the digital home, digital entertainment systems, consumer electronics, etc. And the Sony brand remains a very strong brand, despite some missteps in recent years.

I’ve worked with Jennifer many times and she is very good. She’s had to leave San Francisco and move to New York, but's she’s from that part of the world anyway. Jennifer’s promised me an interview next time she’s in town.

I bet she’s got some interesting Larry stories to tell, but then again, who doesn’t? I didn’t register LarryWatch.com for nothing…it cost me $8…coming to a website near you very soon.

by Candida Kutz for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

Tom and I met with the founders of Voce Communications last Friday, 10 Dec., for an informal lunch meet and greet (see Tom's companion piece). Among the guests were Nancy Evars and Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo, who worked together to put up the Yahoo Search Blog.

This pairing in itself was interesting to me, as engineers (Jeremy) and marketing types (Nancy) have traditionally been allergic to one another. (I've seen this many times from my former vantage point inside many startups.) So I found it fascinating they have managed to work together to create a succesful blog.

by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

The Tech Museum Awards shine a well-deserved spotlight today on Silicon Valley innovators who have applied technology to humanitarian causes.

by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

Paul Otellini will become Intel's chief executive when Craig Barret ascends to chairman next May, the Associated Press reports.

by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

The man with the cure for China market fever is Lip-bu Tan, "one of the first U.S.-based VCs to begin investing in China," according to the San Jose Mercury News.

by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

Heard the one about the men's room encounter between Bill Gates and Joe Kraus, founder of Excite.com during the dot-com boom and more recently of JotSpot?

by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

Intel CEO Craig Barrett got down on his knees and begged forgiveness for cancelling the 4-gigahertz Pentium 4 chip.