Cerdafied...startups, people & the variety Hour

The power of WE.

Gore kicked off WE today, an advocacy campaign for the fight on global warming. Great stuff. Gore showed this video during his preso at TED weeks back, which is also on the site.

Technorati Tags: Al Gore, WE, Global Warming

VON, March Madness, Beavis and Butthead and a bad glass of wine.

Things have been busier than normal lately. I missed most of VON. I didn't attend until yesterday, when I was moderating a panel on phone numbers. So I showed up a couple hours early to spend some time there, but the exhibits had already closed the prior day. All that was left were 70 people and a handful of panel sessions. Since the place was a ghost town, I made a pit stop in the bar to catch up on the Kentucky/Marquette game. I asked what wine they had by the glass, and the waiter told me "We have chardonnay, merlot, and cabernet." That's when I knew I was in trouble. (It reminded me of this Beavis and Butthead episode where all Butthead said was "We have vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.") So I asked which cabernet's they had and got a choice of two, so I picked one.

Yuck. I think I'll go in and listen to a session.

So off I went, to see a session on identity and presentity. This is what the room looked like when I got there.

It filled up with about 15 people, but that was it. It was then that I realized I either had ADD or was in the wrong place. I must have checked my email a dozen times, and engaged into 3 different text chats. The rest of the time I was knodding off.

Years ago when I was in the middle of spinning my last company up, VON was a place to be to talk about SIP, do deals with suppliers and actually learn some things that were trying to break thru. It seems as though VON is the place to still do those things, but if you've already done those things that what else is new? Sure there's more to do with policy stuff, video, etc, but not for me in particular. I realized that I no longer suit the profile of a VON attendee in any way, shape or form. And if the 70 people in attendance were representative of the whole, I'm not sure I fit in the demographic either! It could just be that the final 70 were those guys from giant telcos who were sent to the show. That said, I did appreciate the opportunity to moderate a panel, and I did enjoy it. I'll remain a fan of VON because it does address things that other conferences don't, but I doubt I'll personally be there.

Technorati Tags: VON

Birds and the Bees

So I was out with Aaron from the office today, getting some soup and a margarita at Blue Agave. My compadre from Blue Agave came by and asked me in Spanish if I drove the silver Prius, and I said yes. He said you might want to check it out because the Police are out there. I assumed I was being towed for parking in the wrong area or something. Then I looked more closely - and it was bees! Freaking bees swarming my car.

Those that know me well, know that I keep my ride squeaky clean, so there's not like an old container of Haagen-Daaz in the cab somewhere! So anyway, Aaron and I went and got a beer while the animal control people were doing their thing. They decided to leave some substance there to attract the bees (let's call this a Spanish fly for lack of a better term). So we went a pub to wait it out and doing mail from our iPhones.

Technorati Tags: bees, birds and the, blue agave

Running Man

El Desayuno

Spring VON

Heading down the road to Spring VON this week to catch up with friends and talk about phone numbers. I'll be moderating a panel called "Tossing the Digits to Add Anonymity" Thursday at 3PM.

From the VON website:

It’s not necessarily glamorous to talk about phone numbers, but it is interesting to discover that phone numbers have a degree of anonymity that is useful in some applications. With the decline of second line revenue, and some even eliminating their landlines altogether, the opportunities for these “tossed digits” can be a source of new income for service providers. This panel will look at some of the new applications that take advantage of numbers requiring anonymity.

• What are the applications taking advantage of this surplus of numbers?
• Does LNP play a role in enabling applications with tossed digits?
• What is the life cycle of numbers used for anonymity?

Speaker(s): Jeff Black CEO and Founder TalkPlus
Mahesh Lalwani Founder & CEO Ccube, Inc.
Frank Paterno VP of Marketing Intelliverse
Moderator: Michael Cerda Co-Founder and CEO Jangl

Technorati Tags: Spring VON 2008

'The whole mass, not less."

Some good friends of mine baptized their baby this weekend in the Catholic church. (I went to Catholic school for 7 years). I hadn't been to mass per se in a while, and being there brought back memories:

1. I can't understand every 3rd word of the priest because of the echo.
2. I can't understand every 4th word because of the accent of the priest.
3. I have always day dreamt my way through my misunderstandings.
4. I have always felt like I've done the right thing by going.

Now, for the kicker... In the back of the church near the exits are these signs:

This is a reminder to those people that sneak out of church after communion I guess. Funny.

Technorati Tags: mass

The whole mass, not less."

Some good friends of mine baptized their baby this weekend in the Catholic church. (I went to Catholic school for 7 years). I hadn't been to mass per se in a while, and being there brought back memories:

1. I can't understand every 3rd word of the priest because of the echo.
2. I can't understand every 4th word because of the accent of the priest.
3. I have always day dreamt my way through my misunderstandings.
4. I have always felt like I've done the right thing by going.

Now, for the kicker... In the back of the church near the exits are these signs:

This is a reminder to those people that sneak out of church after communion I guess. Funny.

Technorati Tags: mass

the Mexican Kramer

Ok, so I frequent Blue Agave in Pleasanton, mostly for the soup. Someone in my party pointed out that the head waiter resembled Kramer, so I had to...

Technorati Tags: Blue Agave, Kramer

Political Video

will this video get Obama elected?

Technorati Tags: obama, yes we can

TED 2008 Day 4 Highlights

John Francis is an environmentalist who has walked all over North and parts of South America. This all began as a personal protest against motorized vehicles, spawned by a big oil spill in the San Francisco Bay in 1971. When he started walking he also stopped talking for 17 years. During that time he earned a PHD and has an organization called Planetwalk. I wasn't clear if he's still walking everywhere, in which case...did he walk to Monterey?

Paul Collier authored The Bottom Billion, which is a book about what is happening to the poorest people in the world. He cited the Marshall Plan of the 1940s, where the US financed the reconstruction of Europe, which turned out to be good for Europeans and Americans. The trick is finding the right alignment of interests and exploiting the opportunity. I've had his book sitting on my shelf, but am looking very forward to reading it.

Al Gore is Al Gore. He continues to evangelize awareness of the climate crisis. In addition to awareness, he also suggested a solution: Put a price on carbon. A CO2 tax which would be revenue-neutral to replace taxation on employment.

Nellie McKay is a quirky crooner, who sings really catchy songs in a June Cleaver sort of voice. The songs are political/activist in complexion and are tongue and cheek humorous. I will be buying her records.

Jonathan Haidt is a psychologist who studies morality and emotion in culture. He authored "The Happiness Hypothesis" and "Flourishing". He cited liberals want change and justice even at the risk of chaos and conservatives speak for institutions and traditions, and want order even at some cost for those at the bottom. He ultimately suggested both liberals and conservatives have something to offer. Then he did an experiment among the TED audience... He looked for a political show of hands of liberals, libertarians and conservatives. The results were about 95%, 1%, .5% respectively, which suggested something about TEDsters.

Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats and Live Aid has long been an advocate of African aid and poverty reduction. I was typing notes on my iPhone and jotted something to this effect: 'Human cultural diversity is as important to the life of the intellect as biological diversity is to nature. I want to build a dictionary of man. I want you to help me'.

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What a fantastic day and fantastic event. It's all going to be available at ted.com; if any of these very brief highlights interest you in the least, I'd encourage you to watch it end to end, and register for TED 2009.

Technorati Tags: Bob Geldof, Al Gore, Jonathan Haidt, Live Aid, The Happiness Hypothesis, TED 2008, Flourishing, An Inconvenient Truth, planetwalk, John Francis