EVC 08 Capital Event Keynote address: The Future of Innovation: The New Rules for Entrepreneurs and Investors

Robert Hope covered the EVC event in the previous blog post. It was definitely a great event. I was able to talk to the keynote speaker Bill Reichert of Palo Alto-based Garage Technology Ventures after the event and he mentioned that he was really impressed with the scope of companies in the area.

In case you missed it here is keynote speech on The Future of Innovation: The New Rules for Entrepreneurs and Investors



Opening statements by Mike Manchak, King Lee, and last years winner.



Other coverage
Pictures of event
EVC Websites summary
Biz Buzz coverage

Bill mentions the book the Art of the Start in his talk. If you haven't read it you can get an overview from Guy Kawasaki himself in this video:

Past and Present Events

So as my involvement in the community has grown I get to attend some pretty cool events.   The latest was the EVC Venture Capital Event this past Tuesday, March 19th, at the Madonna Expo Center.  I've got this neat idea that I don't want to put out there in public too too much, but if you know my background you wouldn't be surprised to find that it is a new web site idea.    But it's only an idea, so I went with my little placard of mockups, some business cards, and a fact sheet, and crossed my fingers that some angel investor might write me a check.

That went ok.  What was interesting, however, was the level of technology that is being developed here on the Central Coast.   Aeromech, who will be presenting at the next Softec meeting, builds Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) for both commercial and military applications.    They were in the booth on my left.      Phoenix is looking to upgrade the Kit airplane to a "sexy" two seater plane that actually kneels so you can get in like a car.    They were in the booth on my right.    Fleet Management Solutions, who does asset tracking via GPS, a company that is building the next electric car, and New Image Technologies' Elements, a custom networking website platform, and another company doing specialized wireless video, were all there.   And while I was personally outclassed, I was also amazed and proud to be part of the tech industry here in SLO County and beyond.   There's a lot of great stuff going on around here if you know where to look.   Hopefully you will all come to the Softec meeting and see Aeromech in person.   It's well worth the visit.

In addition, Microsoft's CodeTrip will be coming to Cuesta College on March 31st.   CodeTrip is basically a bunch of code geeks on a bus, touring the West Coast in support of some new, really cool Microsoft technologies.   Through my contacts via the San Luis Obispo .NET User Group, we were able to get them to visit us here in SLO on their way from LA to SF, where they will be stopping by VSLive the first week of April.

Code Trip at Cuesta

They will be giving presentations to student classes and then holding a general session at 6 pm at the school.   Another great opportunity to expose yourself to the great technologies available to you.

Hope to see you there,

Robert Hope

Founder, San Luis Obispo .NET User Group

Meeting: Utilizing Open Source Technologies to Build Enterprise Class Organizations

Shopatron talked about their use of open source technologies. It was interesting that they not only used open source technologies in their server LAMP (Linux, Apache, mySQL, PHP) configuration but they also took it to the desktop. They chose to standardize on Open Office and Kubuntu as their desktop systems.

Here is the video in case you missed it:


Some benefits they cited:

• Saved ~$400 per machine in licensing costs


• Ability to tweak their software to meet their special needs


• Ability to scale their DB without having to resort to buying more expensive DB hardware


• Transparency into their software providers, access to key architects and developers of MySQL

Some challenges they cited:

• New tools do have a ramp-up time, they included training


• Just because it's open source it doesn't mean you don't pay for premium support


• Cutting edge software can cut


• Going from proprietary solutions to open source solutions can be a significant effort and should be planned carefully.

Overall they were very pleased with their choice to go open source across the board and they recommend that others take the leap.

Recommended reading/viewing:
I would also highly recommend reading Wikinomics. It has a very good overview of how the open source philosophies have affected business in the last 10 years. It has some great examples ranging from IBM to motorcycle manufacturers in china.

If you still want more this TED talks also hints at what open sourcing other areas of life can mean. Video embed below but you can also watch it on the TED website



The open source model has proven as an effective method of tackling large common problems. Various areas are looking to this type of collaboration model and reinventing themselves.

NOTE: I chose Jonathan Coulton's "Code Monkey" as the sound track because he's opening up some new ground in open source music. He gives Creative Commons licensing to his music so I could use it without calling his licensing agent. I did however pay the $1 for the song out of respect for the fact that he has to make a living. The ccMixter site allows users to share their samples in this open source way.