"Breaking News" Posts on ValleyZen

It is only February but already Jillian Manus and Alan Salzman have set the bar high for the best parties of 2009 in Silicon Valley. Last night guests arrived to raise money and awareness for the Stanford Cancer Center…

Logitech Co-Founder Daniel Borel is celebrating the creation of ONE BILLION mice. “That’s enough (end on end) to stretch to the moon and back,” he told a packed Stanford Memorial Auditorium gathered to honor the 40th anniversary of Douglas Engelbart’s landmark 1968 “DEMO” at SRI that signaled the dawn of interactive computing.

Don’t Miss ValleyZen’s exclusive VIDEO interview with Daniel Borel:

ValleyZen was invited to attend the National Women’s Leadership Initiative National Issues Conference. Billed as “the pinnacle event of the general election to highlight the importance of women’s leadership,” it drew women from all 50 states. Mega donors as well as high-level policy makers and senior campaign advisors converged on the Chicago Sheraton Towers to focus on “issues…

On Sunday, famed video game developer Richard Garriott launched into space aboard a Soyuz TMA spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. For more than $30 million, he has become the sixth private citizen to travel into orbit.

The Russian rocket lifted off on schedule at 1:01 p.m. (3:01 a.m. EDT), carrying precious cargo including a revolutionary experiment in art —the first in-space art exhibition. Highlighting the importance of private space travel to future generations, Garriott is hosting this zero-gravity art exhibition. Included is an original brush painting by Drue Kataoka, created for this historic
mission…

The world premiere of the largest, most comprehensive exhibit of the art, science & engineering works of Leonardo da Vinci is at The Tech Museum for just 100 days.
Wait — make that 99 days!

Last night the red carpet rolled for a lavish celebration hosted by Frank and Denise Quattrone, Tech President Peter Friess and The Tech Board. Friess told ValleyZen, “There are so many engineers in Silicon Valley, and inside the soul of every engineer is a little bit of Leonardo. He’s not a person — He’s a phenomenon.”

Donors and Valley celebs walked the red carpet —-flanked by a 24 foot tall model of the Sforza Horse with its mighty hooves crushing hundreds of fresh rose petals. This bronze sculpture was originally designed as a gift for Ludovico il Moro, the Duke of Milan as a monument to Francesco Sforza, his predecessor. Shipping it from Florence, Italy to San Jose, required two ocean containers…

“What has happened by chance is often difficult to repeat when it is sought deliberately. Chance is a genius.”
-Katsuki Sekida, Zen Training.

This past Saturday, September 6th, marked the second edition of Barcamp Hong Kong. Barcamp began as an un-conference in Palo Alto in 2005. Some bright, enthusiastic, cosmopolitan people have brought the concept to Hong Kong. Yet, I wouldn’t even know of the event, let alone be a participant were it not for Chance…

“We’d like this to be the Sundance Film Festival” for the tech industry – said Jason Calacanis—to over 1700 attendees, partners and press that rocked the San Francisco Design Concourse Center. Sterling sponsors including Fenwick & West, Google, The Founders Fund, MSN Money and Yahoo! made it possible. 52 top startups were selected from 1038 hopefuls and earned coveted 8 minute spots to present before the A-list audience. Short pitching sessions were judged by Valley icons like Google VP of Search and User Experience Marissa Mayer, MySpace Founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe, Angel Rockstar Ron Conway and Youtube Co-founder Chad Hurley. Check out ValleyZen’s exclusive interview with Chad Hurley…

“ValleyZen will be the first to know when we pull the trigger,” said Ron Gutman, Co-Founder and CEO of Wellsphere. A sleep-deprived but adrenalized team gathered around him at Wellsphere headquarters in San Mateo yesterday morning. Having worked around the clock the past few weeks in preparation for today’s launch of Wellsphere 2.0, they seemed none the worse for the wear.

“Welcome to our office,” said Dave Kashen, Co-Founder and CFO.
“It’s NOT an office, it’s a WellHome,” quipped Gutman…

Prof. Jeremy Bailenson is turning heads (real and virtual). With all the media attention he has received lately for his research at Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL), you might suspect he was making use of multiple avatars to sit in for all these interviews.

The New York Times, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Science Magazine, and The TODAY show have got Prof. Bailenson in the media spotlight right now.

Today TIME magazine features…

For Barack Obama’s campaign, the Zen surprise came out of the negative space. In the art of Sumi-e, the negative space (the white space between the brush strokes) is as important as the brush strokes themselves. This is what holds the painting together and makes it take shape and meaning. For the Obama campaign, the ebony-inked brush strokes are Obama himself. The negative space is the countless campaign contributors, supporters and activists who have found meaning and identity in his campaign. They are the ones that have created the surprise…