"Valley Future" Posts on ValleyZen

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…

“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…

On Tuesday April 22nd ValleyZen was invited to observe “The First Amendment in the Digital Age,” a Stanford seminar by Beth Noveck. She is a Professor of Law and the Director of the Institute for Information Law & Policy at New York Law School. Noveck teaches in the areas of intellectual property and innovation law and policy, constitutional law, e-democracy and e-government. The topic for this week concerned the development and use of impenetrable anonymizing software which makes it impossible to identify the source of a posting on the Internet. The class discussed the effects on the constitutional rights of freedom of press and individuals’ right of privacy. The guest presenter was Michael Fertik, CEO of Reputation Defender…

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…

NBC 11’s TechNow! Host Scott Budman knows the value of eliminating clutter on & off the air. Want to get on TV? Be Zen! “I’ve gotten to know some of the CEOS, analysts and individuals who are really going to give the good soundbites. I seek those people out who…”

Scott Budman on:

• Interviewing the Valley’s major players & covering the big tech stories.
• ValleyZen as the “work-life balance” of successful CEOs and journalists.
• Transforming a 90 minute tape into a 1 minute story.
• Inside look at Silicon Valley’s NBC 11 – the first news station to do live on the air “texting” to talent.
• Shooting a hi-tech blog video interview in a traditional TV studio!
Keep Reading

One way of viewing the discussions about content generation at Stanford’s weekend Legal Futures Conference is a struggle between two forces. One force wishes to use technology to make traditional media more productive without disintermediation, substitution or decentralization of content delivery. The other force is attempting to remove the throttle traditional media has on information distribution, while also revolutionizing the content delivery processes, mechanisms and values. The principal factor in this…

Yesterday we attended the Legal Futures Conference at Stanford University. A fiery debate erupted between Prof. Larry Lessig and Andrew Keen about Professional vs. User-Generated Content (UGC). Lessig believes that UGC is the future and that legal changes should be made to facilitate its growth. Open the floodgates and see if old media can compete! Keen argues that UGC produces massive amounts of low-quality content whose credibility can’t be relied on, and it clutters the public domain. Keen is nostalgic for…

“eBay just opened in Thailand this morning.” Meg Whitman, President and CEO of pioneering online auctioneer eBay Inc. (EBAY) looked out across the distinguished audience of academia and industry attending the SIEPR (Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research) Policy Forum – Innovation Policy for the Next President. In her keynote address entitled “The Innovation Agenda,” the dynamic Silicon Valley icon captured the very spirit of innovation itself. Director of SIEPR, Prof. John Shoven introduced Whitman and pointed out that her many accolades including being named one of Time Magazine’s world’s most influential people and The Wall Street Journal’s one of 50 Women to…