Friday, August 1, 2014

BEAU PERRY’S PREMIUM OCEANIC


     20 years ago Woodside’s Noel Perry made an appearance on this menu discussing his venture fund based on financing socially beneficial businesses. He and his wife Claire were proactive in a variety of local and global causes; for example helping to found Conservation International, an organization promoting biodiversity. They were also known as the folks who donated Barkley Fields and Park in Woodside. One of Noel’s projects that is sometimes overlooked today was the planting of the oak trees along Cañada Rd. 25 years ago Cañada was a much more barren stretch where there is a thriving forest today.    
     Their egalitarian work became a model for public service that their five boys have grown up with. The eldest, Beau Perry, is devoting his time to making the world a sounder place. Beau took an MBA in sustainable business management from the Presidio Graduate School and based on his love of surfing, diving and all things related to the sea founded the nonprofit Olazul in 2009. This organization has worked in Mexico and Indonesia innovating market solutions to some of the ocean’s big problems.  Their programs are all based on direct partnership with indigenous fishing communities. Olazul plans to do for coastal fishing populations what fair-trade has done for small-scale coffee farmers on land. But instead of modifying existing land-based farm models, these new ocean-based livelihoods need to be built from scratch.                                                                          
   It may surprise you to learn that wild and farmed seafood industries are roughly the same size. And aquaculture is growing rapidly every year while the world’s wild fisheries are either already harvested at capacity or are rapidly declining. Farmed seafood and beef are pound for pound the same sized industries worldwide. Farmed seafood has its bad actors, but compared to beef it is clearly easier on the planet. If aquatic ranching is done right it can be a substantial part of the solution to sustainably feeding the world. In fact certain forms of aquaculture can yield remarkable quantities of healthy food with minimal environmental impact. A few aquaculture models such as seaweed, oyster and clam farming even have positive impacts in that they provide economically significant ecosystem benefits such as cleaning inshore waters, mitigating ocean acidification and coastal erosion as well as providing critical nursery habitat that contributes to wild fisheries restoration. 
Beau with Geronimo
    We all know about the degradation of the oceans and the seemingly insurmountable task of reversing the increasing levels of plastic, temperature and acidification. But what can one do? One option is to wring our collective hands and lament; the other is to roll up our sleeves and do something. Beau is doing something.
     Beau has launched a number of programs including developing alternatives to the cyanide/bleach reef poisoning method used in marine aquarium fish harvesting. He believes that where there are big problems there are big opportunities, and the ocean has more than its share of both. While it takes some investment to realize lasting solutions, there is also money to be made in upgrading and even replacing some of the broken elements of the world’s marine economy.
     Beau and I met up to discuss one specific venture he is just beginning to roll out. He recently established a for profit, Premium Oceanic LLC, to work with Olazul in creating a whole new sea vegetable farming industry in Mexico’s Baja California. The fisherfolk there are dealing with the local consequences of global overexploitation of wild fisheries. The coming generation is being left high and dry on the beach without viable livelihood options. Beau is working with these communities to develop a regional network of independent sea farms, which his business will supply with seed and then buy and distribute the harvest. This contract farm model is a strategic choice. He intends to maintain a lean business with a small number of employees, yet one that can scale up production rapidly. The fishermen already have fleets of boats, knowledge of the sea and the political position to get aquaculture permits. They also have an increasing desire to explore new ways of making a living as long as it involves producing food from the sea. Beau has several farms in the region setting up sea vegetable farms in their adjacent waters taking the entrepreneurial leap with him into the depths and into the unknown.
     Until 2013 Beau had been working on a new community model for farming shrimp fed with seaweed. But seeing a spike in demand for seaweed products in North America he realized a more immediate opportunity was to develop cultivation of the seaweed itself for direct human consumption. Beau has seen the success of seaweed farmers in Asia (and more recently in Maine) and believes that community grown fresh sea vegetable products will be popular with Americans.
     The broader aim is to design, innovate and develop new conservation-compatible livelihoods, as opposed to merely creating jobs. Catching fish is a dying industry. It’s an arduous, dangerous job and a poorly paid one. But having alternative coastal livelihoods balancing managed fisheries with low impact local aquaculture give these coastal communities a way to ensure that future generations thrive.
Green chilies stuffed with abalone over sea lettuce
     To grow seagreens Premium Oceanic is doing the hard science right now by identifying the most effective species and techniques. Farming seaweed is, in theory, a magnitude less complicated than open ocean farming and the technology will be easier to deploy to small operations.
     The market for high quality seaweed in North America is new, so Beau plans to complete the value chain by developing a brand and building a new sea vegetable market for American consumers. Make a market? Is this possible? Sure. Not only possible but probably inevitable.
     But will people really eat it? Well they already do, but the US market consists almost entirely of dried forms imported from Asia, including the valuable Nori used to wrap sushi rolls. And these imports are generally made with the lower grade material not acceptable for the more sophisticated tastes of the Asian market. The difference between the fresh and dried is much like the difference between fresh and dried food of any kind. There is a wide range of leafy brown, red and green sea vegetables and they’re packed with essential vitamins and minerals many of which are harder to find in terrestrial plants. It is as close to wild gathered food as one can get short of foraging in the woods and needs no irrigation, no fertilizer and no arable land. 
     Many folks encounter seaweed as a decomposing mass on the beach but fresh seaweed comes in a variety of shapes, colors, textures and in many cases delicious flavors. Fresh seaweed includes species that look like soft lettuce but denser and richer with a mild flavor. There are also sea grapes, kelp noodles and Ulva tortillas- even ice cream! Farming vegetables in the ocean won’t solve all the problems in the world’s oceans, but the partnership between Olazul and Premium Oceanic definitely points the way towards a better future.
     Having started the new venture in January of this year, he believes he will see the first product harvested later this fall; with exports to the US beginning in 2015. By the end of the decade he hopes to have launched dozens of community seaweed farms across northwestern Mexico, creating hundreds of new livelihoods, producing large quantities of nutrient-dense seaweeds for North American consumers. Beau believes that the economic opportunities that emerge from this effort will create lasting local incentives to protect and restore marine ecosystems.
    Beau is creating a new industry from scratch on the West Coast but he is confident that he can make this work because he was brought up to think big about helping the world be a more graceful and fair place for us all. 
     So here we are full circle. Noel planted a forest in Woodside and Beau is planting forests under the sea. I agree with Beau that seaweed farming in North America is an idea whose time has come. Will you be seeing fresh seaweed on the menu at Buck’s? Absolutely.

AUTODESK’S PIER 9 WORKSHOP                                
Autodesk's Carl Bass with ConXtech's Bob Simmons and Kelly Luttrell
   Carl Bass is the charismatic CEO of Autodesk, the leader in computer aided design software. I had the good fortune to go on a tour of his new workshop recently with my good friends and business partners from ConXtech.
     First ConXtech is the space frame steel construction and technology firm that Bob Simmons and Kelly Luttrell launched nearly 10 years ago. ConXtech designs and builds the steel frames for large structures from hospitals, condos and office buildings to mining and refinery racks. And all this is designed with Autocad tools from Autodesk.
     The Autodesk Workshop is on Pier 9 in San Francisco and is a shop where software and hardware meet. There are studios devoted to laser and water jet cutting, welding, woodwork, fabric labs, and computer controlled cutting machines. One of the most fantastic is an 11 axis mill that uses a drawing to cut out stainless steel or other metals in fantastical shapes.
     Of course there is a lot of 3d printing and it is here where Autodesk is now making a stand as a hardware manufacturer with their own branded 3d printer. There are dozens of 3d printers of all sorts available today. There are a good many low-end machines used to print simple tchotchkes like toys and amusing food products.
     At the other end of the market are firms like Siemens and GE who are growing metal and ceramic turbines in shapes not possible using traditional machining methods. Sintering, selective laser melting and other additive techniques are changing that industry.
     Autodesk’s 3d printer, called Spark, can make parts of remarkable precision down to about 25 microns. Both the hardware and the software are open sourced. This is a critical aspect. By group-thinking the system it will grow like a wiki and is good for Autodesk and good for users.
     Autodesk is famous for egalitarian public outreach. They make their software available free to students and teachers and the new shop is accessible by all Autodesk employees as well as a great many artists in residence working on projects of their own devise. Many of them are supported with stipends allowing them to even quit their day jobs and for a fixed period of time focus on the intersection of art, craft and society.

Marooned on a Desert Island...Sort of
    This summer I found myself on a desert island with three lonely palm trees and no Man Friday to keep me company. Would I die of thirst? Would I be forced to eat my sandals? No, the sandals were made of rubber so that was out. Maybe a coconut from one of the palm trees? Hey, wait a minute. These trees are plastic. It seems the real ones keep blowing down so Richard Branson has put artificial ones in their place. Pretty funny.
    Instead of perishing I hopped back in our launch and we sped the 100 yards to the dock at Necker Island in The British Virgin Islands.
     Several years ago the man who launched Virgin Records, Virgin Airlines, Virgin Cola and countless other Virgin branded products ending up in what he no doubt thought of as a brand extension. His 74 acre paradise is what most folks envision a tropical island billionaire’s fantasy to be. There are flamingo ponds and a remarkable collection on other animals. When we were there the lemur population was exploding. 
     Lemurs are from Madagascar and they are very unlike other monkeys I have met. They are very affectionate, slow moving and even though they wear thick fur in the tropics they have no smell. They love to jump up on your shoulder and make eye contact. Their young cling to their backs and they are happy to have hold their babies. 
    Am I getting one? Well I’d like to but monkeys are not legal to possess in California though they are legal in many states and there is a vigorous trade online. We also can’t possess armadillos, pangolins, piranha, dugongs, elephants or flying squirrels. Well zebras and camels seem to be OK so that might be enough to keep me from moving to Texas. One can get special permits for lions and tigers but I think I’ll just dress up the dog.


     Branson also has a pretty handsome giant tortoise collection. The biggest one was about 700 lbs and was as old as your grandmother or more. We were able to rub their heads and we tried to play with them. They move at the speed of a rock (on flat land) and have about as much personality. Still it is pretty cool to fondle their necks, which are actually made of tortoise leather.
    Sir Richard or just Richard as he wants to be called had just arrived that morning and he is most convivial host known for hanging out with his staff and guests. The place is called a private island but you can actually rent one of the houses or the entire island. It goes for about $50,000 for the whole place for up to 28 guests (not including your personal staff such as your hair and makeup people) plus the usuals like food and gratuity. The resort is Balinese style and the main house looks like a movie set which it sometimes is. It is also pretty new, the original one having burned down from a lightning strike in 2011.
     I’m not kidding about hair and makeup, some do come with these people. Personally I prefer to go native and never travel with staff though I probably should. In fact none of us paid for anything. We slowly walked out backwards and the Necker staff thought we were just arriving. This is the same technique I used to get of prison back in the 70s.
     If you find yourself in the area you can visit the island as you are, or pretend to be a big shot. Just tell them you are a friend of Richard’s but make sure he isn’t actually there unless you are a friend of his. On the other hand he would probably welcome you with good cheer as he really is a right fellow. 



Big Man On Campus
     I was asked to speak to the students at Singularity University recently by Neil Jacobstein, the Co-chair of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. I do a good many impromptu talks at Buck’s and in more formal setting from TEDx to Stanford but being asked to speak at Singularity University is certainly a highlight in my somewhat unconventional speaking career.
     First a little history. Back in the spring of 2000 several folks from Yahoo came in for lunch and asked to meet me. I sat with them and they told me about a three day conference about the future they were holding with top brand managers for all over the country. Tim Koogle, Jerry Yang and the rest of the big dogs from Yahoo would attend as well as the top people in marketing from Procter and Gamble, Walmart, Taco Bell and dozens of other companies. This sounded interesting and it emerged they wanted me to come. Then it seemed they wanted me to give a talk. Finally they explained that they wanted me to be the keynote speaker to kick things off. I asked how long I had and what they wanted to speak about. They said take all the time you need and talk about anything you like. I have zero stress around public speaking so I said OK.
     This did put me very much in mind of the Roman emperor Claudius who was installed more or less by accident. But hey, if they were paying for the mini bar I was game.
     I don’t remember exactly what I said but I did have two costume changes and I got some laughs. It was just a few days later that the air went of the internet stock market. Yahoo dropped from $250 to about 25 and we all ran in from the rain under the banana leaves. Ahhhh, good times.
     But now it was 2014 and I was at Singularity and these students (really carefully recruited seminarians) would be more skeptical. The height of irony is pretending to be yourself and being worried about being found out. Neil asked me to speak about the community focused around Buck’s and what I have learned during my tenure in The Valley. It is has been said that Buck’s is a place were a many businesses have had their origin. I like to say that the founding of a business is when the money meets the entrepreneur because before that it’s just talk and after it’s all work.
     Singularity University is part think tank, part education nerve center, part incubator, and a place were the future is being invented. It gives a data jammed Graduate Summer Program and executive programs that are focused on teaching leaders to understand the technical, business, and ethical implications of exponential technologies (like AI, robotics, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology) that double in price performance every 18 months or so. The participants are encouraged to use these technologies to address humanity’s grand challenge problems (like illiteracy, global health, climate change, poverty, energy, security, etc.). I did talk about Buck’s, but what I found really compelling was my chance to ask some 80 super engaged men and women in their late 20s (who had been selected from a vast number of applicants from all over the world) what they thought the future held. One question I like to ask is, “Do you feel that preserving human life in its current form into the deep future is imperative?” To my surprise only about 30% thought this was important. But then they are attending Singularity University, after all.
     Ray Kurzweil is the man most identified with the notion of the singularity as well as the University. He cofounded the university with Peter Diamandis of XPrize fame. Peter wrote the best selling book “Abundance”. The term singularity was first applied as the astronomical name of the event horizon at the edge of a black hole. It now also now refers to the juncture where machine intelligence meets or exceeds human intelligence, and the future becomes very hard to predict. Is such a thing possible? Well, Ray thinks it will happen in less than 40 years. Ray has accurately predicted many other events; so when he talks people listen.
     Critics of this notion and of many other predictions can be heard to say, “This will never happen.” I have noticed that the impossible seems to fruit up shortly after being declared to be “impossible”. Of course timing is always the main issue. All those marvelous Star Trek inventions will show up given enough time. Gottfried Leibnitz predicted the arrival of the computer 300 years ago.
     Me, I just had to make it through the student’s questions. Keep in mind we are now in the arena of big ideas. “What do you worry about?” one student asked me. There are sooo many problems to fret over, but the one that concerns me now is unemployment. I asked for a show of hands of who among them were creating new businesses and protocols that added more jobs vs. eliminating them. None. In spite of this, several spin out businesses from prior Singularity University summer programs have already created new jobs. Also, many at Singularity think exponential technologies will generate vast wealth, which could lead to a society willing to distribute some of this abundance. We shall see.
     Aubry DeGrey was to follow me at Singularity. He proposes that the human body can be scientifically reengineered to live far longer than today. He is shooting for nothing less than to live forever but he is starting with 1,000 years (I must take better care of my skin). He is talking about the human body not the singularity. Hey Aubry, do you realize how hard it will be to get a table at Evvia then? Alternatively Ray proposes that we live in server farms - which is good because I like the country.
     The Singularity University campus is located near the hollowed out corpse of the old dirigible base at Moffett Field. How elegant that this new enterprise emerges from the ashes of a failed dirigible technology. Soon, though, I expect Singularity will be moving from their physical campus into the cloud.
     Most of the new acts that come out of Singularity will not work as businesses but as long as there is learning they will not be failures. A few of the spin outs may make a real difference either economically or socially. I count myself lucky to have been a tiny part of this noble enterprise.
Can you hear me in the cheap seats?

Micro Story – Bernie has breakfast
     Bernie sat at his kitchen table and stared at the picture of the missing child on the milk carton. It was 2% milk though he didn’t mind what sort of milk he used. The child stared back. Then moving slowly the girl grabbed the edges of herself and very carefully peeled free of the container and stood before him on the table. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.” Her hair looked funny. Bernie looked down at her and thought for a long minute and said, “I don’t know anyone named Kenobi.” and he brushed the cardboard girl to the floor and called his cat; who whisked her through his little door.
      Bernie thought, “I really don’t care if the milk is 2% or whole milk. Either is fine.” 

                            




















Thursday, January 23, 2014

The Cote d’Azur and Fencing in Bulgaria


Travel time once again. The ultimate destination this time was one of the corners of the earth - Varna Bulgaria, but first I had to kick a little of the jetlag by cooling my jets on the Cote d'Azur, or the French Riviera with my great friend Peter Friess who is a durable and frequent travel partner. Peter and I met up in Nice and we picked up a snappy VW convertible with a quaint 5-speed stick. From Nice we buzzed on over to Monte Carlo for the boat show. There were some very nice boats up to about 40 feet some costing in the 2 million range. Oh, these were the tenders for the actual boats which started at about 80 feet and went up to over 400 feet. The big ones can’t even get into the harbor.
THE NORTHER STAR
Peter and I set our sights on the Northern Star, a 250 footer with a nifty green helicopter on the aft deck. I asked the sales rep taking us through if the chopper would be included in the price. He said sure if you like. At 150 million it seemed they’d just toss it in like floor mats for a Volvo. This boat is 5 decks of overthetopness and can go wherever 52,000 gallons of diesel will take you. Frankly, buying the Star is a bit beyond this humble restaurateur but it can be chartered for about 700 a week in Euros in the summer in the Med or 700 in dollars in the Carib in the winter. That’s plus food, fuel and tip so toss in another 25 % taking you just shy of a million a week in either currency (they also take rubles). But it is real nice. Trust me.

From Nice we cruised down the coast in the prefect sunny weather to Saint Tropez. We got hooked up in Monte Carlo so one of our stops was Pallis Bulli which is Pierre Cardin’s ‘house of bubbles’.
HOUSE OF BUBBLES
It is fantasy of rubric-stone soap bubbles perched above the azure sea (as Homer might say [not the cartoon one]) Finally we arrived in Saint Tropez. This is a smallish town with the reputation for flash that is well deserved. We arrived to find it was the week of the J class sailboat race. These are 125 footers and include some of the great yachts of America’s Cup fame. Lionheart, Hunaman and Valshida were all lined up at the quay.
Lionheart, Hunaman and Valshida
I was overjoyed to see the boats as I had attended all but the last race of the recent America’s Cup in San Francisco. I did witness the final day via Skype with my family who were at son Dylan’s apartment in San Francisco where he has a view of the entire course of the event.

The food in France defies my humble powers of description. One night at La Penche I had a plate of tiny cuttlefish the size of the finger tips of angels. Each one of these squid-like cephalopods has a delicate crunchy center. As Homer would say. AGGGHHHHH. (Not the Greek guy, the cartoon character). We sat next to a very jovial couple from Holland who said they were in on their 36 foot sailboat. As we left the restaurant we saw them go aboard a giant sloop…oh - 36 meters. I told Peter if I had realized that, I would have stuck to them a little tighter.

Then off to Cannes where we had adjoining rooms at the Carleton and where the film stars gather for the festival. That isn’t why we stayed there. It was because during this year’s festival some thieves made off with 150 million US in jewels from the ballroom. (Queue Pink Panther music.) Cannes is pretty over the top. The streets are lined with Ferraris and Bentleys…sort of like Woodside I guess. But we don’t have stores that sell mobile phones for as much as a BMW. A salesman said with a straight face one was 35k Euros. Peter asked what made it special and the fellow said it has electroplated gold buttons. Too bad it was a Droid, or maybe…

We then flew to Geneva where Peter is the director of a rather special watch museum.  Many of you will recall that Peter was the director of the San Jose Tech Museum for many years. He took that institution from a marginal operation to greatness and after 5 years decided he needed another challenge so he took the post as director of the Patik Philliup Museum in Geneva. He does this by commuting from the Bay Area. The owners of the museum wanted him very badly but he didn’t want to move from California so they accepted his offer to commute. And you thought your trip to SF was a chore.
TOURISTS ENJOYING THE VIEW IN SWITZERLAND
Peter is one of the world’s foremost experts on not just timepieces but also historical automatons. These tiny mechanical robots are the marvel of the pre industrial age. Picture a tree covered with birds all singing and turning their heads and flapping their wings. The birds are about an inch long and 300 years old.  Peter is charged with not only running the museum but with acquiring historic pieces for what is already the greatest museum of watches in the world. He recently bought the watch owned by Marie Antoinette shortly before she became short herself.

My cousin Will Milne met up with us in Switzerland with his two daughters Helen and Ruth. Helen is a volleyball coach and a graduate student in Santa Cruz and Ruth just graduated from Santa Barbara after a stunning career as the four-year starting goalie on the water polo team. This fall she has joined the French professional team. I see more cuttlefish in my future.
RUTH AND JAMIS PARAGLIDE

After the museum visit the five of us went to the store where the new Patik watches are sold. I wear a Timex Ironman which really turns heads especially in that store. It helped that Peter was taking us through. The starter watch, the one you give for the bar mitzvah, starts at 30k. A new one sold recently for 5 million at a charity auction. I’m told they aren’t even waterproof.

Peter had to return to San Francisco and then Will, the girls and I tootled off to the Jung Frau. This is train trip up an Alp in the middle of Switzerland. I had never been to this part of the Switzerland and was amazed to learn that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of trains, gondolas and all sorts of clever contraptions in the Alps that allow for the vertical living they are famous for. Of course this is a new development and we were amazed that people could have inhabited such difficult terrain before the electric motor. There are lots of houses 4 and 500 years old plopped on the side of cliffs covered with grass and trees. It is this grass that sustains the cows, hence the milk and cheese. Historically the Alpine Swiss had just cows to sustain them. The average herd now is about 17 cows in Switzerland and half them live in the mountains. The government pays about $1,500 a year to subsidize each cow. Somehow the Swiss have turned this whole country into a miracle of sustainability. The power is nearly all hydo and the standard of living is so high that the government is considering a national minimum income. Not minimum wage - a minimum guaranteed income regardless of whether you work or not.

The place might look like a fairyland but the Swiss are pretty tough minded and have a lot of rules. All able bodied men are expected to do real military service and are required to keep a machine gun at home with ammunition…just in case.

But enough frolicking. We had work to do. Our work was to be sword bearers for Will at the International Fencing Tournament in Varna, Bulgaria.

Bulgaria is the poorest country in Europe. It is part of the EU but doesn’t use the currency. I expected it to be a sad, drab country. The airport in the capital city Sofia was modern enough. I asked the way to Varna and the car guy said just go out of the airport and turn right at the gypsy village and then he chuckled as we shared a joke about American’s thinking there would be such a rustic sight. But soon we saw there was no joke and we found ourselves driving through a slum of very unEuropean squalor. The city gave way to rolling countryside and village after village of collapsed barns and empty houses. We soon came across factories from the Soviet times, all abandoned. Some proved to be quite large, as in Detroit auto plant-sized, and the only employment seemed to be a gate guard or two running the remarkably clean and modern gas stations. The road we took was a country two lane highway with suicidal truck drivers who pass at tremendous speeds on blind curves. There is a great deal of animal roadkill and there are frequent roadside shrines to the vast number of traffic fatalities.
BULGARIAN FAST FOOD (NOT BAD)
It was about 250 miles across the country and there was only one city of any size. It was poor, partly abandoned and very grey though it’s claimed to be the intellectual center of Bulgaria. We sped on through. Finally after about 7 hours we entered the seaside city of Varna. Population about 300,000 in the winter and 600,000 in the summer. Some call it the Cote d’Azur of the Black Sea and they aren’t far off…if you don’t look too closely. It’s oldish and the pavement heaves a bit but there are modern hotels and lots of them. Most were open but the season was over so we had the run of the place. All up and down the coastline there are some tens of thousands of hotel rooms and villas. Most of the hotels and casinos were finished but the 2008 recession hit them hard and you see a great many that are half finished or completed but empty. It is eerie to see whole neighborhoods of empty buildings.

The fencing tournament was a multi-day affair so we settled into our top rated hotel. This is an ultra modern place called the Grafit and each floor had a different theme. The hotel is famous for having truly strange rooms with loose river stone floors in the bathrooms (necessitating putting towels down so you can walk on them) and clear glass walls for the bathrooms. The furniture was made of solid wood or stone and some of the tables weighed 300 lbs. The rooms were huge, the view of the Black Sea great and all for about $80 a night. The food in town was very good and so cheap it felt like stealing.

The world of fencing is taken very seriously by the participants who come from all over but primarily Eastern Europe. Last year Will took first place in his 50-59 year old saber division. This drove the other fencers simply wild because some have been doing this all their lives. He beat university fencing coaches, Olympians and has only been doing it for 11 years. Because he is relatively new to the sport compared to many he bested it really stung. Will is a design/builder of fine homes and is just finishing a house on Canada Road two doors north of Buck’s. He brings the same attention to excellence in his profession as he does to completive fencing.

During the preliminaries the girls and I amused ourselves by exploring the town. We discovered that there a good many stray cats and dogs. The dogs are cared for by the government and are all tagged and live on the streets. They were very happy to meet us as we brought them treats from breakfast. At one point we assembled a rather large dog posse and took our new friends to the center of town where they inexplicably attacked passing cars with startling ferocity. One driver tried bashing one of our dogs with his car door. The locals snarled at us with undisguised scorn which we though unwise of them as we had a half crazed posse of biggish dogs who would do our bidding.

The day came for the finals and we were wound up as tight as a tiny sweater. The field of 32 was quickly halved with Will winning his first bout 10-9. Too close for comfort. Then 8 more dropped with Will easily crushing the UC San Diego coach. Then he faced off with another American and sadly did not prevail. We saw one guy lose and hurl his equipment and berate the ref then apologize profusely and sputter a list of excuses. Will stoically took his beating and said that next year he would learn from his mistakes, train harder and take the gold again. Last year he was modest in victory (he took first) and this year gracious in defeat. He lost to the second place finisher so he is still one of the best swordsmen in the world and certainly the best in my family.

It was time to drive back to Sophia but this time we took the southern freeway. This gave us a very different view of the country. There were still closed factories but the south had a less desperate air even though the countryside has been severely depopulated. In the small towns there are people so poor they are seen collecting firewood in horse carts with the entire family. There are farms but curiously no farmers. The corn crop had just been taken in but there are no farm buildings and we realized that under collective farming the small farms had been wiped out and the large scale farms were mono cropping wheat and corn and once the harvest is in the whole place takes on a post apocalyptic feel.
OLD AND NEW
Our last night in Sofia we did the town and it was fairly vibrant. At one point we stumbled into a polite protest against the government. The police weren’t even interested.

Bulgaria, like the other eastern European countries, will come around and soon. The people are shaking off the communist past more slowly than most but I believe that Bulgaria is a good bet for success. Traveling there is so cheap it might as well be free. The people are nice and they have real beaches so I say, go Bulgaria!

Bulgaria is pretty far to go for fencing but next year’s tournament is scheduled to be in Mauritius. This is to the east of Madagascar and is the farthest place from Woodside you can go on earth before you are actually coming home.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

UNGROUNDED - SolarImpulse - DRAPER UNIVERSITY


By Jamis H. MacNiven
     So I was sitting innocently at Buck’s one morning and these stylish folks from British Airways came in and invited me to come with them to England for a brainstorming session in the sky around the subject of STEM. Science Technology Engineering Mathematics. This is the touchstone today. 130 Important Silicon Valley Innovators, and me, met up at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco where Gavin Newsome addressed us and begged off the trip claiming that his wife was about to go into labor. Flimsy excuse if you ask me.
     We broke into teams at the hotel and went into conference to come up with schemes to promote education, create products and foster more participation in STEM.  Then together with the facilitators from IDEO and a support staff from British Airways we took busses to the VIP lounge at SFO where we boarded a new 747 that had been rigged for a 10 hour conference in the sky. We had 16 teams each charged with developing a plan to present to the United Nations on our arrival in London.
     An example of the folks on board was Duncan Logan, founder of RocketSpace. Rocketspace is a collaborative workspace in San Francisco where startups rent space to be part of a frothy atmosphere conducive to emerging ideas. This plan is to break down the traditional walls isolating small firms and providing both physical space and a social atmosphere to make working more fun and increase connectivity. British Airways has some people in this space.
     The event was called Ungrounded and is part of a larger initiative by British Airways to open the door to collaboration with the start-up community in Silicon Valley.
     We were spread throughout the aircraft and as we developed our ideas we posted charts and slogans all over the walls and overhead bins. We roamed the aisles and eventually voted on the most popular ideas. Our group hatched the notion of creating mini maker-shops in places like Home Depot where kids could come and learn to use tools and discover techniques to actually build physical things. It was no coincidence that the founder of the Tech Shop, Jim Newton, was in our group. There are a half dozen of these Tech Shops across the country and one is in Menlo Park. There you can join like a gym membership and come in and use a wide range of tools from saws and lathes to 3d printers and plasma cutters.
     The most popular ideas from our journey included a backpack wireless hotspot for travelers, a protocol to engage more women in STEM, and a notion called Init – a technical ingredients list (much like a food ingredient label) that is meant to educate consumers as to the exact contents of technical products. Brian Wong hatched the idea for Init.
    Brian Wong is a kinetic 22 year old entrepreneur who founded Kilp. He dreamed up the idea of offering real world rewards for achievements
in the virtual world of gaming. For instance you reach a new personal best or beat a record and you get a coupon for a consumer product. Brands are wild to give Kilp the goods and in just 3 years he has 45 people sending out 100 million rewards a month. He told me he wasn’t a good student in school but I noticed he finished university at 18. During one brainstorming session a facilitator handed him a pen and he looked at it and asked, “Who still uses these?
     Having finished our project we arrived in London where we were whisked off to the Langham Hotel, a 19th century first class hotel. In the last 20 years they have put 250 million pounds into renovations and it looks it. The Langham is right across the street from the BBC’s Broadcasting House and is the only corner in all of London about which I know some history as I was once taken on a tour of the BBC.
     Our hotel’s roof is the place where Edward R. Murrow broadcast during the blitz back in the War. It is also where author Arthur Conan Doyle and Noel Coward had dinner one night with Doyle’s publisher and from that meeting came the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle as well as Mark Twain were guests and now.…me.
     That night we were invited to the Houses of Parliament where Baroness Scotland told us about how the place functions and asked if we might like a tour of the digs. We then proceeded to crawl all about the joint including a visit to the Houses of Common and that of the Lords. Down one random hallway I spied the Magna Carta in a flimsy glass case just begging to be lifted for display at Buck’s. Alas it turned out to be locked up pretty securely and besides it looked like a fake
     We convened for breakfast and were treated with the 5-star elegance this place is renowned for. A crumb can’t fall to the floor without a tuxedoed waiter slipping a tiny silver tray under it (just like at Buck’s).
     The agenda for the day following our in-air confab was a bit of mystery. Most of us had not looked up the name of the next conference as we just went where and when we were told to. A nice way to travel.  Turned out we took a bus to the Olympic Village and joined up with other entrepreneurs and tech folks making us now about 250 people. On entering the auditorium we were treated to a talk by Richard Branson. And he wasn’t even the headliner. This was the G8 Innovation Summit.
     Ron Dennis, the CEO of McLaren automobile told us about his new hybrid which gets 25 miles to the gallon while hitting 0-60 in about three seconds. It costs about 700,000 pounds so I’m not sure how many miles you would have drive to make this economical.
      Now keep in mind most of us had no idea what was coming next so imagine our surprise when the Prime Minister of England came in and spoke
Really Jim, how big is it?
to us about trade, immigration and taxes for half an hour and then took questions. David Cameron really had the crowd in the palm of his hand. He is elegant and appropriate. He said he would like to stay longer but he had to go meet Vladimir Putin in a few minutes. One does not keep that man waiting.
June Sarpong UK TV star, Craig Newmark & some guy
     One of the organizers of Ungrounded was also a member of a discussion panel, Celestine Johnson. She is a partner at Eric Schmidt’s new venture firm Innovation Endeavors and her area of concern is human rights in the supply chain, a topic both very new and quite pressing. Her panel consisted of women in the forefront of media, tech and venture. Among the topics they addressed was why there aren’t more women in STEM. The answer goes all the way back to elementary school. One study shows that women comprise about 35% of the workforce in tech, and yet women run businesses have a 12% higher revenue and 35% greater return on equity. Interesting stats, no?
     Thomas Heatherwick, the designer of the new London bus as well as the stupendous Olympic torch displayed at the Games last year told us about his design process (I would not want to have to follow him as an Olympic torch designer).
     After a break for lunch the topic was the DNA Summit (Decide Now Act) with more great speakers, including the Secretary General of the United Nations ITV who came to us by live link from Geneva. He commented on our Ungrounded summit singling out the winning ideas for specific comment.
     Afterwards, in a TED Conference fashion, there was vigorous mixing of the delegates in the public areas. Me, I passed out face first on the lawn from jetlag.
     After the conferences we were taken off once more, this time for a reception at the Royal Academy of Art. This was yet another mix of people and I ran into a rather lot of folks who were Buck’s customers. I teamed up with some Stanford medical researchers and people from Singularity University in Mt. View. We went to one of those tony restaurants you see in the movies called Downtown Mayfair right between Savile Row and Regent Street.
     The next morning I was up early for a stroll around London town. It was Saturday and the city had yet to wake up. The skyline is changing dramatically with skyscrapers emerging all round including what will be when completed the tallest building in
Europe. London is definitely on. I recall a time in the 70s when it seemed that it would really become the dystopian Clockwork Orangian fantasy. But there has been a town and city there for about 2,000 years and it has never been more vibrant.
     Over by Hyde Park they were setting up barricades for a parade later that morning for the Royals who were celebrating the Queen’s birthday. The Queen would have to see me another time. I had a plane to catch.
     So why on earth would an airline go to all this effort and expense in a field they are not in business in? Well in England British Airways is big. The way we look to Google here Londoners look to BA so they feel that by creating strong ties to Silicon Valley they will continue to be thought leaders.
Draper University  
Professor Draper
      When I first heard that a new university had been founded I was immediately struck by the inevitability of this being the brainchild of long time venture capitalist Tim Draper. Tim has had an abiding interest in education for quite some time. A few years ago he spearheaded an educational initiative on the California state ballot and he is also the founder of the successful Biz World program, which teaches basic business ideas to elementary school children.
     So it is a natural extension of his egalitarian ideals to found a university. He bought the Ben Franklin Hotel in San Mateo and remodeled it into a campus with facilities for about 50 students to live there for the two-month sessions.
     The students come from all over the world and what they all have in common is that they want to be “in business”. This is not an MBA; it has a very different twist. Basically it’s about teambuilding, public speaking and a great environment to build confidence. Tim uses a superhero theme as the hook and he has the students break into teams for the duration. They work on individual and group projects culminating in final presentations.
     Tim and his staff believe that creating a fun environment fosters creativity and team participation. Some of the activities can seem a little corny but try this: at Google new hires are expected to wear a propeller beanie hat when they first come aboard and are referred to as Nooglers. Imagine you are top of your class at Harvard and you have to dress in this less than hip fashion. It is partly to allow new hires to be greeted by the already arrived but it is also a way of saying “You aren’t as cool as you might think. Join the club.”
     I have been fortunate to have been asked to lecture about my business history and that of The Valley and I have also worked with a number of students on their projects at Draper University.
     Right now the whole affair is in the beanbag-chair phase but the learning is for real. People far more experienced than I have come forward to participate as mentors and lecturers. I sense the start of something durable and significant.
     Most of the students have some college or have even graduated. They are bursting with ideas and high ideals. One of the outcomes of attending a semester at Draper University is to feel out the process of how it is to create a startup in an atmosphere far more forgiving than the much colder world of having to compete in the open market of ideas.
     It’s often said that failure is in some sense  good but I have always thought that failure is the second best lesson where there  are just two lessons. So maybe instead of celebrating failure we should say that we are trailing ideas.
Draper U is great place to do just that.
SolarImpulse
     Many folks recall that the magnificent SolarImpulse solar powered airplane was here in the Bay Area recently. I had the great good luck to not only meet the people behind this effort but to get somewhat involved. The pilots and other key members of the team were living in Woodside while they were getting prepared for the first leg of their round the world expedition.

     The two principals behind this effort are the Swiss adventurers Betrand Piccard and André Borschberg. The goal is to circumnavigate the world using only the power of the sun. It is impractical, dangerous and wildly expensive. It serves no clear business purpose. It is simply a magical mystery tour, just like our excursions to the moon. Except for scaring the Russians, there was no practical application in taking a car to the moon and hitting some golf balls. I know you’re thinking Tang and Velcro. It turns out these products were not first connected with the space program.
     What the moon adventure did was make being a scientist and an engineer, not to mention an astronaut, very cool and attainable goals for the youth of the nation. Compare that to the impact of writing the next cool iphone app and you might see a bit of difference.
     SolarImpulse was founded on the idea that we can all soar beyond our preconceived limitations. This was the message the founders gave to the sponsors and they have believed it to the tune of well over a hundred million dollars. The entire enterprise is expected to cost 140 million. And the funders aren’t aviation companies either. Among the biggest sponsors are Bayer (a multi-national conglomerate making everything from aspirin to appliances) and Schindler (an elevator company). Schindler probably hasn’t improved its elevators much with the materials science behind the project but Bayer certainly has. One of the structural foams used in the plane was so revolutionary that it is now being used as insulation in millions of refrigerators. 
     It’s hard to say sometimes what the specific benefit of sponsoring something this esoteric is but many firms want to be associated with cool future-tense technology. And the fact is, one has to do something with one’s time and money. There are always folks who will say that feeding the poor is of first and only importance but we live in a world of vivid opportunities and the SolarImpuse team is adding to that.
    The plane itself is a remarkable piece of construction. It has the density of a dragonfly. The wingspan is greater than that of a 747 yet it weighs as much as a Prius. This fragility makes taking off and landing with any sort of wind a challenge but after 6,000 miles it has performed flawlessly. The aircraft takes over 30 technicians to fly while holding just one pilot.
     SolarImpulse has just completed the trip across the U.S. and now it will be retired. The next aircraft will be even larger so that it will be able to complete a trans Pacific jump that requires several days in the air without stopping. Bertrand is expected to be the pilot of that leg as he has been practicing deep concentration for long periods. Professionally he is a psychiatrist with a specialty in hypnotism and he says this project will make good use of this ability.
     Bertrand comes from a long line of adventurers. His grandfather, August Piccard, and a partner were the first men to the edge of outer space when they flew to 50,000 feet in a balloon in 1932. August had to invent the pressurized cabin to accomplish this as well as the pillow-stuffed wicker crash helmet. It seems the German FAA required crash helmets for the flight so the pilots used the seats from the gondola.
Bertrand, Jamis, Andre and Grandpa in his fabulous hat
     Bertrand’s father was the deep sea explorer who went to the deepest part of the ocean, 35,000 feet in 1960 in the Trieste bathysphere.
     Bertrand set his own records including the first balloon flight to circumnavigate the earth. After 20 days he and his partner landed with only a couple of hours worth of fuel remaining. It must have been then when he decided that he would not take fuel on his next adventure.  
Bertrand, some guy and Andre with grandpa w/helmet
If you’ve heard the name Captain Piccard from Star Trek it is a nod to this amazing family.
     Andre has his share of accomplishments as well. He has been a fighter pilot on the Swiss Air Force. The Swiss have an air force? Yes, and it is a volunteer one at that. The Swiss are a peace loving people despite the fact that adult males are required to keep automatic weapons at home in case of an invasion. So yes, a volunteer air force.     Anyway Andre is an engineer and has launched several tech companies. He is the chief developer of the aircraft and, with Betrand, is the co-pilot.
     In 2015 the next aircraft will take our hopes and dreams on an around the world tour. Mine will be on board.