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 19^th 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.

TED 2013,

TED 2013 - Pope Benedict Moves to San Francisco - Viper Stormchasers -Vesta Restaurant Review - The Secrets of Silicon Valley a new book - Jamis's classifieds

by Jamis H. MacNiven

         When I first wrote about TED 10 years ago the conference was like an energetic teenager full of bright ideas. Today it reminds me of a seasoned 30-something – experienced, respected and wise and cutting a wide path through the intellectual wheat fields.TED.com

         Chris Anderson is the curator of this museum of thought. I was that when he first took over he looked calm enough but I think he might have been a little nervous about how it was all going to work out. It was terrific then but over time it has grown in self-recognition and the emergent world of TED eclipses all the other events I participate in. In fact TED has made Burning Man look somewhat dull. It certainly is less dusty and with the move to Canada next year less dusty still. I know, Canada? Who would have though that they would turn out to be cultural and economic heroes. We used to joke about Canada, now we want to be Canada.

         TED consists of dozens of talks over five days. Short or long it doesn’t matter. You can tell a compelling story in 30 seconds though most are 18 minutes. My aim with this article is to drive you to the TED website, so I’ll hit a few highlights. I’ll dive right in with Open ROV, David Lang’s company making open source underwater Remote Operating Vehicles submarine kits. These ROVs can take your eyes to 300-foot depths and you get to build the ship yourself.

         This was followed by a talk by Skylar Tibbit on self-assembling mechanical devices. Taking a page from Mother Nature, Skylar is exploring the step beyond 3d printing.  A few years ago we had memory foam, but now visualize solar powered factory pipelines that squeeze their fluid contents to their destination.

Kevin Kelly, Stewart Brand, Carl Page and Felix Kramer

         A video that really rocked me was follow the frog. Stop reading this drivel, look it up, now! I’m just sain’.

         Edith Widder finally discovered the long rumored 30-foot plus giant squid. But squid cheat being 2/3rds tentacle and all. Still I wouldn’t want to meet one on a lonely highway.  She discovered that the ROV’s being used in the hunt were always too noisy and once she sent a quiet one down the squid were all over the place. Ahh, the power of common sense.

         Tony Hsieh (Zappos) is a regular a TED and is one of the real trendsetters in clothing and business philosophy. Who’s Tony wearing now? He wears Betabrand a mutual friend Chris Lindland’s company. Betabrand is hip but not tooo hip. Heretofore exclusively sold online Chris has just opened a new very unusual store at 780 Valencia in The Mission. I love the word heretofore, yes? Uptop!

         Jennifer Grandville, the ex-governor of Michigan, had some electrifying ideas about the nation’s energy needs. I saw a strong Presidential possibility in her but discovered she was born in Canada. How hard would it be to the change the Constitution or maybe get annexed by Canada?

         Robert Gordon came out from behind the curtain and told us the sky was falling. He is a well-respected economist who says that growth, innovation and prosperity are coming to an end (get that man a chair and nice cup of cocoa).  He was in the distinct minority at TED. I feel that too many economists equate growth with prosperity. I am campaigning for increased prosperity but reducing the rate of growth.

         Rodney Brooks brought Baxter, the workplace robot. It performed badly (but Rodney was cool throughout) because the lighting was a bit too dim so it needed some effort to cajole a few reluctant movements out of the little fella. Later Julia Sweeney quipped that it only took three people to try to coax the robot to move a single item from a table to a box in about 10 minutes. A real job creator this. Ha ha. Well, not so fast. The first aeronauts were a rooster, a sheep and a duck in a hot air balloon (still a crew that has never been bested) and with this strange beginning we are now looking at travel to Mars. Queue the Strauss score from 2001.

         Speaking of Mars, Elon Musk materialized from the future to give us an update on his many mandates. Space travel plans are littered with crackpots. There is a team trying to fund an inflatable space hotel for tourists. Another wants to sell you a one-way ticket to the Red Planet. Elon is as far from crackpot as Edison is from Gyro Gearloose (of course Gyro’s stuff did work, more or less)

         Richard Turere came to see us from Nairobi. Now 13 he crafted a way to keep the lions from eating the family cows in the city limits of Nairobi back when he was a kid of 11. After several false starts he hooked a solar panel to an old car battery to run blinking led lights that keep the lions out of the pasture. Lion Lights are being used all over Africa now. His invention was real and would have been just as effective if he had been a 30-year old.

         There were other young inventors with more complicated tales. Taylor Wilson created a fusion reaction in his garage at 15 and now at 18 told us he could make a real dent in global warming and help foster world peace by feeding nuclear warheads to his pollution-free fission reactor. Well, maybe, but if he wasn’t so young would anyone listen? Bill Gates proposed a similar reactor a few years ago but Fukashima back-burnered that one.

         Even younger is Jack Andraka who at 15 has had the boldness to say that he invented a $3 test that can detect pancreatic cancer and, because of early detection, yield a 90% cure rate. This is audacious and the crowd loved it. I loved it, but I spoke with a notable research scientist from Stanford who had his doubts because the kid is unpublished so his data is hard to review. He might be a Pasteur or Lister but remove his age as a consideration and his story is less compelling. Still, he was a magnificent and provocative presenter.

         Bono came out to tell us about his charitable intentions. I have always been a little unconvinced by his rock star/poverty warrior bravado and the glasses make me suspicious. Bono took off his glasses, mocked his celebrity and made me believe. He is promoting ‘factivist’ thinking to counter demagoguery on his fight against poverty. Bono is a good man and a damn fine rock and roller.

         Bono is old school But Amanda Palmer sure isn’t. She says she’s a mix of punk and cabaret. Amanda has the heart of Janis without the pain; the punch of Patty Smith without the attitude and a voice very much like Bowie. A little while back she decided to ask her fans to pay her through Kickstarter instead of buying her album. She hoped to raise a hundred grand to support her and the band. Her fans sent her 1.2 million because that’s what they thought she was worth it.

Amanda and fan

 

At one performance she crowd-surfed across the Weston lobby. No one wanted to offend by touching them ladyparts so she nearly ended up being baloney-sliced face-first in the piano. See her talk and her TED musical performance but I advise against looking at her overproduced MTV like videos online. Just because you and the band can dress all in white is not reason to actually do it, Amanda… unless you’re from Sikkim.

         The staging at TED is a brilliant. This year it was a tree house theme and on one limb we found Ben Affleck. He said that TED felt like the Academy Awards for smart people but that he was going to be neither funny nor smart. He then became both, especially when imitating Al Gore. As we all laughed he said, “I hope Al’s not here”. He was. Ben brought the Congolese String Orchestra. These men were in formal tails playing western strings and made us all embrace this tragic place.

         Alastair Parvin open sources punch-out-of-plywood wiki buildings; much like kid’s models but giving you the ability to print your own house. He needs to team up with Tibbits so it self-assembles and maybe Baxter can live there.

         Danny Hillis says we’re at a point with the internet analogous to when singled celled organisms turned into multi-celled organisms. He warned us that there is no backup system for the internet and that it’s fragile and vulnerable. Just sayin’.

         We saw some art from the forthcoming film called The World’s Largest Jumping Fish. It Looks like Life of Pi on LSD. It will be blowing minds at theaters near us soon. Bring Tupperware for your brain.

       Meg Jay is a clinical psychologist who pointed out that a good many 20 somethings without a life plan had better get with it. She says some young folks are lazy maybe but some simply need some tools for success. She has a book.

         Mitra Siugrat was this year’s TED Prize winner (a cool million). For some time he has been mounting computers literally in holes-in-walls in poor areas all over the world and then walks away. In one poor village in a Tamil-speaking region of India he returned a month after going live and talked to the children who were playing on the computer. He asked them what they were doing. These ten and twelve year olds said they were investigating the structure of DNA. Their one comment was that all the programs were in English, which they did not speak. He said, “Oh sorry.” They said, “No problem we learned English.” They are not being coached by professionals, but there is a team helping them. Retired grandmothers in northern England come aboard with video chat to encourage the kids. Not to tutor or test they just say “Good job, keep going.” This remarkable morphology has spread to other places. Get thee to the internet to see more.

Jamis with inventor of Glass Babak Parviz

        The geeks from Google were wearing their Google Glass heads-up hyper reality project on their faces. This is the sort of thing that got you beat up for on the playground years ago but now it gets you a G5 jet. Geek respect happened gradually as this is a world were we didn’t even notice that our biggest celebrities had names like Arnold and Sylvester.

        Mary Lou Jepson (cofounded One Laptop Per Child) is the Head of Digital Display for Google Glass. She proposed that it might soon be possible to bypass our verbal categorization of data and interact directly with images in our brains. Basically a new way to think.

         De-extentiction. You heard it here first. Steward Brand and his wife Ryan Phelin believe that their new program called Revive and Restore can literally bring back extinct animals. This is not ivory tower conjecture. They say the science is close to bringing back recently departed animals. You’ve heard of the passenger pigeon?  A boy with a bb gun killed the last wild one in 1900.  But did you know that it was the most populous bird on earth and that it was hunted to extinction. It was also the biggest source of meat for the poor in America the early 19th century. Flocks were reported to be a mile wide and 300 miles long. In a few decades we ate every last one. It has been reported to taste better than chicken and I intend to find out if it’s true.  

The very last one died in a zoo

         Liu Bolin is truly the invisible man (run to your computer and look him up[wait no running you are already on your computer, right]) by making himself (nearly) invisible. Really he can do this. He speaks convincingly about political and social issues in a manner completely original and memorable. He can actually make himself invisible. I saw him do it.

         Larry Lessig talked to us about how to equitably fund political races. It makes perfect sense so it will go nowhere. His work dovetails with Steven Johnson who just released a penetrating book about the new networked landscape in Future Perfect. Steven is a social scientist and he believes we are witnessing the old vertical power systems being pushed aside by social networks. Occupy and other movements represent what he calls peer progressive cooperation, an emerging model for the very structure of society. Occupy didn’t work you say? Not so far but the future isn’t done with us yet.

         Again with the kids. Dong Woo Jang is a kid who picked up sticks at 14 in his Korean neighborhood and began crafting bows and arrows to examine the intersection of mathematics, wood, flight and craft. His many bows allowed him to see the metaphor and the reality of this most ancient tool. It is now overlooked but is indeed a member of the top-ten most important human contrivances of all time.

         One presenter showed us new evidence that the alphabet might not have been invented in Biblos, present day Lebanon, but in upper Egypt considerably earlier. I’m an alphabet aficionado and so if this is true it’s BIG news.

         Kees Moeliker of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam won the Ignobel Prize for being the first to document a case of homosexual necrophilia in ducks, he brought the a duck. It was dead. He’s kidding...or is he?

         N. Korean activist Hyeonseo Lee came from privilege and as a child was told that the starving people in her country were diseased and there was nothing that could be done for them. Her family fell into disfavor and they escaped through China to Vietnam and finally to S. Korea which was only a few miles, but a universe, away. A moving tale of despair and triumph.

         Eleanor Longden moved us too. She has schizophrenic tendencies and has a talkative team in her head that first tried to kill her and then helped get her through school as she finished her PhD. Mostly folks with this diagnosis fail at life but she is making those voices work for her.

         Neil Gershenfelt is examining the boundary between bits and atoms in the Fab Lab at MIT.  He says the digital revolution is over and we won!

       There is so much more. Much, much more online.

Pope Benedict Relocating to California

The long lonely highway

         It’s official. The recently retired Pope Benedict (or is it back to Ratzinger once again) is moving to a nice three story Victorian in the Twin Peaks neighborhood of San Francisco. I’m told he has joined the Powerhouse Gym on Market to keep those abs buff. I am not making this up. The ex-pontificate is driving the Popemobile from Miami to San Francisco because he wants to see America up close.

         He called me in March from the Holiday Inn along Alligator Alley in Florida. He told me that the alligators were very nice if a bit snappy.  He said he was disappointed to discover that his car would only do 9 miles an hour but he said he was looking forward to cruising into Nashville and eating fried grizlin’ and possum pie at Minnie Pearl’s Gud Eats.

Expect the ex-pontifcate to be pulling into Buck’s sometime in the fall.

Restaurant Review

         Why are you eating here when you could be eating at Vesta? Oh right, you can’t get in because it’s too busy. This is the first restaurant review I’ve ever done for the competition. Well they aren’t really competition. As with the restaurants in Woodside, we’re all friends.  

         Peter Barone and his wife Courtney opened Vesta at Broadway and Main in Redwood City last year. It is his parents and my old pals Roy and Rose Barone’s old location, which they ran in the 70s and 80s across from Margaret and my construction office.

         Now all our kids are the biz and let me tell you, these kids are schooling us parents.

         Vesta is truly amazing. First, they close Sunday and Monday and make less money so have conquered one of the biggest limitation of the business, burnout. The staff is convivial as heck but the big news is that the food is simply spectacular. I’ve eaten at Noma in Denmark, called “the best restaurant in the world” I’ve uncovered insider places from Toulouse to Tokyo but in this great big world I’ve never eaten at a place (that my kids didn’t own) with better food than Vesta. It’s pizza, salad and veggies. But with such flair and love that has forced me to recalibrated my understanding of this cuisine. Do-not-miss the sausage, honey, green chili and mascarpone pizza. Oh I had my doubts about the honey but trust me; this is the best single food anywhere. It is.

         This isn’t just me playing nice. Check out their well-earned ratings online.

         I can tell you this, though. The art collection is pretty weak. Thank goodness.

MacNiven Boys in San Francisco

         Dylan continues to captain the restaurant group in SF with his brothers, Tyler and Rowan. The Woodhouse Fish Co. brand is growing and West Of Pecos, in the Mission, is already a year old. Overseeing the kitchens is corporate chef August Schuchman. August is on fire (in a good way) and I predict that he will be a name in years to come. That is a single name like Gordon or Wolfgang. He’s that good.

Viper

By Jeff Shardell (Buck’s first guest author ever)

Dustin and Jeff

         Two years ago, I was perched on a knoll top just outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi with video camera in hand.  No, I wasn't filming butterflies or bird migrations, I was filming a tornado.  This wasn't just any tornado, it was a behemoth - an EF-5 tornado (picture Tornado7) barreling directly towards me at 60 miles per hour.  With self-preservation kicking in, every fiber of my being was telling me to run as fast as I could in the opposite direction.  I remember thinking to myself "Why in the %#^%$! am I putting myself in this situation, yet AGAIN?"  The path that lead me here was a bit circuitous but as Steve Jobs is famously quoted as saying, "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards."

         Jumping back in time, I was your typical tech guy, holding a number of senior business positions at a variety of Bay Area companies.  My most recent was running business development at Google from the early 2000s until 2009.  Even though technology is what put food on my table, I always had a latent passion for weather.  I spent my early years growing up in Florida and was that crazy kid (every neighborhood has one) who ran outside to watch the thunderstorms roll in while others were taking shelter. In undergrad, I studied meteorology and even though I transitioned to business, my excitement for extreme weather never left me.

Crimineeeee!

         Fast forward a bit after leaving Google when I convinced a friend of mine to come storm chasing with me.  Landing in Denver with nothing more than a rental car (full insurance policy of course!), laptop and data card in hand, we embarked on a week of chasing.  After days of crisscrossing a multitude of flyover states in search of storms, we finally captured the full lifecycle of a beautiful tornado in the Comanche Grasslands in southeastern Colorado (picture DSC_0139) and I knew I was hooked.  When I got back, I started trying to convince everyone who would listen and who was adventurous enough to come storm chasing with me.  When I exhausted my friends and family, I got connected with the guys on the Discovery Channel's Storm Chaser show and started chasing with them.

         Now, me and my good friend and chase partner Dustin Feldman decided to double down and create the only high-end VIP storm chasing business in the world - Viper Tours LLC.  

         We chase in a specially designed Ford Raptor and our goal is to get our guests as up-close and personal to a tornado as possible - without actually getting sucked in! We've even signed on with a TV production company and will be filming a pilot for a reality TV show about our business and our adventures during the chase season.  If you are interested in experiencing the thrill of a lifetime, visit vipertours.com for more information - or just reach out and say hi.  Oh, and in case you are wondering what ever happened with that EF-5 tornado - well, it veered off it's track in the last few minutes and thundered harmlessly by.

         I have seen nearly 50 tornadoes over the past few years.  What keeps me coming back? Well, there is nothing like experiencing this powerful but beautiful force of nature.  Once you feel the wind blowing through your hair, the rain and hail on your skin and the smell of wet summer wheat fields, all the while a funnel is being born in front of you, you know you are witnessing one of the miracles of life.  As Haruki Murakami said, "When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in.  That's what this storm's all about."

The Secrets Of Silicon Valley

         Now on sale at Buck’s bookstore (The Smallest Bookstore In The World) right here.

         I’ve read all the books about The Valley. This one is by far the best and not just because of the couple of flattering pages about me. It is a solid work with insights from 100 years ago up to 2013 of the Valley’s tech industry. If there is one book you should read about our little Valley of Surprises it is Deborah Perry Piscione’s new book.

Classified ads

     I’ve decided to get rid of much of my stuff. I’m not talking about the stuff at Buck’s but the junk I have at home so if you know anyone interested in the following let Jamis know.

·       1929 Springfield Phantom Rolls Royce. This is has had just two owners, just me and the countess. It has 7,000 original miles but need an alignment. $975,000

·       Jivaro shrunken head collection. These are pretty rare. Six heads including the “Spaniard” Juan Calderon. Perfect if, somewhat shrunken, condition. $67,000 each or 300k takes them all.

·       Henry VIII suit if armor. This is probably technically the property of the British Crown but we’ll just keep it between us. This from his fat period. 12 million or will trade for Florida real estate.

·       Set of golf clubs. $75.