Long walk home, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Queensboro Bridge

Long walk home, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

The Citibank Building from 53rd and 1st...

Long walk home, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

The UN

  Museum Mile Festival 
  Originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Museums are free.  People are chalking the streets.  No cars.  Its cultural chaos!!

Sandy is a Hoboken resident dedicated to getting her community to take advantage of its waterfront.  She's been spearheading efforts to build a new boathouse over there.  I coaxed her into writing a blog post in her own words about why she does it.  I think this is great... and its exactly what makes blogs better than brochureware.

Link: Hoboken Cove Boathouse: Why we do this....

I may need a ringer or two for kickball tomorrow...   e-mail me if you can be in Central Park right by Columbus Circle tomorrow (Tuesday) at 5:45PM and you're interested.

Link: VC Adventure: Making your threats real.

  Jones Beach 
  Originally uploaded by ceonyc.

The water is freezing!!

Ok, we now have our own website.   www.hobokencoveboathouse.org   Link to it.  Love it.  Comment on it.   And come kayaking tomorrow!

Alright, so *hopefully* the www.hobokencoveboathouse.org domain name parking propogates nicely in the next few hours (playing with domain names is such sketchy business), but in the meantime, you can access our website here.   Please don't link to it or bookmarket or whatever until its up and running at its new domain name. 

The details on tomorrow is that we'll be running our free kayaking program at Frank Sinatra Park from 12-5.   Please e-mail Sandy for more details....    I'll post a rainout notice here and up on the temp site if anything changes.

I'm LinkedIn.

I have a Friendster profile.

I'm a member of NYSSA, an alumni of Fordham and an alumni of Regis High School.  I have various levels of data about myself at each of these institutions.  NYSSA and Regis have online databases available for people inside those organizations.  Regis lets me post a resume/bio.  Fordham... well, Fordham puts out a book (yes, with actual pages and everything) every five years or so, which is already obsolete in my case because it doesn't have my current work address.

I have an About page here and here.

I just registered for the NYPEN.

I'll admit to some online dating... but I'll let you match me to those profiles on your own.  ;)

I play kickball and dodgeball for ZogSports, and softball for Fordham in the NYC MetroSports League.  Both of these leagues have enormous online social networking potential that I'd be very happy to participate in, but they don't take advantage of that in any way.  Sportsvite is trying to solve that problem and while its a great idea and a neat implementation, its Y.A.F.P.  (Yet another...err... profile.)  If anyone is looking for an OF/3B in softball who catches and hits a lot better than he runs for a fill-in or a pickup game, that's the site to contact me through. 

The Downtown Boathouse is the same way.  They don't attempt to leverage their network at all.  I don't even know the last names of most of the other kayaking volunteers, let alone what they do for a living.  Its actually kind of an unspoken taboo there that when you're there, you're a kayaker and that's all that matters.  In a way, its sort of cool, but I'm sure I'm probably missing out on a lot of good professional networking because it never gets discussed.  Its a great place for free kayaking in New York City on the Hudson, but a terrible place for efficient social networking.

I also have an outdated profile at MonsterTrak where I'm listed as an alumni contact for Fordham students.   Now, Fordham wants me to fill out Y.A.F.P.  for the alumni mentoring program that I helped start two years ago so that all of the other students in the program can contact me.  I'm all for being helpful, but, to be honest, I'm a little profiled out.  I'll fill it out, but there has to be a better solution, for ALL of these things I'm a part of.

As far as I'm concerned, LinkedIn, at least for all this professional stuff, is far and away the best answer.  Their site is extremely professional.  Their set of permissions based contacting prevents me or my network from being spammed.  That's my favorite profile, but it doesn't solve half my profiling and networking issues.  I can't take that profile anywhere and use it for anything, nor can anyone else use it to really solve their member database issues.  Everything about LinkedIn has to be done on the LinkedIn.com site.  So, people see it as Y.A.F.P. when they already have enough trouble managing all of their member database and profile data everywhere else.

LinkedIn should open up the network through an open API and "Powered by" type services.  Take Fordham, for example.  Fordham University as a whole is never going to get LinkedIn for Groups.  They already have an alumni database.  They don't need two.  However, LinkedIn could provide a "Powered by LinkedIn" front end that would, with permission, give anyone in the alumni database all of these great networking tools that the LinkedIn users already use.  So, lets say I'm Joe Blog, Class of '57.  I've already given the school all my data, but its going to get stale pretty quickly, because they don't have a clunky online database which will take a million years to implement.   Besides which, it becomes Y.A.F.P. for people to manage, and Joe's not interested in that, especially since his own participation in the database might not provide him any direct value.

But, what if Joe gets an e-mail or sees on the alumni website that he can now log-in and get connected via Linked-in automatically to all of these great features if he so chooses.  So, his profile is on the system, but he can opt-in to a Linked-in for Groups type functionality.  If he's already on LinkedIn, that's great, because his profile has been autopopulated, and if he's not, his LinkedIn profile has been autopopulated with the data he gave the university.  If he wants to turn it on, great!  If not, that's his choice.  For LinkedIn, its mostly coming up with a school skinned UI, because they already have the database backend for groups.  For the school, its a really really lightweight, simple, opt-in implementation of the online database everyones been asking for.  Why every professional member database doesn't have a LinkedIn frontend with a one click option to be a LinkedIn member, I have no idea.  Joe would love it, because then he could use the same profile for his school, his professional society, or his softball team.

If you open up the API, you can let people develop stuff on top of the LinkedIn backend.  So, the Sportsvite folks can choose not to show your professional resume, but instead throw on a rating on how hard you can throw.  Currently, aside from the attempts at FOAF, I haven't seen anyone open up their system and attempt to be the profile engine for everyone, but I think LinkedIn has the best shot.  I don't think you can just do this with a closed, LinkedIn.com offering.  You need NYSSA to choose you as their front end provider and Fordham and whoever else wants a "Powered by LinkedIn" database.  Until then, LinkedIn is just going to be Y.A.F.P. and we're still going to have to log on and put our stuff into these clunky pseudo address books.

Seinfeld's got a great skit about shopping in a supermarket... no windows... no clocks.  They're designed to make you forget the existance of the outside world.  Casinos are the same way.   Some corporations are the way

Link: Bubblegeneration - Evil Corporations Only.

Good blog.  Great resources.  Check the sidebar for some really interesting presentations and articles on digital music and peer created content.

Got some link love from Brad and it comes at the right time, too, because I've been noticing a lot of the VC Analyst crowd popping up around the Blogosphere, and its made me think about my own role.  Brad charactorizes me as a "New VC Blogger", I'm more of a new VC than I am a new blogger.  Nevertheless, I was thinking the other day that when I do post about being exactly who I am, a new analyst in the VC world, it generally gets a good response, but I don't do it too often.  As I've said before, I'm really pretty overwhelmed (in a positive way) about all I'm learning at USV, and I'm probably too caught up in the idea that my blog posts and ideas need to be completely baked (as oppossed to half) before I should post them.  I don't do a lot of thinking aloud on the blog, but when it comes to the new leaf I've turned over in my career, perhaps I should.  Ok, note to self:  post more about what its like to be a new VC creating your own role in a very small shop.

Also, on that note, I like to think of myself as a consummate networker and I love loose connections.  I find a lot of value in professional societies, but, admittedly, that's not something I've investigated thoroughly enough.  Rachel Masters, who should be blogging herself, who just left Starvest, introduced me briefly to a young venture capital professional society here in NYC but I haven't done much with it yet.  That's something I need to jump on.  So, now, that my first 100 days are over at USV, its time to redouble my professional efforts.  Look for more professional posting here, not because I want to, but because I need to be, for myself.  This blog can and should be my space to think and connect, and, after some self assessment, I feel I should be doing that more related to my new position.

On that note, I'd like to thank my former colleagues at the GMAM Private Markets Group, who are spinning out and moving within the next couple of weeks.  The team, now called Performance Equity Management, got me this great engraved Tiffany clock for my four years of service to their group.  It finally arrived all finished up and shiny this week, and it now sits on my desk.  Thanks!

Since it was Memorial Day weekend, which is way I kinda forgot to post this on Monday, I tried to think of a movie that could somehow tie into the holiday theme.  I scanned my list for anything with war...  nope...  beaches?  Boats perhaps?  Well, actually, beaches and boats I have.

My Memorial Day Weekend 50 Favorite Movies Pick:

Castaway

I saw this in the theater and from the moment the plane goes down and he wakes up on the island, to about the moment he gets saved, I've never seen a theater full of people so engaged, so intently focused on a movie in my life.  No one made any noise.  No shifting, no whispering.  They just sat still, in silence, while Tom Hanks lived and learned, alone, on this island in the middle of nowhere.  It was one of the quiet movie experiences, between both the audience and the movie, that I've ever seen.  It was just exhausting to watch, really.   We'd seen Philadelphia and  Forrest Gump, and while those were good acting roles for Hanks, they were also solid, well written stories.  Castaway... well, was there even a script for this movie?  I mean, it must have been all directions, because he hardly has any lines throughout his time on the island.  Now that's great acting, when you can move an audience just by being alone, quiet, in the middle of nowhere.  We've seen this story before with a boatload of people, or two or three people, but just one guy...  it could have been a real flop if it wasn't done right, but its perfect.  Hanks is perfectly cast and really pushes the envelope on his acting skills.  Oh, and the Wilson the soccerball did a phenomenal job as well.  This is one of those movies that I probably won't watch again, only because its so intense, but its easily one that deserves to be on this list because of its quality.