So Guy Kawasaki, who is "by no means “proven” as a venture capitalist" (by his own admission) has put together a quiz about what it takes to be a VC. 

Guy thinks that , "When you’re young, you should work eighty hours a week to create a product or service that changes the world. You should not sit in board meetings listening to an entrepreneur explaining why she missed her numbers while you read email on a Blackberry and intermittently spew forth gems like, “You should partner with MySpace; I can also introduce you to a few of the losers in our portfolio.”

Furthermore, entrepreneurs should view any young person who opted for venture capital over “real world” experience with contempt."

Well Guy started out on the financing side, first at an insitutional LP where I listened to a lot of VCs and then on the VC side where I listened to a lot of entreprenuers and the VCs I got to work with.  It took me a while at each place before I started contributing my own two cents, and I tried to do it where I felt I had some relevent insight.  Listening, in my opinion, is a skill in short demand and I feel like I learned a lot.  Now I'm taking what I learned to the "real world" on the operational side, but I don't think that any of the entrepreneurs I met looked at me with contempt before I joined Oddcast.  I'm glad they didn't. 

Here's my advice to young people trying to get into the field.  Don't let anyone tell you how to get to Mecca.  There are many ways, and one thing I remembered at my time at GM was that the VCs I met came from lots of different backgrounds.   Some were former entreprenuers. Others were technologists.  A few came from journalism and media... others... sales. 

And, to debunk Guy's quiz, I'll give the example of Mike Moritz.  Moritz is a partner at Sequoia.  You may know the startups he's funded:  Google, Yahoo!, PayPal, eGroups, Agile...   Most people consider him to be somewhat good at his job.

If Mike were to take Guy's quiz, here's what he would score:

Part I: Work Background

What is your background?

• Engineering (add 5 points)
• Sales (add 5 points)
• Management consulting (subtract 5 points)
• Investment banking (subtract 5 points)
• Accounting (subtract 5 points)
• MBA (subtract 5 points)

Mike would get -5 points here, because he joined Sequoia after reporting for Time Magazine and starting a newsletter and conference business. In other words, he was a media guy.  Then, he made the mistake of getting an MBA.

"The ideal venture capitalist has an engineering or a sales background."  Sorry, Mike.

Part II: First-Hand Experiences

You may have been in the right places, but you also need the right experiences in those places. Specifically, have you gone through these?

• Been kicked in the groin by a major, long-lasting economic downturn, so that you know how powerless you are. (add 1 point)

Hmm...  since Mike has been part of a successful firm for 20 years, and he invested in Google during the bubble, I'd say this is a no.  His track record seems to have left his groin intact.  No points.

• Worked at a successful startup, so that you can speak first-hand about the ecstasy of entrepreneurship. (add 1 point)

Nope.  No points.

• Worked at a failed startup, so that you understand three things: first, how hard it is to achieve success; second, that the world doesn’t owe you a thing; and third, what it’s like to be fired or laid off. (add 3 points)

No failures, no points.

• Worked at a public company, so that you know what the end goal looks like, warts and all. (add 1 point)

Reporter for Time.  Time was public.  Um....  1 point I guess.

• Held a CEO position, so that you have this fantasy experience out of your system and will not try to run the startup from a board position. (add 2 points)

Was he the CEO of the conference company he co-founded?  Maybe... 2 points.

• Been an angel investor with your own money, so that you understand the fiduciary responsibility of investing other people’s money. (add 2 points)

I don't think he can angel invest while working at a VC, so I'd say no.  No points.

Part III: Necessary Knowledge

Finally, can you answer these questions for entrepreneurs? Because this is the kind of advice that entrepreneurs need. (Don’t worry: many current venture capitalists would fail this part.)

• How do I introduce a product with no budget? (add 2 points)

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt on most of these, b/c he seems pretty smart... never met him (would like to, of course), but I'll assume.  2 points

• How do I determine whether there’s really a market demand for my product? (add 1 point)

1 point.  (Seems like this should get more weight, but ok..whatever...)

• What do I do if customers hate our first product? (add 1 point)

1 point...  [shrugs]

• How do I get Walt Mossberg to return my call? (add 2 points)

This is one of those, "The way to be a successful VC is to be a successful VC before" things...  I imagine Walt would answer Mike's call.  2 pts.

• How do I get to the folks who run Demo? (add 1 point)

See above.  1 point.

• How do I get a plug in TechCrunch? (add 1 point)

I have an issue with this one.  I don't think TechCrunch has made or broken any companies (the products may have broken themselves...  Arrington just calls 'em as he sees 'em).   Plus, I don't really think a VC making a call to Arrington would really influence him... maybe a VC who blogs or anyone who blogs, but otherwise I really think its just create something worthwhile and submit.  0 points.

• How do I get the folks at Fox Interactive to return my call? (add 1 point)

Hmm... if you're investing in a B2B company, I'm not sure how this is relevent.... but, I imagine they'd return Mike's call.  A point, I guess.

• How do I dominate a segment when there are five other companies doing essentially the same thing? (add 2 points)

2 Points... see Google.

• How much time, energy, and money should I spend on patent protection? (add 1 point)

1 Point...  a patent lawyer would know this, too.

• We bet on the wrong architecture for our product; what do I do now? (add 2 points)

Since MM isn't a technical guy, but he probably has connections to lots of great CTO's, I'm going to give him 1 point here.

• What kind of people should I hire: young, old, unproven, proven, cheap, expensive, local, remote? (add 1 point)

As if there was a right answer to this... whatever... 1 point.

• How do I get them to leave their current jobs without throwing a lot of money at them? (add 2 points)

Benefit of the doubt... 2 points.

• How do I tell my best friend that he can’t be chief technical officer just because he was a cofounder? (add 2 points)

2 points.

• How do I get to the buyer at BestBuy to return my call? (add 1 point)

1 point... b/c anyone with a clue will say, "Make a product people demand at the store."

• How do I handle a customer who wants to send back his purchase for a full refund? (add 1 point)

1 point.

• How do I fire people? (add 2 points)

2 points.

• How do I lay people off? (add 2 points)

2 points.

So, on experience, I gave him most of the points, assuming that anyone with a 20 year career in VC should know this stuff.

So, that makes his total...21.

According to the results chart:

24 points or less: Work until you can score higher and keep flying on Southwest Airlines.

:)

• This is going to be BIG! - 5 Funny things I know now, but didn't know then...
  (tags: funny)
• Go GenX - Trendy Urban Clothing Store
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• Design View / Andy Rutledge - Anti-Social Media
  I don't agree, but it's always good to hear the arguments of the other side
  (tags: socialmedia social media community news wemedia mevertising marketing business wisdomofthecrowds)
• Manifest Destiny Part I
  (tags: wireless cellphones carriers mobile)

Does anyone use anything better than ActiveSync... like... I dunno... something that works?   ActiveSync is being really difficult.  I'm trying to sync a PocketPC-6700 using Windows Mobile 5 to Win XP.... everything is in Outlook...   actually... it's just calendar and contacts.  

If no one ever tells you about something, you're likely not going to find out about it until after you probably should know better.  It happens.  You'll get what I mean when you read this...   Please feel free to add your own!

1. When I used to hear marathon times when I was younger, I'd always thing, "Wow...  4 hours.. that's way longer than I could ever run."  But, I knew that logic dictated that if you ran faster, it would take less time.  Time being the bottleneck there, I imagined that if you just ran the marathon really really fast... like as fast as you could, it would be a lot easier to finish, because it would take so much less time.  Why was everyone just jogging?  How come no one has ever tried this??
2. One time my mom noticed my hands at dinner when I was like eight.  She said, "Wow, you have really slender fingers!  You should be a pianist!"   If you say pianist too quickly to an eight year old boy who had never heard the word, they think it has something to do with their little boy parts.   I was so embarrassed...   What could my mom be thinking of at the dinner table that slender fingers could be an advantage for?   "A what!?!"   Oh...  pi-an-ist.
3. There are no male cows.   There are no female bulls.  I thought that cows and bulls were seperate animals until my senior year of high schoool.  Male and female cows.  Male and female bulls.  Makes perfect sense to a city kid.
4. My first grade teacher, Sister Ann, told us that you couldn't digest gum and fingernails, so you shouldn't swallow either.  Wow... couldn't digest it at all?  Jeez.  I imagined that if you didn't know better, eventually, they'd have to surgically remove this big gum and fingernail ball from your stomach, and that the gum and fingernail ball was the most disgusting object I could ever conceive of.
5. When I was like 10 or 11 and dating and liking girls started to become a topic of conversation, I was really confused about something.  In Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, people used to call making out "going with."   No, not like the 50's version of dating or seeing each other as in "they're going with each other"...  I mean, literally the act of making out was "going with".   A boy and a girl would take a walk around the block and we'd be all dying to know if they "went with each other."   The problem was that I didn't really know what exactly we were referring to.  I mean, I knew about a kiss and I had some loose conception of what sex was... but anything that fell anywhere in between... no clue.   Where the hell were all these people going?  Where they having sex?  The funniest thing was that, in the seventh grade, the first time I ever really went with someone (which turned out to just be some open mouth and a bit of tongue) I told my friend about it and he goes, "And you guys were naked!?"    Apparently I wasn't the only one that didn't know what the deal was either.

If no one ever tells you about something, you're likely not going to find out about it until after you probably should know better.  It happens.  You'll get what I mean when you read this...   Please feel free to add your own!

1. When I used to hear marathon times when I was younger, I'd always thing, "Wow...  4 hours.. that's way longer than I could ever run."  But, I knew that logic dictated that if you ran faster, it would take less time.  Time being the bottleneck there, I imagined that if you just ran the marathon really really fast... like as fast as you could, it would be a lot easier to finish, because it would take so much less time.  Why was everyone just jogging?  How come no one has ever tried this??
2. One time my mom noticed my hands at dinner when I was like eight.  She said, "Wow, you have really slender fingers!  You should be a pianist!"   If you say pianist too quickly to an eight year old boy who had never heard the word, they think it has something to do with their little boy parts.   I was so embarrassed...   What could my mom be thinking of at the dinner table that slender fingers could be an advantage for?   "A what!?!"   Oh...  pi-an-ist.
3. There are no male cows.   There are no female bulls.  I thought that cows and bulls were seperate animals until my senior year of high schoool.  Male and female cows.  Male and female bulls.  Makes perfect sense to a city kid.
4. My first grade teacher, Sister Ann, told us that you couldn't digest gum and fingernails, so you shouldn't swallow either.  Wow... couldn't digest it at all?  Jeez.  I imagined that if you didn't know better, eventually, they'd have to surgically remove this big gum and fingernail ball from your stomach, and that the gum and fingernail ball was the most disgusting object I could ever conceive of.
5. When I was like 10 or 11 and dating and liking girls started to become a topic of conversation, I was really confused about something.  In Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, people used to call making out "going with."   No, not like the 50's version of dating or seeing each other as in "they're going with each other"...  I mean, literally the act of making out was "going with".   A boy and a girl would take a walk around the block and we'd be all dying to know if they "went with each other."   The problem was that I didn't really know what exactly we were referring to.  I mean, I knew about a kiss and I had some loose conception of what sex was... but anything that fell anywhere in between... no clue.   Where the hell were all these people going?  Where they having sex?  The funniest thing was that, in the seventh grade, the first time I ever really went with someone (which turned out to just be some open mouth and a bit of tongue) I told my friend about it and he goes, "And you guys were naked!?"    Apparently I wasn't the only one that didn't know what the deal was either.

So YouTube is going mobile on Verizon phones.  You'll be able to subscribe to videos from YouTube for an extra $15 a month on top of your existing data plans.

So... wait...  Let me see if I have this straight.  Carriers want to resell me what I get on the web for free over and above what I already pay extra to get the web in the first place?  On top of that it's on a smaller screen and bound to be slower.

As it is, most people are already paying $50-100 a month for their phone plans.  Where does that break?  $150?  $200? 

At the point where my phonebill becomes more expensive than insurance on the 'Stang, I will run my phone over with the car and take a video of it.  I will then upload it to YouTube so you can all have it Vcasted to your Verizon phones.

When do the phones break wide open and we have enough WiFi or Wimax or whatever to just walk around with an unlocked VOIP phone and just download freely from the web?

Carriers are making my phone experience about as good as my online experience was with Prodigy...     in 1992.

I just installed an Incircles widget that enables live group chat on my blog.   I found it on TechCrunch and I think it's pretty cool for an alpha.   

Here's what's great about it:

• Easiest install of any widget I've ever used.   I think I picked a color, told it where it was going... then boom, I was done.
• It's built in flash and the embed code is flash, which means it will pretty much work anywhere.
• Slick interface.  It's very easy to message other users and join in.
• Links to popular pages.  I can easily check out other pages where people are chatting with InCircle widgets.

Here's what needs some work:

• Notification and popping out of the page.  I don't want to keep my blog open all day, but I wouldn't mind an extra window that blinks when new people join or new messages are played.  I'd probably even download a little notifier for this.   An html link that opens a new popped out window of the chat I'm on would be great.
• Chat isn't visable until you start chatting yourself.   Outsiders can't see what's going on in the chat or that it's even live until you jump in.  This makes them look dead at first.
• Archiving and user reports.  Not registering made it easy to get started, but that also means I have no backend interface for getting reports, seeing what was discussed, etc. 
  I also can't block certain words or users.  The user thing is hard b/c no one registers to join a chat, so it's hard to ban people, but you could do it with a cookie at least temporarily.
• I'm not cookied with the same identity.   Once I create a screename, it should be mine... so maybe I do want to register...  or make registration optional, but what I get for registering is the ability to own my screename... b/c I don't want anyone else being ceonyc.  That would allow me to be ceonyc in any chat I walked into.
• Feedflare...   Allow me to put something in my RSS feed that says "X number of people chatted on this page in the last hour) that encourages clickthroughs.

All in all, nice work...   I wonder how much traffic a blog needs to have for this to reach a critical mass.

I hear the Sox are going to give JD Drew $15 million a year.

That makes Carlos Beltran's $13 look like a steal, considering Beltran has more power, more speed, plays better defense at a more important position, and, oh yeah, is good for more than 130 games a season.  Out of Drew's 8 full seasons, he's only played more than 130 games 4 times.

Then again, if Gary Matthews, Jr. can get $10 million a year for five years at 32, after only playing fulltime the last two seasons...    The guy's never hit more than 19 homers, never driven in more than 79 and he's a career .263 hitter. 

Put it this way...  Jay Payton is two years older than Matthews, but his career stats per 162 are .284-17-70 with a .439 slugging.  Matthews?  .263-14-58 and a .419.  

I think Jay needs a new agent, because he's only making $4 million.

Looks like the Mets just lost Chad Bradford to the Orioles.   That really stinks.  Bradford was a double play waiting to happen every time he came out of the bullpen.  I loved watching him pitch, since I throw a little bit of sidearm myself.  In fact, my one and only career pitching win in little league (the only game that I really ever found the plate) was a complete game throwing sidearm.  It's also how I pitch in wiffleball.

Wiffleball...      sigh.   Boy, do I miss wiffleball.

Anyway, this is a big loss, since Mota will miss the first 50 games of the season due to his roid suspension.  They also traded away Henry Owens.  I guess the return of Duaner Sanchez made a righty in the pen expendable, but it was nice to have someone who keeps the ball in the park.

• The Quoter :: Mitch Hedberg Random Quote Generator
  (tags: cool funny quotes mitchhedberg)
• nextNY Holiday Gathering! December 13th
  Feel free to join us!
  (tags: events nextNY)

"I feel like I... have nothing to conclude, despite having tons to say..." - K.S.

• 7 tricks to Viral Web Marketing - Baekdal.com
  (tags: marketing viral)
• Micro Persuasion: Media Enter Second Life But Its Potential Still Untapped
  (tags: avatars secondlife)
• Web 2.0 and Tim O'Reilly as Marshal Tito | The Register
  Throught provoking... I thought this was pretty good... brings everyone down to earth a bit.
  (tags: web2.0 technology ajax fordhamclass)
• 10 Reasons to Go Short on Second Life
  (tags: secondlife virtualworlds marketing pr)
• Kaneva. The social entertainment network.
  (tags: socialsoftware virtualworlds socialnetworking secondlife)

Preface:   I think what Linden Labs has built is amazing...  its an interesting social experiment, an amazing business, an PR phenomenon...   and I give it kudos for making us all think differently about the way the digital world might move forward.   That being said, to anyone that has been involved with Second Life, please don't take this as a knock, but more as a healthy and perhaps, if I'm lucky, conversation provoking dose of skepticism not on the product itself, but on the approach to it by PR folks, marketers, brands, pundits, etc.  EDIT: (Based on comment #1... I'm not making any sort of direct comparison between SL and the avatars that Oddcast makes, because SL is an immersive world...  Oddcast makes talking avatars that live in the web... they're very different animals used for very different purposes.)

The PR buzz around SecondLife is amazing... (Nice job, Lewis PR...)  and I think it's causing a lot of businesses to wonder if they should be participating.    Consider the following list the "grain of salt" you might want to take Second Life with:

1. Second Life is not, and probably will never be, mobile.   From cellphones, to the iPod, portable gaming...   the consumer has clearly voted with their wallet that they want to pick up their digital life and take it with them, getting out from behind the PC and the laptop.  SL, because it needs to be online and it requires powerful and complex 3-D rendering, will not wind up on your cellphones anytime soon.  In a world where I can blog and read blogs, take and send pictures, play games, consume and even download music and videos wherever I am, how appealing is a technology going to be if it forces me to sit home behind my PC?
2. There are no microchunks of a virtual world.  CDs got broken up into tracks.  Movies and TV shows became YouTube clips.  Websites make sure everything has a permalink so that URLs can be tagged and passed along easily.  This is the viral fuel for a short attention span world...  small and bitesized.   SecondLife can't easily be consumed in small bits.  You can't link to an event that already happened, or tag a place, or share it with someone who doesn't have the software.  That also makes it hard to discover things in Second Life when you're not looking for them.  You can't stumble upon it through Google or by browsing social networking profiles.
3. Second Life is a benevolant dictatorship. If you were doing corporate business development in emerging markets, political stability would be a key factor in measuring the attractiveness of a potential new market.  I think, if given the choice, you'd rather invest in a place with a representative government that has proven to support smooth transition of power in the past.  To me, the fact that a very small group of people basically dictates what goes and what doesn't in this market... a group of people that is not beholden to the residents by law, is a political risk. 
4. Second Life is a business.  Linden Labs has taken venture capital investment and those firms are going to look for an "exit" at some point over the next four years or so.  Maybe Linden Labs will be profitable enough to go public.  In that case, the founders could remain at the helm, but they'd still have the pressure to grow revenues which may be at odds with the authenticity of the service.  Contrast that with Craigslist, which makes its team enough money to be comfortable and not feel pressure to do anything that it's users might not like... no quarterly numbers to meet and no pressure to grow the business. 
5.  Diminishing returns for brand participation.  Darren came up with this one and I thought it was very astute.  Right now, you can gain a lot of PR buzz by participating in Second Life... probably enough buzz to justify the investment in development for whatever you build to put in there.  But, how long will that last?  Will you get any buzz for being the 25th retailer in Second Life?   The 50th?  Plus, are you gaining buzz with the right crowd?   If I'm Major League Baseball and American Apparel, I think I'd be doing more in MySpace and Facebook right now because they represent a broader audience.
6. Requires 100% attention.   I think we all agree that attention is finite.  We just don't have the time to do everything we want to do.   With more and more content and services available to us on a regular basis, consumers are looking for things that either coexist well with other things they spend their time on, or save them time.  I'm generally short on anything that requires my full attention and a lot of time.  You can't casually browse Second Life... you're watching it.. it's full screen on your machine... your character needs to walk around to experience more.  It's very different than an IM window you can put away in the background when you're doing other things.
7. Lack of context.   The idea that you can be anyone you want and do anything is really cool... conceptually... but with no guidence, no schedule... no context, users find themselves lost over overwhelmed.  That's what happens with blogging sometimes.  A blog with no theme is difficult to keep up with.  When you're in a 3-D game, you have a goal...  the game has rules.  Hardcore SLers might find this constricting, but the more casual mainstream appreciate knowing what to do from the second the game starts.
8. Digital world with an analog business model.  In Second Life, people make stuff and sell it.  Goods are exchanged for digital items, but because of their digital nature, SL has experienced problems lately with users copying digital items that would otherwise be sold.  The music and movie industry has been fighting this kind of thing for years and still hasn't stamped it out... and that's with big entertainment money behind them.  When you have a world where all of the items are user created, I just can't imagine that the future will offer adequate protection against the free distribution of these items.  DRMing of user created digital goods just seems very counter to the nature of user created works anywhere else on the web.
9. Reach.   No matter how many registered users you have, getting less than 20K simultaneous users online really isn't very much.  By comparison, many of the online MMOGs get more users than this on a regular basis, with World of Warcraft peaking at half a million users online at the same time.   Yes, it's growing, but interestingly, the number of registration is far outpacing the active usage of the site.  A number of sites I found analyizing the usage on the site showed that online/active as a percent of the total is trending down, meaning that more people are coming to check it out, but they're not sticking around.
10. Escapism vs. Reality.   The promise of social networks is that you've got digital self expression going on in unprecidented volume.  That makes them interesting to both users and marketers alike...   because of their ability to connect you with real people based on real and authentic things about themselves.  Throw blogs in that category, too.   Second Life is more of a fantasy.  Even the name says it.  This is not your life... it's your other life.  You cannot be yourself.. .you have to change your name.  It's not me and it's not other really other people, either.  I thought the blog/Web 2.0/Cluetrain revolution was all about authenticity and living online the way I do in real life...  my digital world as a reflection of my real interests and real personality?  So far, that seems a lot more compelling for people than fantasy... otherwise, wouldn't most of the profiles on MySpace be roleplaying profiles... fake people created and maintained by real humans behind them?   If I'm a business, I want to make sure I'm connecting in a sincere way with real people as well.... not sponsoring a fantasy.  That's the way I personally want to live online as well.

This song has been featured on a Gears of War commercial and it's hard not to stop and listen.  I found the video for it on YouTube.

In case you didn't see Christian Bale and Wolverine... um...   Hugh Jackman in The Prestige yet, stop reading.    I am going to give away a major plotline here.   Don't blame me if you keep reading... you've been warned.

As far as I can tell there are only two scenarios that make sense with this movie.... two explanations that neither of which are entirely satisfying.

1)  Christian Bale has a natural twin that he has grown up with all his life.  He makes "Telsa" the key to his book because Telsa is attempting a cloning machine that doesn't work, sending Hugh Jackman on a wild goose chace.  (Because, if he was aware of it working, he would have essentially given his one advantage, being a twin, over to his arch rival.)   By sheer dumb luck, the machine actually turns out to work.  Now, actually, I believe Tesla was more likely trying to invent a transporting machine... and that happens to be the wackiest glitch in the world... that it doubles you.  But, either way, Bale could have never thought it to work.

2)  Telsa actually did make the machine work for Bale and he used it once, to clone himself a twin.  The second Bale doesn't seem to exist very early on in the movie, like when he's a stagehand.  Where was he all those years if they weren't doing the magic act routine?  Plus, it's just too random that the key to the diary is Tesla, a man that, in reality, has nothing to do with his trick, b/c Bale already has a twin and doesn't need a transporting or cloning machine...   of which Telsa actually winds up, ironically and accidently, creating a cloning machine that works.  Of course, this doesn't make sense either, b/c Telsa doesn't even know his machine works until Hugh Jackman comes to visit him.  If that was the case, though...  why would Bale have anything to do with Tesla?   

• Group chat on the page
  I think I'm going to try this out.
  (tags: chat)

• This is going to be BIG! - I'm Thankful For...
  (tags: thanksgivinglist)
• A VC: Things I Am Thankful For
  (tags: thanksgivinglist)

In my family, Thanksgiving is pretty much about eating...    but we're Italian, so that's to be expected.  Still, it's nice to actually stop stuffing your face for a second and think about what you're thankful for.   Here's my list.   If you blog a list of what you're thankful for, tag it "thanksgivinglist" on del.icio.us...    I'd love to see what everyone else appreciates...  and when you write the list, don't forget to tell others to tag it as well.

1. Most importantly, I'm thankful for my family...  My parents got through their new home purchase and renovation ok, my grandmothers are still going pretty strong at 88 (89 in February), and my brothers, who I know I need to call more often, are doing well, too.



2. I'm thankful for the opportunities that my job at Union Square Ventures afforded me, and the challenge that I know have at Oddcast.   It's been a really pivotal (and exciting) year for me professionally and next year looks to be even better!  *hopefully*
3. I'm thankful for great friends--some really special people in my life.  My schedule is always crazy, but a handful of people have managed to hold on for the ride...   some are new and some are old, and some are old friends that have become new in a way... coming back from college or grad school to continue and strengthen friendships from the past...     To Brian, Adrianna, Suzie,  Allison, Deirdre, Pastore, Tommy, Alicia, Kristin... thanks for sticking around.

 

4. I'm thankful for my health...  no major softball, kayaking, dodgeball, football, biking, skiing, or driving injuries quite yet...    *knocks on wood*.
5. I'm thankful for the Downtown Boathouse... not just the buildings or the activities, but for the community.  It's my second home five months out of the year and I've made some terriffic friends through it.  More importantly, it's given me a new appreciation for the conservation of nature in this city and a new perspective on New York.



6. I'm thankful for this city...   the only place I've ever really wanted to live and ever have.  There's no place like it anywhere else, and I couldn't ask for anything more than to always be able to put a roof over my head here and to be happy with my life here.



7. I'm thankful for the success of nextNY....  or rather...  I'm thankful that it's success has enabled me to meet so many fantastic people that I can relate to and who have a vested interested in developing the NYC technology community.  That's really what has been the most fun for me...    the people are great.   I can't wait to see what we do next year.
8. And lastly...  I'm thankful for this blog.  Seriously.  Blogging has led me to two jobs, a wonderful relationship, an adjunct gig, countless connections with really interesting people, on time furniture delivery and an elementary school reunion.  It's been a great sounding board for my ideas and a lightning rod for people with similar interests.  Thanks for reading... thanks for commenting, thanks for sharing on your own blogs and linking over...    Your attention is much appreciated.

• An API for Google Image Search - The Code Project - C# Libraries
  (tags: images search google api myoddcast)