M@Blog » alma mater

Inspiration from Stanford’s entrepreneurship video library

matt — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 04:13:32 +0000

I’ve been on a video binge watching insightful and inspirational talks by some of the VC and entrepreneurship community’s leaders, all given at Stanford over the past 3-4 years. Many of these were suggested by my friend Greg, who is himself an angel investor in some very promising ventures.

I’m posting these here as both personal reference and to share with others who may be interested. Most of them are short snippets of only a few minutes length rather than your typical 1-hour lecture, so they’re all quite digestible.

Enjoy!

EGG in the WSJ

matt — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 20:39:34 +0000

The Tuesday, September 25th US edition of the WSJ has an article on one of the most successful academic-institution chancellors – the one and only E. Gordon Gee, who once presided as Brown University’s chancellor for a mere two years and miraculously burned through $3 million fixing up the president’s mansion before being whisked away to Vanderbilt. Seems he’s rubbing some of the trustees the wrong way over there now with his profligate spending. But that’s not all!

Some trustees’ concern was aroused when they learned that Mrs. Gee was using marijuana at the mansion. The chancellor told some trustees she was using it for an inner-ear ailment.

Sounds like Mrs. Gee is the one who should have been chancellor of Brown!

Mrs. Gee has caused stirs on campus with her liberal politics. She lowered the American flag outside Braeburn [their residence in Vanderbilt] to half-staff after President Bush won re-election in 2004 … She and others signed a letter of protest to the chancellor when Condoleezza Rice, then Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, was invited to address graduating students in 2004 … Mrs. Gee posted the letter on the couple’s refrigerator door at Braeburn.

But seriously, I think Brown is very fortunate (and better off!) to have Ruth Simmons, and I hope she stays for a long time.

Stanford IT Recommends …

matt — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 09:02:44 +0000

I was visiting the Stanford bookstore today and saw a sign over in the computer section that amused me. Here’s a section from Stanford’s new student “getting started” guide with the quote which was on the sign:

4. Should I buy a Mac or a PC? Should I buy a laptop or desktop?

Both Macs and PCs are used and supported on campus, and most students have PCs, although a rising number (about 30%) have Macs. Nonetheless, Residential Computing actually recommends Macs over PCs, because we’ve found them easier to support, and more importantly far less susceptible to viruses and network break-ins. Essentially all security problems here, which often result in network disconnection, are on Windows machines—see the security section for more detail. Those who favor PCs point out that more software is available on this platform, and most computing in non-academic contexts is done on PCs. A majority of commonly used public computers are Macs, with the balance being PCs and enclaves of Linux/Unix machines.

(bolding is mine, of course) What I find amusing is not just the blatant plug for Macs, but the usage figure – 30%!? This is the premier university in the heart of startup central, Silicon Valley, VC-land, whatever you want to call it. Nurturing a future generation of entrepreneurs on an as yet little-used platform globally could have some interesting consequences. Of course, it’s nice just to see great deals being passed out to the students!

Philanthropy

matt — Thu, 16 Sep 2004 03:56:33 +0000

Brown gets 100 million. What a generous guy – I hope they give him an honorary degree!

Weekend Catchup

matt — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 15:30:13 +0000

My ISP, rosenet, goofed and cutoff our connection over the weekend instead of changing the service like I had requested. Finally had it resolved this morning, having to miss 1/2 a day’s work in the process. Anyways, a “slashback” session, as they say:

Finally got a chance to see Lawrence Lessig in person givin his presentation on free culture(flash). Very cool. Something to work on from the…inside :)

Friends from CCRMA are in town for ISMA this week. Ate some fantastic tofu dishes.

April is the start of a new cycle for many entities in Japan — school, businesses, budgets, you name it. Probably why we’ve been seeing new logos for the subway system. I hate them. Just numbers are more confusing than station names. The subway management probably thinks they’re doing foreigners a service. Just wait for the chaos when real tourists come and can’t figure which number was for which line. We already have English names for each station; who needs more?

Japan Tobacco has a new campaign that started a week or two ago. They’re actually quite amusing. I’m glad they’re trying.

Ye ol’ mater

matt — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 00:47:57 +0000

Brown in the news, investigating its connections to slavery.

Random drop-ins

matt — Tue, 23 Sep 2003 15:12:34 +0000

So on extremely short notice, my buddy Rodrigo from Stanford’s CCRMA decided to let me know he was swinging through town the other weekend. Things didn’t work out ideally as timed, but we did manage to enjoy a bit of DJ Ko Kimura’s spinning over at Air in Shibuya. Now I’ve got two other buddies from Brown in town for the week and weekend. I should start a travel agency, eh? :)

The VR Challenge

matt — Thu, 04 Sep 2003 02:47:24 +0000

Tim Oren’s blog had an interesting tidbit on Virtual Reality guru Jaron Lanier. I remember well the hype surrounding the CAVE at my alma mater, with some interesting applications including this one (PDF) by uber-geek classmate and friend Matt Ahrens. Scott Fisher has some interesting current work going on, but as Jaron points out, we still have a ways to go and some challenging obstacles to overcome.

Everyone’s buying a house!

matt — Thu, 28 Aug 2003 08:44:17 +0000

Well okay, maybe not everyone, but the housing craze doesn’t seem to be tapering off anytime soon. I just found out today my friend Carl, who runs whatweate.com just bought a house and is throwing a warming party in a few weekends. Then there’s Mitch, who not only bought a house but a yellow scooter to boot. There’s also Jeff, who is shopping around his new neighborhood, and I’m taking a guess that my friend Andreas will be shopping around soon as well. Is this a generational thing — where it now feels like everyone around me is also getting married — or does the housing market in the U.S. still have that much juice left? Boy do I miss the states :(

Update: Add one more to that list — my friend Jess has bought a place as well. Anybody else?!

Wedding Bells

matt — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 13:37:53 +0000

Just returned to Tokyo after a wonderful week with the family in New York (so great a city, they had to name it twice), and attending the marriage of my friend Ben to Becky. Ben and I spent a good number of years attending the same academic institutions — 3 years in highschool and 4 in undergrad. Now he’s a family man working on a PhD and MD at Northwestern. whoa. It was a blast catching up with ol’ highschool buddies I hadn’t seen in a while, some for as long as 6 years. Though this was the first wedding within my highschool circle of friends, for some odd reason I’ve been pegged as being the next. I guess there won’t be any wedding bells for a long time :^P Enjoy the pics; the first few in the album are of Andover, where I hadn’t returned in 6 years.