Brian L. Colbert

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Last night’s dinner was grilled scallops over a salad of mixed greens with a shallot-champagne raspberry , endive, pine nuts and fried onions with fresh backed cranberry walnut bread.

Here’s the recipe:

• Grill the scallops.
• Arrange the endive around the individual salad bowls
• Dressing: Mix olive oil, fresh lemon, raspberry vinegar, shallot-champagne mustard and touch of rice wine vinegar.
• Toss the salad with the dressing and put into serving bowls
• Add scallops and top with pine nuts and fried onions

Serve with fresh walnut-cranberry bread and Damascus ice tea.

Enjoy.

A couple of interesting posts recently caught my eye:

Tyler Willis weighs in on politics.  It’s an interesting and thoughtful piece.  I hope to find the energy and coherence to respond in a timely manner.

Dave Winer has a very interesting post entitled Is it news if it’s not reported.  I tend to have the general view of,  “who cares what reporters  think is news.”  The old paradigm of being told what’s important is slowly dying Sort of like the days of Walker Cronkite being the most trusted person in America.  What were people thinking back then?

The problem of course is that consumers of news (and I include myself), must find someone or some organization to provide “news.”     And if you want to participate in a discussion of “current events you’d better better be reading a newspaper, because everybody else is. Well most people are probably watching TV news, but I gave up on that years ago.  What’s the point of taking the time and effort to find out what’s going on in the world and not be able to exchange ideas about it.  Not much in my opinion. I think it’s the main reason that I scan the NYT, the WP and the WSJ (yes post-Rupert).  Everybody is reading those papers, including the producers of TV news.  It’s the news food chain.

What I do love to read is the Economist and the New Yorker.  A fabulous combination of weekly reading.

Off to bed

I had the pleasure of tagging along to attend a  Teach for America happening,/pep rally/ get together last Thursday at the Berkeley Marina.  I was never a  member of TFA.  TFA began after I graduated from Oberlin College. The event was split into two parts.  The first part was held at the Berkeley Marina Doubletree hotel.  There was a gathering of TFA alumi from the early 1990s.  These are some of the first and oldest participants in TFA.  Some were still involved in education (admins, teachers, private practice), some had left education completely, and some had returned to TFA after doing a variety of things.  The TFA alumni all seemed to be happy to reconnect about how much TFA had grown and how far the organization had advanced.  There were  also a couple of presentations by TFA staffers. Leslie brought the alumni up-to- date on the growth of TFA and a second staffer spoke about TFA’s current 5-year plan.  TFA likes to lay out five-plans.  I can see the usefulness of a 5-year plan as a way to  to meld  vision and execution, but I always think of Stalin or the U.S.S.R.

The second part of the evening consisted of a boat trip out into the bay so that alums could mix and mingle with the the new TFAers.  The new group was in Berkeley for a week and then heading down to LA for the summer institute before running to Bay Area to start the new school year.

The new recruits were excited for the opportunity to meet the alumni and many of conversations were peppered by expressions of disbelief at how small TFA was a the beginning and how challenged for resources TFA was that the time.  Sounds like the general state of most non-profits to me.  But as a board member of CALICO,  I’m exposed to resource concerns on a continual basis.

It was also my first time out in the Bay on a boat and the captain, a fine fellow by the name of Richard was patient enough to give me a bit of a tour and answer multitude of questions.

Here’’s some photos of my buddy Jonathan on Saturday.  Jonathan was in town for the weekend and was kind enough to treat me to a delicious breakfast of pancakes over on Fillmore Street. I was feeling expansive on Saturday so I let Jon talk me into talking a picture without my ever-present sunglasses

Nihal even made a guest appearance

Did you know that Joseph Schmidt is closing.  Discovered this when I was on my way to a meeting in the Ferry Building last week.  Turns out that Schmidt is closing its doors forever or more accurately, Hershey is closing Schmidt’s doors forever at the end of this month.  So if you like Schmidt’s confection head to the Ferry Building or the Schmidt’s shop, the confections are 50% – 60% off.  I’m not a huge fan of Schmidt’s confections, but I did pick-up a few bites over the weekend.

Heard a really interesting talk by the artists and designers that that run Cronan Michael Cronan and Karin Hibma.  In June of 2009, he and Karin Hibma were named two of Fast Company’s list of 100 Most Creative People in Business.  I was really looking forward to today’s talk and Michael and Karin certainly disappoint.  They were were funny, engaging and insightful.  It was a great talk.

I keep finding myself in the East Bay.  last weekend I was in the Berkeley Hills, today I was back in Berkeley and tomorrow I’ll be attending a Teach for America Alumni event in the Marina.

At the Semantic Code Camp in SJ with Danny http://bit.ly/YTy7u

In Napa — doing the “Napa” thing.

Building43 Launch at TechCrunch

Originally uploaded by jack’sdad

Yesterday’s Building43 Launch Party.

Took Caltrain down to Palo Alto to attend the Building43 launch at Techcrunch’s office.  The launch party

was fun, bumped into people that I haven’t seen in few months, some folks from Startup Weekend and had the pleasure of finally meeting Rob La Gesse in person.  Unsurprisingly, Rob was personable at the party as he is over the phone.  I know that virtual meetings are the rage, but nothing beats connecting face-to-face.  I even managed to join in a conversation between Nihal and Guy Kawasaki about his Alltop demo last night.

It will be interesting to see how Building43 develops as place for “people that are fanatical about internet.”  It’s certainly an interesting start and with Robert Scoble involved you that that there’s going to be a lot of attention paid to it.  I wish them nothing but the best of luck. Here’s a photo.

And  interesting bit of Building43 the focus on providing practical advice.  I was on call today, trying to walk some people through Twitter, FB, FF and Bit.ly integration and it went … nowhere.  Second nature to me, well probably 15th nature, but  was pretty clear that the people I was talking to were lost in space.  Or perhaps, I wasn’t communicating or — I shouldn’t have tried to do it over the phone.  Lesson learned.

A better conversation that I had today, was with old friend from grade School Brendan.  I probably haven’t seen Brendan in almost 25 years, but hearing on his voice was like seeing him yesterday in Bethel, CT.  It was a great way to start to the day and still leaves me smiling as I think about it.  Sometimes, it really is the simple things in life.

at the #building43 launch

Just got back from attending the lates SFNewTech here in SF.  Like all events of this type is can be a hit or a really, really bad miss.

Tonight’s was pretty good. Some interesting people to talk with and some interesting demos to see.  I was worth the hell ride on the 27 line.

The main attraction (I suspect) was Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, Alltop is an “online magazine rack.”  Guy’s demo was fun, informative and he kept it to 5 minutes on the dot.  ALL demos should be 5 minutes or less.  The funniest thing that Guy said during the question and answer session (at least I thought it was funny) was, “people are cheap, technology is cheap, the problem is that nobody is buying.”  This is damn true.  Alltop is great for a one-on-one aggregation experience.  But if you’ve seeking a one-to-many aggregation experience talk to me about PagesPlus.   Some of the other interesting demos were Scoutlabs, Chartbeat and Blurb.  Wasn’t quite sure what Blurb was doing, but it never hurts to get the word out.

The most humourous moments came during a demo, when a fellow kept trying to pretend that the company was more that just him. I/we, we/I, it was funny, truth be told he’s a far better programmer that I’ll ever be in this lifetime.  But does the world really need another way to use Amazon’s API’s top find the best price on camera.  It’s not as bad all the brain power that poured into hedge funds, but it’s a bit dull….