Jen and I are founding partners in LASVP, a really great group of people that are leading the way for a concept called venture philanthropy.  Simply put, rather than just writing a check to a charity and having little visibility into where your money goes, venture philanthropy entails taking a more active role – both in disbursing the money and in getting involved directly with the recipients. LASVP follows a model established in other cities – I think Seattle was the first, and there about 70 or so nationwide.

All of the partner units contribute a fixed annual amount to a 501c3 pool of dollars, and then have focused investment rounds where we solicit proposals in a specific area – in LA so far we have invested in Education and Environment.  An investment committee goes through a pretty detailed process of weeding through the porposals and determining who to fund and at what level.  After an investment has been made, the organization then works hand in hand to match the expertise of the partners with the human capital needs of the organization through the duration on the funding cycle.  Partners help in areas such as talent acquisition, governance, real estate, etc.  Its pretty cool.  All of the time commitment aspects are voluntary, you can scale them to the cycles of your own life (ex. maybe the year you have a third child or join a start-up you can just write a check).

I’ve got two reasons for the blog post – first, if you live in LA and find yourself looking for a way to plug into the community and give back, please ping me to find out more about LASVP.

Second, I received an email this week where one of our partner organizations (Kipp Academy of Opportunity) is looking to fund a high school scholarship for one of its graduates to attend a great private high school in LA – Vistamar.  Kipp is an AMAZING charter school in South Central LA – literally an island of opportunity in a pretty desolate place.  Its only a few years old (founded in 2003) – I’ve spent a little bit of time there and its literally mind blowing what they are accomplishing for the kids of LA.  Before Kipp opened its doors, its safe to say that ZERO, NONE, ZIP, ZILCH kids from that neighborhood would have ever been given an opportunity to attend a place like Vistamar.  It would have been an absolute impossibility. You can’t get there from here.  Now there are 3 kids who might make it in (and likely on to college after that), if they can find a few pesky $$$.  Others have already come forward, they just need a bit more.  Here’s more info.  Let me know if you’re feeling personally flush for whatever reason and want to cut a seriously cool check(for all or part, its a lot of money) and I’ll put you in touch.

Posted: June 24th, 2008 under philanthropy.
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Some fierce music by the Funky Meters off an album that is no longer for sale called The Funky Meters Jam.

The player is courtesy my old comrades at Yahoo, check it out here. You literally drop one line of code in your index file and it can play any mp3 files on your page.

Stretch Your Rubber Band

Groovy Lady

Come Together

photo from Flickr by companyofstorms

Groovy Lady (Single Version) on Amazon

Posted: June 11th, 2008 under mp3blog.
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For the first time ever, I found myself hitting refresh on a liveblogging Jobsnote this morning. (Engadget blew away Techcrunch in the coverage, clearly). There was nothing surprising about what they announced (slightly different form factor, 3G, GPS, push Outlook) except for the we’re-ready-to-grab-market-share pricing. The phone’s only Achilles heel is that the keyboard doesn’t work as well as a berry’s. Its a calculated trade off versus slim form factor and big beautiful screen. Wonder if they are considering a flip keyboard form factor?

Some people are wondering, is the phone that they announced worthy of all the hype and fevered excitement it generated in “bubbleland”. Short answer: Yes, that phone rocks and tons of people are going to be lining up on July 11.

Longer answer: Apple consistantly proves that

The integrated solution wins when technology is imperfect.

Great consumer electronics products are not merely the sum of the feature set. If I had a nickle for every time a CE maker told me that their fill-in-the-blank mp3 player was better than the iPod because it had an FM tuner, I’d have at least a quarter. Damn iPod still doesn’t have an FM tuner. Even better example: GPS. Obvious that its a killer app for mobile phones – every phone will have it 5, 10 years from now max. I use the poor resolution triangulation version on the iPhone *all the time*, its awesome, I don’t know how I ever got along without it. GPS on the iPhone is probably reason enough for me to drop $300 on a new one. But before iPhone had it, phones that had it jammed in to their overloaded interfaces and subpar form factors, weren’t superior phones. They were inferior phones that had GPS.

Brand matters. Working on another blog post about that (TEASER ALERT!) but anybody who has ever owned an Apple product knows what I’m talking about. There isn’t another CE/Mobile/PC company in their class, not even close.

Don’t release a feature until it is rock solid. Supposedly (this is an unconfirmed rumor but it could be true) GPS was an iPhone 1.0 feature but they backed off because the battery drain was too great. They were right to wait a year and get it right.

Don’t move down market until the product is ready. Guess its ready.

Posted: June 10th, 2008 under digital entertainment, digital music, mobile, portable devices.
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If I were a gambling man (oh wait, I am), I’d wager on Obama winning the presidency in November. Right now Vegas has Obama at -194 or a little less than a 2 to 1 favorite. I can’t see how it will be close in the end. This election is shaping up to be similar to Clinton/Dole ‘96. One guy is young, energetic, smart, and full of vision. The other guy is old and crotchety. That’s a tough dynamic, irrespective of your political leanings or worldview. On top of that the Republicans have NO MOJO (negative mojo if thats possible) after 8 years of everything that could go wrong did go wrong. George Will on Charlie Rose last night thought that McCain’s only chance is if Obama fails to make the case that he had the gravitas to be president. After 5 months of speeches like this, I can’t imagine the electorate saying “No thanks, I’d like an old guy who’s just like Bush”.

Obama Victory Speech 6/3/08 in St. Paul Minnesota

Posted: June 4th, 2008 under politics.
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