CNN/Money Magazine published a list with the “smartest” US cities as measured by the percentage of the population with college degrees. While it’s not a perfect metric by a long shot, it is indicative of certain shared experiences and at least the ability to complete a degree program. Seattle tops the list with 52.7% of the population (age 25 and older) earning degrees.

Silicon Valley makes a good showing with all 3 major cities making the list. San Francisco weighs in at #2 (50.1%), San Jose at #15 (36.1%), and Oakland at #18 (33.8%.)

Technorati Tags: Smart Cities | Degrees | Lists | Mike Harding Blog

After seven years, I turned in my badge at Sun today. I did so with mixed emotions, sad to depart from all the great people there, satisfied with all the memories (good and bad,) and excited to move on to the next adventure.

The gains in market share have been impressive and I expect that profitable growth will follow and be sustained. While I may not have the badge, I will still be rooting for you to win Sun.

Technorati Tags: Sun | Change | Transition

A few days ago I posted an entry on 20 ideas venture capitalists would be willing to back with $100M. Well, Business 2.0 released the antithesis for that today in a short and direct article; examples of ideas VCs won’t back.

This list is harder to collect as VCs are very reluctant to discuss them, but everyone has seen some real stinkers over time. My favorite is the individual looking for $10M to make a film, based on a book, based on their life. A great way for investors to lose $10M fast.

Another great place to see some “interesting” ideas is Patently Silly, a collection of ideas that might have been better left unrealized. Only in this case, the innovators went so far as to patent them. There’s a blog dedicated to bad ideas located here – though it seems to be something of a cobweb. A Google search on bad invention yields 16.4 million hits.

The challenge for all innovators and investors is to sort through the ideas recognizing that there are very few worthy of investment. And then, investors aren’t simply looking for a single shot, but investing in a team with experience able to churn out results based on those ideas time after time.

Edison had it right when he said “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Accordingly, a ‘genius’ is often merely a person who has done his or her homework.” Make sure you take the time to vet your ideas and your execution plans in advance of seeking funding for the best chance of positive results.

Technorati Tags: Venture Capital | Investment | Ideas

Darin Boville posted a great video over on Coastsider.com showing pelicans feasting on smelt this past week. If you haven’t had a chance to see pelicans throw back “smelt shots,” I encourage you to watch this video.

Click the image to view the video


Technorati Tags: Pelicans | Smelt | Feast

After doing some research, it seemed like a good idea to partner with a feed aggregator to ensure that the RSS and Atom feeds are accurate, timely, and maintain the integrity of the original posts. That being said, I’ve chosen Feedburner. As a consequence, the feed urls for this site are changing. If you read by feed, I encourage you to update your reader using the appropriate link below. Thanks.

• Feedburner SmartFeed (All versions of RSS/Atom)
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• Delivered by email:
  
  
  

Technorati Tags: Feeds | RSS | Atom