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Feb. 7, 2012 SVForum PWC

dj — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:00:16 +0000

On Tuesday February 7, 2012 in Palo Alto at Pillsbury Winthrop, SVForum presented the SVForum Quarterly Venture Breakfast with Pillsbury Winthrop and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The topic was “2011 The Year In Review.” Allison Leopold Tilley of Pillsbury Winthrop moderated panelists Steve Bengston of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Casper de Clercq of Norwest Venture Partners, Steve Goldberg of Venrock and Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad. They discussed the past year and prospects for the next.

Venture capital investments went up from $23 billion in 2010 to $26 billion in 2011. Fundraising went up from $10 billion in 2010 to $12 billion in 2011. This growth is seen as unsustainable when the top sectors of cleantech, biotech, and medical devices are vulnerable to scaling and regulatory issues. Despite the IPOs of LinkedIn and Pandora, the trend toward VC backed companies going public declined from 75 in 2010 to 50 in 2011. This does not help the unemployed if over ninety percent of job creation occurs after a company has an IPO. The Facebook IPO may generate more Silicon Valley angel investing, but such investment has not generated well paying jobs in the US.

According to the US Dept of Commerce and Wall Street Journal, multinationals over the past decade have cut 2.9 million jobs in the US and moved 2.4 overseas. One result is that over 80 percent of internet growth is overseas where more than 90 percent of the children under 15 live in emerging markets. One place the population may not be growing is in China, where the workforce will peak in 2015 and become the world’s largest economy by 2017 but be surpassed in population by India in 2020. Growth in Europe is unlikely considering their continuing instability as seen in Greece.

Despite more money going in, there are fewer exits. The current situation is unsustainable.

Feb. 1, 2012 CICC UC Berkeley Israel High Tech

dj — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:07:34 +0000

On February 1, 2012 at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, hosted ”Israel Through The High Tech Lens.” Kenneth Bamberger of the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israeli Law, Economy and Society welcomed the crowd. Daniela Kretchmer of MIT Sloan and the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology introduced the first panel.

Prof. Tadelis Steven of Haas School of Business moderated panelists Prof. Jerry Engel of Haas and Michael Eisenberg of Benchmark Capital on topic “The Trillion Dollar Question: Can Israel Maintain its Position as a High Tech Leader?” They said Israel has the venture capital density and innovative technology community to build a sustainable society that does more with less. Dan Senor, co-author of Start-up Nation gave the keynote.

Sponsors were Israel 21c, The California Israel Chamber of Commerce, Morrison Foerster, Dorsey & Whitney LLP and the Berkeley Hillel Jewish Student Center. Supporters were Howard Rice, Bank Leumi USA, Shenav & Company and the American Technion Society North Pacific Region.

Jan. 26, 2012 STC Joe Welinske Optimize Googleability

dj — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:00:02 +0000

On January 26, 2012 in Santa Clara, the STC Silicon Valley Chapter hosted Joe Welinske of WritersUA to speak about “Optimizing the Googleability of Your Content.” To get a higher rank with search engine optimization (SEO), create fresh HTML content on a registered site with a public facing server. Create relevant links and metadata. Consider search engines other than Google like Alexa, Bing or Yahoo.

Welinske wants people to think about the growing mobile needs of the Apple iOS, Google Android and Microsoft Windows devices as seen in his new book “Developing User Assistance for Mobile Apps.”

More information will be presented at the Conference for Software User Assistance on March 11-14, 2012 in Memphis Tennessee.

Please join us on February 23, 2012 for the February STC Silicon Valley Chapter Meeting to be held at the Hola! Mexican Restaurant & Cantina, located at 1015 Alameda de las Pulgas in Belmont. The meeting starts at 6 PM. This topic will be “Learning How to Communicate Better with Numbers” with Randall Bolten.

Jan. 25, 2012 SVEC Scholarship Banquet Info

dj — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:16:07 +0000

On January 25, 2012 in Sunnyvale at Ozen Engineering, SVEC Council quarterly full council meeting. The E-Week banquet on Friday, February 24, 2012 at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose. You can register at http://svecbanquet2012.eventbrite.com/

This year the keynote speaker will be Patrick Lo, Chairman and CEO of NETGEAR. His speech will be “Everything connected to the Internet – how Silicon Valley engineers are only beginning to change the world”

The 2012 Hall of Fame Inductees will be Dr. Joseph W. Goodman, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University; Dr. Sam D. Haddad of President of HTCS Consulting Services; and Dr. J. Patrick Kennedy CEO of OSIsoft.

The link for students interested in the scholarship is : http://svec.org/scholarship-awards.html

Two distinguished members visited, SVEC Hall of Famer Dick Elkus and Forrest Williams, former city council member representing the Synopsys Science and Engineering Fair. Also at tonight’s event was Dr. Brian Day, E/PO Lead for the LADEE mission and Citizen Science Lead at the NASA Lunar Science Institute. He gave his presentation on “Exploring the Lunar Environment.” Pretty cool!