The May Report: 5/26/2011: Part II: I’m terribly sorry and they will shoot me at the dialysis center: I had huge formatting problems largely due to the Ronnie’s list ad (which cut in Part II) and the report was coming in as a zip file: Dalka doubles down: saves TMR and gets thumbs up on Ronnie’s list; Drunken farm boys and states with no helmet laws; More toads or toadies at the Chris Brogan roast?; and the guy making the money is the guy printing the cards; and wanting to throw up at the roast: “Mikey, are you in there?”; the sorrows of Len Bland; the new designer drugs, Poland’s history and what happened in 972AD, Jeff Meredith and Darcy, Stel V., Andrea Moran, David Culver, Glenn Gottfried, Bob Kaufman, and much more…

Editor and publisher: ron@themayreport.com, ronaldmay@aol.com, www.themayreport.com , 773-525-3944.

Assistant editor: Melanie Adcock, iPHONE: 312-259-0610, melanie_adcock@msn.com

If you missed an article, go here: www.tmronline.com/A55951/tmrarticles.nsf/vwFullNewsletter
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Finalists Announced in 2011 MIT Enterprise Forum Chicago Whiteboard Challenge Idea Contest

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Enterprise Forum Chicago selected 10 finalists to present their ideas at the 2011 Whiteboard Challenge. The Whiteboard Challenge, now in its sixth year, is an ideas contest, with the winners receiving a share in $5,000 in cash prizes.

Finalists will present before a panel of judges beginning at 5pm this Thursday, May 26, at the IBM Innovation Center, 71 S. Wacker, 6th Floor, Chicago. 2011 finalists are:

Fun Captcha Bryan Arturo
Blood Vessel “BullsEye” Locator Colin O’Donovan
ENERGY DISTRIBUTION UNIT OR EDU Eduardo Sampedro
M.O.R.E. Life (Mobile Operating Room Engineering) Henna Eassa
I-GO Peer-to-Peer Car Sharing John Brophy
Green Zephyr Inc. Michael R. Weinman
Energy Recovery Technologies Ron Fleckman
CommuniTeach Sarah Press
Fear Experiment Saya Hillman
Efficient transmissions for heavy trucks and machinery Thomas Capote/CVT Innovations Corporation

As 2010 winner Joe Sprovieri, Founder and CEO, ReadyPing, explained, “All you have is a whiteboard, markers, and five minutes to explain your idea. It forces you to simplify the message and visuals. That pitch has become the cornerstone of my ReadyPing presentation. Sometimes I skip the PowerPoint and just go to the whiteboard.” ReadyPing “pings” waiting customers with text notifications that their provider, restaurant table, or other service is ready (www.readyping.com).

Sponsored by Ungaretti and Harris (www.uhlaw.com), a law firm for entrepreneurs offering corporate and intellectual property services, the 2011 MIT Enterprise Forum Chicago Whiteboard Challenge will be held 5 pm -8:30 pm, Thursday May 26, at the IBM Innovation Center, 71 S. Wacker, 6th Floor, Chicago. The event is free for MIT EF Chicago members. Cost for pre-registered guests is $30 (before 5/24) and $40 at the door.

REGISTER NOW

bitly.com/lTxiLA

Date and Time
Thursday, May 26th, 5:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Location
IBM Innovation Center
71 S. Wacker Drive, 6th Floor
Chicago

Cost
Individual Member No Fee
Pre-Registered Guests $30.00
Day of Event Registration $40.00

REGISTER NOW

bitly.com/lTxiLA

MIT Enterprise Forum is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and strengthening technology-oriented startups, allowing them to grow and prosper. The Chicago chapter is an extension of the national MIT Enterprise Forum and is the voice for local entrepreneurship.

CONTACT:
Ted Wallhaus, Chair, (312) 593-3796, twallhaus@gmail.com

Collin Canright, Communications, (773) 426-7000, collin@canrightcommunications.com
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The Business of Cloud Computing

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

8 a.m. – Noon

IIT’s Rice Campus in Wheaton

Join us for a Cloud Computing seminar oriented to business and co-sponsored by Illinois Institute of Technology and NewGen Business Solutions Inc.

Key Topics

• Hype vs. reality

• Moving to a cloud-based world

• The Cloud Computing Roadmap

• The Private Cloud: The answer to security and privacy concerns

• How the Cloud benefits business

• Cloud architecture: Operating your full business cycle in the cloud, from CRM to general ledger

Business owners, professionals, senior managers, IT technical staff, and educators should attend this event.

Location

Illinois Institute of Technology

Rice Campus

201 East Loop Rd., WheatonIllinois

Wednesday June 1, 2011 , 8 a.m. – Noon

Cost

Advance Registration: $40.00

$50.00 at the door the day of the event

Registration includes continental breakfast

Register Today!

Visit www.cpd.iit.edu/cloudcomputing

Questions? Call 630-682-6001 or email pfeiffer@iit.edu

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SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING WORKSHOP – STILL TIME TO REGISTER!

Join 12 Social Media experts in this 5 week “Social Media for Business” Training Workshop starting Wednesday, May 25 – June 22, 2011.

Great group of attendees representing over 37 states and 15 countries across the globe!

There are a total of 15 sessions conducted by leading social media authors & industry experts including few of Chicago’s own.

As a special bonus for May Report readers, Instant E-Training is extending an exclusive 10% off their listed fees.

So, why wait?

Click here to sign up:

instantetraining.go2cloud.org/SHE

Here is the list of authors and speakers training this workshop:

Dan Zarrella, Author of Facebook Marketing and Social Media Marketing book
Ramon De Leon, Dominos Pizza
Hollis Thomases, Author of Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day
Krista Neher, SXSW Speaker & Author Social Media Field Guide
Eric Enge, Author of The Art of SEO
Simon Salt, Author of Social Location Marketing
Fionn Downhill, Instructor & CEO, Elixir Interactive
Barbara Rozgonyi, Founder Social Media Club Chicago
Marshall Sponder, Author of Social Media Analytics
Bob Tripathi, Trainer & Industry Speaker
Nicole Duhoski, Social Media Manager
Look at the detailed training agenda. There is something for everyone to learn:

instantetraining.go2cloud.org/SHE

Here is how this Social Media training workshop is different:

Live video streaming makes you feel like you are in a classroom
Real-time Q&A features as well as questions you can ask experts during the training
Recorded training available for 90 days
Free Access to 10 training video worth $897 in value
Certificate of completion awarded

Learn more about this

instantetraining.go2cloud.org/SHE

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Scoop section:

– Ruder-less Connolly might get caught in Finn’s new wake
– Jeff Carter : HPA on Chicago NBC5 News – Hyde Park Angels
– Hock pulls Hoch out of a hole: Illinois Technology Association and TechNet Form A New Partnership
– AgileThought, Inc. Opens Office In Downtown Chicago’s Central Loop
– Briefly noted, by Ron May
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Going Mobile – Web Content 2011 Conference – June 6 & 7
Gleacher Executive Conference Center – Downtown Chicago

Register here (Fewer than 35 seats remaining)

www.webcontent2011.com/

15 mobile-focused sessions over 2 full days featuring speakers including:

Gian Fulgoni, comScore, Inc. – Today’s Mobile Mainstream
Robert Rose, Big Blue Moose – Context Aware Everything!
Colleen Jones, Content Science – This Mobile Moment
Erin Scime, HUGE – Content Strategist & Designer Talk Mobile

Plus BONUS WORKSHOP:

“Smart from the Start” – Content Strategy ½ Day Workshop by Brain Traffic

“In the world of online content, mobile is the new black! Join national content experts, marketers, strategists, developers and other industry thinkers June 6th and 7th in sunny Chicago at WebContent 2011 www.webcontent2011.com/ .” – CMSWire

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Briefly noted, by Ron May

This was written over from roughly the 11th of May until the 20th of May.

* Let me get started. This report has been in the making since Wednesday, May 11th if not earlier than that.

– If I have not heard it, it is not news YET. So, Groupon fired Crispin Porter, the firm that did their Super Bowl ad, in March, I believe. Also, March sales for Groupon headed down even more than they did in February off 32% I believe from the peak.

www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/18/2121929/burger-king-parts-with-longtime.html

www.businessinsider.com/groupon-crispin-porter-2011-3

– Lundin’s latest satirical slam on Burson-Marsteller:

www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=150820

Did Eric and Erica read this? That’s Benderoff and Swerdlow of course since both are at Burson-Marsteller.

And where is the Bill McDonald comment?

– I spoke to Steve Jambor of www.strongarmmobility.com since I am waiting for his strong arm canes. I am buying two of them for $50 each. His usual price is $59 each. He is in between inventories since they just sold 1,600 canes on QVC. The canes are made in China. My friend Julia who has returned to Chicago from four years in Portand and Atlanta (eight months in Atlanta) told me that the canes are just a piece of aluminum. Maybe, but they are made specially to provide extra support for one’s weight.

– Andrea Moran whom I really like and btw, it is pronounced with the emphasis on “drea” not on “an,” the European pronunciation, and I talked for a bit Thursday afternoon, May 12th.

She tells me that Tim O’Connor, the head of Learning Encounters, www.LeoScienceLab.com, which won in the Guppy Bowl category comes out of Hasbro and all the top management, including John Wagner the founder, has money and plenty of experience in the toy biz. They have bootstrapped until now and they do have products on the market.

Another fave of Andrea’s was Solixir, www.solixir.com, which has a beverage that has made it into Whole Foods nationally without so much as a demo!

Andrea said that the founder Scott Lerner comes out of Pepsi, and has experience with Gatorade and vitamin juices.

She also likes Justin Baker’s business www.mypersonalshopper.com. Justin’s presentation is weak, and he knows it, but what Andrea likes is a.) his business model and b.) Justin is not only very coachable, but he gets it and even asks good questions back to the panelists. So, “he is able to adjust his business model on the spot,” she said.

Two firms that she works with also presented, but I don’t believe in front of her panel: Popbig, www.popbig.com out of California and Ben Nager of BlinkMed, www.blinkmed.com.
She told me that Funding Feeding Frenzy was the first time that BlinkMed has presented and she acknowledges that their presentation needs work. David Culver told me that another firm Andrea brought in was Tiesta Tea which provided tea at the event. www.tiestatea.com.

Another firm that Andrea is talking to is Atneed.com and she is wondering about Kevin Callaghan who has been doing their presentations and is functioning as an interim CEO for the purpose of raising money. Andrea asked me what I thought of him and I told her that they are selling tschotzkes to which she said that such a business model could work at a time of grief when people are vulnerable and looking for something to comfort them.

I did tell Andrea that they better make sure that Larry Bloom’s felony conviction and jail time is disclosed in any PPM they put out.

I did also add that like Terry Kirch, Bloom is not inherently a criminal — he just got caught up in a bad situation and exercised very poor judgement. I distinguish guys like Bloom and Kirch on one hand who screwed up from guys like Michael Kurgan or Chris Tomes who are con artists at their core and it is in their DNA. Kurgan and Tomes should probably be in jail but have never been prosecuted. That is my opinion and not an assertion of fact. Hence it is not defamation either per se or per quod. Do I know the law on defamation or what?

I asked Andrea why she let Kevin Wielgus off the hook so easily since Wielgus’ investors bounced a check for $50K and while that bounced check did not cause Kevin to bounce more checks, he did tell me before his presentation that his employees (I think there are seven of them) have agreed to defer their salaries for the time being until he gets funded. Andrea told me that she is harder on firms that have something of value and in her opinion, www.jabberjury.com has no “there there.” It is not at all a viable business model, she feels, so she was not going to worry about a bounced check.

Now to Mr. Beazley. Randy Shipley, a former consultant who did work for www.Affluence.org, tells me that David Beazley did get investors for Affluence.org and he also tells me that Beazley has been effective at brokering deals for social media firms. But everyone seems to agree that Beazley does NOT have his own fund at this time. Andrea Moran agrees with Shipley. She believes that Beazley does a good job and gets results but he is a broker at this point and he is not writing the checks.

Glenn Gottfried also gets high marks from Andrea. Gottfried told on Wednesday on the phone that he is talking to two firms that presented about investing in them, but he did not want to name them at this time.

Gottfried also said that he does routinely spend an hour or two with entrepreneurs who want to get his take on their business and he does not charge anything for that meeting. Glenn believes that this is his way to give back.

My observation about Glenn Gottfried is that he has been on both sides of the fence, as an entrepreneur and an investor. Glenn is also a thoughtful guy who tries to give the entrepreneur the benefit of the doubt which is why he told a few firms that they are “Fundable but in a limited way.” Glenn does tend to take a while to arrive at his point and he meanders a bit. But I’d rather have Glenn meandering than some other investors giving me simple thumbs up or down.

I have been calling entrepreneurs who either presented at FFF or who attended and some very interesting things have come out of those conversations, quite by accident because I had not been inquiring about such matters, but now I will definitely ask.

One person I called was Bob Schulein of www.tensionlabs.com. Bob told me that he had some issues with the event. First, he felt that his eight minutes to present was not enough to explain his business. I told him that one of the purposes of the event was to teach entrepreneurs to present in a short timeframe. Second, he felt that the panel did not have domain expertise in his field and that may be true. I told him that if we took all the non-IT firms and lumped them together, they would not have constituted a significant percentage of the firms that presented.

Third, and this when I was quite surprised but I should not have been knowing what I know about the people whose names came up. Bob said that he was “frustrated” by the fact that two people approached him to sell him on their consulting services. One of those people was a panelist, he said. Naturally I asked him who the panelist was and he said that it was Len Bland. Now Len had just sat on Bob’s panel and Bob said that Len proposed a $15,000 service at $5,000 a month over three months. Schulein told me that for his $15,000 Len offered him coaching and business plan sprucing up, but he was not offered any funding. Len is selling consulting services.

The other person who approached Bob Schulein with a proposal quite similar to Len Bland’s proposal was Terry Flanagan, but Terry Flanagan did not name a price. That surprised me because I thought that Flanagan sold insurance. What his qualifications are to do this I do not know. Flanagan does have on his card that he is a resource matchmaker and a collaboration leader. Huh! So, he is getting into this biz with a low profile. Terry Flanagan called me this morning (Monday the 16th) about 8:58am.

Unlike Len Bland, Terry wants to sit down and talk. The tone of the conversation was quite friendly, but firm on my end, and non-confrontational. Terry did tell me and I then recalled it because he had mentioned it a long time ago to me that he has a diverse background that includes chemistry and the air force. Then he shocked me. How old do you think Terry Flanagan is? Take a wild guess. Would you believe 66? I almost fell out of my chair. My jaw did drop. The guy does not look a day over 55 or 56. Terry does not want to be dragged into the Len Bland controversy and I confirmed with one person who knows him today that he definitely does not want to be tied into Len.

I decided to run an “ad” or Public Service Message to warn entrepreneurs about their dealings with Len Bland and that is in the report today (this was written on Friday) at the top. Well, it is 3:12pm Friday the 13th and I decided to hold off on that ad until next week. I sent the copy to both Len and Ray Markman and Ray told me he would call me back, but so far I have not heard back. I left Ray a message (and I have now talked to David Culver Friday morning and I talked to Bob Bock Wednesday when I found all of this out, and Bill Anthony and a whole slew of others) and I also talked to Ray on Wednesday about this.

I think Ray got it. But only time will tell. Ray Markman has never been so silent. I suggested to Ray that Len should wear five hats, each with a different sign. One hat would read “I’m actually an investor now who writes checks.” Another would read “Now I am a deal broker who will charge you 10% for any money raised under $500K.” Another hat would read “Now I am a consultant who wants to get $15,000 from you over three months to coach you and to re-write your business plan.” Another hat would read “I am an event organizer who charges you to attend events and requires a signed contract from you before you present to my group.” Yet one more hat would read “Explore the caverns measureless to man in Len Bland’s mind but first light the dim space with a candle.” “Caverns measureless to man” is part of a line from the famous poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. www.xamuel.com/kubla-khan-poem/

I had a good discussion with David Culver who called me Friday afternoon at 12:49pm. We covered a lot of ground. First, Bob Schulein is not a rube (my term, not David’s) even if he may come across that way (or at least he comes across as somewhat unpolished and a bit unsophisticated) in some respects. Bob has had some long conversations with Culver and David believes Bob is smart enough to know what he does and does not want. Second, providing consulting services is not inconsistent with or contrary to the purpose of the FFF event. David also said that the Len Bland story is not the same as Affluence. I completely agree. What Len is doing is not illegal by most standards. I have this one caveat to that statement. He is making representations about having a fund which he does not have yet and I don’t know at Jesse White’s office or for that matter Lisa Madigan’s office might have to say about that. Third, Len Bland was “a last minute fill-in” because they had a couple of last minute cancellations of judges. Fourth, if I understood David correctly, he too believes that Len could have handled things better by not pitching Bob Schulein on his services right after he has just finished judging him. David believes that Len is doing pretty much what some other panelists do, but perhaps in a less suave way. Those are my words and my interpretation, not David’s words. Culver did say that Len has the paperwork for a fund but no fund yet and they have a commitment from a lead investor who will put money in if they raise $X elsewhere. I told Ray Markman at 2:15pm Friday the 13th and told him that Len should have said to Howard Brown of www.inphodrive.com that he has no fund now and that he is trying to raise one and if he ever does have funds, he might consider investing in Howard’s firm if he gets up to speed in the area of mobile apps and devices. Now that would have been more direct and honest. My whole point is don’t conflate all the different roles you play. Len does not get that. I think Ray does. Ray told me that he does not want to be dragged into this and he did say that he understands but boy, it took me quite a while to get him to say even that. He was not a man of many words Friday. Look, I get that. Len is his partner and he does not want to trash Len. BTW, Howard Brown, Ray asked for your materials so that he could better understand your business, not to invest in your firm. That is a failure on Ray’s part to be clear in communicating. Ray told me that he asked Howard for his materials because he wanted to learn more about his space. That is all very well and good Ray, but the presenters are there to get money, not just to educate panelists about their space.

Another point brought up by Culver about Len is that Len has trademarked his name as a capital matchmaker and there is some reference to this on LinkedIn but believe me at 3:19pm on Friday I do not have the time now to look it up. Well, I have now looked it up.

Here is what he says about being trademarked.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Len Bland
The Capital Matchmaker(tm)

Len Bland is a Capital Matchmaker(tm) who has founded seven companies including Concept Equity Group. He prepares entrepreneurs for investment by helping them with their people, partners, strategy, and investor communications (executive summary, financial model, business plan, and investor presentation). He screens entrepreneurs for Investors, introducing them where there is a match.

Len coordinates and runs the BNC VC Group – Business Network Chicago Venture Capital Group conceptequity.com/BNCVCGroup.htm.

Prior to founding Concept Equity Group, Len was VP of Sales for Tesseract, a human capital management software vendor, and Napersoft, an international document management software vendor. In these roles he implemented successful sales strategies targeting the C-level executives of Global 2000 companies. Previously, Len automated operations while managing information systems at Kraft Foods and Unisys, and analyzed company financials as an auditor for Grant Thornton.

Len is a CPA, and earned his MBA at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and his Bachelors in Accounting from the University of Illinois.
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I told Ray that the presenters are simply looking for money and they don’t necessarily understand the nuances and subtleties of trying to raise a venture fund. Len and Ray and other panelists need to be more conscious of that.

I told Ray that he can forget about having lots of prospects. Matt McCall had prospects but he still threw in the towel and went with J. B. Pritzker and New World Ventures. Ellen Carnahan had prospects but she still ended her efforts to raise a fund. Tom Churchwell has tried for a long time to raise a fund but to no avail. And of course then there is our buddy Mike Rhodes. If all of these folks who have track records (except for Rhodes and even he may have one) can’t do it, what makes Ray and Len think that they can? BTW, Culver told me that Rhodes is spending a lot of time in the West Loop, doing what I don’t know. But Mike knows that it has now been 77 days since March 1st when the Syncubator shut down. And I will have to re-address the topic of what is going on with Mike and his partners.

Culver said that Beazley has raised money and has invested his own fund’s money and has liquidity event opportunities as does he Culver.

That is key. Beazley, in many ways unlike Bland, has the potential to cash out on a deal or on a number of deals and that could change the equation very rapidly. Culver told me that he would be an angel investor in a heartbeat should such a liquidity event come about. Someone asked me today, Monday, if I know how many firms Culver has invested in. I said no, that I don’t, but it is apparently more than ten.

Culver did say that in addition to the two deals that I know Len and David Carman have done with entrepreneurs (Jim Orrico and the guy with the movie theaters in Naperville), Len has done much more, but he was not specific about it. That may be true but Len is no David Beazley.

A few other things Culver said that should be noted. They started out hoping to charge $700 or $800 for presenters and the coaching was included at no extra charge. A number of the presenting firms took advantage of the coaching, David said, but at the last minute they had a deluge of firms signing up largely because of David Carman’s involvement, Culver explained. He told me that Carman brought them a bunch of firms that he had met in New York and one of those firms was Howard Brown’s InPhoDrive. Culver said that originally they had planned on two stages, not three but things blossomed, mostly at the last minute.

So, how did they go from $700 per presenter to about $400? That is because they got a great sponsor, the firm known as Entrust IRA Administration, www.entrustcompany.com and www.entrustiraadmin.com . When Entrust offered their space at 135 S. LaSalle Street for FFF, they were not a sponsor. But Entrust was so happy with the way the event went on April 4th that they became a major sponsor and reduced the price for the presenters.

David Culver also emphasized that the main focus of the event is education of entrepreneurs and the bringing of resources to them and not funding per se.

That is also the reason that he is less concerned about strict rules and regulations with respect to judging. The panels are for advising first and foremost, he said. At an event where real cash is being competed for things would be different.

One firm that did well in the presentation was NanoIntegris, David said. And Papatel did well, but he felt that as a facilitator he had to intervene to keep the event on time.

Naturally I brought up Scott Starbuck because it seemed to me that David was jumping in too much to save Scott’s bacon during the Q&A period. In a nutshell, David feels that the facilitator is a facilitator and not a moderator per se. And there is one more thing about Scott Starbuck. Much of the discussion came up during lunch and tied back to a question that George Deeb had raised.

I got a note from Scott today, Monday, in response to my email to him responding to my request for his thoughts.

Let me wrap this up. Len Bland needs to buy those five hats and he and Ray and whomever else is part of their prospective fund (if it still includes Carman, Sussman and Fishman) need to tear up their cards stating that they have a fund called Midwest Renaissance, www.midwestrenaissance.com, and they need to be very careful to say that they don’t have money now. Period. And Len needs to learn how to be less heavy handed and less tacky about how he approaches entrepreneurs to sell them services. And the next time someone is evaluated by Len, rather than telling the presenter as he did with Howard Brown of InPhoDrive.com that he does not invest in mobile or social media, Len should add for the sake of full disclosure and honesty that “By the way, we don’t have a fund yet.”

I have much more.

1. The SELVN meeting on Monday night, May 9th, about Walmart. Short version of story: The people attending the meeting were opposed by a vote of 4 for and 25 against and about 7 abstaining but the opposition to downzoning the block was upheld by a vote of 18 to 12 with a few abstentions. More on this to come.
2. Running into Stel Valavanis at the Golden Apple Tuesday afternoon the 10th and how his firm is wiring The Green Exchange which is 500,000 square feet. On Shore’s revenues in 2010 were $6.4MM, pretty close to previous years. Stel did drop the Poker Charity board. Stel’s grown a beard and his three kids are Kina (14), Lety (12), and Ariana (2). His oldest kids are by his first wife who dumped him, he told me. Stel seems as always to be in a great frame of mind and as usual quite easy going. His CTO Steven Kent, a big burly guy with a beard too and long hair was with him at the restaurant. I’ll tell you Stel’s take on the Microsoft Skype deal and how Microsoft and Google are playing their competitive games. OK, just to wrap up, Stel says that Microsoft will own the corporate world and Google will own the cloud and the $8.5B purchase of Skype was for eyeballs, not revenue.
3. Ray Willis, Adam Saffro, a lot more, and what happened to….
4. C. D. Vann and the Brogan Roast.
5. Sima Dahl or as I call her Slima Dahl. BTW, her hubby is David Dahl, the CTO at Total Attorneys and one of the four founders of Orbitz years ago.
6. A fascinating story about fake journeyman cards used by city fork lift and crane operators who had expired cards. How 189 of them went to jail and if this story is true, how it is under-reported.
7. My entire review of the Brogan roast.
8. Corrections and clarifications:
– It’s Winkelman, not Winkelmann
– Rich Goodman of www.brainmatters.com has changed the company name to Zydeco Studios, www.zydecostudios.com and the new site is under construction.
– Dr. M. Sarab whom I praised at my clinic is Dr. Menaka Sarab
– Robert Cronin who put $10 on Animal Kingdom is actually Dennis Cronin. I had his name wrong.
– It’s C. D. Vann, not Van
9. I attended a talk by Bob Kaufman, a bit overweight and still quite active at 68, at the Harold Washington Chicago Public Library Tuesday night the 17th on the 7th floor, authors’ room. Topic was addiction in general and addiction to technology in particular and it was being sponsored by some mental health organization. There was not much new that I had not heard before but it is always nice to take a break and get a sense of perspective on things. I thought I recognized Bob Kaufman and indeed I did. He said he has met me at various networking events such as the MEF and he has known Bill Miller a very long time. Bob was an Indiana farm boy born in 1943 and he is a licensed clinical social worker who deals with addiction and family problems. He gave the usual jovial and entertaining talk with the usual jokes like the one about his great uncle Joe who used to farm quite successfully using mules. His farming friends asked him how he did it and he told them that he speaks softly to the mules. So his friends tried it and came back to Joe, telling him they did try it and it did not work. Joe said, “Oh, and by the way, first you hit them over the head with a two by four to get their attention. Ha, ha. Later Bob admitted to me that it was an old joke, and not a real story, but it highlights a point. When you tell a personal story people are drawn in much more so than if you say you’re telling a joke. Further confirming the fact that I always get the best information at the end of an event chatting casually with a few folks, I overheard Bob talking to two people and asked him what it was about and he told me that years ago, his wife and daughter had been killed by an arsonist who burned down their house in Arlington Heights. The police botched the crime scene and the woman was never caught. Bob even consulted a psychic to find the arsonist. One guy standing there at the end just came back to Chicago from LA, I believe, and he is very involved in the tourism business and entertainment centering on LiveNation. James Muff, jamesmuff@rocketmail.com He kept saying that he is an epileptic who has not had seizures in about five years now. The woman with James Muff, Valerie Shive, is involved with dance, particularly big band stuff. Muff was talking about Rahm’s background in ballet, his scholarship to Sarah Lawrence College and how he turned down the Joffrey Ballet. He defended Rahm saying that he’s not a jerk, but he is a little guy who talks big. James is working on getting things set up for elite level entertainment. He said that the city could create 50,000 jobs related to tourism. I did eat dinner after the talk at one of my old haunts, The Exchequer Pub, where I ran into a bunch of conventioneers from IEEE which is having a meeting here.

Valerie Shive told me that she went to NIU and describes herself as a “Renaissance man.” She loves dancing and suggested Big City Swing and some place on West Randolph.

Here is James Muff’s profile on LinkedIn:
+++++++++++++++++++++++
James Muff
Lead Writer/Performer at Pink Dolphin Digital Media, LLC

Location
Greater Chicago Area
Industry
Entertainment
James Muff’s Overview
Current •Lead Writer/Performer at Pink Dolphin Digital Media, LLC
Connections 0 connections
James Muff’s Experience
Lead Writer/Performer Pink Dolphin Digital Media, LLC
Entertainment industry

Currently holds this position

James Muff’s Contact Settings
Interested In●career opportunities
●consulting offers
●new ventures
●job inquiries
●expertise requests
●business deals
●reference requests
●getting back in touch
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

When you go to this type of event you run into interesting people but they are somewhat oddball or individualistic types and often at the fringe at some level. I did not say that very well. They don’t tend to be joiner of clubs types. They are definitely echoing Groucho who famously said he would not be a member of a club that would have him as a member. They were probably not cheerleaders in high school or on the football team. They might have been in a computer club in the 1970s or the chess club though.

That’s ironic because the social media inside crowd that attended the Chris Brogan roast last week which I also attended echoes that sentiment. They say that they were nerds and geeks in high school but how they are famous — amongst themselves!

The thought occurred to me that what differentiates the types of people who show up at the talk at the library where there was no charge, no water or drink of any kind or food of any kind and the types of people who populate a place like the Chris Brogan roast is that the roast people are involved in self-promotion and group think and self or group adulation with the goal of making themselves feel good about themselves. The people at the Bob Kaufman talk are really curious and want to learn something. They don’t have the garrulous nature of a Jeff Willinger and they are a bit shy or reserved and not showboater types and they may not make big money but they are trying to find some meaning in life. This is my thought today. All throughout the Chris Brogan roast I kept saying to myself that at some point they will start talking about something in the external world that was not self-referential like the earthquake in Japan, the flooding of the Mississippi, the royal wedding, or the taking out of bin Laden. All of these real world events had social media components but such matters were the furthest thing from the minds of the people in the roast room. They would rather talk about their eighth grade teachers, how they’ve known each other for decades, or how they used to be nerds and geeks in high school but how they are famous. Yes, they actually said these self-congratulatory things and I have the whole thing on tape. Brogan got up and praised the audience for their contributions and he told them that they deserved the encomiums just as much as he does. “I’m just your icon,” he declared. Did I actually hear a guy refer to himself as an icon?

Sure it was a roast and I laughed at some of the jokes even though most were very much inside baseball.

But they are ensconced in their own little world built on a cult of personality, not just one personality but all the personalities.

To wit: the only guy making money here is the guy who makes the cards. The cards are available to be ordered online.
The card has a picture of the person and right above the picture is the twitter handle, to the right on the top is number of twitter followers and just below the twitter handle is the number of tweets.

So, we have
@KatieFelton 5,607 Twitter followers
Tweets 24,843

But wait, here’s her Bio:
Community Manager and Brand Evangelist at @Mashable / Social Media junky w/a passion for Living Life / Int’l speaker on building your brand / #ungeeked / #MsTech

Oh, but wait, we don’t know her special power yet.

Special Power: Master Connector of People #intro
Hobbies: RedWine /Bikrim Yoga / Travel /Trance

Or how about Jim Raffel @raffel with 21,260 tweets and 2,742 twitter followers

Jim exists a bit more in the real world than Katie Felton and his bio says that he is an inspirational story telling public speaker and small business CEO. Passionate about color strategy as guy who runs color metrix.com
Jim’s Special Power is Shining Awesomeness
and his Quote is Make the Impossible Possible

What a thought! Did you know that today is the first day of the rest of your life? Can we possibly be a bit more cliche or trite?

Now do you see why I wanted to puke?

Liz Strauss stroked my arm and told me that she had sent some reply to my comments about SMCC and SOBCon back in April. I told her I did not see the email and she said she had told me that I am better than that. No, Liz, I’m not. I still don’t get it. Is it all about PMA, that’s it? Or is it all about celebrating our own little group? Is it all about evangelizing? The narcissism is overwhelming.

But there is more. It is also about being a part of an exclusive club, being cool and being in the club. The people who attended the Kaufman talk could not have cared less about acceptance into the club. Those people were not all about self-absorption or spreading the word.

And some of the stories which can’t be repeated here would make Francois Rabelais blush. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Rabelais

The jokes were bawdy and how could Brogan have people saying these things in front of his mother. Have they no shame?

Stories about banging hookers and oh yes, get this one. Going under stalls in the men’s room when people are in the stall and saying, “Mikey, are you in there?” Was that some sort of reference to the U. S. Senator from Idaho who got caught in an airport bathroom soliciting sex from a man in the next stall? Who knows? These were very inside jokes.

Liz Strauss told me that she thought that story was true.

I think Jeff Willinger captured what I am driving at more than anyone else. He said to me, “Don’t you think that so and so (referring to someone we both know) would love to be accepted by this group?” My initial reaction was that our mutual acquaintance would not really want that just as I don’t want it, but it is revealing that Jeff thought someone would want to be in the self-proclaimed “in crowd.”

I guess I can sum up the whole thing by saying that there were probably as many toads as toadies at the Brogan roast.

But let’s not put guys like James Muff, if that is his real name, on a pedestal. He sent me this note and can you make heads or tails out of it?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: James, is this your company? Where is Pink Dolphin Digital Media located?
Date: 5/18/2011 2:07:04 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: jamesmuff@rocketmail.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com

Hi Ron

We do elite-level entertainment…music, videos, variety shows, musicals, movies…I would be happy to send you information depending on your needs. We are ready to launch a new brand we plan on franchising, focusing on true stories about Chicago…pretty exciting stuff. By following our proven plan, we calculate first-year ROI at 1000%.

We are receiving interest from Chicago’s elite individuals and corporations…previews are being scheduled.

James Muff

——————————————————————————–
From: “RONALDMAY@aol.com”
To: jamesmuff@rocketmail.com
Cc: ronaldmay@aol.com
Sent: Wed, May 18, 2011 1:41:09 PM
Subject: Re: James, is this your company? Where is Pink Dolphin Digital Media located?

May 18, 2011

James,

I ask because I am confused. When I googled Pink Dolphin Digital Media I got some firm called Dolphin Digital Media in Miami which trades on the pink sheets. I gather that is not your firm. But what is the website for Pink Dolphin Digital Media or is there one?

Ron May
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Muff would not fit into the Brogan Roast crowd at all, but he is no less of an exaggerator. He is “Mr. Hype” too, just on a lower key level.

And with respect to Len Bland who has done a lot of good with his BNC VC Group, and has been consistent from month to month in getting 40 to 70 people at the meetings at Locke Lord, my only concern is that he may have farted and then pissed in the Funding Feeding Frenzy pool. The fart was using his position as a panelist to brazenly solicit consulting business and the piss was how Len’s kind of behavior leaves a sour taste in the mouths of entrepreneurs who attend and present at such events, thus tarnishing the FFF brand somewhat.

As Bruce Montgomery always reminds me: Where’s the action?, where’s the traction?, the big success stories? Groupon had and continues to have a huge psychological impact on our tech community’s self-image, but it has also brought out a lot of bottom feeders. Milton Friedman once said “We are all Keynesians now” and we must say “We all exist in the shadow of Groupon now.”

Bottom feeders is a bit harsh but you get the point. They are new guys to the scene with no real track record of raising funds and funding firms. Everyone is raising a fund — Len Bland and Mike Rhodes and the Evanston Incubator Fund that I found out about in December 2010, and others, but where is the beef so far? Yes, there are a number of firms that have been funded but generally by VCs from other cities. We have a somewhat active group of angels here, nothing exceptional yet, and some of them like Lon Chow or Matt McCall are both VCs and angels, as we have reported on with some detail, but we are seeing more activity from angel groups like Hyde Park Angels than we are from any newly established fund.

BTW, someone undoubtedly will ask me why I left out David Carman in this. The answer is that Carman was not a panelist and he seemed to me to be busy taking notes at the presentations and on top of that, he did bring a number of firms to the event to present. He actually met a number of these firms in New York. Carman, unlike Bland, seems to be much more focused on getting down to the business of helping these firms get funding and exposure. I have no proof but my sense is that Bland and Carman are on two different tracks even if they are friends and do collaborate at some level.

More topics to cover include:
– “Drunken farm boys” in Wisconsin and what that has to do with my chances for getting a kidney transplant sooner than later. Also, as Bill Anthony pointed out to me, apply in states like Ohio where there are no helmet laws. Short version of story: Mike Novak at my clinic told me that kidneys are more available in WI since young kids get into accidents, motorcycle and otherwise. What I never really understood until recently is that cadaver donors are not dead. I know, this is ghoulish, but that is how such kidneys become available. They are usually brain dead but the organs are still being kept alive.

– The president of Pakistan was known as “Mr. Ten Percent,” according to a cab driver I had recently. He also supposedly has squirreled away $12B and the cabbie suggested that now that he’s president, he is Mr. 100%. Corruption is deep and rampant, he said. He also told me that the president of Pakistan had his wife killed.

– Tom Bennett told me that he is linking up with a nationally known journalist who is an expert on the Valerie Plame, Scooter Libby case and this will become known soon.

– Chalk up another one for NMH efficiency — NOT. The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. More on that later. My surgery on Monday May 9th went well, but it took about four hours longer than it should have due to poor internal communication between two departments in the hospital. Old story, new version. BTW, may I now add that Katie from Masonic called me Monday to follow up on how I was feeling and what I had to say about my hospital stay. That is a new thing with them. But NMH has also sent out a survey now. Masonic is really working the crowd these days.

– Watch for this story to gain traction in the mainstream media. The new designer drug: bath salts. Potpourri, incense, etc. sold at the epicenter of the latest hallucinogenic drugs. The new cocaine. Channel 11 did a piece on it recently. And now MS/NBC is picking it up (Friday afternoon, May 20th). The report on Channel 11 (May 12, 2011) cited the four stores at Clark and Belmont as the epicenter of this activity. epicenter of what is fast becoming a big drug problem in Illinois, Indiana, and other states. The sale of these so-called bath salts for $30 a half gram is not illegal but it all very low key. The sales people at the stores act like they don’t know what is going on.

blogs.wttw.com/moreonthestory/2011/05/12/designer-drugs/

www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=42,8,80,32&pid=0rbwlW2DU1JJClFoZFglCWWf_xn_3A9l

Actually, googling it, these stories started surfacing earlier this year.

The Chicago Tonight report said that you can get high but it won’t show up on a drug test and something about k2. They had 10 calls about it in 2010, and 91 so far in 2011. On MS/NBC, they reported today, Friday the 20th, that rarely has there been such a hockey stick growth curve for a new drug which has skyrocketed in the last three months.

Tennessee is also moving to monitor and regulate the sale of Sudafed which is abused by a lot of teens.
_________________________________
END OF REPORT