Daily Archives: 03/20/2009

(Community Matters) Very excited about four new board members: Scott Abel (founder & CEO, Spiceworks), Elizabeth Davis (founder, Allegro), Dave Hood (CEO, Troux Technologies) & Phil Siegel (GP, Austin Ventures).

Also, can’t wait – EF selected by our dear friends at TateHahn & Associates as a pro bono client for a marketing/branding boot camp. We need this.

Lemonade Day – on May 3, buy lots of lemonade. Thanks to dear friends at Trilogy, including Joe & Andra Liemandt, we’re launching our kids entrepreneurship & philanthropy training initiative. During their second year in Houston, the kids sold $1,300,000 of lemonade from 11,600 stands, donating over $220,000 to charity. Modest goals our first year – we’re hoping for 2,500 stands.

The Austin Entrepreneur ™ – a new hard copy publication hitting the stands later this month. Well, not really hitting the stands; it’ll be exclusive distribution.

(Community Matters) At dinner on Wednesday night, Michael Mitchell brought up the question of which symbol Doonesbury might adopt for President Obama. It begged reminding which symbols Garry Trudeau adopted for presidents starting with Reagan.

• Reagan – Ron Headrest (depicting artificial intelligence)

• George H.W. Bush – invisible, often depicted as a point of light

• Bill Clinton – a waffle

• George W. Bush – originally a Stetson Hat atop an asterik (all hat, no cattle – the asterik adopted after Bush’s loss of the popular vote and installation by the S. Ct) then a Roman military hat on top of an asterik, representing imperialism.
  

Other popular symbols include: an unexploded bomb for Newt Gingrich and a feather for light-weight Dan Quayle

(Community Matters) Cousin Daniel Sepulveda is all set to launch as Ambassador Ron Kirk’s Assistant US Trade Representative for Congressional Affairs. Daniel was formerly Senator Barack Obama’s economic policy advisor. Before that, he worked as a legislative assistant for Senator Barbara Boxer.

(Community Matters) Not bad at all, #6 in AAS poll of best local blogs – thanks to readers who voted. Not sure if Kip Keller really voted for CommunityMatters over Out & About, but it was sweet of Michael Barnes to say in any case. Sorta evens out, I voted for Out & About myself.

(Community Matters) I don’t want to see the demise of locals or nationals either. And, I disagree with Leonard Pitts that Kwame Kilpatrick & Larry Craig wouldn’t be taken down without a local daily. Experiments are underway around the country taking dailies to exclusively online. Sites such as BOR would undoubtedly step up – we just have to figure out an economic model & bring journalistic conflict of interest standards to those sites. Wikipedia lists the Austin American Statesman’s circulation at 174k daily, 216k on Sunday – obviously there’s huge demand that would transfer to a more economic business model (sorry JT) if deployed – and one would deploy, rest assured.