On May 19-21, the leaders of ICF's Top Seven Intelligent Communities will share success stories from around the world in creating and retaining the talent that powers an innovation economy.  In 2010, the Building the Broadband Economy Summit theme is about talent and how to keep it. BBE 2010 will offer case studies from Smart21 and Top Seven Intelligent Community leaders who have grappled with this challenge and developed innovative strategies to close the education "last mile."  Confirmed speakers include:

• Premier Shawn Graham of New Brunswick, Canada, ICF's Visionary of the Year
• Vice Chairman Christopher Zimmerman, Arlington County, Virginia, USA
• Mayor Larry O'Brien of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• Mike Galloway, Director of City Development, Dundee, Scotland, UK
• Professor Cheol-Soo Park, SungKyunKwan University, Suwon, South Korea
• Toomas Sepp, City Secretary, Tallinn, Estonia
• Dave Carter, Head, Manchester Digital Development Agency, Manchester UK
• Deputy City Manager Dana McDaniel, City of Dublin, Ohio, USA
• Mayor J.M.L.N. Mikkers, City of Veldhoven in the Eindhoven Region of the Netherlands
• Anette Scheibe, CEO, Electrum Foundation & Kista Science City AB, Stockholm Sweden

Jeff Hunter, 48, of Troy, Ohio, grew up in a family business, waiting on customers and sharpening saws at his father's industrial supply store. Now a partner in consulting firm Arete Management Solutions, he says: "I see entrepreneurs who are often underresourced and underexperienced. I have a strong passion for helping out any way I can."

Ken Keegan, 45, is a finance expert and strategic planner based in St. Louis. After 20 years as a management executive and an entrepreneur, he wants to help business owners identify alternate solutions to common problems.

Hunter and Keegan are examples of the many successful individuals who would like to become advisors—formal or informal—to small business owners. Some hope to turn an advisory board position into a full-time job. Others are scouting for promising business investment opportunities. Still others have struggled through the early years of their own entrepreneurial ventures and simply want to give back.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Fenwick & West LLP, one of the nation's premier law firms providing comprehensive legal services to high technology and life science clients, today announced the results of its First Quarter 2010 Silicon Valley Venture Capital Survey.

The First Quarter 2010 survey analyzed the valuations and terms of venture financings for 104 technology and life science companies headquartered in the Silicon Valley which reported raising capital in the first quarter of 2010.

"During the first quarter of 2010, up rounds exceeded down rounds 49 percent to 32 percent with 19 percent flat. This was similar to the fourth quarter of 2009, where up rounds exceeded down rounds 47 percent to 30 percent, with 23 percent flat, and the third consecutive quarter in which up rounds exceeded down rounds," said Barry Kramer, a partner in the firm and co-author of the survey.

Despite a 34-per-cent drop in this quarter, venture capital activity in Quebec is growing at a healthy pace, an association of investors says.

Réseau Capital, which represents private equity and venture capital firms in the province, yesterday unveiled its quarterly report, which revealed $101 million was invested by venture firms into emerging or growth companies in the first three months of 2010, down from $153 million over the same period last year.

The association noted, however, last year's first-quarter results were higher than normal, and this quarter's figures better reflect the quarterly average over the last two years.

YouTern, an online community to link interns with startups, has launched their pilot program in California, with plans to expand nationwide.

While there are many programs that assist students with finding internships with large, established companies, until the launch of YouTern, there was no similar service helping entrepreneurial-minded students find a position with a startup. And now in turn, startups will have a resource to identify and recruit talented students for internship positions, a move that may help build a "startup culture" so college graduates don't feel as compelled to only seek employment with major corporations.

It may look like a floor lamp mounted on a vacuum cleaner, but Anybots, Inc.'s new QB is actually the latest in surrogate robotics. QB is designed to serve as your eyes, ears and voice when you can't be there in person. Even better, it's mobile, rolls around on two wheels like Rosie (from The Jetsons) and can be navigated remotely via the Web and a Wi-Fi connection.

Telecommuting workers and traveling executives alike could use QB (so named because it is the next in line after the company's prototype QA bot) as a virtual extension of themselves, allowing them to attend meetings, tour facilities or perform walk-throughs of real estate properties, all while controlling the robot from a computer keyboard.

Entrepreneur and professor Steve Blank authored a blog this morning that expressed his opinion that business plan competitions are useless to startup culture and should be scrapped for business model competitions. Business plan competitions are just what they sound like: students are encouraged to submit a business plan and a winner is selected by a panel of judges, often resulting in some monetary reward for the triumphant student. Blank argues that models, not plans, are much more applicable to the iterative startup atmosphere, but not everyone agrees that business plans are entirely irrelevant.

Looking at the opposing viewpoints, it seems that those against business plans use an alternative approach to their argument than those in support of them. In his points against business plans, Blank takes aim at the plans themselves, dissecting them as unrepresentative of the startup ecosystem and its needs.

For over a decade, the topic of foreign technical professionals working in the U.S. under H-1B visas has been contentious. Many Americans claim that corporations use H-1Bs to displace domestic workers and depress wages. Companies say that colleges don’t graduate enough technical professionals. Both might be wrong.

A recent university study in the journal Management Science suggests that H-1B workers make more money than domestic counterparts. Another study last fall said schools graduate the same number of technical workers, but the top ones go into other fields, probably for better opportunities. The combination of factors means that many corporations may need to reassess their staffing strategies.

Chris Rodde: We recently just completed our Series A funding, in which we raised $1.1 million. The round was led by MentorTech ventures, with participation from Amicus Capital and prominent Bay Area and Seattle angels. We started fundraising in earnest in August of 2009, so from start to finish it took us eight months.

Raising money was a lot harder and took a lot longer than we expected, but obviously with determination and a bit of luck it can be done. This post covers the top lessons we learned along the way:

1. Raising money can be incredibly hard: Yes, I’ll repeat it again it case you missed it the first time. I’m sure there are plenty of startups out there that skate through the fundraising process -- we were not one of them. Despite having many of the elements of an attractive investment (experienced team, huge market, proven business model) our hit rate with investors was very low. We had to push through hundreds of “No’s” before we got to the few “Yes’s.” Set your expectations properly so that you don’t get discouraged five months in when you are still eating Top Ramen and your bank account is near empty.

Despite receiving some bipartisan support, the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 failed to attract enough support to pass in the House on Wednesday. As a suspension, the bill required support from two-thirds of the House, but fell short in the final tally, 261-148. The reintroduced bill contained a 50 percent cut in the funding path from the previous version and shortened the authorization period for its programs from five years to three years. The future of the COMPETES Act is unclear, but Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) plans to continue work on the bill.

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On the opening night of Building the Broadband Economy 2010 Thursday, May 20, 6:30 - 8:30 pm The Samsung Experience, Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, 3rd Floor, New York, NY

The Top Seven Intelligent Communities of the Year Reception honors the seven communities named by ICF every year as role models for the development of prosperous and inclusive economies based on broadband and information technology. The Top Seven were announced in January at PTC'10, the annual conference of the Pacific Telecommunications Council in Honolulu. On May 21 at Building the Broadband Economy, one of the Top Seven will be named Intelligent Community of the Year. The 2010 Top Seven are:

• Arlington County, Virginia, USA
• Dublin, Ohio, USA
• Dundee, Scotland, UK
• Eindhoven, Netherlands
• Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• Suwon, South Korea
• Tallinn, Estonia

The reception for summit attendees and invited guests will begin at 6:30 pm at The Samsung Experience, an interactive space showcasing Samsung's vision of digital convergence.    The Time Warner Center can be reached by New York City Subway (A, B, C, D or 1 train to 59th Street Columbus Circle) or by taxi.

RSVP by Thursday, May 12 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or +1 646-291-6166 x104. For more information on Building the Broadband Economy, visit www.icfsummit.com.

In an earlier column , I explained that older people start businesses at a much higher rate than younger ones. As I wrote there, “the incorporated self-employment rate is 4 times higher among those aged 65 to 69 than among those aged 25 to 34—and a whopping 25 times higher than among those aged 20 to 24.”

This pattern worries some observers, who believe it reflects a lack of job opportunities for older Americans. For instance, writing in the True Slant, Anne Field argues that many older entrepreneurs today are being driven to start businesses because they have lost their jobs and cannot get new ones.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AMONG SENIORS NOT DRIVEN BY JOB LOSS
It is doubtless true that in today’s economic environment, some entrepreneurs of all ages have chosen to start businesses because they were laid off and couldn’t find new jobs. However, the data don’t indicate that the high level of entrepreneurial activity among those over 55 can be attributed primarily to recent high levels of job loss. As Dane Stangler explained in a report he wrote for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, “In every single year from 1996 to 2007, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity than those aged 20-34.” That is, boom or bust – and we have seen several of each since the mid-1990s – older Americans are more likely to run their own businesses than younger ones.

VC backed startups generally aspire to valuations in the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, but very few really consider all of the elements they’ll need to make it happen.

After analyzing several startups I’ve worked with that have reached or are approaching these valuations I’ve boiled it down to four interdependent commonalities that always seem to exist.

While they are easy to describe, they are of course very difficult to achieve. Still your best chance of achieving them is to know what they are.

This week researchers will present a study showing what could happen if a determined hacker went after the computer systems embedded in cars. The researchers found that, among other things, an attacker could disable the vehicle's brakes, stop its engine, or take control of its door locks. All the attacker needs is access to the federally mandated onboard diagnostics port-- located under the dashboard in almost all cars today.

The researchers point to a recent report showing that a typical luxury sedan now contains about 100 megabytes of code that controls 50 to 70 computers inside the car, most of which communicate over a shared internal network.

"In a lot of car architectures, all the computers are interconnected, so that having taken over one component, there's a substantive risk that you could take over all the rest of them. Once you're in, you're in," says Stefan Savage, an associate professor in the department of computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego, who is one of the lead investigators on the project.

A bipartisan group of Senators “tonight scored a victory that will provide strong protections for investors while promoting small business startups vital to job creation,” according to a joint press release.

A bipartisan amendment sponsored by Senators Kit Bond (R-MO) and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and co-sponsored by Senators Mark Warner (D-VA), Scott Brown (R-MA), Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Mark Begich (D-AK) was adopted by voice vote as part of the financial reform bill being debated in the Senate.

The Senators’ amendment which passed tonight will ease restrictions in the financial reform bill for accredited investors.  The amendment promotes small business startups by speeding and increasing the availability of essential seed capital from qualified investors. Specifically, the Bond, Dodd, Warner, Brown, Cantwell and Begich amendment eliminates the language in the underlying bill that required a 120 day Securities and Exchange Commission review period for investors that prove an annual income in excess of $200 thousand and net worth totaling more than $1 million.

The number of self-employed Canadians is on the rise.

According to Statistics Canada figures released in March, self-employment rose by 4.3%, or 100,000 people, between October 2008 to 2009, as the recession set in.

The move to self-employment carries with it challenges for newly minted entrepreneurs, lawyers warn. They must avoid the seven common mistakes made in starting a business, which can come back to haunt them years later.

So what are these seven deadly sins?

- 1. No structure The first is "not picking the appropriate structure to operate the business," said Richard Brooks, a Toronto lawyer at Brooks, Barristers & Solicitors who works extensively with entrepreneurs.

Swimsuit season is almost upon us. For most of us, the countdown has begun to lazy days lounging by the pool and relaxing on the beach. However, for some of us, the focus is not so much on sunglasses and beach balls, but how to quickly shed those final five or ten pounds in order to look good poolside. It is no secret that dieting can be challenging and food cravings can make it even more difficult. Why do we get intense desires to eat certain foods? Although food cravings are a common experience, researchers have only recently begun studying how food cravings emerge. Psychological scientists Eva Kemps and Marika Tiggemann of Flinders University, Australia, review the latest research on food cravings and how they may be controlled in the current issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

We've all experienced hunger (where eating anything will suffice), but what makes food cravings different from hunger is how specific they are. We don't just want to eat something; instead, we want barbecue potato chips or cookie dough ice cream. Many of us experience food cravings from time to time, but for certain individuals, these cravings can pose serious health risks. For example, food cravings have been shown to elicit binge-eating episodes, which can lead to obesity and eating disorders. In addition, giving in to food cravings can trigger feelings of guilt and shame.

As a startup entrepreneur you’ll have many demands for your time. Especially if you start to have a degree of success or build a high public profile. Everyone will want you to speak at conferences. Service providers will want to get to know you. Potential employees want to “get together.” VC’s will want to learn about what you’re up to and later stage VCs will have their 23-year-old analysts call you to tell you how interested they are in your company.

The problem is that the scarcest resource in any entrepreneur’s life is your time. Yet we all feel guilty not doling out time for anybody who asks – especially if we were introduced. I know! I feel the same way. I’m trying to embrace my inner “NO” a little more in my life. One simply can’t take every meeting.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to be a great leader and seem to be having this conversation a lot lately about Facebook, Yahoo!, Zynga and others.  I wrote several of the characteristics when I did the Top 10 (11) Attributes of an Entrepreneur.  One thing that I’ve realized over the years is that to be an effective leader you can’t aspire to be loved by everybody.  I think people with this affliction have a hard time being great leaders.  They dither on decision-making.  They fudge on org charts to appease people.  Clarity of purpose in leadership matters.

Think of the decisions we face as countries globally. How much do we cut back public services to shrink our national debts? How much do we bail out companies that were culpable of helping create our woes and what moral hazards does this create? How much health care is the right amount to provide? Who should be allowed to immigrate into our countries and on which basis? How does the United States deal with 12-13 million illegal immigrants that are already in our country and came here illegally? My point is that any decision you “actively” make will affect people. Doing nothing is avoiding real leadership. It’s kicking tough decisions down the line for somebody else to deal with in the future. And for every day we put off decisions things get worse.

Thank you for your support of technology-based economic development in Maryland. During these difficult economic times, it is more important than ever to build our tech and biotech industries and the Tech Council of Maryland (TCM) appreciates your support.