It's so sad to realize I'm in Kigali International Airport on the way home from Africa. On balance, I think I was drawn as much to Rwanda as to Uganda in the end.

I was able to overcome the hotel without (hot)water and electricity, the absolutely miserable food, and the inevitable dust because Rwanda, like Uganda, can teach us so much about the power of family, community, and the human spirit.

After driving through some of the most beautiful farmland I have ever seen, all of it terraced and under cultivation because the country is densely populated and small in area, we entered the capital city of Kigali.

You can see the influence foreign aid ( let's call it guilt) from the developing nations has had on Kigali: there's lots of new construction, both commercial and residential. We went immediately to the Genocide Museum, which was (of course) financed by the Belgian Goverment and the Clinton Foundation among others.

The Belgians were the colonial power that promoted the differences between Hutus and Tutsis in the first place, issuing identity cards in 1932 that demarcated them by caste. Tutsis were taller, so the Catholic colonial government thought they would make better leaders. Unfortunately, they were a minority, and didn't fare too well after Rwanda gained independence in 1962.

It was a pretty big mess even before the 1994 genocide, but when a million Tutsis were murdered in 100 days --with little interference from Kofi Annan OR Bill Clinton--we hit a new low in civilization. The Museum showed us mass graves, faces of slaughtered children, videos of tortured survivors, and memorial gardens all at once. Every one of us emerged crying. No wonder Bill Clinton has financed this memorial. I think of him as a very compassionate person, and I suspect he was just too new on the job to understand what was really happening in a little country so far away. In 1994 in America it was still "the economy, stupid."

If you have not seen " Hotel Rwanda,"you must. It is based on the true story of the Hotel Mille de Collines in Kigali, whose manager savewd 1000 people by hiding them inside the hotel. Paul Rusesabegina was (and still is) a Hutu married to a Tutsi, a hero to his people.

As a people, Americans have traditionally turned a blind eye on events in Asia and Africa until they hit us in the face. After all, pre-Internet they were pretty far away unless you like big animals or fine rugs.Asia now has our attention because of its growing economic power and its ability to make nuclear weapons. Africa will get our attention, too, and I just wonder how that will happen. I know that it will, because I sat next to many young people in Internet cafes across the countries I visited who were writing letters to friends across the world. The message is getting out.

The gorilla was watching intently as Daniel approached Samantha. The rest of the trekkers in Rwanda's Volcano National Park stood by. Sam was shaking. Daniel put a bracelet on her hand, a gift for their two-year anniversary. She didn't even look at it as she said to him "can't you find a better time?" She was trembling because the gorilla seemed to be growling or yelling.

Thus,two of the participants on our East African Leadership Safari, my daughter and her boyfriend, got engaged in Rwanda, in the middle of a gorilla trekking expedition with fifteen other gorillas and eight other humans in attendance. Welcome to eco-romance.

Daniel made Sam read the bracelet --on which were written the words "Will you marry me?" before he gave her the engagement ring. The gorilla witnessed.
Yes, in my mind that stole the show from the gorillas, but the gorillas weren't bad either. It's clear that the theory of evolution has merit.

After we got up at 5 AM and discovered that our hotel turns the electricity off over night, we piled into the vans (again) and drove down perhaps the bumpiest roads yet to the park -- and that's saying something! (Have I told you this trip is not for wusses?)

Volcano Park is at the border of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. We had to sleep in Rwanda because the Rwandans want the tourist dollars and won't let you go trekking unless you spend one night there. Our hotel had armed guards patrolling the perimeter all night.

Clearly the political problems in Rwanda have made them need money, so the permit is pretty pricey, too: $350 USD. But it is worth it.

There is a Rwandan farming village in the park, where the residents grow daisies for their insect repellant value, as well as potatoes for food. There's a rock wall at the edge of the village that abuts the mountains where the gorillas live; its purpose is to keep out the elephants and the buffalo from the forest so they won't eat the products of the farm. (A buffalo wall has a narrow pass through which a human can fit but a buffalo cannot.)

We entered the forest with two armed guards whose duty was to protect us from animals other than gorillas that might cross our paths, although we didn't see any. The guards also protect the gorillas from poachers who try to steal the babies and sell them to zoos in other countries.

Our first sighting was a mother with a baby, and she could not have cared less about us. She continued to feed herself and at one point even turned over on her back and laid down with the baby. We also saw an adult male who had lost a hand. And then, the "piece de resistance," a silverback. We all had to duck under a fallen log, and when we came out the other side, we were a foot from his back. When we walked around to his front, we saw how enormous he was.

He just sat there feeding himself and ignoring us, as though we were in the presence of a deity. And then, after we had time to take pictures and study him, he got up, turned around, and walked away from us down through the same hole we came through to find him. We took a detour back.

Tomorrow is the last day of our trip, and we end up in the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, where we get on the plane for Nairobi and home. It has been a real eye-opener to see what is happening in East Africa -- the beauty, the poverty, the community, the digital divide, and every other paradox you can imagine. I'm not sure it's describable if you haven't been there, although I plan to share my photos as soon as I get them downloaded and edited.

I couldn't leave off without one serious comment: the UN has a very large presence in Africa, but I don't see the results. It appears to be a very big bureaucracy full of people who want to tell the Africans what to do, but don't weem to do anything themselves. The UN people drive all the new cars and have all the best facilities. Yes, this view is probably controversial, but I've spent a couple of weeks here and I feel entitled to an opinion.

The rains came last night, within seconds. We were gathered on the patio of the lodge, ordering dinner and sipping South African wine, and all of a sudden the wind came up. Then lightning became visible. Then the wind became worse. Then all the glassware and napkins started flying across the table, the staff warned us to go inside, and the heavens opened. Unbelievable rain. We thought we would lose the electricity, but we didn't. Everyone went inside and continued eating, although there were small leaks in the roof through which we could sample the rain.

After dinner, the manager came around to every table to see if we were all right and to reassure us. Apparently, the rainy season doesn't always start as violently as it did last night, but "sometimes" it does. What a cool thing to be there! The warthogs disappeared from the grounds.

However, the lions came out to hunt. Four lions were prowling around the gates of our compound, forcing us to be under lock down for most of our meal -- a fact we really didn't know until the end. Men patrolled the perimeter with automatic rifles -- not to kill the animals, but to scare them away and keep the guests safe.

The rain changed the entire landscape. The dust that had been getting in our noses and throats since we arrived was immediately gone. The temperature, which had been, to say it bluntly, equatorial, cooled to jacket weather over night.

Which meant that our drive to Rwanda where we will trek tomorrow with gorillas was more than pleasant. Once we left the bush and the animals, who all came out this morning (well, at least a baby hyena and the usual water buck)to say goodbye, we drove through the Green Hills of Africa. Beautiful rolling countryside terraced for agriculture and carefully cultivated by hand. It was quite a contrast from where we came from, and seemed to be less poor.

But the population of Uganda is slated to triple in the next fifty years, and there is concern about how the population will be fed. The president proposes to industrialize, because there isn't enough land for agriculture. It will be interesting to see how he plans to do it.

We stopped for lunch at Travellers' Rest, a 50-year-old haven for gorilla trekkers near the Uganda-Rwanda-Congo border. Dian Fossey used to stay there. Once again, children from a local orphanage danced for us to raise money. This orphanage, which takes children from the period of the genocide, is run by a man who is himself a teen-ager, and the children support themselves by doing odd jobs, helping out in the motel, and performing.

I'm now at an Internet cafe -- no, at THE Internet cafe in Ruhengiri (I know that's misspelled) Rwanda. We crossed the border, checked into a hotel, and I came into town to re-join the 21st century for an hour. I am surrounded by Rwandan kids listening to music, reading email, and talking on VOIP. It's so cool how technology -- especially the Internet and cell phones -- has connected the world and brought the developing countries right up to our level in certain aspects.

Tomorrow, the gorillas.

The guide told us that on the primate trail, which heads into the jungle down a gorge, we would see five kinds of primates: babboons, globus monkeys (monkeys in tuxedos), vervet monkeys (taupe, standard), red-tailed monkeys, and chimps. The chimps are hardest to see, because they signal each other when danger is approaching and go underground.

Well, we hiked for over three hours, and never saw or heard hide or hair of a chimp. And why not? Twelve novices and a guide, tramping through the jungle singing songs from Broadway shows and giggling. Even a deaf chimp should have hid. But we did get a chance to try our luck at crossing a river on a big log, and we saw the babboons (who practically came out to greet us) and the tuxedoed monkeys. And a huge African python. And a million different vines. Several times I was Jane. It was a tough hike, and at the end of it we were ready for a swim.

So our van headed off to Jacana Safari Lodge, another lodge in the park, to have a drink and cool in the pool. Jacana, opened in 1998, has no air conditioning and has been built entirely of pine and eucalytpus in designs and materials that do as little as possible to impact the environment. It's right on Jacana Lake, and it is gorgeous.

The other van loaded up for more fun and games on a forest walk, where they entered a bat cave and saw a cobra and two pythons. In the meantime, our lazy selves saw the vervet monkeys and the red-tailed monkeys.

And on the way home, a huge (in every sense) herd of elephants off for a swim in the river. Elephants do swim.

You get such a kick out of being so close to so many animals that you have only seen in books, that you totally forget about insects, dust and heat. Sort of

Mweya Safari Lodge is, as George MacDonald who has been here before says, "Ralph Lauren does Africa." This morning we got up at 6 AM and left in a van with a roof that lifts up so we could stand to take photos. We saw a hyena resting in the grass, and untold number of deer, and the back ends of alot of hippos running away from us. Apparently, the hippo population has been decimated by anthrax lately; on the other hand, the elephant population has grown because refugee elephants from the Congo are coming to the southern sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park.

I missed photographing every animal due to slow reflexes, but my daughter has some photos that are unreal in their resemblance to the Discovery Channel in HDTV. She actually caught a baby elephant in close up with his trunk raised to our van.

There are hundreds of varieties of birds here, some of whom migrate back and forth from Europe (they are banded, so the park can tell). There are also 56 kinds of animal, although I'm told we will not see a giraffe.

On the other hand, this afternoon I saw everybody in the park -- hippos, buffalo, a gazillion birds, elephants, and even a male and female lion -- at distances as close as ten feet. We were on a cruise through the Kazinga Channel, which connects Lake Edward and Lake George (how British). Everybody has a happy hour in the afternoon when they come down to the lake to have a drink, and we joined them from our boat.

The hippos are basically submerged, except for every six or seven minutes when they come up to breathe. They flap their ears in a little circle (range of motion exercises?) and flare their nostrils, and then they go back under. The water buffalo stare at you, not even bothering to run away.

The female lion was behind a bush, and when she saw our boat she retired to her tent. The male, however, with his big mane, stared at us from behind the bush, refusing to give up the shade for us interlopers. Eventually, we pissed him off and he vacated for a while, but he wanted to go back to his spot, so he did. He looks and acts just like my chow Emmitt, the scourge of Esplanade Place.

The elephants were the best. According to Sam, they're enormous and wrinkly. I thought they were surprisingly agile for something so large. Yes, they have wrinkles, but don't we all?

The cormorants sat in large groups facing the wind, cooling themselves by flapping their throats. I found this bizarre the first few times, but then it got to look natural.

It is wonderful to be so close to the animals. On the cruise we saw a fishing village, where men were bathing in the river about a dozen feet from a half-submerged hippo. There are also crocodiles, but we didn't see them.

Now we're at the patio part of the day. where you sip your vodka and passion fruit juice while looking at the water. Are you jealous?

Driving west across Uganda to the Mweya Game Reserve, after bidding our friends in Kampala a festive farewell (we treated all our hosts to an Indian restaurant dinner and made some donations), we saw both the good and the bad: the terrible environmental pollution caused by cars and diesel trucks in poor repair and the rolling green tea plantations near Lakes Edward and George.

As we passed through village after village, we saw the same lifestyle -- the market and strip center along the road, the children in their bare feet and colorful school uniforms walking to and from the schools, the women carrying bowls of bananas on their heads. We made a stop at a gift shop at the Equator, and I bought a wood print by a Ugandan woodcut printer who had been a Fulbright scholar in the US. Coincidentally, he showed up at the shop as I was leaving and explained to me that when he was in the US he had trouble painting because he couldn't find the same inspiration he finds at home. His inspiration comes from the sense of community and family, and he thinks it's being ruined by development.

We arrive at the Mweya Game Reserve at lunchtime, and were led to a patio right out of a British colonial movie. The outdoor dining overlooks the channel between Lakes Edward and George, and there were elephants drinking below us, and yellow birds eating the leftover food of the diners. I guess Uganda is one of the world's best bird watching sites.

Me, I have already seen elephants, water buck, and baboons, as well as a room with old time mosquito netting. Very elegant, in-house massage therapist included, and a pool. What a difference a day makes.

Women are the entrepreneurs of Uganda. Today we visited a microloan fund whose mission was to instill godliness and wealth into every Ugandan household. In the mornings, they pray that their work will bear fruit.

And when we saw three of their "success stories, " it appears it does. We visited one woman who started with a $50 loan ten years ago and has leveraged it to 600 chickens, laying 30 trays of eggs a day, at an income of $800 per month. With this money she has sent her two children to the university, and sent one to a master's program. She mixes her own chickenfeed, from maize, millet, and fish and greens. For the baby chicks she includes more fish. For the hens that lay eggs she includes more greens so the yolks are yellow and have more iron.

Another group of women have formed a consortium to borrow money together. They meet once a week to make their payments. The treasurer of the consortium collects the money from all the women and takes it to the bank, where she gets a receipt and brings it back to the others. The women grow all kinds of crops, including aloe vera, vanilla, coffee, and flowers. The leader also has chickens, pigs, and cows, and now owns 80 acres of land on one of the hills outside Kampala. It's gorgeous!

The last group of women weave baskets and make clothes as well as growing things. They, too, meet once a week to make their payments. It creates a kind of social pressure that raises their average repayment rate to 98%.

Godfrey, the branch manager of the fund, told us that 75% of his loans are to women, because they are the ones who make the households. They do lend to married women, but they lend to the women. The businesses -- at least the ones we saw -- are home-based.

I was thinking of how little we can do with $5000, let alone $50, to further entrepreneurship in America. It's partly the costs of doing business, partly the costs of compliance, legal systems, and all the added issues that arise when you get far from the land and the family (hiring, travel, etc). Not that I think we should be Uganda, but it's something to think about. Would a group of Americans (men OR women) get together and borrow together? Do we have enough trust?

Tomorrow we leave the cities for the game park. I wont be sorry to leave the traffic and pollution of Kampala, although I have loved the people. Animals, here I come!

I have volunteered to put two sons of a woman with AIDS through computer training here in Uganda. This morning we visited a slum parish (you have no idea what that means here) that cares for people with AIDS. We saw a skit that they put together to educate other people about getting tested and getting treatment. The cast, themselves people with AIDS, was empowered and energized by being to go out and tell people how to prevent the spread of the disease.

The skit was about a sick father whose wife did not know how to care for him and didn't have any money. Their two children couldn't go to school, because they didn't have food or shoes. A visitor, a friend of the father, comes over to the house and offers them some money. Then an AIDS worker comes and takes the man to the hospital. Once the man and his wife have left, the visitor-with-money takes advantage of one of the daughters. When the husband and wife return home, the daughters are gone, but they return shortly, proud to have earned money by being sex workers. It is left to the AIDS worker to explain to the family that Aids will be spread by the daughter who had sex for money.

The HIV-AIDS problems here in Uganda are monumental. A child sang a song about being the younger generation and praying for all her parents, teachers, and ministers who were dying of AIDS. It was a very upbeat song about how the younger generation is the generation of hope because it won't repeat the mistakes of its elders.

And then I got a chance to speak to a 38-year-old mother of four who was clearly going to die soon. Her sons, 21 and 19, had qualified for university, but she couldn't afford to send them. And they had no trade, so they couldn't get jobs. I promised to put them both through computer school if they would promise to go to work and support her afterwards. I hope this will work.

In the afternoon, we visited a program that re-trains young people who have been commercial sex workers. We went to its outreach facility, in a slum, and saw a beautiful group of young women (and some men) who were attending classes. The program's policy is not to discourage the women -- many of whom are orphans or runaways -- from their livelihood, but to offer them other skills training. After they train, get a job, and get money for doing else, they withdraw themselves from commercial sex.

Here we were entertained by a group of extraordinarily talented drummers and dancers who performed traditional African dances for us. And then, I decided I wanted to learn. They costumed me, and began to teach me. I love to dance, but after five minutes of rapid foot and pelvic movements in the afternoon sun in Equatorial Africa, I had to hand it to those kids. I kept going (competitive me), but I bet my quads and glutes will be sore tomorrow!

The takeaway from today is that these NGOs have some excellent programs for dealing with major issues of poverty, AIDS,and adolescence. They are called "Youth Friendly Programs," -- developed by young people for young people. The ones we saw today were sponsored by the African Youth Alliance, a program of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Another opinion I've formed after today: Bill Gates knows how to spend his money...

Outside the crowded and dusty city of Kampala, the capital of Uganda, is a serene sixty acres inhabited by one hundred children with no families and their caregivers, the same Sisters who run the Nysambia Babies' Home. After the children in the Babies' Home reach age 6, they are transferred to this location, where they are educated and may live until either eighteen years of age or when they have developed a skill that will allow them to make a living in the city.

The girls learn to crochet beautiful shawls, weave mats, and embroider pillow covers. The boys learn carpentry. Some of the students also paint on canvas or batik. There are no parents or families (except for a few children whose siblings are also at the Home, including one family of five children), but there are also no gangs or drugs.

When our van pulled up to the school after a long ride that included crossing the Equator, the children came out to greet us with bouquets of flowers. They waited patiently while we handed out one pen per child. (They need pens for school). They proudly showed us through their dormitories, where their clean rooms were decorated with their own drawings.

There is a great emphasis on education in Uganda. There are many private and boarding schools as well as public schools, and primary education, at least, is mandated. But there are also many universities.

On the way back from the Childrens' Home, we were stopped dead in our tracks by a tremendous traffic jam around one of them. When we inquired as to what was happening, we were told the students were rioting because the police had knocked one of them down. Eventually, the police used tear gas to break up the riot -- so close to us that I felt it in my eyes and lungs. As we drove by, we saw a squad of police with rifles standing by the side of the road ready for action. When we tried to photograph them, our driver begged us not to; she said it would make them angry.

The school has enough extra land to cultivate food for its students and to sell the excess. But they have only hand tools. Somehow, I found myself volunteering to raise funds for a tractor for the school, which they could use themselves and also hire out for still more money. These sisters are so entrepreneurial; every idea is for a new revenue stream.

There were also some youthful volunteers today when we visited; Sister said that many young people in Europe volunteer to intern at the school because they want to be in the teaching or social service professions. In fact, she told me they had more applications than they could handle, because they can only afford to manage a handful of interns at a time.

Yes, I see poverty in Africa. But I don't see the unhappiness that accompanies poverty in the States, and that may simply be a case of managed expectations. If everyone around you is also poor, there's no stigma. Here in Uganda, everyone is grateful for peace, and for stability in the government and in their own lives. All the rest is commentary.

After flying from Phoenix to London (which is unbelievably expensive in the airport, and from what I've heard, everywhere else)to Nairobi to Entebbe, I am now in Uganda. All I have is a first impression, but upon first impression Africa makes India look like Beverly Hills. I think there is a real difference between third world countries that have been the beneficiaries of manufacturing outsourcing, and ones that have not. Clearly, no one has located a plant of any consequence in Uganda, and therefore the infrastructure is sorely lacking -- except for cell phones. (I have been told that even on the game preserve we are going to next week we will be able to communicate with the States through SMS.)

This afternoon we went to a Babies' Home to present it with a check from Phoenix Rotary and Rotary International for $20,000 with which to start an Internet cafe as a revenue-generator.At another location, the nuns who run the home also run a guest house, the proceeds from which go to support the Babies'Home. They are enlarging the guest house, at great pains and labor, so they can have five more rooms to rent out. The Babies' Home is run entirely by five nuns and a lot of volunteers who take care of at least a hundred babies from age 1 day to 6 years that have been abandoned. No government grants, no Social Security, no Aid to Families with Dependent Children. I held a 7-month-old girl, Mercy Grace, who had been found in a dust bin at one day of age. They take these kids in and find ways to keep them alive and get them medical attention.

The kids live in rooms of 4-6 kids per room, and the home supports itself by raising chickens and cows and selling off the extra milk and eggs. The local Rotary chapter helps the Home by supporting the poultry project. The nuns are more entrepreneurial than anyone I have ever met. They also rent out mattresses and chairs, and sell used children's clothing. Anything to make a dime to support the babies.

We met one of the Rotarians who help the home, an orthopedic surgeon who trained and practiced in London until he went back to Uganda (the place of his birth) four years ago.He said he came back to Uganda because here he feels like if he does something, he really saves a life or eliminates pain, and that no one could do it but him. He's probably correct: there are only four orthopedists in all of Uganda. He said he does things with his bare hands that surgeons in other countries have instruments to do; he uses a Black and Decker drill to cut into bones, for example. But he says it keeps him inventive and creative.

After age 6, the kids from the Babies' Home have to go to another orphanage where they have a primary school. We will visit there today. At the Babies' Home, we met two men who grew up there and are now adults coming back to volunteer.

Africa is very lovely, but it is incredibly poor and lacking in basic necessities. And unlike many other countries, Uganda has not been able to capitalize on the ecotourism boom that has helped most third world nations, because Africa has had so much war.

Fortunately, we are now in a period of peace, and technology has connected it with the rest of the world.

Here we are again at the Demo conference, where all good software products come to launch. Every year I come here and find some piece of software to download and experiment with. I found Grokker and Picasa that way, as well as some stuff I later deleted from my hard drive.

This year my favorite might be FiveAcross�s Bubbler, a product that spreads information like being at the water cooler. Bubbler is the fastest blogging engine in the world. It actually produced a blog entry about the Demo conference itself within a two-minute demonstration. Its Court Reporter feature is like instant messenger, and when you hit return, every line goes live on the Internet. Another difference between most blogging engines and Bubbler is that Bubbler can include pictures and audio at the same time.

This is the fifteenth year of Demo, and many old industry innovators are being honored. Indeed, one of the speakers at the first Demo introduced Visicalc, an early spreadsheet that was bested by Microsoft�s Excel.

This year, Demo is about security, search, and social software. Things have certainly changed in the last fifteen years. Instead of holding information privately, as we used to, learning how to share information has actually led to whole new business models. (This will eventually make old intellectual property laws irrelevant.)

Since the Internet, every year we have grown more and more connected. New media, such as video and audio, are fast becoming communication tools for ordinarily people. Being proficient at writing has been required of people in business for years, but now one also has to be proficient at audio (for podcasting) and video (web conferencing) in order to collaborate. The production values don�t have to be high, because these media are used only for online collaboration, and not sold as entertainment or education, but it�s still a constant learning process in this very connected world.

However, we are still going to have to figure out how to make audio and video easier for the general public to use before they take off like blogging did. Blogging, social software, and collaboration all came into their own this year , according to the conference�s producer, Chris Shipley.

All this blogging contributes to information overload, so there were several products, such as Pluck, Affini and Onfolio that collect and organize information found on the desktop and the web and allow you to find and access your own information quickly. Apparently, we are about to get very organized, and probably without paying for the privilege. Most of the products I saw are available free (for now).


One of the good new free products is ASAP Express from Convoq, a personal web conferencing system that allows users to conduct online meetings with file sharing, white boarding, and video conferencing. It can be downloaded from the convoq.com web site.

Jambo Networks has a product that allows face-to-face networking if you share something in common and are within walking distance. If, for example, I�m in the airport waiting around, I can immediately find all the people who are Jambo users. I can then find out what I have in common with each of them, and make myself invisible to the ones with whom I have little in common. When I find someone I want to meet, I can send them a private message with a photo of myself. At the end of the chat session, the photo disappears.

If a match is nearby, the icon in the task bar changes from red to green. Jambo has a patent-pending process for syncing your device with any other wireless device without using the Internet or sending personal information. Currently partnering with Cornell Silicon Valley, and other university groups. Jambo.net/demo15.

I was pretty impressed by Browster, a free plug-in for a browser that allows much quicker access to searched pages by preloading them into memory. Browster allows you to mouse over a link in a Google search or a blog, find out if it�s relevant or not, simply by mousing over the link and mousing out immediately if you want to. Page pre-loading cuts search time in half. The business model is pay for performance, like Google�s. But Browster is only available for Windows browsers.

And then there was Quicksites, which provides a professionally designed templated web site for small businesses. (Their demonstrators sang for five minutes, a parody of Bye-Bye Miss American Pie listing all the features and benefits of their product. It was truly the highlight of Tuesday for me.) At the end, people stood up and clapped, and I guarantee you it wasn�t for the concept of templatized web sites.

Demo is one of my favorite conferences. I�m gonna try Jambo and Pluck, and wish that I could try Browster.

As part of my effort to capture the trophy for Mother of the Year, I flew up to the Bay Area yesterday to help my daughter do some publicity for her upcoming book, "Why Business People Speak Like Idiots." She's a bit shy (but a great writer), so here are her thoughts on our experience--good for anyone who has written a book:

"Well, today I shuffled around hawking our book to two bookstores in Oakland and at the Churchill Club's annual dinner in San Jose.

The highlights:

First stop: Borders in Oakland. The store manager offered to put out
some of our cards, and suggested we come back when the books arrive to
sign some copies. These signed copies will then get an "author
signature" sticker on the cover, and be displayed at the information desk
(right above Eats, Shoots & Leaves, btw).

Borders Corporate does tell them
what books they have to display around the store, but if the stores want to put
out books of their own choosing, they can do that by displaying them at
the information desk. They had ordered six copies. The store manager
gave me the name of the regional coordinator for marketing/events, and
told me to call her. She also said it was a huge coup that we had even
made it into their inventory system. I walked away thinking this signing
deal could be a great grass-roots way to get our books more prominent
placement in stores. I also realized (duh) that anything we can do to
help these stores sell more books will be welcomed by them.

Feeling good, we then skipped off to the Barnes & Noble at Jack London
Square in Oakland. There we were quickly introduced to Jerry, an extremely energetic, supportive guy who runs events for the entire region. As soon as I said I was there to pimp my book, he let his true self out, started cracking jokes, and got really into it -- saying he had
chills, that his hands were sweating, etc, etc. He was very into the idea of the book.

He took us around the store for a tour, and the first
stop was the Events Loft. They hold events there everyday -- some for
children, and some for local authors. He wanted to do a huge party there
for us, do in-store flyers to publicize it, put it in their store
calendar, use their mailing list of business people to promote it,
perhaps start targeting specific companies to come in for "training
events" on the topic, and promote attendance by doing it as a
fundraiser for a local school.

Jerry was full of ideas. This is his sole job, and B&N is trying to get more stores to do it. Then he took us to the ordering system, where he showed us that theyhad five books on order. He then showed us how many books were in the 10
warehouses they have around the country (477, 300, 500, etc), and he
said, "Oh, this book is going to be very big. This is a BIG book. You
didn't tell me this was a BIG DEAL." He promptly typed in an order for
15 more books, said they'd arrive tomorrow, and said he'd be displaying them immediately right by the door. Then he showed us around the store to where our books would be displayed, and said he would make a special
effort to make sure they were facing out (rather than just filed away alphabetically with only the spine showing).

I must say, I think it was
my mom that he fell in love with, but what the hell! I'll be talking to him next week to make plans. When we left, he gave me a hug.

My take-away from all this: the in-store visits are HUGE. HUGE! We
can't visit enough bookstores or Costco's. I am going to try to hit
every single Borders and Barnes & Noble in the Bay Area, but also work
through the regional events people here. I think if we can each do as
much of this as possible, and show that we are fun authors -- not the
usual stuffy ones -- we will be well on our way to building momentum.

Then, if we can get our friends to go out and pimp the book at their
local stores, well who knows what could happen. Don't think they will
have as much luck given that we are not from their towns, but still ...
once you make personal contact with the store manager, you have a much
better chance of them buying more books. I also think B&N caters more to
authors than Borders. Seems like it is a corporate initiative or something.

Then we headed down to San Jose for the Bezos Churchill Club's 20th Anniversary Dinner, starring Jeff Bezos, who is mentioned in the book.

During cocktails, I ran into Guy Kawasaki's partner, who told me Guy had done 55
events from the time his book, Art of the Start, was released, to now (it was released Sept '04). He said he was really happy with sales - had hit
WSJ bestseller, Business Week bestseller, and #34 at Amazon. Didn't have
much time with him to get into more detail, but he said it was selling better than his first book, Rules for Revolutionaries.

And then, finally, after swilling as much wine as possible during the cocktail hour, I caught a glimpse of Jeff Bezos sitting down at the head table
for dinner. After a few more swigs, I decided to make my approach.

Me: Excuse me, Jeff? Sorry to interrupt your dinner. I wanted to give
you this book. First, because I wrote it. Second, because you were a
big inspiration for it. And third, because you are featured in it
(marked the pages w/ our cards).

Jeff: What is it? Why Business People Speak Like Idiots? I'm probably
about to do some of that on stage tonight. This is great! (flipping
through it). Wow, so was I a good inspiration? I hope?

Me: You are one of a select few we hold up as an example of someone who
does not speak like an idiot.

Jeff (flipping through more furiously now): Well, did you sign it?

Me: Uh, no.

Jeff: Well, could you go remedy that please?

[2 minutes later]

Me: Okay -- here it is.

Jeff: Oh, excellent. I am hereby inducted into the Loyal Order of
Bullfighters! (loud voice) AWESOME! Thank you. You are so kind. I
really appreciate this.

He was very kind, and I do believe he will look at it.

He gave an awesome interview with Josh Quittner (editor of Business
2.0). Made me proud we had put him in the book. He talked about how, 4
years ago, they decided to stop advertising and instead put their ad
budget back into improving the customer experience. So that includes
supersaver shipping, spending a lot on 1-to-1 technology, their A9 search
subsidiary, etc. He talked a lot about information transparency and
putting the consumer first. It was very non-sell sell-oriented. He was funny, forthcoming, self-deprecating, personable, told stories -- he was
really better than I'd even expected. Talked a lot about blogs and even
mentioned a few he reads daily (boingboing, for one). He had that same
boyish optimism we mention in the book ... about the future of their
business and the future of online commerce. Very clear-headed, very
focused, sound strategic mind, and ZERO bull.

fyi -- how I signed it:
Jeff, you are hereby inducted into the loyal order of Bullfighters. Thanks for being an inspiration to business people everywhere.
Now, go forth and continue to fight the bull!
Chelsea

So -- that's the wrap up. I am going to continue visiting bookstores as
much as possible. I think we all should continue to do the same. It's a
real high. And the more ideas you can offer them (offering to sign their
copies, ideas for events, etc), the more receptive they are.

But, alas, I am not a sales person by nature, so I am exhausted.

Nighty night."

http://www.broom.org/epic/

A must-see for anyone interested in journalism,blogging and technology.

Wow. Things have really changed. Remember when mutual funds were the �safe investment� to which savvy investors flocked? And how we all learned that there was no magic in mutual funds, but that it depended on who the fund manager was, what his or her track record was, and what sectors he chose to invest in?

Well�mutual funds have apparently been replaced by hedge funds. Large institutional investors have decided that they should make large allocations to this class of alternative investment. Widows and orphans� money, your alma mater�s endowment, and large foundations all invest in hedge funds. And what are those funds? They are a variant of private equity.

More money actually flowed into hedge funds between 2001 and 2004 than into mutual funds. That money is earmarked for the capital markets. Hedge funds are now a source of capital that have to be reckoned with. That�s good if you are trying to be the investee. But since hedge funds are largely unregulated, and many have been started by people without much track record or experience who have raised large sums of money, there�s a bit of risk in being the investor.

So this morning I sat in a room full of pension fund managers, general partners, service providers and other potential investors to hear a managing director of Merrill Lynch talk about the outlook for this year�s capital markets. The people in the room were asking the question �where should I put my money,� while I was asking what�s the difference between a hedge fund and a mutual fund?

The answer is, less and less, except the hedge funds can invest in private equity. In fact, they can invest in almost anything. So naturally these folks have a big curiosity about what�s going to happen to the capital markets in 2005.

After the great year of 2003, there were questions about whether 2004 would produce a correction. It did not, because GDP grew consistently in 2004, and although the large caps didn�t do well, we had acceptable returns on the S & P.

2004 was a tale of three markets: the first quarter was quite robust, but by the middle of the year rising oil prices and uncertainty about the election and the Fed�s actions caused the market to level off. Once Bush won and oil didn�t run up to $80 a barrel, the market zoomed ahead and we had the January effect of 2005 in December 2004.

IPOs tripled between 03-04, as did secondaries. So the IPO market really re-opened in 2004 and will continue to be open for a while in 2005. The backlog from 2003 was mainly in technology, health care and finance. At the end of 2004, the backlog was in telecom, chemicals, real estate and finance.

The world is fickle for being able to take on IPOs. At the end of 2000, and until 2002, more deals were withdrawn from the marketplace than actually got done. In 2004, the majority of deals got done, but got done outside the acceptable price ranged. So there was liquidity, but not up to expectations. On the other hand, IPOS did well in the secondary market in 2004.

But 2004 is over. What does Dunleavy think about 2005? He says there are some questions:

How far will the Fed go?
Is the world, particularly emerging market economies, prepared for a period of increasing interest rates-- or are new crises around the corner? Greenspan says that rising interest rates have been advertised for so long and in so many places, that everyone should be hedged against them or ready to lose money. However, at the end of every tightening, a financial calamity seems to occur for which somebody is unprepared, like the bankruptcy of Orange County or the tech wreck.

What happens when the Fed tightens? Well, EPS subsides within the next six months, so the expected growth of earnings per share in 2005 will be muted. When the yield curve flattens, EPS and GDP both slow down. The offset to that should be taking a look at balance sheets. Corporations are as liquid as they have been in 42 years. But household debt is the highest it�s been in 30 years; apparently, the consumer is almost entirely responsible for the trade deficit. It�s a wash.

So where will the action be in 2005? M&A is the most active sector of private equity. The way to grow becomes through acquisition rather than through capital spending. If you are awash in cash, but you�re still afraid to hire because you don�t know what the future will bring, you always decide to buy rather than build.

Will there still be a window for IPOs? Sort of. There will be access to the capital markets, but the question is what the valuations are. Are you looking for liquidity, or the top tick? If you are a spinoff from a sponsoring parent, you will do okay.

And where will the �smart money� go? Hedge funds are getting multimillion dollar commitments with multi-years lockups, even when they are new and their management has no real track record. This makes me wonder what the real definition is of smart money.

The moment of most pride for a parent: my daughter Chelsea's book will be published on March 2. Please go to Amazon and pre-order it in bulk for your friends and colleagues. In our family, language is important and jargon is not. Chelsea carries the authenticity gene; if you want to download a piece of software that will go through all your documents and filter out the bull, go to: http://www.fightthebull.com.

Sitting in the SRI Private Equity Conference, I've learned that private capital is definitely moving outside the usual places. While the PWC study of venture capital dollars does say that as a percentage, the rest of the country got only 45% of venture dollars in the past few years, the truth is that the rest of the country provides more than 50% of deals. Megadeals are done in Silicon Valley, New York and Boston, but smaller deals are done all over the country.

Because valuations are lower outside Silicon Valley, New York and Boston, ignored regions now make sense for both investors and co-investors, say the conference's attendees. There is now a regional focus to venture capital investment. However, the regions that are attracting capital, and those in which venture capitalists are opening offices, are places where retirees from large corporations are producing startups, or government spending for research is affecting both labs and universities. Thus, New Mexico looks more interesting than Arizona to a VC, because of the government's $3 billion investment in Sandia Labs.

The Southeast is a vibrant market for deals, although the dollars per deal are less. Atlanta has doubled its venture funding over the last three years, and Florida and the Research Triangle are growing fast, largely because of good research at Duke. Atlanta is a center for software security and financial services technology, which brings out of region money to the area.

In that region, too, Nashville is a health care services capital and Bell South and Cox produce communications and telecom startups. Over the next five years, the southeast will emerge as research center as Scripps is going to south Florida and Mayo does deals down south.

But the Southeast is undercapitalized, more now than ever. From forty VC firms during the bubble, it's down to a handful.

In the Pacific Northwest, Microsoft has 60,000 employees that produce many spinoffs. But the northwest also has a wireless background, 3G and cellular and an Institute for Systems Biology. Because of the expense of wet labs, much research on genomics is done through computational biology, and Dr. Larry Hood has a big lab there. Pacific Northwest National Labs, the largest data center in the world, is now fabricating nanotubes with megabucks from the government.

An underappreciated feature of the northwest is that Intel's presence is bigger and bigger in Oregon. Oregon now has the headquarters of Intel capital, as well as the headquarters of the wireless and WiMax initiatives and the digital home initiative. In addition, there's lots of corporate infrastructure there. In fact, although Craig Barrettt lives in Arizona, Portland has Intel's largest facility in the world.

Linux is also big in Oregon, because Linus Torvald lives in Beaverton. Oregon also boasts HP's image processing headquarters, its biggest business. To capitalize on all these companies, Oregon has aggregated its players into the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, which has received over $20m in government funding.

The Midwest, say its boosters, is the Rodney Dangerfield of venture capital, which creates both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is the perception that nothing goes on,, and there's a slight isolation problem because the region isn't close enough by air to the major VC centers. However, the midwest probably has the deepest technology base in the US, partly because of its corporate headquarters (Motorola, Baxter, Tellabs), and partly because the Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan universities have huge research grants. For an investor, we were told, there's limited competition, so valuations are low.

In the west, the place that most clearly fits the pattern of the regionalization of venture capital seems to be Colorado. Technology is concentrated in Denver, Boulder and Colorado Springs, all within an hour of Denver. It's a very concentrated area to work in, because the universities are also scattered up and down that corridor, as are the industry and government labs. Colorado has one of the highest concentrations of PhDs in the country, and people want to stay there when they move there.

The venture capital infrastructure began in the '60s when IBM opened a facility there. Sun and HP are both outside of Boulder, as are Amgen and Pfizer. All of that provides the base, but there is also a community of serial entrepreneurs that make the venture market interesting. The infrastructure is also there with Silicon Valley Bank and Cooley Goddard.

I'm not even going to tell you about San Diego, because we all know what's happening there. It's the one place we really have our eye on as we try to compete in biotechnology.

So how do we compare here in Arizona? Well, we didn't have a venture firm on the panel, so I asked. I was told by a Silicon Valley woman VC that Silicon Valley and Texas firms look all the time at Arizona deals because it's a short trip to Phoenix on Southwest. And I was told that Colorado venture firms, such as Sequel Venture Partners are looking at deals in Arizona.

But I was also told that our infrastructure for deals (banks and law firms) are fifteen to twenty years behind. So according to the money people, it's not money we lack. I guess it must be lawyers :