If you don't know Dan Rua, know that he is a Venture Capitalist who invested in PayPerPost, an Orlando-based business. He's a Managing Partner of Inflexion Partners, "Florida's Venture Fund", and a part-time blogger. In addition to geeky stuff, he also posts about biotech and UF/Gainesville (his alma mater) quite often.

In light of John Rife's blog today about Central Florida's Early-stage Venture Needs, I got to thinking about how we can further encourage such an event. I'd like to nominate Dan to be on the planning committee for the first Florida Creatives Summit, which I would love to happen some time in the next 6-9 months, sooner if possible. He should definitely attend a Florida Creatives Happy Hour like the one on August 20th or Sept 17th. I'll accept BarCamp Orlando or BlogOrlando as well. Mostly, I'd like to speak to a real live VC guy from Florida.

Dan, I'd just like to have you as a contact more than over MyBlogLog. How's that sound?

Here are some events we're holding in the near future, but they happen each 3rd week of the month.

likemind.orl
Friday, August 17th
8:00 - 11:00 AM
B & S Daily Market
47 E Robinson St
Orlando, FL

Florida Creatives Happy Hour
Monday, August 20th
6:00 - 9:00 PM
Crooked Bayou
50 E Central Blvd
Orlando, FL

Bug Labs, Chumby, Neuros, Netvibes, Facebook -- what do they all have in common? Open platforms.

Bug Labs is developing BUG, an open, modular, consumer electronics web services hardware platform. Designed for the general audience, not just the technically inclined, BUG is intended to bring to the world of hardware gadgets what the Internet, open source, XML and web services have brought to the world of software and media.

(blank) is developing (blank), an open, modular, web services platform. (Insert name of company here)

I was saying today that a possible future step for Facebook will be to release the FBML interpereter as a platform you can install on your web server and integrate into your app. Now they have a dead-simple web services framework. Will they do it? Is it smart? Can they make money? Keep hold of their audience? Achieve "Web OS" status?

BUG is supposed to have Wi-Fi, a GPS, a screen, USB, and the processor. Dave Winer had the first mention I saw of the device. He was one of the guys pushing the open-source podcast device a while back, so I'll bet he's pretty excited about this.

More thoughts on this later, for now I have to get back to work.

Official Website

Video by Jason Hawkins. Logo by Meagan Fisher.

At Taste in College Park, Sunday, Sept 23rd, 2007

I made a video about Taste with Becky, here it is:

One of the newest attendees, Cory, posted FloridaCreatives.com to StumbleUpon, which resulted in 32 visitors in one day (if Feedburner has the right of it). Cool.

I guess I need to get an account over there. That's some nice free traffic.

Please put one of your friends in StumbleUpon, today.

marc. with a c. (with me on drums) at the Anti-Babe show Sept. 29th, 2006 at AKA Lounge

Our monthly "coffee and coworking" event is happening this Friday, Likemind.orl, sponsored by Anomaly. Piers and Noah will be celebrating one year of Likemind.us in New York, and we're going to help them (sleepily) in Orlando by drinking coffee near Lake Eola at an early hour. There will be nametags, Alex, Ryan (me) and a small cast of people who work downtown. We are encouraged to take pictures (I'm thinking video, less caption-writing...) and upload them to flickr tagged with "likemind".

8:00 AM - ?11:00AM
Lake Eola Panera Bread
Northeast Corner of the lake
Corner of Robinson and Eola Dr.

A big thanks to everyone who came out to Florida Creatives on Monday - the strong presences by NFI Studios and the SomaCow Media Network make me feel really good about the long-term validity of a local "glue network" where groups gather in one big meta-group. Now we just need more traditional artists to realise the value of the group (or to check their email, is there some better way we can get to them?). We are doing well with the new media types and programmers, and I'm very very glad we can get together and openly discuss what's going on with us, with out community, and the rest of the world.

There are people I run into around town - poets, artists, musicians, filmmakers, actors and the like who I actively recruit to attend, yet haven't been able to make it yet. We had a remote happy hour across the street from the Enzian once, and that had a great film turn-out in addition to the regular gang. The Fringe Festival meetup kindof got lost in the general hullaballoo, and I think some active flyering can help at big events and remote events.

One birthday regret: I weigh more than 10 times my age. Hopefully this will be the last birthday I will ever have to say that.

This is the kind of thing I think one would study if they attended FIEA. Video by Robert Scoble of PodTech

EDIT: The woman speaking here is Nicole Lazarro from XEO Design. The event is iPhoneDevCamp 2007, just one week after the initial launch of the iPhone - held in Silicon Valley.

I took a trip to New England seeking Beer, Whales, Lobster, and good times. Portland, Kennebunkport and Saco, as well as Oxford, Mass. Beer by Grtty McDuff's and Sebago.
Music by Jason Spooner

Update: Oops! somehow this didn't get posted! Here it is a few days late.

Wow, the "B" terminal at the Orlando airport has certainly looked better - I'm flying US Air today (because I was trying to save $50 and they had a cheaper flight to Manchester, NH), and the 50-59 wing is looking ragged. At least the free wi-fi still works.

I left my MacBook power cord safely at home -- feeling really great about having to find a big-box computer store in rural Maine. If you live there, or New York City or Boston, comment on this post and we'll get in touch.

I'm hoping to get in some quality time with the kids from Fractured Atlas (and Six Characters), and I'm sending a random email to Loren Feldman to see if he responds. It would also be cool to hook up with Piers or Noah from Likemind, since I have an Orlando chapter (the next meeting is the 20th).