2008 Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference at UNC Chapel Hill

Seems most posts after graduation here are recovering things happened earlier. Nonetheless, this one is talk about the 2008 Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference at UNC Chapel Hill from 06/03 to 06/07 this year.

My fellowship professors at Babson College, Bill Bygrave and Julian Lange, are kind enough to put my name at a research paper that I've worked for as a research fellow at Blank Center of Babson College.

It's a very unique conference. First of the kind to me. Definitely I was the only one there with a master degree but not in a Ph.D program.  There are a large turn out of Chinese scholar and Ph.D students. Surprisingly, female was in a dominant position of Ph.D student, percentage wise. The only male Chinese Ph.D student is from Syracuse University who is originally from Taiwan with startup experience.

My biggest surprise is how far from or how little interest many academic researchers have from the real entrepreneurship activities, or connect with the real startup world. Bplan related research is one of the biggest example for it.


For those of you haven't been such a conference before, here is a list of materials from the conference:

2008 BCERC-1- UNC Schedule.pdf 


2008 BCERC-2- UNC Doctoral Consortium.pdf


2008 BCERC-3- UNC Conference Summaries.pdf

2008 BCERC-5- UNC Conference Directory.pdf  

2008 BCERC-4- UNC Authors & Titles.pdf


This conference is sponsored by Kauffman Foundation and UNC at Chapel Hill

Btw, I also think BCERC could use a service like Box.net to store/distribute above pdf files without bothering with CD. Less cost. Less waste. But may not be good for Mixonic I've interviewed at SF.


Technorati Tags     entrepreneurship,phd,unc,conference,babson,bcerc,kauffman

Trip planning for 2nd California interview trip and Micro-Economy thought deriviated from it

Just spent about 2 hours to figure out how to take public transportation in San Jose area using, Google Transit, and The trip planner offered by 511 Transit for Bay area.
Why? because I was shocked that Car rental companies want to charge me for $150 for a 2-day rental while I only paid $171 in total for an one-week rental just two weeks ago. Rip me off, eh?

But finally, I've figured out how to do so, to travel between San Jose Airport and My friend's place in Cupertino, as well as between my friend's place in Cupertino and Redwood Shore that my 2nd round interview will be held.

What's the ROI? So assume a typical hourly rate for a recent MBA graduate like me is $25/hour (can also be $0 since I dont have a job yet), so 2 hour is $50 and the public expense is by caltrain is about $5.75x2=$11.5 + bus fare so about $70 in total which gives me a 30% saving.

Then, will it be good to get the same result from people living in the Bay area? Yahoo! Answers is cool but not real time and  you don't know what you will get since it's a free service. Calling friend is another option but not helpful as most are driving. Ideally, there should be  marketplace of micro-economy that serving those small needs. I am happy to pay $5 to get a detailed How-To for my need, which is very much like what Marin had described before as an idea. (He is smart!)


Anyway, get ready to go back to California for the 2nd time in



Technorati Tags     job,travel,interview,jose,san,california,caltrain

Trip in the Valley -05/26

(some posts I want to write way earlier but almost no time during my trip in the Silicon Valley two weeks ago. so tired everyday after meeting 3 to 5 people then got K's place at 9 something...But it's a great memory so I am rebuilding my trip with the  help of my Google Calendar)


So I am in the Silicon Valley now. Sitting in the starbucks at Cupertino for its paid wireless service. Ironically, I cannot find a free wifi from my friend's neighbourhood after the Verizon technican accidentanlly disabled his phone and DSL service though he is just asking for disabeling the phone service so that he can switch to 100% IP phone service. So how much productivity I am loosing because of that? I could be an amazing number if we add from all the other people facing similiar problem. Maybe that'd be big enough to persuade city hall to push forward the free citi-wifi program but it also may be the reason for carriers such as Verizon to use to defend their hostile against those program internally. If the city hall understand how important it is, they should do it definitely. I am also wondering if every other region wants to duplicate a similar or something close to Silicon Valley's success, they should focus on building a world-class infrastructure service first. Wifi/WiMax everywhere. waive tax on "enabler" devices (or more accurately, platform devices) such as iPhone or XBOX 360/PS 3 game console. Why? Because those devices can create a enough demand for a new starutp. It's stupid to treat those as treating dumb electronics such as microwave or toast. How much new service can 100,000 microwave generate? But 100,000 iPhone may be good enough to support a iPhone game company to develop something...

Anyway, today's plan is to meet Su from HP and Zhu who had own startup in the Bay area. I am having lunch with Su's family and it's a very nice thing. He is happy to refer me to some opening position at HP and I very appreciated. (Update: I do receive email from HP HR division for a follow up talk but my first reply seems missed the point. anyway, back to this later when I blog about my lunch with Kent from Pond Ventures). Zhu is also looking for good opportunities to monetize his patent in the mobile video area and checking possibility to do it in China. My comment is maybe can do something to improve user experience with his patent.

(Two meeting today but then later on you and me will realize it's  a very "light" day!)

Technorati Tags     valley,cupertino,califronia,silicon