The Porch in Winter

We have this great big social porch at our house. My friend and fellow entrepreneur Sean Neville lists this porch as one of his 5 favorite places. It's really about the people, conversations, atmosphere, and beverages that happen there.

To extend the porch's usefulness as the weather turned, my dear wife had the brilliant idea of getting an outdoor heater. It's a hit! Not only were we comfortable outdoors as the weather turned colder, but now we have a conversation piece with any of the neighbors who walk by and feel its warmth. They usually stop and say "Hi", which adds to the porch's ambiance.


Enjoying the Tropical Warmth of an Ithaca Winter
Sadly, the snow got ahead of us and we had to shut down porch living for the season. If you stroll by in the early springtime, stop to warm your hands. We'll be back!

Linking Communities

One of the goals of the Upstate Venture Connect is to link the different entrepreneurial communities in Upstate New York. Last night, we all got together to grab some beers and watch the Syracuse vs. Cornell basketball game. We had entrepreneurs from Sound Reading, PiXL, Widetronix, Zetroz, Mezmeriz, qur.ly, and Bear Claw, as well as representatives of the Seed Capital Fund of Central New York, Syracuse University iSchool, and The Syracuse Student Sandbox. Also along the way we ran into our friends from CenterState CEO.

Our Syracuse hosts hooked us up with phenomenal 2nd and 4th row tickets. From that distance, we couldn't miss how big and fast the 'Cuse players are. The Orange were in control for the entire game. The Ithaca contingent was pleased that the score ratio wasn't a ridiculous blow out, so we'll just mark this one up to a rebuilding year for the Big Red. It did give us more time to catch up on everyone's startups, so that's something.


Carrier was the tech entrepreneur who funded this Dome

It's get togethers like this that creates a broader, stronger community. I personally learned a lot more about the Sandbox and qur.ly, and I think they learned more about the state of high tech in Ithaca. The other guys had similar experiences.

By the way, check out this qur.ly link that with one click will open the websites for everyone involved: http://qur.ly/RqTSP. Qur.ly is a free website service which allows you to combine multiple url's into a single, small link. Handy for Twitter, Facebook, and blogging!

Next game is in Ithaca for Big Red Hockey. Who's wants to join us?