Deductible Junkets
Must Be the Money
Corporate Venture Capital
The legend of Silicon Valley is based on the few companies who ascended from their humble roots with nothing more than a dream and a modicum of money. This mythology heroizes the daring financiers who knew enough to fund the Ciscos and Intels when success seemed a remote possibility. To these moneyed entreprenerds, corporate venture capital must sound about as appetizing as franchised fine dining."The independent venture industry has generated enormous wealth, so naturally corporate America is interested in emulating its success," says Josh Lerner, organizer of this Harvard Business School conference. "But transplanting the venture model to the corporate environment is a tricky endeavor. Unlike independents who have one goal - making money - corporations display a schizophrenia in their investments."Case in point: Analog Devices, a manufacturer of integrated circuits, started a corporate venture program called Analog Devices Enterprises in 1980. Funded by Amoco, ADE had invested US$26 million in 11 firms by 1985. In the same year Amoco ceased funding the project, and 10 of the firms in the portfolio were terminated or sold off at bargain-basement prices. Attempting to mimic the independent venture model caused ADE to run up against its own divided loyalties. Fund managers were expected to simultaneously invest in relevant technologies, acquire firms of interest to Analog Devices's management, and generate profits for Amoco. No easy task.Focusing on VC case studies (such as Analog's and more successful examples), Harvard's Corporate Venture Capital will distinguish corporate funding from the more familiar independent model. It's a suit soir�e where the buttoned-down set can play daring financiers for a couple of days - and then go back to work.Registration: US$3,500. Contact: +1 (617) 495 6226, fax +1 (617) 495 6999, email executive_education@hbs.edu
Feel the Green
What's the antidote to talking money with a bunch of suits? Try a beer-soaked, blue-collar afternoon in the bleachers of Fenway Park (www.redsox.com/fenway/). Long before Route 128 lured megabusinesses with big bucks to the Boston area, there was another Green Monster capable of devouring some of the most im-posing Tigers, Indians, and Yankees around.With its manually operated scoreboard, its geometrically peculiar shape, and a birth date that coincides with the sinking of the Titanic, Fenway remains a link to the legends of baseball. When it was constructed in 1912, the 37-foot wall in left field cowed the game's most powerful hitters. By 1936, a 23-foot screen was hoisted above the monster to protect the windows on Lansdowne Street below. No other park - save perhaps Chicago's Wrigley Field - exhibits the charm of old-time baseball like Fenway.
Tours, given Monday through Friday, include stops at the press box, the "600 Club," a Red Sox private suite, and a walk around the playing field. While scheming about the future, spend some time in Boston's glorious past.
Jesse Freund
The Current Roundup (see Wired 5.02)
March 16-18 Telemedicine and Distributed Medical Intelligence Conference; Vail, Colorado.
March 20-21 Sixth Winlab Workshop on Third Generation Wireless Information Networks; New Brunswick, New Jersey.
March 23-26 PC Forum; Tucson, Arizona.
March 25-27 @d:tech.97; Chicago.
April 1-3 Gigabit Networking; Washington, DC.
April 16-18 European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks; Bruges, Belgium Europe's biggest brains will dissect the advances in neural networks - computational systems that filter and organize information based on a human cognitive structure. These scientists will mind-meld with synthetic brains, presenting papers on the links between cognitive networks and other areas of scientific research - such as statistics, biology, data analysis, psychology, evolutive learning, and bioinspired computing. Registration: BF20,500 (US$638). Contact: +32 (2) 203 43 63, fax +32 (2) 203 42 94, email esann@dice.ucl.ac.be, on the Web atwww.dice.ucl.ac.be/neural-nets/esann.
April 25-29 Computer Game Developers Conference; Santa Clara, California Demo or die is the mantra at this gathering of the top guns in the computer gaming industry. Showing off their wares at the CGDC, companies such as Borland, Br�derbund, and the Total Entertainment Network find that life springs eternal. This supergeekathon is an opportunity to network with people and games, to trade secrets, and to claim your place among �lite programmers, designers, and product managers. Registration: US$1,195. Contact: +1 (415) 905 2702, email cgdc@mfi.com, on the Web at www.cgdc.com/.
May 8-10 Culture and Democracy Revisited in the Global Information Society; Corfu, Greece Sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing, this freedomfest aims to draft a working statement about the future of democracy. A group of international theoreticians will endeavor to answer the myriad questions engendered by networked culture: What does a sustainable information society entail? How can people remain in control if global culture is not rooted in their own culture? How is democracy affected by the increasing power of liberal market forces? Click to Corfu and find out. Registration: US$300 before March 31, $400 after. Contact: +32 (8) 172 49 76, fax +32 (8) 172 49 67, email jberleur@info.fundp.ac.be, on the Web at www.math.aegean.gr/english/eevents/econf/ecnew/ewc97.htm.
May 8-11 The High Frontier Conference; Princeton, New Jersey Orbit the universe with world-renowned star-trekkers Freeman Dyson and John Lewis, swap extraterrestrial resources, erect advanced space stations, and learn how to mine an asteroid. Sponsored by the Space Studies Institute, this is your chance to kibitz about space technologies, programs, and concepts with some pretty far-out folk. Contact: +1 (609) 921 0377, fax +1 (609) 921 0389, email ssi@ssi.org.
May 11-14 Corporate Venture Capital: The Third Wave; Cambridge, Massachusetts See information in Must Be the Money.
Out on the Range
May 30-June 1 InterFoto 97; Moscow. Contact: email interfoto@aol.com, on the Web at www.interfoto.ru/.June 11-13 International Conference on Consumer Electronics; Rosemont, Illinois. Contact: +1 (716) 392 3862, fax +1 (716) 392 4397, on the Web at www.ieee.org/ce/icce97.
- June 15-18 Global Networking 97; Calgary, Alberta. Contact: +1 (403) 493 4760, fax +1 (403) 493 5380, on the Web at www.wnet.ca/gn97/main.htm.
- June 24-27 inet 97; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Contact: +1 (703) 648 9888, fax +1 (703) 648 9887, on the Web at info.isoc.org/inet97.
