MacArthur Fellows in Virginia

Two Virginians were recently recognized as MacArthur Fellows. They are Marc Edwards, Charles P. Lunsford Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at VA Tech, and Corey Harris, blues musician from Charlottesville.

Tenth Annual Business Forum

The 10th Annual Business Forum will be held in Charlottesville on December 6 and 7, 2007, at the Darden School of Business. Workshops include Transforming Ideas into Enterprises, Delivering Innovation through Social Networking, Information Tsunami – Email to Twitter and Beyond, and Crash & Learn – Anatomy of a Failure.

The keynote speaker will be Frank Cappiello, who will present his take on The New American Economy – A View from Wall Street. The Friday morning panelists for Live Fire - The Angel Round represent three of the top angel groups in the United States, from Connecticut, Ohio and New York.

The Charlottesville Venture Group has put on this conference for the past nine years. This year's event is presented by the combined resources of the Charlottesville Venture Group and the Virginia Piedmont Technology Council. On October 2nd, the group will announce their new name, and celebrate their joint venture.

UPDATE: The 11th Annual Business Forum is scheduled for October 30 and 31, 2008. For more information about the CVG Annual Business Forums see the Annual Business Forum blog. For program and registration, see Virginia Annual Business Forums.

CNE Welcomes New Director

The Center for Nonprofit Excellence (CNE) welcomes Kerry Dodson, their new Executive Director. Membership in the CNE is open to Charlottesville area nonprofits; the dues range from $100 to $400 annually.

The current CNE calendar of upcoming events includes their Brown Bag seminar, How to Write a Survey, on Oct. 4, and the Oct. 19th FOCUS presentation by Bob Eliason of JMU College of Business Management on the basics of starting an online business from establishing a website to handling payment.

The January 2007 Virginia Network of Nonprofit Organizations (VANNO) report The Virginia Nonprofit Sector indicates that there were 8,537 reporting charitable nonprofits in Virginia in 2004, and that the 1,240 foundations in Virginia held $6.1 billion in assets and gave $388 million in grants.

Another First at IBM

Italian workers at IBM are planning a September strike in Second Life, according to various sources. The Grid Live says that the event will begin on the 25th; the Union Network site has instructions for participants.

Intel has joined IBM in anticipating "the 3D internet", according to Justin Rattner in his keynote speech at the recent Intel Developer Forum.

Presentations, Zen

Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen offers Swedish doctor and researcher Hans Rosling as one of the masters of displaying data in live talks. Reynold's Play the Music has several short videos and comments on the components of Rosling's incredibly effective presentation at TED 2007.