Wow I’ve never been so uncomfortable watching a basketball game before…

You don’t realize having the ability to run apps in the background is a necessity with a smart phone until you have it.  Honestly, I’m not going back to the iPhone until it gets that feature.

Yesterday I made the trip from Pittsburgh to Syracuse to attend the Syracuse University iSchool’s SXSW Report (and to see some family, but that doesn’t make it sound as cool).  I really had no idea who these students were or why they were doing this presentation nearly a week after SXSW but I figured I’d give it a shot.  I was greeted by cool people and beer so I knew it wasn’t going to be a complete bust.  Come to find out, the SU iSchool actually paid for the entire trip for these students because they recognized how important the event was.  That completely blew me away, an educational institution that realized how important and relevant SXSW was for its students that it sponsored them 100%.

Kate Holloway (@KatiePunkin), Shay Colson (@shaycolson), and Andrew Farah (@andrewfarah) did a great job sharing their experiences of SXSW.  As an entrepreneur I was happy to hear them say that they recognized how many small companies that were there that were simply building and hustling as opposed to going after large amounts of investment to start their venture.  They said that seemed to be the theme with most of the companies, a lot of them were bootstrapped or had received a very small amount of funding to start up.  I think a lot of people are finally realizing how cheap it is to start a business and aren’t writing huge business plans, instead choosing to get their hands dirty and build it themselves.  They also confirmed that Mark Cuban is indeed an asshole all the time, not just at Mavericks games and on his blog.

It was really great meeting the people from the iVenutre Upstate Forum, I think there is a great thing going on there and I hope to see a lot more people start to contribute to the discussions.  I must say my heart has officially moved to Pittsburgh but I like to do anything I can to help create opportunities like the one I have been given from Alphalab in Syracuse, and last night proved that the right things are being done for that to happen.

Again, it was great meeting everyone last night and thank you for opening the event up to the public.  I really enjoyed myself.