Conmergence

Tennessee State Capitol
5:00 p.m.

Family members and advocates for the Tennessee Family Support Program PLEASE JOIN US Monday, January 30th at 5:00 p.m. on the 2nd Floor of the State Capitol Building (between the House and Senate Chambers), just prior to Governor Haslam’s State of the State Address, which begins at 6:00 p.m.

In his State of the State Address, Governor Haslam will present his funding recommendations to the State Legislature for the 2012-13 State Fiscal Year. We hope Governor Haslam will include the Tennessee Family Support Program in the budget he submits to the Legislature. Otherwise, we must convince our State Legislators to include funding prior to voting on the budget.

The Tennessee Family Support Program serves over 4,500 people with severe disabilities throughout the state. The program serves people of all ages with a variety of types of disabilities. Funding is used to pay for services such as therapies, non-covered medical needs, specialized care, disability-related home adaptations and many other essential needs for which no other sources of funding are available. For the past two years, this vital program has been funded by the state’s “Rainy Day” reserves. If funding for the program is not included in the 2012-13 budget, everyone on the the program will lose their services on June 30, 2012.

Let us Know You are Coming!
Email: tnfamilysupport@gmail.com
or go to www.tnfamilysupport.org and enter your comments at the end of the post

About Parking:
Low cost parking is available at the MTA Bus Station and Downtown Public Library:
The MTA Music City Central Bus Station is located at: 400 Charlotte Avenue, Nashville, TN 37219
The Downtown Public Library lot is located at: 615 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37219

Anyone wanting to join a carpool is welcome to meet at 4:30 p.m. at the offices of United Cerebral Palsy of Middle Tennessee: 1200 9th Avenue North, Nashville Tennessee 37208.

This message is from the Tennessee Family Support Alliance, a grassroots volunteer organization comprised of family members, friends, and representatives of community agencies who believe in the Family Support Program as a necessary component of Tennessee services for families who have loved ones with disabilities.

Stumbled upon Don Tapscott’s ReCivilization series created with the CBC/Radio-Canada. If you know people in your life who have NO IMAGINATION about the implications of global collaboration, point them here.

Do you have a task in biomedical or clinical informatics that will benefit from the use of ontologies or ontology-based technology? Want to brainstorm application design and development questions? Want help incorporating the NCBO Web services into your application?

Join us for the first-ever NCBO Hackathon. This event will include two days of intensive hands-on sessions to facilitate the development of applications using NCBO Web services. We will devote extensive time to your software development project and will have presentations covering a range of topics from application design to coding. You will:

• Brainstorm ideas for applications
• Discuss coding issues, performance tuning, and future development plans
• Learn about the suite of NCBO Web services and how they are (and have been!) used in applications. Examples include access to ontologies, search, mappings, term proposals, text annotation, and biomedical resource search (the “Resource Index”)
• Hear about the design of our RDF triple store and learn how to access the triple-store directly from your application using the SPARQL query language

Early registration is $25, but spots are limited so register online now.

Key content is news from, about, or of interest to National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in Africa. We request and invite you to submit an item before the 20th of each month capturing:

• News and developments from your NREN and news items of interest to NRENs
• Content networks: how researchers and academics are using the REN infrastructure to enhance effectiveness and efficiency their work and to promote national and international collaboration
• Hot tips about something you have done successfully (organisational or technical)
• A photo that tells a story
• Looking into the future, especially with regards to fibre infrastructure

Submissions should be sent to info@ubuntunet.net

You might want to do some research here http://www.internet2.edu/presentations/jt2012winter/

M-PESA’s infrastucture maxes out while Paypal transactions double

Jayanth Varma wrote recently re: India:

Last month, the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) published a 95 page report (The emerging equity gap: Growth and stability in the new investor landscape) arguing that over the next decade, there is likely to be a shortage of equity investors globally. This is based on two arguments:

1. Demographics and the regulatory aftermath of the financial crisis are reducing the demand for equities from investors in developed markets.
2. Global wealth is shifting to emerging market investors who have historically had less appetite for equity investment.

The second prong of this argument is clearly debatable. Had there been a think tank examining such questions in the nineteenth century, it too would have worried about the shifting of wealth from the UK (which was then the dominant source of risk capital for the world) to newer rivals. We do know with hindsight that with increasing wealth, the rising powers of the nineteenth century went on to become major sources of risk capital to the rest of the world. That could well happen again, but it will not happen unless today’s emerging markets create the preconditions for a vibrant equity market.

Concerning how those “preconditions” are developing in Africa, Jonathan Marks recently posted this vimeo with these comments:

VC4Africa.biz is one year old in its present form, though the idea has been around with co-founders Ben White and Bill Zimmerman for a lot longer. After experimenting with the ning platform, they decided to build their own platform where they can tailor the functionality of the site to match the needs of both African entrepreneurs and investors. As bandwidth opens up on the continent, especially later in 2012, I’m helping the team with some experimental video projects. We’re actually working from the premise that video isn’t needed at all, unless it can add something to the story. Ben White recently gave a presentation which explained very clearly the thinking behind VC4Africa, why it’s needed, how it’s working with collaborative teams across the continent, and what’s been achieved in such a short time so far. I confess to being very impressed by their ability to work WITH entrepreneurs rather than FOR them. This is turning sharing of expertise into a sustainable business model. Enjoy.

This infographic may also be helpful:

http://vc4africa.biz/blog/2012/01/04/vc4a-infographic-lets-make-2012-the-year-of-the-entrepreneur/

The call for papers submission period -HIMSS AsiaPac12 closes the end of this month. Key focus areas are HITX.0 (cutting edge technology), mobile technology and its use in healthcare, home care, and Standards and Interoperability.

If you are interested in sharing your knowledge and expertise, guidelines for submittal are located here. Please note, proposals are due for review by January 31, 2012.

Start-ups in FI space: act now! The Innotribe 2012 start-up competition is here.

The objective of the Innotribe start-up challenge is to close the gap between early stage start-ups and the SWIFT community. With few exceptions, banks and large FIs are too big, too busy, and not well structured to take early stage start-up pulse in the financial services sector.

At Sibos in Toronto we did an experiment where we brought a selection of start-ups to a carefully selected sample of our top 50 clients. It turned out to be a big success! We had in excess of 200 start-ups competing, 10 pitched their product at Sibos, and two won a prize of 50K USD each! Beyond this prize though, what startups really appreciated of course is the exposure to the banks (and I know for a fact that there was action in addition to exposure). And our clients appreciated the quality and financial focus of the start-ups. See here for a detailed summary and videos of the pitches.

Based on this success, we decided that this year we will do the same, in 3 different locations, regionalising the challenge, with the objective to bring – again – the best of each competition to Sibos in Osaka (where a 50K USD cash prize will be granted to the winner).

What is the role of Innotribe in all this?
First of all, we do the pre-screening, using our network of VCs, entrepreneurs, technology and consulting partners, and banker who has experience in the start-up field. Then we build up the event where this extended eco-system (including the banks) meet and network.

To give you an idea, this is a non-exhaustive list of banks who already confirmed their participation:

• SOGE
• JPMorgan
• Wells
• BAML
• Barclays
• Lloyds
• BONY
• Commerzbank
• Danskebank
• SEB
• Standard Chartered
• Deutsche bank
• HSBC
• ANZ
• ICICI
• Sberbank
• OCBC
• ING
• Banco sabbadell
• BBVA
• Santander
• RBS
• Rabobank
• Intesasanpaolo
• Unicredit
• Nordea
• UBS

The first of the 3 regional challenges is next February 8th in NYC. If you are a SWIFT customer and you are not in this list, and you want to send a qualified representative to the competition, get in touch.

If you are a start-up and want to apply, go to www.innotribestartup.com … you have less than a week left to apply.

The financial community, the Innotribe, is looking for good ideas!

Konstantin (Kosta) Peric

== Level 2 ==

=== Level 3 ===

==== Level 4 ====

===== Level 5 =====

====== Level 6 ======

Collaboratory Platforms

Alfresco – http://www.alfresco.com/

Apache – http://www.apache.org/

dotCMS – http://www.dotcms.org/

DotNetNuke – http://www.dotnetnuke.com/

dotproject – http://www.dotproject.net/

Drupal – http://drupal.org/

Joomla – http://www.joomla.org/

Mozilla – http://www.mozilla.org/

OpenSuSE – http://www.opensuse.org/en/

Red Hat – http://www.redhat.com/

Ubuntu – http://www.ubuntu.com/

Zoho – http://www.zoho.com/

Zimbra – http://www.zimbra.com/

Zope – http://www.zope.org/

IRC
SocialCast

Wikispaces

WordPress P2 Theme

WizeHive

Yammer

SalesForce
SugarCRM
Maximizer
Act
Goldmine

This Summit is co-organized by Ontolog, NIST, NCOR, NCBO, IAOA & NCO_NITRD, and is the 7th in the series of 3-month open annual events, by and for the Ontology Community and their collaborators.  #ontsum

Dear Allvoices writers,

I hope this email finds you well.

As we all know, the U.S. presidential elections are quickly approaching — November is less than a year away!

We are extremely excited to launch a new contest that will last all year: Campaign 2012, the Search for the American Pundit.

In short, the American Pundit competition aims to find the smartest, most unique and most engaging voices who have something to say about U.S. politics. Share your thoughts, opinions and reporting between now and Election Day and vie for cash prizes!

Two American Pundit contest entrants will be awarded $250 every two weeks between January 15 and November 5, 2012. Once all the votes are counted in November, one finalist will earn the title of American Pundit and claim a Grand Prize of $5,000. One runner-up will also be selected and will win $1,000.

As part of this process, Allvoices will also post a writing assignment on the first business day of each month. We’ll award at least two writers a month with $250 for the best responses to this assignment. The first topic is already posted: Which of the Republican presidential candidates has run the best (or worst) campaign and why? Write a post this month to respond and click the box for the American Pundit competition for your chance to win $250!

Full details are at http://www.allvoices.com/contest/americanpundit/details. The contest is open to writers from all over the world, not just in the U.S., but please do not check the American Pundit checkbox when writing an article unless your article is about U.S. election politics.

A big thanks to user Punditty for helping us formulate a vision for this extraordinary contest. Be sure to follow the American Pundit contest on Twitter @AmericanPundits.

Good luck!

Best,

Dean Schaffer
Allvoices Community Manager

Happy New Year!

We wanted to give you a quick update about the Innotribe Startup Challenge and remind you about the upcoming application deadline.

Thanks to the generous support of our sponsors SWIFT, Invest in Northern Ireland and Cisco, we’re very pleased to announced a $50K prize purse to be shared by one or more Early-Stage winners selected at Innotribe @ Sibos.

Because the prize was only confirmed in the last week of 2011, we’ve extended the application deadline by a week, until 11:59pm Pacific on next Friday, January 13th.

If you’d like to apply for the NYC Showcase Challenge, taking place on Feb 8, please complete and submit your Challenge Registration and Company Profile, and upload your Pitch Deck on http://www.innotribestartup.com.

And whether or not your applying yourself, if you know of other startups or innovators who are looking for new customers, partners or investors in the global Financial Industry, please let them know abou the Challenge by sharing this message by email, post or tweet!

Warm regards,

- The Innotribe Team

About the 2012 Innotribe Startup Challenge
The Innotribe Startup Challenge introduces the world’s most promising FinTech and Financial Service startups and innovators to a global community of over 9000 financial institutions, venture capitalists, angels and influencers. The leading challengers are invited to meet face to face with potential customers, investors and partners who are actively investing in disruptive innovation. Learn more and apply at http://www.innotribestartup.com

I think it is fair to say that 2011 was a good year for the VC4Africa community. What originally started as a Linkedin group has now grown into a thriving and productive network. This year we closed the old website and started a new chapter on VC4Africa.biz.

We now have more than 4.300 members who have opened personal profile pages on the new site and over 200 entrepreneurs stepped forward to crunch their venture online ( http://bit.ly/9Yzi7T ). There are promising businesses making progress in over 30 African countries and we have seen members in Cameroon, South Africa, the United States, Kenya, Nigeria, the Netherlands and Somaliland establish partnerships, investments and joint ventures. Increasingly, VC4Africa featured entrepreneurs are being picked up by global media channels like Forbes and BBC World. We have opened a new thread where members are starting to share their successes as their continued progress remains our bottom line – as a community and organization ( http://bit.ly/sWTglN ).

In the past months we have launched a number of new programs and resources VC4A entrepreneurs can tap into for support. For example, entrepreneurs are now calling in on Free Feedback Fridays ( http://bit.ly/s9Xd9j ). These are sessions hosted by business experts and are useful for working through challenges faced in the business development process. We also hosted several Business Modeling Workshops and worked with entrepreneurs to practice and film their elevator pitches ( http://bit.ly/tsItJ9 ). More recently, we launched the ( http://bit.ly/rHbJa9 ) VC4Africa Mentorship Program that connects members for peer-to-peer coaching with some early successes already on the books. We also gave a facelift to the venture profiles and entrepreneurs can now post their video pitches online, one of the reasons ventures like ( http://bit.ly/s2cyCG ) Njorku are top ranked all time. In the year ahead we will be doing even more to support our entrepreneurs as they champion their ventures.

Our team is constantly working to introduce new tools and services that further improve the VC4A networking experience. To foster more effective network building we launched our own ‘dating widget’ that matches members on the basis of complimentary skill sets and forwards recommended connections. How do you tap into a global network spread across 159 countries? This past year saw the release of ( http://bit.ly/w4VuI2 ) Questions & Answers as a tool for crowdsourcing knowledge from across the member base. There are now 68 open threads and 128 responses. We also launched dedicated groups that allow members to come together around a specific country or theme. Some notable groups we look forward to growing in 2012 include ( http://bit.ly/tMHdEC ) Green Entrepreneurship, ( http://bit.ly/vsF8up ) the Social Entrepreneur, ( http://bit.ly/rHbJa9 ) VC4Africa Mentors and ( http://bit.ly/vTS0vG ) VC4A Woman Entrepreneurs.

Far and away, one of the greatest projects we launched this past year was VC4A Badges. Building great companies and an effective network of contacts is a lot of hard work, but it’s also a lot of fun. With great looking badges we look to recognize your milestones and contributions along the way. See an overview of all of the badges and keep your eye out for new ones :) ( http://bit.ly/us5lZs )

Editor: Got me my nifty VC4Africa Officer Badge Rightcheer; woohoo!:

VC4Africa Officer Badger

We will continue to listen to your feedback and build the tools that enrich your time spent with VC4A ( http://bit.ly/sbph8f ).

These developments aside, VC4Africa had a great year because we have such great members. People who believe in the continent’s potential and want to see its best entrepreneurs succeed. It is remarkable to see more than 30 VC4Africa meetups organized by members from around the world. We already have great events online for 2012 starting with Accra, Oslo and London.

Certainly Africa is a great business opportunity and we all agree the time to make it happen is NOW.

The best part about all of this? We’re just getting started :)

Needham, MA, USA and Ann Arbor, MI, USA and Chicago USA – December 22, 2011 – OMG®, Health Level Seven® International (HL7), and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), today announced the Call for Participation for “Interconnected Health 2012: Enabling Health through High-Impact IT.” The event will be held at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Chicago, IL on April 2-4, 2012. Registration and abstract submission details may be found online at http://www.interconnected-health.org/cfp.

Interconnected Health 2012 will focus on approaches, challenges, and solutions affecting the ability to connect health organizations and systems, and the role of IT as an enabler in achieving this connectivity. Geared toward the CxO suite and senior leaders within healthcare organizations, Interconnected Health provides a venue to hear what peer organizations are doing (both within the US and abroad), to exchange ideas, and to interact with peers who are leaders in this space.

Call for Abstracts

The conference Review Committee is seeking proposals for presentations based on “real-world” organizational experiences, evaluations, case studies or research papers relevant to the conference themes of interconnected healthcare, information sharing, service-oriented architecture, enterprise architecture, business process management, and interoperability. Please indicate whether you are recommending your submission for the Executive Summit, the Functional Track, or the Technical Track. Topics may include (but aren’t limited to):

Business Enablement (Enterprise Architecture, Business Process Management)

Architecture (Business, System, SOA and Technical)

Information Semantics, Ontology, Vocabulary

Application Innovation (Integration, Open Source, Legacy Enablement, etc.)

Infrastructure Innovation (Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Device Integration)

Information Sharing Strategy, Governance and Implementation

Modeling (SoaML, SysML, BPMN, etc.)

The abstract submission deadline January 20, 2012. For abstract submission guidelines and the submission form, visit http://www.omg.org/abstracts.

Program Committee

Charles “Chuck” Friedman, Chief Scientific Officer, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), HHS

Mark Frisse, MD, MS, MBA, Accenture Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Dr. Hon S. Pak, CEO, Diversinet

Jim St.Clair, Senior Director, Interoperability and Standards, HIMSS

John Quinn, CTO, Health Level Seven International

Registration & Information

InterconnectedHealth is hosted by OMG, HL7 International, and HIMSS. The early-bird registration discount is available until February 24, 2012. Registration information is available at http://www.interconnected-health.org/cfp. Exhibit space is available; for more information contact Mike Narducci at marketing@omg.org +1-781-444 0404. Sponsorship opportunities are available; contact Ken Berk at ken.berk@omg.org or +1-781-444 0404.

###

About Health Level Seven (HL7) International

Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven International (www.HL7.org) is the global authority for healthcare Information interoperability and standards with affiliates established in more than 30 countries. HL7 is a non-profit, ANSI accredited standards development organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation of health services. HL7’s more than 2,300 members represent approximately 500 corporate members, which include more than 90 percent of the information systems vendors serving healthcare. HL7 collaborates with otherstandards developers and provider, payer, philanthropic and governmentagencies at the highest levels to ensure the development of comprehensive and reliable standards and successful interoperability efforts.
About HIMSS
HIMSS is a cause-based, not-for-profit organization exclusively focused on providing global leadership for the optimal use of information technology (IT) and management systems for the betterment of healthcare. Founded 50 years ago, HIMSS and its related organizations are headquartered in Chicago with additional offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. HIMSS represents more than 38,000 individual members, of which more than two thirds work in healthcare provider, governmental and not-for-profit organizations. HIMSS also includes over 540 corporate members and more than 120 not-for-profit organizations that share our mission of transforming healthcare through theeffective use of information technology and management systems. HIMSS frames and leads healthcare practices and public policy through its content expertise, professional development, research initiatives, and media vehicles designed to promote information and management systems’ contributions to improving the quality, safety, access, and cost-effectiveness of patient care. To learn more about HIMSS and to find out how to join us and our members in advancing ourcause, please visit our website at www.himss.org.

About OMG
OMG® is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry standards consortium. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a wide range of technologies and an even wider range of industries. OMG’s modeling standards enable powerful visual design, execution and maintenance of software and other processes. For more information, visit www.omg.org.

About Open Health Tools
Open Health Tools is an open source community with a vision of enabling a ubiquitous ecosystem where members of the Health and IT professions can collaborate to build interoperable systems that enable patients and their care providers to have access to vital and reliable medical information at the time and place it is needed. Open Health Tools will generate a vibrant active ecosystem involving software product and service companies, medical equipment companies, health care providers, insurance companies, government health service agencies, and standards organizations. More information at http://www.openhealthtools.org

Programme for UbuntuNet-Connect 2011
http://www.ubuntunet.net/uc2011_programme

CHAIN Workshop on Research Applications and e-Infrastructures
http://agenda.ct.infn.it/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=632

Latest newsletters here

December, 2011

Dear partner in Christian unity:

Great news! Thanks to a generous donor, if you give to World Convention by the end of December, your gift will be matched up to $10,000!

So even if you have already given this year, I ask you to give again. If you have thought of giving but have not, now would be a great time.

These gifts will assist people like Martin Phiri. For years he has worked faithfully as a minister in Kenya, tirelessly spreading the good news of Jesus. With few resources, he is managing (with God’s help) to produce a self-sustaining ministry. What is more, he is on the board of World Convention.

But he does not have the resources to attend our Global Gathering in Brazil next year.

And he is not alone. From Latin America, Asia, and other parts of Africa, we receive numerous requests for assistance to attend the Gathering.

That is why I write you. The question is “Are we a World Convention?” Or are we only a first world convention? Will we have a Global Gathering? Or just a gathering of Brazilians and those from North America, Australia, and other places who can afford to come?

For the next eight months, all donations to World Convention in excess of our annual expenses will go toward funding travel grants to those who want to attend the Global Gathering.

Last week I heard a presentation on the shift of Christian numbers to the Global South. There are now more Christians, and more members of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Latin America, Africa, and Asia than there are in North America and Europe. Yet the overwhelming amount of financial resources is still in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Will we share with our brothers and sisters in need? One way to do that is to give generously to World Convention, to allow us to see them face-to-face in Goiania.

I hope you have registered to attend the Global Gathering. If so, would you help make it possible for others? If you cannot personally attend, you can be there in the person of a brother or sister from another part of God’s world. And whatever gift you give supports our continuing ministry of Christian unity.

God is at work among us! He asks us to join in his work worldwide.

PayPal

PDF

Folks:

Help me funnel ideas to Martin. Thanks! – Ed

Dear Ed,

I am writing to you because I am conducting some research on future developments in ICT to assist development in Africa, in particular mobile and internet. I’m aware of the HIMSS Medical Banking Project and World Bank Task Force  and some of my research may be of interest to you.

This project is to inform Comic Relief’s grant-giving, who are a grant-giving charity based in England that raised a £100 million or so last year through their telethons. I’m looking for any ideas, projects, contacts  or resources you may have on this. The most restrictive parts of the brief, which makes it interesting,  are technologies must be future, have direct impact and have some component of ICT in them, but I try to be flexible. Amongst other things, I’m looking at:

•        Cutting costs of ICT devices to include more people

•        Increasing the numbers of people connected through subsidising mesh networks (eg. Solar panel equipped mesh devices), WIMAX and 3G

•        Converting information from one medium to another (eg. SMS to Facebook or translated voice calls from local to commercial language)

•        Citizen journalism

•        Voice recognition

•        Crowd sourced information on complex events

•        ICT that enables other technologies (eg. Add-on sensors for mobiles eg. Ultrasound wands, 3D printing in remote areas)

•        Machine to machine communications (eg. Micro-grids for solar and other power sources with dyanamic pricing linked to m-banking)

Assuming this is of interest, I’d like to talk further about this sometime this week. I can send through a slide deck that may be of interest as well.

Best,

Martin Underwood

Future Media & Technology

Comic Relief

1st Floor, 89 Albert Embankment, London, SE1 7TP

tel: +44 (0)207 820 2298

email: m.underwood@comicrelief.com website: http://www.comicrelief.com/

Hi Ed, I would love to figure out how to do that. I agree, a credentialing system would be great. Our system allows the colleges and universities to accent their peers- selling downstream and collaborating in parallel. Please tell me more of what you’re thinking, I’d love to hear more.
http://www.ted.com/conversations/6173/unify_universities_into_networ.html?c=346684

# # # #

Stream of consciousness to follow:

1) The main reason most 4 year degrees are of value is because corporations refuse to invest in their HR departments enough to get discerning, knowledgeable screeners and so they use the 4 year degree as a substitute for insightful thinking, meaningful training and education, etc. when culling job applicants.

2) There is a growing consensus that there is ‘diploma for dollars” racket (as Dylan Ratigan puts it). The Jeff Pulver 140edu events, the #uncollege movement, home schooling association growth, the increase in online mentoring, open courseware, Dspace, Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Online Library, Curriki.org, Khan Academy, WikiBooks, Wikipedia, Youtube courseware, etc. …

… dog interrupts requesting to play with sockie…

3) The department of education simply requires that any university which accepts Pell grants be required to submit the knowledge required to attain any of the degrees they grant. An average of all similar degrees would yield criteria to which Petersons et al can easily write tests. Then we set up gov’t testing centers (public libraries) where online CLEP-like tests can be taken. If you pass the criteria, you get the General Bachelor of Arts/Science Equivalency degree. At that point, if the employer wants more, they can pay for it.

Paul Sonnier writes:

Group: Wireless Health
Subject: New Mentor at Blueprint Health and Lessons from Venture “Assistant”, Vinod Khosla

Dear Wireless Health group members,

I founded the group to connect people, facilitate knowledge sharing, and accelerate health-related business innovations by entrepreneurs, startups, and established companies. Helping entrepreneurs is something that I’m particularly passionate about. In this context, I am excited to announce that I am now a mentor at Blueprint Health, the health and wellness-focused startup accelerator based in New York City.

In a recent interview, Vinod Khosla – who just closed a new $1B investment fund – stated that he is a “venture assistant”, not a venture capitalist. The hands-on assistance his firm provides to entrepreneurs is a core component of his investment success. A case in point is Jawbone, which was about to go under when Vinod invested in it. Vinod’s partner, David Weiden, made a key introduction to AT&T, whose distribution channel enabled a massive growth in sales, thus saving the company. (It’s noteworthy that UP, the company’s newest product is, you guessed it, a personal connected health solution. Another portfolio company is ZocDoc, the OpenTable-like application for making healthcare appointments.)

Why does this matter? In the relatively chaotic and burgeoning digital health innovation space, the startups that succeed will most likely do so as a result of the hands-on assistance provided by mentors and investors, who partner with them and amplify their talents via strategic advice, key introductions, and the ability to foresee and help guide entrepreneurs through the inevitable pivot points that occur along the way.

In my evolution as a social and business entrepreneur, the Blueprint Health mentor role is a huge step forward and further validation of my efforts. I’m eager to focus my energy on helping entrepreneurs, starting with the inaugural class this January. This is not a full-time role and I’ll continue working with the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance, serving as a co-chair of the Healthcare Communications SIG at CommNexus San Diego and, of course, curating and building the Wireless Health LinkedIn group.

A brief overview of Blueprint Health:
Blueprint Health is a TechStars affiliated startup accelerator program based in NYC that helps early stage healthcare companies get started. Surround yourself with nearly 100 mentors – healthcare entrepreneurs, VCs and innovators – that want to help you succeed! Over the course of a 3 month program, we support entrepreneurs who are building innovative companies at the intersection of health and technology by providing capital, office space and, most critically, access to the most robust community of healthcare mentors of any accelerator program. We encourage you to learn more and to apply to our Winter program, which starts January 12th, by visiting http://www.blueprinthealth.org/

Mentor list: http://www.blueprinthealth.org/index.php?page=mentors
Recent media: http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/nyc-startup-accelerator-blueprint-health-now-accepting-applications/

Also, here’s a link to the fascinating interview with Vinod Khosla: What Cash Crunch? Khosla Ventures Closes Another $1 Billion Fund – http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/13/khosla-ventures-1-billion-fund/

Best regards,
Paul Sonnier

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/WirelessHealth1
Connect with me on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/psonnier
Posted By Paul Sonnier, MBA