More Progress

While this is still a part time after hours thing, we are continuing to make good progress. The big step for me is taking place THIS WEEK. My group is being merged into another group under a peer VP at Sun. As a result, my time is beginning to free up and for the first time, real hours are being spent on FreshBrain!!

Here are some highlights.

• Creating Our Board. We have found the first three members of our board. I will wait to name these folks in a later blog entry. But we have one member from higher education. We have another with an amazing marketing background. And the third with a good number of years of selling. We may add a couple more members as part of the interim board. One who is a leader in technology from Sun Microsystems our initial donor and technology provider. And one from a small company who has experience on the board of another nonprofit. These folks together with me will be sufficient to help us get things going. A few others with experience in finance and legal will be added in the future.
  

• Evaluated Technology. We have been scouring the planet for open source technology on which to build our business. It is absolutely amazing what is out there. We have found everything that we need, and in some cases multiple options. Specifically, we have found community, learning, collaboration and presentation software that is impressive. We have visited Sunlabs in search of the next generation of technology and found some interesting 3D collaboration software that may be available as well in our timeframe. And we have started to evaluate CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software as the first business system that we need to use - for all of the contacts that we are beginning to make! More on all of these as well in a later blog entry.

• Making Contacts. We are reaching out to everyone who shows an interest at this point. We met with folks from JA (Junior Achievement), CityYear and FIRST. We are taking to everyone who has an interest and wants to help. There are simplified java development activities like Greenfoot. Folks interested in helping us with legal issues (pro bono), book keeping, visiting schools, being advisors and so on. It is truly inspiring!!
  

Rounding Out Core Team. And we have been working on rounding out the core or management team. As of TODAY, Todd Ferrario (yea, my brother) has let his staff know that he will be moving on to be a part of this startup / nonprofit. He will be freed up on a few weeks and will "officially" start in early July. Our third will still remain unnamed as he has not told his boss and company yet. Our fourth has said yes (as I predicted). He will have to remain unnamed as well, but start at the beginning of July as well. And we have found our fifth. He will be on our board initially and will ultimately become a part of the nonprofit - as soon as we can afford him!!
So things are moving along. I will be taking a bunch of vacation, but things will continue to move forward at an accelerated rate with the nonprofit fully up and running in August.