A Week in the Life

Last week was another excellent example of the diversity of activities that we face as a startup. Here are some of my highlights.

• Monday - spent an hour with a communications manager for Sun talking about how and when to make more noise around FreshBrain. The big idea that came out of this was the possibility of a FreshBrain sponsored JavaOne (or Community One) day for high school students. Imagine that - the most appropriate content from JavaOne presented the Sunday before the real event, provided to high school students free!!! We will see if we can make this happen.

• Tuesday - in Utah for two days. First we met with an amazing group at the Jordan Campus of Salt Lake Community College. In this one location they have a charter school, an applied technology high school, a biotech lab and the college itself. We were there to determine if there is some kind of linkage between the applied technology high school and FreshBrain. I believe there is in two ways. One in terms of their using FreshBrain for the areas of technology that they are currently not providing. And the other is their using FreshBrain in connection with their hands on labs - as a project and activity platform. These are both very interesting as we plan out how we expand and tie in high schools moving forward.

• Wednesday - met with the USTAR executive team. USTAR is chartered with driving strategic investment in Utah Universities in order to drive applied research from invention to implementation by industry. They are very interested in driving innovation widely as part of this charter - all the way back into high schools. That is where we come in. They are interested in partnering with FreshBrain in some manner. We are excited and interested in this as we see USTAR as similar to initiatives in other cities and states where developing our youth in the areas of business and technology is a priority.

• Thursday - back in CA, focused on caching up. We spend time discussing the difference between program, admin and fundraising expense and working on our budget submission as part of our 1023 (to add tax exempt to our nonprofit status). Also worked a bit on a better "Golden Pitch" about FreshBrain. I am starting to present more formally and need some slides to more succinctly tell the story.

• Friday - meeting with SRI in an effort to build a strong tie and establish them as a partner. Good progress ... Also worked on the early testing plan with a volunteer who has offered to take this on.

So there you have it ... a typical week these days:)