Sometimes, you just have to say yes. Guillermo Sohnlein, a friend from the Space Angels Network, is now CEO of the OceanGate Foundation. He emailed me a few weeks ago asking “Do you want to take a dive in a research submarine?”

Guillermo and his partners have bought a refurbished submarine, Antipodes, that has been refitted with enormous (58″) twin Lexan domes. One on each end. If you’ve seen pictures of research subs like Alvin with its handful of 6″ portholes, these domes make for an entirely different experience.

Then he sweetened the pot. Also on our dive would be Scott Parazynski (@SPOTScott on Twitter), a five-time Shuttle astronaut who has climbed Everest slightly less than twice. And Steve Jurvetson would be diving later the same day.

Sometimes, you just have to say yes. (Even though it meant missing the Clemson game! Luckily, we found a couple of loyal young alumni to use our season tickets.)

We flew into Monterey on Friday night, and immediately joined the team at their rental house in Pebble Beach. They’d been in Monterey for most of the month of October, and we shared their dinner while listening to stories of previous dives and of the students they’d brought onto the sub the previous week.

Scott joined us… in addition to being an astronaut, rock climber, and mountaineer, he’s also an pilot (commercial, instrument, multiengine and seaplane-rated), and scuba diver. And an M.D., medical researcher, and inventor of a CamelBak that works in sub-zero environments. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to find that he’s an Olympic athlete and cordon bleu chef on the side. And, on top of that, a genuinely nice guy! Made for an interesting dinner.

We made it to our hotel on Cannery Row around 10pm local time, which our body clocks insisted was 1:00 in the morning.

Up early the next morning. Skipped breakfast (no bathroom on the sub!) and walked down to Breakwater Cove Marina.

(Click on any photograph or video to embiggen.)

Antipodes was docked in a slip behind the surface support vessel, Kraken. After a safety briefing and handing over our shoes, we boarded the sub. The conning tower is only 21 inches wide, so it’s a snug fit, but there’s a surprising amount of room once you’re inside.

Although Antipodes can dive over 900 feet deep, getting to that depth from Monterey requires a long tow out to the Canyon. Due to time and logistics constraints, we chose to do a shorter dive onto a wreck in Monterey Bay in just over 50 feet of water.

Cissa and I have been deeper than that with scuba gear, but this was a completely different experience:

• We could talk to each other and to the other mission participants. No more tapping on the shoulder and pointing silently. This is an enormous advantage over scuba diving.
• You can share the experience with friends and family who are not scuba-certified (think grandparents and children).
• Much better view. I have poor vision and, even with a prescription faceplate, my field of view is limited by a scuba mask. Those Lexan domes on each end make for a truly immersive (sorry!) experience.
• No worries about tank capacity. (I go through air about twice as fast as Cissa, so even with dual tanks, I usually have to surface before she runs out of air.)
• No worries about equipment. Tim took care of that. (Tim has lived in research submarines for years, working for everyone from oil companies to James Cameron.) No clearing the mask and adjusting for leaks.
• We could use our own cameras, not finicky (and expensive) underwater cameras. Yes, National Geographic has better footage… but some of our favorite shots from this dive were taken with our iPhones!
• We could park and watch a particular fish or starfish or whatever without worrying about keeping up with a dive buddy or group.

And, of course, on deeper dives, you can go 900 feet deep, which technically you could do with scuba while breathing Tri-Mix if you don’t mind the very real risk of dying.

Lots more photos here but just a couple more:

All of us got a chance to steer the sub for a while… a joystick for X/Y translation, a dial control for yaw rotation, and a slider for Z-axis. Painless.

We saw a lot of jellyfish. Some of whom, inevitably, fell afoul of Antipodes’ electric thrusters.

The circle of life had a few gaps cut in it that day. Scott, in particular, seemed to attract clouds of the beasties, earning him the nickname “Shredder.”

Don’t miss Scott’s comment about duct tape.

After about ninety minutes that flew by far too quickly, we surfaced for a quick tow back to the dock and a change of crew:

Cissa and I played tourist for the afternoon, then we all rendezvoused back at the house for dinner, where we got to watch Steve Jurvetson and his son drive a knuckle boom crane.

Then Scott Parazynski sang for his supper by showing his slides from his five Shuttle missions and seven spacewalks, including one of the most challenging and dangerous ever performed. In order to repair a damaged but fully-energized solar array, he was positioned by a 90-foot robotic boom farther than any orbiting astronaut had ever ventured from the safety of their airlock. The tremendous coordinated effort in orbit and on the ground by Mission Control and other engineering experts has been likened to the Space Shuttle and Space Station era’s “Apollo 13 moment.”

Then he talked about his two climbs of Everest. He had to turn around at High Camp in 2008 due to a spinal injury, possibly a consequence of his extended time in zero-gee. Then he went back in 2009 and made it to the summit. In his pocket, taped between two Pringle can lids, was a moon rock brought back by Apollo 11. His sherpa nailed the photo of Scott holding it up beneath the crescent moon, while standing on the summit.

He spoke for almost an hour. If you’re ever at dinner with Scott and he says “Let me show you my slides”… say yes!

The rest of the weekend was pretty standard Monterey/Carmel tourism…

We came back to the Pebble Beach house on Sunday evening for the end-of-the-expedition party… the team was scattering back to their home bases in Seattle, Virginia, Arizona, and elsewhere. (A few stayed behind to prep Antipodes for her cross-country trek to Florida next month.)

Met all sorts of interesting people, including a delightful gentleman named Bob Talbot. I’ll confess, I had seen a billboard at the airport for Robert Talbott, and I assumed it was the same guy. After all, how many Bob Talbot(t)s can there be in Monterey? Until one of the OceanGate team said “I have one of your posters; will you autograph it?”

Yeah, that photograph. You’ve seen it. He took it. Check out his website and buy your own copy.

Also met a high school student (and his parents) who had been inspired by an OceanGate educational visit a week or so earlier… from not having any particular goals in life, he’s now convinced that he’s going to spend his career in marine research, and I think he might be right.

With that, it was time to go back to the hotel for a 4:00 am wakeup call and a pre-dawn flight on a little bitty regional jet to LAX, then home!

All in all, an incredible experience. I can’t express sufficient gratitude to Guillermo and the entire OceanGate team for letting us share their underwater world. And, after all, how many people can say they’ve been in a submarine piloted by an astronaut?

Complete gallery of photos and videos here:
http://photos.stephenandcissa.com/Travel/Monterey-2011-10/

Tweet

South Carolina needs a personalized education for every student

Go read it. I actually agree with a lot of it, especially this paragraph:

A personalized, customized education for every student is the future of education. A student-centered approach will transform education from a system that treats students as identical units, teachers as assembly line workers, and administrators as managers who work to meet production quotas of dubious quality. It’s not the people in the system who are stifling progress. It’s the system itself that must be replaced.

But I replied to John in a series of tweets

@StephenFleming
Not sure if I agree. You and I didn’t get “personalized education” & we turned out OK. Restore discipline & fire 10% teachers/year

@StephenFleming
With current educrats, “personalized education” means “more excuses why Johnny can’t read.” Time to end excuses, fire bad teachers

@StephenFleming
Bring back shop classes, quit pretending all kids should go to college, upgrade technical schools

@StephenFleming
“Health care and education are next up for fundamental software-based transformation.” I hope Marc Andreessen is right! http://t.co/tfvSYKD

Then I realized that what I was trying to say really doesn’t fit into 140 characters. This post is over 15,000 characters!

K-12 education is badly broken in this country. Nearly thirty years ago, the “A Nation at Risk” report stated that

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

Things have only gotten worse since 1983.

Kati Haycock, President of the Education Trust, gave a viciously factual presentation to Georgia Forward this week. You can dig back in my tweetstream for some of her points:

Single most determinative predictor of future income is high school mathematics performance

No matter how you slice the data, USA is not keeping pace with international competitiors in K-12

It’s not just poor kids. Even USA’s top 5% ranks 23rd out of 29th compared to top 5% elsewhere.

USA one of only two developed countries where young people in 2010 have not achieved higher education than parents

U.S. African-American and Hispanic high school graduates score 4 years behind white students in reading and math

Success stories from Frankford Elem, Delaware; George Hall Elem, Mobile, AL. Fired all teachers for lack of vision

Elmont Memorial Junior-Senior High, NY: low incomes, but high scores, high grad rates

Same exam given to low-income African-American students in Boston and Washington DC: 19% diff (two grade levels)

Family issues and poverty matter, but not as much as teachers who are in it to win

Need to demand more from students. Convince them that taking challenging classes in HS makes a difference later

It’s a lot easier to start a good school than to fix a bad one. Aggressively shut ‘em down, transfer only good teachers

Good teachers don’t give up on any kids.

No teacher should be allowed to perform poorly for more than two years. They do too much damage. Move them out.

Or you can read more coherent statements at the Education Trust website.

There are some good arguments to be made about getting the government out of the school business entirely, and you can read about them at the Alliance for the Separation of School & State. But, for the purposes of this blog post, I’m assuming we’ve decided as a society that there is value in a publicly-financed universally-available public school system. A better one than we have today.

A Grand Bargain

Synthesizing all the discussions I’ve had in the last week about K-12 education, and using the language of the debt-ceiling crisis, I propose a Grand Bargain.

• Immediately double the salaries of all classroom teachers.

In 2011, the median starting salary of a B.S. graduate from Georgia Tech was $60,350.

The recent average starting salary of a teacher in Georgia was $34,442. Double that is almost $70K. That would get the attention of any recent Georgia Tech graduate.

But, in return for doubling their salaries, teachers would have to accept some fundamental changes in how we run the business of public education.

1. Salary doubling only applies to classroom teachers. If you spend more than 50% of your time in a classroom in front of students, your salary is doubled. If less than 50%, you get a pro-rata increase. If less than 10%, no increase at all.
2. Employment is year-round. No more summers off. The school year is going to get longer… the kids aren’t bringing in the crops anymore. In return for your doubled salary, you’re expected to be at the school(or in continuing ed classes) all year. When the students aren’t there, you’ll be “sharpening your saw.” Curriculum development, skill development, proficiency testing, team projects with other teachers… there’s plenty to do.
3. Immediate end to K-12 teacher tenure. There are valid arguments for tenure in a research university. (And valid arguments against it, but that’s a different blog post.) There are none for K-12 teachers. End it, now.
4. Principals have complete authority to hire and fire teachers. No more deadwood. No more passing the deadwood back and forth between classes and between schools. If you’re not earning your newly-doubled salary, you have to find another line of work.
5. School boards have complete authority to hire and fire principals. Same as above.
6. A supermajority of parents can fire any teacher. I suggest 3/4ths of all parents with children in a teacher’s current classes. If a teacher receives such a vote of “no confidence,” he or she cannot be moved to a different job in the same district.
7. An end to credentialism. Last week, I heard of an Army officer with a degree in engineering who taught mathematics at West Point to military cadets. He retired to Georgia and wanted to teach math in the local high school. He wasn’t qualified because he didn’t have a degree in education. That’s absurd. If someone wants to teach, and if they can convince a school principal that they can do the work, they should get the chance. There are valid pedagogical skills that can be taught, and teachers should learn them, but you do not need a B.A. or M.A. to demonstrate mastery of those skills. Mastery of the source material is far more important.
8. Restore discipline. If a child wants to disrupt class, let him or her do it down the hall, in a classroom dedicated to the purpose. I suggest staffing it with military vets returned from Iraq and Afghanistan who are looking for work. The doubled salaries should get their attention, and the end of credentialism will make it easy for them to give it a try.
9. Bring back shop class. We’ve created a generation (or two) who think the objective of high school is to go to college—and that any child who can’t or won’t go to college is doomed to flipping burgers… or dealing drugs. Not true. In Roanoke last month, I heard the head of Huntington Ingalls shipyards explain that he needed to hire 4500 skilled welders, at salaries of $100,000/year, but he can’t find them. The kids who should have been going to technical colleges to learn how to weld went to the local four-year college instead to get a degree in Critical Studies. Now they’re flipping burgers, and the welding jobs go unfilled. That needs to be fixed.
10. Repeal ‘No Child Left Behind.’ It’s failed, and everyone knows it. “No Child Left Behind” has turned out to mean “No child gets ahead.” We’re not in Lake Wobegon, and not all our kids are above average. Repeal it, and try again… salvage any good parts in a new bill.
11. Everyone learns to read. There are far too many kids being kicked along the grade path who cannot read. There are as many excuses as there are “educators.” But the truth is, almost every child can learn to read, if it is expected of them and if they’re taught appropriate phonics skills.
    
    If a grade school student can’t demonstrate reading proficiency on unfamiliar material by, say, the fourth grade… he or she gets taken out of class and drilled on reading until they can do it. Then they may be returned to class, or rotated back a year. If that means the child takes 13 years to graduate from high school… so be it.
    
    (There are a small number of unfortunate children who—through injury or illness or genetic bad luck—are actually and truly unable to learn to read. One of them is in my extended family. We should do something kind for them. But we shouldn’t build policy around them, and we shouldn’t exaggerate their extent. Based on demonstrated literacy rates elsewhere on the planet, I suspect the number is less than 2%, and I do not believe anyone who claims it is over 5%. Therefore: 95% of students must learn to read. A very few get taken out of the classroom and taught to the best of their capabilities.)
12. Everyone learns basic math. Same as above. Rather than reproduce the arguments of Mathematically Correct, I’ll just link you to their website and you can read for yourself.

Now, before the screams and wailing and gnashing of teeth begins… if you’re a good teacher, why wouldn’t you jump at this deal? Doubling your salary to do more of what you entered the teaching profession to do in the first place. How can you argue with that?

And if you’re a teacher who opposes such a deal… what does that say about you, and your confidence in your ability to teach your students?

(If you’re a K-12 administrator who doesn’t teach… this shouldn’t cause you any grief. You continue extracting the same salary from the taxpayers as before. What’s your problem?)

How Do We Pay For It?

How do we pay for anything these days? Borrow the money from the Chinese.

Seriously: the states are broke. So do it at the Federal level. Add up the total salary of a district’s public school teachers, and have the U.S. Department of Education write the district a block grant for the same amount… wrapped in fearsome and enforceable legal restrictions that the money can only go to doubling classroom teacher salaries, and not to new buildings, new basketball courts, or new staffers for district supervisors.

Yes, this would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. So did TARP, and that was frittered away uselessly. At least putting money into teachers’ pockets would be an actual economic “stimulus” since they’re likely to spend it, and spend it in this country.

Since I don’t like open-ended Federal obligations, ramp it down over ten years: block grants of 100% in Year One, 90% in Year Two, down to zero in Year Eleven. What happens as the grant goes down?

Probably several different things.

• Some school districts would decide the doubled salaries are important, and raise the taxes from their local millage rates or whatever mechanism they use.
• Some districts would choose to keep the higher salaries, but adjust class sizes so that the successful teachers would teach more students. Over ten years, class sizes could double with no ill effect. Good teachers with effective discipline could easily manage the larger class sizes. After all, they used to do just that, fifty years ago. “What Man has achieved, Man can aspire to.”
• Some districts would keep the higher salaries, but make up part of the difference by firing non-teaching school administrators.
• Some districts would let salaries drift lower, and see if they continue to attract and retain good teachers.
• Some districts would try a combination of the above.
• Some districts (and states) would lobby Congress to extend the block grants. Ignore them.

States (and smaller political subdivisions) used to be “laboratories of democracy.” Let them experiment! Could the result possibly be worse than what we have now?

Next

I’ll end with John Warner’s tweet to me this morning:

Must move from education designed for 19th century industrial revolution, to educ designed for 21st century creative economy

Well, yes. John and Marc Andreessen and Clayton Christensen are right. We need to reinvent the educational process, and technology will play an important role in that process. I look forward to being able to develop “personalized education” for every student.

But when a patient is wheeled into the emergency room with a sucking chest wound and a broken leg, you focus on the sucking chest wound. First, stop the bleeding. Then we’ll have the time and resources to experiment with new structures, new techniques, and new technologies.

I joined the board of trustees of a local charter school eight years ago, spent several years on the curriculum committee, and have learned a lot about the current stage of education. I naively thought that technology was the solution: “Laptops! Eight o’clock! Day One!” Then we realized we were getting incoming ninth-graders who were reading and calculating at 3rd, 4th, and 5th-grade level. First, stop the bleeding. We quickly gave up on universal laptops, and started focusing on discipline, high expectations, and teachers who really believe these kids can succeed. It’s working.

We can make it work nationwide.

Double teacher salaries. Expect the teachers to succeed, and don’t tolerate failure. Expect the kids to succeed, and don’t tolerate lack of discipline. Then stand back and watch American students knock our socks off.

Tweet

While still at the competition, I tweeted:

Of the first 28 student entrepreneurs I’ve met in this competition so far, 2 of them were born in USA. Our immigration policy has to change!

Exactly 140 characters (the Twitter maximum), but it triggered a number of public posts, private messages, and face-to-face conversations over the next week or so. And, for unrelated reasons, I’ve wound up having variations on the same discussion with different audiences for the last two months. So I figured it was time for a blog post on the topic.

First off, some people misunderstood my comment as being anti-immigrant or anti-immigration. Nothing could be further from the truth. Heck, I married an immigrant!

Immigrants bring brainpower, ambition, and energy that our country desperately needs. (Our K-12 school system seems to be doing its best to destroy those same characteristics in the children who are born in this country, but that’s a different blog post.) And the willingness to pack your bags and move to a different country for graduate school is a pretty good filter for whether a young person has what it takes to start a company. Over half of the startups in Silicon Valley have a founder from India or China.

No, my tweet wasn’t about changing our laws to restrict immigration. It was stating that our policy has to change to allow these students to stay here! The United States has the best graduate schools in the world. We attract Master’s and Ph.D. candidates from all over the world. And, under current law, once we grant them a degree, they have one of two choices: they can get a job with a company big enough to sponsor them for a green card, or they can go back to their home country.

As a national immigration policy, that’s insane.

(I’m oversimplifying. There’s something called “Optional Practical Training” that can extend a student visa for a year or so of work experience, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through, and you can’t use OPT to start a company. And there are a limited number of H-1B visas out there, but they have layers of restrictions, and you still need a sponsoring company. And, even if you follow all those avenues, you eventually still have to find a green card sponsor or go home.)

Now, big companies like Coca-Cola or Cisco or Monsanto have whole legal departments to help their employees navigate the shoals of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. My wife got her green card through IBM when she chose to move here from IBM Brazil. And a graduate can build a great career going from OPT to H-1B (or L-1; that’s different) to green card to U.S. citizenship while working for a multinational in the United States.

But what if you want to start a company?

Sorry, you’re out of luck. USCIS doesn’t recognize self-employment. And even if you aren’t going to be the founder, but just an early employee of someone else’s company, most startups can’t afford the legal services and fees to get you an H-1B visa, much less a green card.

So, even though young companies have accounted for essentially all the job growth in the United States over the last twenty-five years, our immigration policy doesn’t encourage foreign graduate students to participate in that job creation. Work for a big company, or go home. (And, more than likely, start a company in India or China to compete with U.S. companies.)

John Doerr, one of the most successful venture capitalists in history, said “I would staple a green card to the diploma of anyone that graduates with a degree in the physical sciences or engineering in the United States.” He’s absolutely right. These people are going to create value. Create jobs. Pay taxes, for crying out loud! Why would we not want them to stay here? Marry, raise families, buy a houseboat on the lake… the economic multipliers are endless.

But “immigration policy” has been hijacked by demagogues of both parties. Republicans rail against illegal immigrants as lawbreakers who must be punished and deported before they have “anchor babies”—children born on American soil with birthright citizenship. Democrats see undocumented workers as a vast new source of potential voters who are doing jobs “Americans just won’t do.” Both find reasons to vilify any measure labelled “immigration reform.”

There’s a valid debate to be had in this country over the right mix of open borders and social services. But that’s a completely different issue than sending back a brightly-minted Ph.D. graduate because he or she doesn’t have the right visa to start a company. Can we agree that a computer science Ph.D. from Georgia Tech is not likely to have swum the Rio Grande under cover of nightfall?

The other issue that has been raised in my conversations on this issue is that “they’re taking jobs from Americans.” That’s nonsense. These young immigrants are going to create jobs… first for themselves, then for co-founders, and eventually—if successful—for hundreds or thousands of employees. It’s not a zero-sum game. If these immigrants aren’t allowed to create jobs, those jobs won’t go to native-born Americans… those jobs simply won’t exist.

(And these aren’t jobs flipping burgers or picking crops. These are high-quality high-paying jobs that your kids would like to have someday. As a bit of history, not just Google, but Pfizer, Intel, DuPont, U.S. Steel, and Procter & Gamble were once startups founded by immigrants.)

Our policy is insane. And it may be too late to do anything about it. India and China have embraced the “reverse brain drain” and many foreign students want to go home to start companies… only a few years ago, almost all would have preferred to stay.

But there is a movement to create a startup visa. Championed by Vivek Wadwha and publicized at http://www.startupvisa.com, there is legislation in Congress to issue new EB-6 work visas to entrepreneurs who can demonstrate traction with angel or venture capital investors.

The bill isn’t perfect. There’s an annual cap on the number of EB-6 visas. And the visas are time-limited, unlike green cards. But it’s a start.

It’s a cliché to say that “the United States was built by immigrants.” It’s also true. We have the world’s best graduate schools and research institutions; other countries are catching up, but we started from far ahead. We have a history of risk-taking, of capital fluidity, and of tolerance of failure that has made the U.S. the best place in the world to start a company. Other countries are catching up here, too, but our culture and history give us an edge. Even with our current financial woes, I believe that we’re still the entrepreneurial Mecca for the world.

But we have to make sure that we attract the best, brightest, and most innovative entrepreneurs, whether they were born here or not. The Startup Visa Act would be a huge step in the right direction.

Tweet

It surprises people that, as a well-assimilated Apple fanboy, I didn’t buy the first generation iPhone. I was in the store on launch day, I had one in my hand, my credit card was burning a hole in my pocket… and I left without one. I used my Treo for nearly another year until the 2nd generation iPhone (confusingly named 3G) was released. I wasn’t waiting for the faster network connection or for the GPS chip, or cut-and-paste, although those were all nice. No, although I couldn’t have articulated it at the time, I was waiting for the App Store.

Remember, I was coming from years in the Palm ecosystem, where third-party apps were a key part of the experience. I was utterly reliant on a couple of them (in particular, an RPN calculator… having been converted to the RPN Way by HP calculators in my youth, I simply cannot use “normal” calculators without an Enter key!). So the first-gen iPhone had lots of promise, but it wasn’t ready for me yet. Web apps looked interesting, but until developers got hold of a native SDK, I kept my money in my pocket.

Once the App Store was announced, I knew I was hooked. In fact, I bought my first iPhone app on July 10, 2008, the night before the iPhone 3G was released… yes, I had that much faith in Apple (and James Thomson, author of PCalc) that I spent ten bucks on an app without hardware that I could run it on!

And, although I didn’t know it, I was participating in an interesting experiment in app pricing. In the early days, I bought several apps for $9.99 or even more. Soon, those apps found their prices cut to $6.99, $4.99… or they were abandoned entirely. A few apps hovered about the magic ten-buck point, but most were driven down by the competition from free and 99¢ apps.

Lots of people have blogged about the race to the bottom, and I have nothing useful to add there… except that I never hesitate to buy a paid app if it looks like it does something I need, or even want. I’ve spent more than the price of that first iPhone in the App Store at this point, and I don’t mind. Software developers gotta eat, and I don’t mine supporting them with a couple of bucks here and there.

Of course, sometimes the app turns out to be less polished than I hoped, or buggy, or just doesn’t get updated when needed. So I wind up buying a lot of apps, experimenting with them, and letting them languish in a rear page, or delete them from my devices entirely.

People are always asking me “So, what apps should I get for my iPhone/iPad?” That’s hard to answer, since I don’t know your needs or your budget. All I can do is give you a list of the apps that I use, many of them daily, and frequently after downloading and trying a lot of competitors. (I think I’ve bought six calendar applications, and I shudder to think how many Twitter apps. I’ve settled on what I think are the best.)

I’ve blogged about this before, but that was almost two years ago, and before the iPad… and things change.

So, in honor of Black Friday, here’s my list of my favorite iOS (iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch) applications. Click on any icon for a link to the official App Store description.

• Productivity
• Apple iWork Suite
• e-Books
• News / Information
• Photography
• Navigation
• Utilities
• Fun and Games

Productivity

	$2.99 (free trial available)	iPhone only
Calvetica	Apple’s Calendar is gorgeous, but it’s a surprisingly clumsy user interface. (It’s only with the latest iOS release that you can actually change the category of an existing entry!) Since I juggle thirteen Google Calendars, I get frustrated with a “one size fits most” calendar. I’ve tried almost every replacement calendar in the App Store, and this is the only one that has earned a place in my iPhone Dock. No iPad version yet, but I’m optimistic…
	Free	Universal
Google Mobile	Google may be occasionally evil these days, but their apps are darned good. I like the voice search and the Google Goggles. Free!
	Free	Universal
Zenbe Lists	There are a zillion to-do list applications out there. This one keeps a position on my home screen for one fundamental reason: painless syncing from the cloud to multiple devices. The real-world use? My wife and I can share a single grocery list (and Home Depot list, etc.). If one of us goes shopping alone, we’re sure we have the most current version. I don’t understand Zenbe’s business model in giving this away, but I’d miss it if they stopped.
	$4.99 (free trial available)	iPhone only
Twittelator Pro	I don’t know… is Twitter a “productivity” app, or an “anti-productivity” app? Probably a little of both. What’s definitely not productive is downloading and testing ten different Twitter clients. I’ve done that, so you don’t have to. Lots of them are good; some are very good. For my money, Twittelator Pro is the best of the bunch on the iPhone. There’s a free trial available if you don’t want to risk five bucks on my say-so.
	$4.99	iPad only
Twittelator for iPad	Unlike on the iPhone, the competition on the iPad isn’t even close (in my not-so-humble opinion). Twittelator for iPad is a complete rethinking of the user experience, and I like it a lot. Once Andrew adds “Open Web Pages in Safari” as a prefs item, it’ll be darn near perfect. (He had to wait for iOS 4.2 for that to make sense, so I expect it any day now.)
	Free	Universal
SimpleNote	I can’t count the number of note-taking apps on the iOS platform. I love SimpleNote because it’s as simple as advertised. Doesn’t try to be all things to all people, but it’s a quick, easy, legible way of writing myself notes, and accessing them on other devices, including my desktop. And they’re a Y Combinator startup! I give them $12/year for “Premium” service, even though the free version meets all my needs.There are multiple desktop clients available to sync with SimpleNote’s server; I use JustNotes for the Mac, but others work as well.
	$4.99	iPad only
iA Writer	This one is iPad-only. Some of the design decisions in this app drive me crazy. But I love it for two reasons: The gorgeous custom font, Nitti Light, which is the most legible monospace typeface I’ve ever seen to on the iPad. And maybe it’s my teletype heritage, but I compose better in monospace. The expanded keyboard with cursor keys (yippee!) and other controls that may offend Steve Jobs, but which lighten my load every time I’m composing text. SimpleNote works well by staying out of my way for a few sentences at a time. If I’m typing more than half a page on my iPad, I want to use iA Writer.
	Free	Universal
Evernote	Theoretically, Evernote could replace both of the above apps. I find it too “heavy” to use for cranking out quick notes to myself, and the UI doesn’t match iA Writer for longer text. Where Evernote shines for me is in taking photographs (I’m particularly guilty of photographing the covers of books I want to buy) and OCRing them in the background so that they become searchable text. I suspect some low-wage English-speakers in India or China are chained to their workstations to type whatever they read in your photos, but I honestly don’t know. Synchronizes with an equally powerful client on your Mac or PC (or on the Web). There are paid options available if you turn out to be a heavy user.
	$9.99 (free trial available)	Universal
PCalc	As I said earlier, I waited to buy an iPhone until PCalc was available. I use it every day on my Mac, and now I use it every day on my iPhone. Gorgeous implementation… not a slavish recreation of my beloved and still-operational HP-15C (although those recreations exist; I’ve bought them) but a rethinking of what’s necessary in an RPN calculator and what can be hidden. (Oh, yeah, there’s an algebraic mode, too, but I’ve never paid it any attention.) Multiple “skins” available to get the appearance you’re looking for. Comparatively expensive for an iPhone app, but worth it.
	$4.99	Universal
PowerOne Financial	If I run into a calculation that’s too complicated for PCalc but not complicated enough to open a spreadsheet, I usually reach for PowerOne. It’s a descendant of the RPN calculator I used to use on the Palm, but vastly more powerful with customizable worksheets (things like Time Value of Money where you can actually see all the variables, not just stuff them into the stack like an HP-12C). My only complaint is that the interface is ugly; I wish Infinity Softworks would implement custom skins like PCalc did.
	$11.99	Both (single platform versions $7.99)
1Password Pro	I use a new randomly-generated password for every Website that I visit. So I need a secure place to keep them. After using SplashID for years on the Palm OS, I paid for both 1Password and SplashID on the iPhone. After a long period of using them in parallel, I settled on 1Password. Frequent updates, and a great Mac client that syncs automatically over Wi-Fi and integrates with Safari or Firefox on your desktop.
	$1.99	iPhone only
Favorites	Simple speed-dialer that sits in my Dock and lets me dial or text my most frequent contacts with one touch. Does exactly what you’d want it to, and nothing that you wouldn’t want it to. Probably overpriced but, seriously, can’t you afford two bucks?
	$4.99	iPad only
ReaddleDocs for iPad	I’ve said before that ReaddleDocs for the iPad is reason enough to own an iPad, and I still believe that. The ability to carry thousands of documents in a slim searchable slab has changed my life. Rather than having folders upon folders of paper printouts, I just forward any attachment (PDF or Microsoft Office… probably others, but those are the ones I care about) to my Readdle email address, and sync just before walking into a meeting.I’ve sold several iPads with this app. Good Reader has similar functionality, but until someone comes up with a better user interface (which, honestly, wouldn’t be difficult) or better customer service (which would be hard!), I love Readdle and use it every day.
	$4.99	iPhone only
ReaddleDocs	Readdle Docs for the iPhone synchronizes to the same cloud storage space as Readdle Docs for the iPad. It’s a less compelling experience just because of the inevitable limitations of the smaller screen. Where I’m likely to open a spreadsheet on my iPad and pass it around a conference table, I’m not going to do the same with my iPhone. Nevertheless, it’s nice to occasionally have access to documents when I don’t have my iPad with me, and Readdle serves that niche nicely. You have to buy them separately, which is an odd choice on the company’s part; I wish they sold a Universal version for 2/3rds the price of the two apps sold separately. Maybe someday.
	$4.99	iPad only
ToDo for iPad	How many to-do applications are available for iOS? Certainly dozens, probably hundreds. Most of them are pretty interchangeable. ToDo by Appigo is different. First, it’s gorgeous… someone really sweated the details on the UI, and it shows. Next, it integrates well between iPhone, iPad, Web (via Toodle-Do), and other services (like Jott). Finally, the developers seem to pay attention to how people actually work, rather than trying to shoehorn us into “Getting Things Done” or any other system. I like it.
	$4.99 (free trial available)	iPhone only
ToDo	Bought as a companion to the gorgeous iPad version above, but really good enough to be bought just for the iPhone. Nicely done.
	$4.99 (free trial available)	Universal
Instapaper	What Readdle Docs does for attached files, Instapaper does for Web pages. Ever get into “tl;dr” (Too Long, Didn’t Read) mode when reading the Web? Instapaper solves the problem. Install a bookmarklet in your browser (desktop or iOS device) and, whenever you get to a page that’s too long, click “Read Later.” Instapaper magically figures out the part of the page you want to read (meaning, not the ads and the blogroll and the other cruft) and sucks it into the cloud. Sync your iPad, and all those articles wind up in local storage, so you can read them at leisure when waiting for a haircut or whatever… no network connection required. Beautifully crafted, obsessively supported. You need this app.
	$4.99	Universal
Consistency	This app is for repetitive tasks that need to be tracked, but that you don’t need to schedule on your calendar. Example: I need to oil my bicycle chain once a month, but if I’m a week early or a week late, it’s no big deal. Consistency is brilliant for things like that.I used to use the desktop version of this app and I like the idea a lot. I was pleased to find it available for the iPhone, so I bought it without doing my research.I’m mildly astonished to find that it doesn’t use iPhone notifications (badges, dialogs, sounds). And I’m disappointed that there’s not a “cloud” option to sync lists between my iPhone and iPad. I’d pay a modest amount for that. Considering it hasn’t been updated in over a year (Yoo-hoo, Sciral! There’s this thing called iOS 4; you might have read about it!), I guess we have to treat this app as abandonware. A shame, really, since I don’t know of anything else that works precisely this way.
	Free	Universal
WordPress	I don’t blog a lot away from my keyboard, but it’s nice to be able to fix a typo or approve a comment while on the go. After a rocky start, the WordPress app has matured to a solid client on both iPhone and iPad. If you have a WordPress blog (self-hosted or on WordPress.com), you need to check this out.
	Free	Universal
Skype	I don’t use Skype a lot, but it’s nice to have for that occasional international phone call. And it’s a nice multiplatform chat interface that most people will either have, or be willing to install. The iPhone client works well, and it’s free.

Apple iWork Suite

	$9.99 each	iPad only
Keynote Pages Numbers	These three get special treatment. Keynote, Pages, and Numbers together form Apple’s iWork suite… originally for the desktop, and redesigned to launch with the iPad.I have my issues with these three apps, but they’re still worth the money. First off, they ought to be named “Keynote Light,” “Pages Light,” and “Numbers Light”… Apple did a good job of focusing on the 80% of features that everyone really needs, but sometimes one of the 20% they eliminated will really bite your project in the butt. In particular, I keep running into limitations with Keynote (master slides, complex animations, fonts, and complex groups) that badly break certain of my slide presentations.Next, the process for getting documents from the desktop version of iWorks applications into and out of the iPad Apps is just hostile. It takes about ten steps, none of which intuitively leads to the next. This is very “un-Apple” and I have to believe that Apple has a major cloud-based solution to this (maybe making Mobile Me worth the cost?) but it’s just not ready yet. I hope so. But, for now, if you think that having iWork on your desktop and on your iPad means you can edit the same document in both places… you’re wrong. You can create a document on your desktop, export it to your iPad, and (most) things will work… but if you make changes on your iPad, you need to export it back to your Mac as a new document. No synchronization, no audit trail, no acknowledgement of cloud-based workflow at all. Ick. All that being said, it’s really cool to walk into a room carrying just your iPad and a VGA dongle, and running the whole presentation from your touchscreen. Major ego boost.

E-Books

	Free	Universal
Kindle	I’m one of those weird people who bought a Kindle after buying an iPad. Different screen technologies, different use cases. I love them both. We’ve bought a lot of books on Kindle, and it’s great to have them with me wherever I go… including the surprisingly-capable screen on the iPhone 4. Synchronization is painless, and the feature set is more than adequate.
	Free	Universal
Stanza	Oddly, the best e-book reader on the iPhone or iPad is made by Amazon, but it’s not Kindle. It’s Stanza. Formerly a standalone company (Lexcycle), Amazon bought the developer in early 2009, and I was terrified that it meant the death of this superb application. But they released an iPad update more or less on schedule, and have clearly not abandoned the product.It’s a better reading experience than Kindle, with a more mature set of interface options (it’s been around longer!), and it integrates into a wide variety of paid and free e-book sources. I tend to want to buy everything that Toni Weisskopf at Baen Books publishes, and Stanza makes that painless. Maybe too painless. Hook it up to Calibre on your desktop, and you can easily see how I have over 200 books on my iPad.

News/Information

	Free	iPhone only
The Weather Channel	Another of those ecological niches where I’ve downloaded at least six free and paid apps. The Weather Channel isn’t just the hometown team here in Atlanta; I think they’ve built the best app. (There’s a paid upgrade, but I haven’t felt the need to buy it.)
	Free	iPad only
WSJ	I gave up on my dead tree subscription to the Wall Street Journal years ago, but I missed it. Now I don’t miss it anymore. The first release of this app for the iPad was absolutely terrible, but they’ve iterated rapidly, and the current version is great. Everything you need so that you’re no longer sitting there looking stupid when someone asks “Did you see the article on such-and-so in the Wall Street Journaltoday?”Now, if they’d just get rid of their obsession with fully-justified typography. Hint: Ragged-right looks better on narrow columns!
	Free (for now)	iPad (iPhone version also available)
NYTimes	The New York Times has experimented with various pay and free models, so I don’t know where they’ll wind up. For now, the gorgeous iPad app has the entire content, every day. The Grey Lady’s business model is probably doomed, but it’s hard to beat having the entire paper on your iPad every day.
	Free (with paid print subscription)	iPad (iPhone version also available)
The Economist	I used to be addicted to print magazines… at one point, I was receiving over 50 per month. (I read fast. Really, really fast.) The Internet killed that little habit, and now I enjoy letting print subscriptions lapse, but one that I never hesitate to renew is The Economist. The iPad version is gorgeous and, if you have a paid print subscription, you get the entire magazine online every week. It downloads to local storage so you can read it on the plane without Wi-Fi. Perfect!
	Free	Universal
AJC Select	Sadly, the local paper has seen better days… a 50% drop in print subscribers will do that to you. And now that it’s moved to Dunwoody, the Atlanta Journal Constitution seems to be becoming the “North of I-285 Journal Constitution.” But there’s no substitute for the AJC when you want to find out about a local city council meeting, or the schedule for the Peachtree Road Race. (And their Twitter accounts are great!)
	Free	iPad only
Flipboard	Flipboard is a Twitter client, but it’s also a lot more. It scrapes multiple services (your choice) and reformats stories into a customized online magazine. Beautiful UI; this is the simplest way I know to kill time while feeding my brain, as long as I have a Wi-Fi connection available.
	$2.99 (free trial available)	Universal
Regator Premium	Another hometown team (Decatur, Georgia), but with a national reputation. Regator hand-selects blog feeds from your topics of interest and presents them in a constantly-curated collection. This is where you’ll find those stories that’ll never make the New York Times… or, occasionally, where you’ll find big stories before they make the New York Times.
	Free	iPad (iPhone version also available)
TED	TED has been called “the new Harvard.” I don’t know if I believe that, but the TED talks are extraordinary. Their self-description: “Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world. TED presents talks from some of the world’s most fascinating people: education radicals, tech geniuses, medical mavericks, business gurus and music legends.” I don’t usually have the patience for videos or podcasts, and I wish TED had a text transcription but these are good enough to be worth an exception.

Photography

	$1.99	Universal
AutoStitch Panorama	Can’t get everything you want into the camera frame? Take multiple photographs and stitch them together into a (vertical or horizontal) panorama. Better UI than Photoshop on your desktop, and it runs on your phone! We really are living in the future. (I’ve listed this as a Universal app, and it indeed runs on the iPad, but it makes most sense on the iPhone where you have a camera.)
	Free	iPad only
SmugMug	I have set up picture-sharing free accounts on Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly, Ofoto, and probably others. But I cheerfully pay for a SmugMug account because it’s just better. My only complaint is that not enough other apps integrate with it, I guess because of the smaller user base… but those users are vociferous fans, and include many professional photographers who use SmugMug galleries in their day job! The iPad app is a delightful way to browse through your photos and show them off to others.
	$3.99	iPad (iPhone version also available)
Photogene	It’s not Photoshop, but it’s amazing. The range of photo manipulations you can perform on a handheld device would have been dismissed as impossible only a few years ago. I’ve downloaded lots of photo utilities, but this one lives on my iPad’s home page.
	$0.99	Universal
ColorSplash	A one-trick pony, but what a cool trick! Convert your photos to black-and-white, then “paint” the color back into place for selected regions. Great user interface, and you wind up with striking photos to save or share. Yeah, you can do this in Photoshop, but not as easily, and not nearly as enjoyably! Spend the buck.
	$0.99 (free trial available)	iPhone only
JotNot Scanner Pro	Another one-trick pony. Take photos of documents (receipts, business cards, or full-size sheets of paper) and JotNot will square them up and crank up the contrast to make them surprisingly legible. I’ve emailed people photographs of documents rather than finding a fax machine, and it worked beautifully.

Navigation

	Free	Universal
MotionX GPSLite	A surprisingly good free navigation program. All sorts of downloadable maps, with waypoints, tracks, and more.There’s an HD version available for the iPad that’s even prettier.
	$39.99	Universal
TomTom USA	I have a standalone Garmin GPS that I like, but I can’t imagine buying another one. TomTom works without a network connection (important in rural Georgia!) to give you turn-by-turn navigation based on an internal database. (Which is enormous, by the way… you need more than a gigabyte free on your device to install this app.) Good user interface, with all the bells and whistles you’d expect, and a few you might not.
	$5.99	Universal
GoSkyWatch	Go outside at night. Look up. What the heck is that star? With GoSkyWatch, you have a planetarium inside your iPhone. Point it at the sky, and you can instantly figure out “Oh, that’s Vega! Cool!” Uses the accelerometer
	$0.99	Universal
Star Walk	Both StarWalk and GoSkyWatch are now universal applications, running on iPhone and iPad. Maybe it’s just my personal experience with the apps, but I tend to default to using GoSkyWatch on my iPhone, and StarWalk on my iPad. StarWalk is utterly gorgeous… a few missing features, but you won’t care. Usually three bucks, on sale today for a buck. Buy it.
	Free	Universal
Google Earth	Possibly the greatest toy ever. If you’ve used it on your desktop, you’re still not prepared for how utterly magical (hat tip to Steve Jobs) it is on an iPad. It’s free. Why haven’t you downloaded it?

Utilities

	$0.99	iPhone 4
Flashlight	I have no clue how many flashlight programs there are for the iPhone. The earliest zillion of them just turned the whole screen white. This was the first of a new generation that lights up the (incredibly bright) LED of the iPhone 4 camera flash. Sucks up your battery if you leave it on too long, but it’s brighter than those keychain flashlights, and you always have it with you. There are free ones out there, but this one is nicely done and well worth a buck.
	$12.99	Universal
PrintBureau	Perhaps the most misnamed app in the iTunes Store. Yes, it manages printing… I can print directly from my iPhone or iPad to my wireless inkjet printer. (Which Apple promised as a feature of iOS 4.2, then crippled at the last minute. It’ll probably come back someday, but PrintBureau works now.) But it also handles cloud storage, and acts as a Wi-Fi hard drive, and has an email client, and probably makes julienne fries. I can’t keep track of everything this app does, but it’s a heck of a lot more than printing.(To print, it runs a helper app in the background on your Mac or PC, which is irritating, but it doesn’t take too many resources and has never crashed my Mac.)
	Free	Universal
Dropbox	Apple, will you just buy Dropbox and put iDisk out of its overpriced misery? As far as I can tell, Dropbox has become not only the default cloud-storage service for iOS devices, but is darned near the file system that iOS tries to hide from you. Integrates seamlessly with your desktop (at least on the Mac; Windows and Linux versions exist, but I’ve never used them). A great way to move files back and forth, to make backups from your portable device, to share files with other people, whatever. I feel guilty for using the free version so heavily and probably ought to buy more storage space, but 2 gigs has proven to be enough for what I do.
	Free	Universal
JungleDisk	I back up all of my Macs to JungleDisk, all the time. My files live safely on Amazon’s S3 servers. If someome steals all my computers, I’ll be angry, but I won’t be out of business. (Yeah, I have the ridiculously-long S3 keys printed out in my fireproof safe.) The iOS app lets me browse and manage those files… including occasionally pulling down a new version of a presentation that I forgot to move to Keynote for the iPad. Amazon S3 isn’t free, but the JungleDisk app is.

Fun and Games

	Free	Universal
Pandora Radio	What’s there left to say about Pandora? All the music in the world, streamed to your device, free, and in (to my ears) great quality. The only drawback was that you couldn’t run it in the background, but that’s been fixed by iOS 4.2. This ought to be burned into the ROM of every iDevice in the world.
	Free	Universal
Netflix	At first, it was just cool to manage my Netflix queue from my iPhone without firing up a Web browser. Then they implemented streaming, and changed the world. Watch thousands of movies and TV shows on your phone or iPad, connect it to an external TV set, pause and pick it up later… yep, this is exactly the way it’s supposed to work. No wonder Blockbuster is in Chapter 11. Or that we disconnected our cable TV service, and don’t miss it.
	Free	Universal
SoundHound	Whenever you’re out somewhere and hear a song and wonder what it is… run SoundHound and give it a try. If there’s not too much background noise, it’s amazingly accurate at identifying prerecorded music, and will instantly show you lyrics and a link to buy the song in iTunes. They claim to be able to identify songs that you hum or sing into the mike, but I’ve had pretty poor luck with that. There’s a paid version if you use it frequently, but the free version seems adequate for most needs.
	$4.99	Universal
Myst	It’s back! The game that sold a lot of color Macintoshes (yes, kiddies, Macs used to be black and white) migrated to the iPhone in fine form. The same puzzles, the same music, and the same backstory that we obsessed over back in 1993. (I basically spent a week over Christmas that year solving Myst.)It’s arguably even better with a touch interface. There’s not a separate iPad version, but the graphics look fine in 2X mode. (Warning: the app is huge, so make sure you have a gigabyte free before purchasing it.)
	$1.99	Both (enhanced iPad version available)
Romi	If you’ve ever played Rummikub, you instantly understand Romi. If you’ve ever played a rummy card game, you’ll understand in about thirty seconds. Nice interface (needs custom skins, though) and intelligent gameplay. Excellent execution for two bucks. The iPad version is identical except for higher-rez graphics.
	$1.99 (free trial available)	Universal
Word with Friends	I was so excited when Electronic Arts released Scrabble for the iPad! I bought it immediately, and it played exactly like the cardboard version. Exactly. There was a cool feature where you could “flick” tiles from your iPhone/iPod Touch to the main iPad screen, but basically, you needed to be sitting around a table with the other players. So, for four players, you’d be using $1300 worth of electronics to replace a ten-dollar board game. EA (and Hasbro/Milton Bradley) managed to miss a technological revolution named “the Internet.”Newtoy — a tiny company in McKinney, Texas — did it right. They published a modified version of the Scrabble board (to avoid copyright issues, I’m sure) and connected it to the Internet. Now you could play a Scrabble-like game with friends or strangers anywhere in the world… and asynchronously, so you didn’t have to try to coordinate schedules. If you’re both online, you might complete a turn within seconds; if not, the next turn might be hours or days later.Absolutely brilliant, absolutely addictive, and an absolutely wonderful way to spend time. There’s a free version with on-screen ads, but send NewToy two bucks. They deserve it.
	$1.99 (free trial available)	iPad only
Words with Friends HD	Same feature set as the basic version, but even more beautiful (and easier to play) on the big screen. Again, a free ad-supported version is available but, if you play as often as I do, it’s worth two bucks. (My screen name is ‘stephenfleming’; feel free to challenge me. I will crush you.)
	$19.99	iPad only
Acid Solitaire	I bought this set of three solitaire card games during a brief promotional sale for five bucks. I know $20 is a lot for an iPad game, but it’s beautifully done. I’ve experimented with a few other solitaire games from other developers, but I’m glad I have this one to play.(My wife developed carpal tunnel syndrome from AcidSolitaire… you have been warned!)
	$0.99 (free trial available)	Both (enhanced iPad version available)
Angry Birds	Saving the best for last! This is the most expensive dollar I ever spent… I’ve spent over thirty hours playing this game, which, at my loaded labor rate, it…. (mumble, mumble, mumble) a lotof money.You know the drill… you use a slingshot to fire various kinds of birds at fantastically-unlikely “forts” protecting evil pigs. Silly. Instantly accessible. Difficult to master. I’ve gotten three stars on all 165 levels, and all 17 golden eggs, but I tend to get compulsive. (Which is why I usually don’t playcomputer games!The iPad version has better graphics and it easier to play, but accomplishments on the iPhone don’t unlock higher levels on the iPad (or vice versa). Similarly, Apple’s GameCenter treats it as a completely different game, so achievements on one platform won’t translate to the other. I bought both, but found myself playing more on the iPhone just because I always had it with me. I hope the developer fixes this, once they finish wallowing in their Scrooge McDuck money room!

This turned into an absurdly long blog post (over 9,000 words), but I hope it’s useful to someone. Avoid “tl;dr” and try it in Instapaper!

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This is different.

ATDC is almost thirty years old. (We’re going to have a thirty-year birthday bash next year; be sure to come!) And, throughout most of ATDC’s history, it’s been a very exclusive club. We usually get a couple of hundred applications a year, and usually accept about a dozen into membership.

That’s a lousy way to make friends… since, by definition, we’re telling a couple of hundred entrepreneurs per year that they’re not good enough to be in our club.

But it’s a great way to validate that the applicants who survive the process are solid companies. Companies worth investing in. Maybe even companies worth catching an airplane from Boston or California to invest in. The ATDC “seal of approval” meant that a company was automatically worth visiting when a VC was coming to town to see what was cooking in Atlanta.

And that model served ATDC well for a long time. Since there were never more than a few dozen members at any one time, the ATDC staff could provide some serious personal service to the entrepreneurs: Consulting. Coaching. Making connections. And, since this was such a high-touch model, it was nice to squeeze everyone in as neighbors… originally the O’Keefe building, then the “storage warehouse” on Tenth Street, and finally a set of three top-notch facilities. ATDC currently manages the second floor of the Centergy building, a set of life sciences “wet labs” in the ES&T building, and a corner of the Georgia Tech Savannah facility.

Then the market changed. Lots has been written about this elsewhere, and I assume you’ve read it… but everyone in the angel/venture capital chain took one step to the right, then sat down. It became a lot harder for a new company to attract VC money. At the same time, in certain sectors, it became much less necessary to attract VC money. For Internet deals: borrow every dime you can, write code like crazy, push the infrastructure up into the cloud, live on ramen noodles until you get someone, somewhere, to pay for something, then finance growth out of cash flow until investors (or acquirors) come looking for you. No VC required. Heck, maybe no offices required. If you’re in the cloud, you’re not keeping your servers under lock and key, and if you don’t need a PBX (hello, Skype and cellphones)… you can run a pretty substantial operation via laptops and coffee shops.

Then you factor in Atlanta traffic. ATDC has always had “remote members”—in fact, today, about 40% of ATDC’s members are not bricks-and-mortar tenants—but, honestly, they’ve always been second-class citizens. They don’t get the same intense hands-on experience as the tenant companies. But if you live in Suwanee, or Alpharetta, or Kennesaw, the idea of driving to Midtown every day can be pretty soul-killing. (Not to mention if you live in Newnan, or Gainesville, or Bainbridge! More about that later.)

So, over the last few years, the ATDC model of “run ‘em through a gauntlet and only the best will survive” has become less relevant. Some companies—some good companies—have chosen to bypass the gauntlet and simply not apply.

VentureLab

Let’s switch gears and talk about VentureLab. I’ve been running VentureLab for a little over four years now. It’s a different model. First off, VentureLab only works with technologies belonging to Georgia Tech. (There are minor exceptions for student projects, but not enough to affect this argument.)

So the “gauntlet” to get in is different… at the time of admission, VentureLab tries to determine if any startup could exist in your target space, not if yours is the potential winner. That’s very different. If we decide that there’s room for a startup, everything is focused around assembling the resources to build a successful one… business plan, management team, seed capital… all those things that companies already needed to have to survive the ATDC admission process. It’s not a coincidence that the VentureLab exit criteria looked a lot like the ATDC entrance criteria.

Too many of you have heard me tell my tired joke that “If ATDC is an incubator, then VentureLab is pre-natal care.” And it works. But… it’s high-quality, high-cost pre-natal care that you can’t have. (Unless you’re based on Georgia Tech intellectual property.) Look at the quadrants below.

If you have Georgia Tech intellectual property, VentureLab would work with you at the earliest seed/concept stage. (We’re not just talking pre-revenue… we’re talking pre-incorporation and pre-patent-application!) And, if you survived to the relative maturity of “early-stage” (I’m stealing definitions from Lance Weatherby’s blog here), you’d be a great candidate for ATDC.

But if you’re weren’t based on GT intellectual property? Look above, at that vacuum in the lower left.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and innumerable groups, linkages, and organizations have sprung up to help fill this one. (That link is to a blog post talking about those groups, and an animated version of that incredibly cluttered chart in the lower left.)

Today’s announcement changes all that. We’re not trying to take the place of any of those organizations—they’re the symbol of a thriving Atlanta startup ecosystem, and we’re not arrogant enough to think we’re smarter than the crowd. But we are going to make ATDC available as an umbrella… if any of those organizations can benefit from using ATDC as a clearinghouse, or a sponsor, or just a place to meet—let me know.

(The VentureLab function for Georgia Tech startups doesn’t go away… and neither do the employees… and neither does the GRA VentureLab money. It’s now just one more program managed by ATDC.)

SBIR Assistance Program

I’m already nearing 1000 words, so I’ll keep this short. How many of you are even aware of the Federal government’s mandate that the eleven most profligate Federal agencies need to devote 2.5% of their R&D spending to small companies? Companies like yours?

How many of you have ever applied for it?

How many of you would even know where to look?

The state of Georgia pays for a free SBIR Assistance Program (which also helps with STTRs; don’t ask) that has helped dozens of companies land tens of millions of dollars in Federal grants and contracts. But you’ve never called them, have you? Now, by merging this program into ATDC, every member will get asked “Have you looked at the latest solicitations? Any of them sound interesting? Need some help figuring out how to submit a proposal?”

Getting some of your taxes back from Uncle Sam with no loss of equity, and no incurring of debt. What could be better?

Scale

This post is already too long, and I’ll come back to some of these topics in the future. But the challenge for the new expanded ATDC will be all about scale. Budgets are tight. We can’t provide the same high-touch consulting services to 400 companies that we can to 40. And we certainly can’t offer startup-friendly real estate deals to ten times as many companies; you won’t all fit in our space!

We have some good ideas about this, but it will mean leveraging community involvement as a force multiplier. Some of you reading this will be helping out other entrepreneurs younger or less-experienced than you. Some of you already do this. Some of you will be asked to start.

And some of you won’t be in Midtown Atlanta. By figuring out how to decouple our services from our real estate, we’ll be figuring out how to offer access to ATDC in places other than Midtown (and Savannah). We’ll want to see ATDC “circles” in Gwinnett, and Alpharetta, and Athens, and anywhere else in the state where there’s sufficient entrepreneurial activity to justify it. Stay tuned for more information on how this will work. I can tell you right now—we’ll need your help.

Whether you’re a first-time entrepreneur needing someone to talk to, or you’ve already exited three companies and are willing to help the next generation, or somewhere in between… If you’re a Georgia entrepreneur and this sounds interesting, please visit the new ATDC Web site at http://bit.ly/svYw6 and sign up!

Disclaimer

There’s a professional disclaimer on this site, but I should probably repeat it here:

Any material posted on this site or other personal sites reflects my personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the position of Georgia Tech, the University System of Georgia, or the State of Georgia.

But, for those of you who are asking “Why are we doing this?”… you’ve just read my answer.

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(Click for full-size image.)

Those of you at the Atlanta CEO Exchange this evening may have seen the lapel button I was wearing. It generated a lot of attention.

If you’ve been paying attention to the buzz around Atlanta, it’s been almost a year since Jeff Haynie moved west, and left us his farewell message as to “What’s wrong with the Atlanta startup ecosystem and how to fix it.”

If you haven’t been paying attention to the conversation, here’s a quick guide to catching up:

• Jeff Haynie
• Urvaksh Karkaria
• Scott Burkett
• Lance Weatherby
• Sanjay Parekh
• Russell Jurney
• Paul Graham
• Greg Foster
• Fred Wilson

Okay… ever since Hayes Microcomputer went bust, there’s been great wailing and gnashing of teeth about how Atlanta isn’t Silicon Valley. In my previous role as a venture capitalist, as my not-quite previous role running VentureLab, and in my brand-new role as the chief of economic development for Georgia Tech, one of the questions I’m most frequently asked is “How can we make Atlanta the next Silicon Valley?”

Not to put too fine a point on it — but that’s a foolish question. Silicon Valley is a unique aberration… a confluence of people, ideas, cash, and culture that will probably never be duplicated. And it’s futile to try.

But, for most entrepreneurs and most companies, it’s also irrelevant. Build a fabulous product that delights customers while solving a real problem, and geography is irrelevant. To quote Fred Wilson from his post above, “You can build a great startup in any of the dozen to two dozen startup hotbeds around the world. Pick a place you want to live and work and possibly raise a family. And then get busy.”

Atlantans, repeat after me:

• We’re not Silicon Valley.
• We don’t want to be Silicon Valley.
• We don’t need to be Silicon Valley.

If you agree, stop me and ask for a “Not The Valley” lapel button. If anybody wants them, I’ll print stickers, too. And, if you disagree… well, I grew up in Atlanta, and Delta has been my hometown airline for my entire life. For me, they’ll never have a slogan as memorable as this one from the 1960s and 1970s:

Delta is ready when you are.

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For a month or so now, I’ve been enjoying my newest toy. It’s a Wentz electric bike… which is a bicycle with a built-in motor assist.

I need to get more exercise. I know that. And two years ago, I moved to a house about a mile from the office, so it seems logical that I should ride my bicycle. And, sometimes, I did. But I would normally find an excuse not to.

Then I started looking at electric bicycles. They come in all levels and price ranges, including some that will run all day completely without pedalling. That’s not what I needed. I just wanted a little bit of extra “oomph” so that I could get up and down the local hills without too much sweat.

(To the exercise purists: yes, sweat is good. But not when wearing a business suit and headed for a day of meetings, okay? Let’s be practical here.)

I live at the top of a hill with a 6% grade, and I have to coast down it then climb another 6% grade to get across Peachtree Street. (Ever looked at Downtown/Midtown Atlanta from the air? Peachtree runs right along the ridgetop.) So, yes, getting to and from the office is “uphill both ways.”

I asked at my local bicycle shop; they don’t carry electrics, but they knew someone who did. Ken Altshuler runs Electric Bike South, which has the Georgia/Florida distributorship for Wentz electric bikes. And he lives one neighborhood over in Virginia-Highlands. Right now, he’s selling them mail-order and out of his garage.

My wife and I went over for a test drive, and I was immediately hooked.

It’s not like a motorcycle (or even a moped). You still have to pedal, except on dead-level ground (and there’s not much of that in Atlanta). But as soon as you pedal a revolution or two—or twist the throttle grip—the rear-wheel motor kicks in and helps. It’s hard to describe… but it makes that 6% grade feel like a 3% grade. Result: less stress, less strain, less sweat.

And there’s another benefit that I haven’t seen written up anywhere. Something you would never notice in a car, but definitely notice on a bike, is how many of the roads in Atlanta are seriously crowned (bumped up in the middle) to improve drainage to the edges. If you’re stopped for a red light (yes, I stop for red lights on a bike, unlike many of the damfools around me), then you’re pedalling from a dead stop up a slope from zero speed… and, if you forgot to downshift before stopping, you’re in the wrong gear. You wobble. Wobbling is unsafe.

With the e-bike, you just twist the throttle as you step off, and the motor gives you a bit of forward momentum until your pedalling catches up. I think that’s safer than a regular bike.

There are purists who hate electric bikes. Lots of reasons: they’re heavy. They’re complicated. They have fenders. They’re “cheating.”

Yep. All those things are true.

But, to me, results matter. And my Trek commuter bike was gathering cobwebs. I’ve ridden my Wentz e-bike to work every non-rainy day since I bought it.

Commuting

This model of Wentz bike comes with a rear carrier. I wanted a basket. Instead of buying an expensive bicycle basket, I went to Home Depot. $17 for a ClosetMaid wire basket, a dozen cable ties, and voilà! A sturdy rear basket able to carry my twenty-pound oversized briefcase. A couple of bungee cords, and it’s suitable for grocery shopping as well.

Range on the standard lithium battery is more than adequate for errands in Midtown Atlanta. The Web site claims twenty miles between charges; I know that I can make three round trips to the office (six miles) before the five-segment gauge drops to only having four segments lit.

And it’s built like a tank (and nearly as heavy), so potholes and rain grates and other urban hazards aren’t a concern. The style is called “step through,” which means it doesn’t have a top tube as in the traditional diamond-frame bike. To anyone raised in this country in the last fifty years, that means “girl’s bike.” That bothered me for about five minutes, until I realized how much easier it is to mount and dismount. (Especially after I added my monster rear basket! Flinging my right leg over that would probably dislocate my left knee!)

Basically: the diamond-frame you are used to is lighter and more efficient. The step-through design requires a massively heavy front frame piece to keep the whole bike from flexing. This is solved by adding metal. So you need more weight of bicycle to carry the same weight of passenger. I’m not going to go racing, or pedal across the country, so I don’t care. Oh, and while we’re adding metal, there’s a chain guard to keep my pants leg out of the front sprocket. And there’s a sturdy motorcycle-style kickstand that holds the bike vertical, so you’re not leaning it over when parking. Think Gelandewagen, not Ferrari.

It comes with a headlight and taillight (both LED-based) that run off the main battery. If I did a lot of night riding, I’d probably investigate something brighter with a more consistent illumination pattern, but this is fine for what I do. The wiring connections from the factory are lousy: friction-fit connectors that easily jostle loose. But a few minutes with a soldering iron and some heat-shrink tubing fixed that. And all the running gear parts (except the hub motor) are standard enough that your bicycle shop won’t be scared to service it.

Travelling

This is a big, heavy bicycle (63 pounds, including removable battery). I could probably get one onto an SUV roof rack, but it wouldn’t be fun. And two of them would probably exceed your roof’s weight limit, anyhow. The front wheel requires tools to remove, so you can’t do the quick-release thing to stuff it in the back of your car. Basically, if you’re going to take it somewhere else, you need to have a minivan/SUV/pickup big enough to swallow it whole, or a trailer-hitch carrier. (Or you buy the Wentz folding model instead, which fits in the trunk of most cars.)

That being said… we were up in the Nantahala National Forest a couple of weekends ago, and I really wished we had had a way to bring my electric bike!

If you’re interested in trying one out for yourself, email Ken and tell him I sent you. And remember to wear your helmet!

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Sometimes, it makes sense to sit back for a moment and reflect on how much things have changed in four years. For those of you who were part of the Atlanta entrepreneurial community, think back to May of 2005. Pretty different, wasn’t it?

You can see the final version of my “Entrepreneurial Atlanta” chart below. But you don’t get the real impact until you click on the slide and watch the animated version.

Click here to animate the slides!

If you’d just like the PDF, you can download that here.

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