Remember the Georgia Tech strategic plan? You should… it has “innovation” (EI2′s middle name!) all through it. Under Goal 3, “Innovation,” it says “Establish world-class initiatives to serve Georgia Tech, the state, and other strategic national and international partners.” Over a year ago, Steve Cross convened an innovation task force which met for several months; I was the EI2 representative. Several new programs and procedures have emerged from that task force, including GT:IPS and industry.gatech.edu. The most visible is Flashpoint.

Under the leadership of Merrick Furst (Distinguished Professor in the College of Computing), a team drawn from all across campus opened applications last summer, and accepted the first class (or “cohort”) of seventeen teams. Each team was between two and five people; at least one member of each team had to be a strong technologist. Four of the teams were based on GT research licenses, but over half had some sort of relationship to Georgia Tech (current faculty or students on teams, or active alumni, etcetera).

And we recruited nearly 40 mentors, from young entrepreneurs to experienced corporate executives to seasoned venture capitalists.

And some friends in the local venture capital community organized a small investment fund to invest in the Flashpoint teams.

And Georgia Tech rehabbed some empty space for us on the third floor of the 828 West Peachtree building (conveniently across from the Technology Square Starbucks).

And then we got started in mid-August 2011.

The Process

In my November 1 column, I wrote this about Flashpoint:

The last thought I’ll leave you with is that, as the nation’s largest engineering school, we think we’re pioneering a new discipline that Merrick has named: “startup engineering…”

It’s a long way from perfect, but it’s very different than the process of just 10 years ago. It’s an exciting time to be in this business.

That was only halfway through the process, but now that we’ve finished the first cohort, we’ve learned some things. Merrick is now using this as the definition of Startup Engineering:

Unlike for-profit accelerators, Flashpoint is primarily an educational program. The “textbooks” for the educational portion of Flashpoint were:

• The Four Steps to the Epiphany
• The Lean Startup
• Business Model Generation

These books emphasize the importance of understanding your customers, distinguishing facts from opinions, and being able to rapidly iterate your business model based on market feedback. They have led to something of a “Lean Startup” cult in Silicon Valley, but they’re not only applicable to startups — they’re good roadmaps for anyone trying to create something new, including innovators inside large corporations or government agencies (or, dare I say, universities!). Well worth reading. (I suspect that Tim Israel and half the folks in MEP will say “Duh! We’ve been preaching this for years!”)

In the first book above, Steve Blank famously states that “In a startup, no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.” So we’d insist that each team spend a significant portion of each week “outside of the building” talking to potential customers. Every Tuesday, the teams and mentors would assemble for pizza around 6:00 pm, and spend the next four or five hours thrashing through what they had learned from these customers that week, and how that would affect their plans for the next week.

Then, the next Tuesday, they’d do that again. And again.

In between, there were weekly seminars and frequent one-on-one mentoring meetings. Teams spent the first several weeks trying to optimize their business models before concentrating on writing code. And the business-model work continued all the way through the end of the program during the holiday break. From mid-August through mid-December, an extraordinary amount of work got accomplished. Sometimes you’ll hear us say “Flashpoint isn’t an incubator, it’s an accelerator.” Acceleration happened.

The Result

On January 10th, the fifteen surviving teams presented their results to a standing-room-only crowd at the GTRI conference center. They did it again at Union Square Ventures in New York on January 18th. And they finished up to a crowd of over 100 Silicon Valley angels and VCs on January 26th, hosted by Andreesen Horowitz in Menlo Park. You can read some of the press coverage here. The short answer is: it worked! At least three of the teams already have term sheets, several more are in detailed negotiation with investors, and every single team attracted at least one follow-up meeting in each of the three cities.

I like to highlight the story of Pindrop Security (one of the ones with a term sheet) as an example of how “it takes a village” to create a university spinout. Pindrop:

• started with a professor in one of GT’s research centers, and
• a graduate student in the College of Computing.
• Once it appeared they would be creating intellectual property would be worth protecting, they worked with GTRC to secure patent coverage.
• They received an NSF grant with the help of our SBIR Assistance Center, then
• received Georgia Research Alliance funding
• managed through our VentureLab program.
• They licensed their GT intellectual property through GTRC.
• They won the TAG Business Launch Competition, which brought them additional funding and heightened visibility from
• the local entrepreneurial community. Paul Judge joined as chairman.
• They joined ATDC and moved into the Centergy building, then
• were selected for the first Flashpoint cohort
• and began talking to major corporate clients.
• At the end of Flashpoint, they attracted investment from local angels and
• from a highly-respected Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

Some of you will remember that, when I interviewed for this job three years ago, I presented a slide based on Jan Youtie’s work explaining how universities are becoming “knowledge hubs,” and my vision that EI2 would be the focus of that hub for Georgia Tech.

Mission accomplished. Now let’s do it again. And again.

What’s Next?

Merrick and the team are taking a deep breath to analyze what we learned in the first cohort. Applications for the second cohort will be accepted in February at the Flashpoint web site, and the teams will assemble on campus in early June for another four-month sprint. The Flashpoint curriculum should be applicable to startups in any field, not just software. We’re actively trying to expand the focus, and would appreciate any suggestions — or nominations for the expanded mentor field.

And, for our next cohort, we are planning to add to the mix by including a small number of teams sponsored by corporations that are looking to use Flashpoint as a new way to manage disruptive innovations. If one of your clients is a corporation trying to figure out how to disrupt their existing business model (before their competition does it to them!), let me know. Flashpoint should have something new and valuable to offer. We suspect that Georgia Tech will eventually offer continuing education in “startup engineering” to companies of all sizes.

(Incidentally, Flashpoint costs money to operate. Our first premier sponsor was SAIC, and we just added United Technologies Corporation at that level, along with some lower-level sponsors listed on the Flashpoint site. We also have many corporate supporters. Let me or Christina know if you have a client who might want to be involved.)

And, internally, we’re applying the Flashpoint lessons to our EI2 startup services. Flashpoint isn’t going to replace ATDC or VentureLab. But the “lean startup” concepts and our new field of “startup engineering” will start to be used as foundations for many of the services that Nina Sawczuk’s team offers.

Launching Flashpoint was chaotic, stressful, exhausting, and occasionally contentious… just like a startup! We’ve learned a lot, and we’ve established Georgia Tech as a national player in this new field of building lean startups on a firm academic foundation. I’m proud of all the EI2 people who played a part, and look forward to getting more of you involved in the future.

As always, keep up the good work.

Stephen

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The impetus for the bill came from a coalition of Georgia angels and venture capital investors, who examined similar programs in other states (notably InvestSC and TNinvestco). You can read the complete text of the Georgia bill as drafted here. I’ve plowed through the seventeen pages of legalese to you don’t have to. Here’s what you need to know.

Invest Georgia Program

HB 718 creates the Invest Georgia program to invest in seed, early, and growth stage companies in order to create Georgia jobs, create wealth within Georgia, commercialize R&D at Georgia’s universities, and promote the economic development of Georgia. (The name in the bill is the Georgia Capital Acceleration program, but that will change.)

A new Invest Georgia Authority (IGA) will consist of five members: three appointed by the Governor, one by the Lieutenant Governor, and one by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Each member must have experience as a venture investor, fund-of-funds manager, or as an entrepreneur. Members serve without compensation and cannot be affiliated in any way with a fund receiving investments.

The Money

The state of Georgia will sell up to $200 million insurance premium tax credits, with the proceeds going to the new Invest Georgia Fund (IGF). This is a mechanism that has been proven in other states; credits against future premium taxes usually sell for about 85¢ on the dollar, which would nominally deliver $170 million in cash to the IGF (in equal thirds over three years, starting in June 2013). The proceeds will be invested in Georgia-based funds who are investing in Georgia-based businesses.

Administration

Through a transparent open-bid process, IGA will appoint a third-party “program administrator” that will evaluate and select Georgia-based venture capital funds. There are many respected third-parties who specialize in such assistance for other states and other institutional investors. Some of the more well known are Hamilton Lane, LP Advisors, Cambridge Associates, and many others.

Once appointed, the program administrator will conduct a separate transparent open-bid process for funds seeking investment of IGF monies, starting in September 2012. Applicant funds must have a history of investing in Georgia and/or commit to a permanent presence or affiliation in Georgia.

The Recipient Funds

The program administrator will recommend investments in funds that meet the state’s criteria and which cover a broad range of sectors that traditionally are good targets for venture capital and are important to Georgia’s economy, including technology, health care, life sciences, agribusiness, logistics, energy, and advanced manufacturing. (Retail, real estate, venue-based entertainment, financial services, mining, and professional services are specifically excluded.) Final fund selections — but not individual company investments — are approved by the IGA board.

IGF investments into the funds will be made over three years, coinciding with the sale of the tax credits. The allocation will be balanced between:

• 30% into early-stage venture capital funds, including first-time funds. IGF can account for up to 90% of the capital in such a fund, with the remainder coming from the principals and other investors. “Seed” or “early-stage” companies must have fewer than 20 employees and revenues of less than $1 million. Early-stage allocations will be between $10 million and $15 million per fund.
• 70% into growth-stage venture capital funds, where IGF can account for up of 50% of the capital in such a fund. “Growth-stage” companies must have fewer than 100 employees, but revenues of greater than $1 million. Growth-stage allocations will be at least $10 million per fund, with the cap to be determined by the IGA.

Any company receiving investment from IGF monies must be located in Georgia; if it leaves Georgia within three years, the investment must be returned.

Recipient funds will collect an industry-standard management fee and other fees (primarily legal and accounting, but specifically not to include lobbying or governmental relations).

Financial Soundness and Transparency

Investments in companies that are successfully acquired (M&A) or go public (IPO) will return capital to the IGF until it recovers 100% of its committed capital. Afterwards, the IGF and any fund returning capital will split returns: 80% to the state, 20% to the fund. This is a standard venture capital limited partnership arrangement.

Every year, each recipient fund will file a report with the Governor and legislative leaders detailing company names, amounts, and performance of qualified investments; number of Georgia employees and their average wages; and other information required by IGA to determine the fund’s contribution to the economic development of Georgia. This report will be published on a publicly-available website (after removing any proprietary or company-confidential information).

Note that this is not a CAPCO (Certified Capital Company) program such as those adopted (and regretted) by many states. You can read more about CAPCOs in the AJC here, and here, and here, and here.

My standard disclaimer applies. Also note that I am not a lawyer and I don’t play one on television. Any errors in representation above are my fault, and you should read the entire bill before making any decisions as to whether you support it. And, of course, bills in the Georgia Legislature sometimes change substantially between first reading and final passage, even if the bill number stays the same!

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There’s amazing footage of storms off Cape Horn, as well as less stressful footage of daily life on board one of the last commercial sailing ships: no engines, no electricity, no hydraulics, no GPS, no radio (except, probably, a short range Morse-code rig). Oil lamps and a hand-cranked foghorn. Over an acre of sails were controlled by a crew of dozens of young men swarming up and down her four masts, up to 170 feet above the sea. Four hours on, four hours off, for a hundred days. Lousy food and worse sanitation.

All this within living memory. Of course, my first reaction was admiration for the strength and endurance of the crew. But then I began to think about all the skills required by the underlying technology base that permitted three dozen men to transport three tons of cargo around the world using wind, muscle power, and ingenuity. How almost every item and every task on board would have been instantly familiar to Lord Nelson after Trafalgar in 1805.

And about how all of those skills have been lost within one human lifetime.

I’m exaggerating. I suppose the skills aren’t really “lost.” There are plenty of books, and journals, and even courses on the Age of Sail. But these are intellectual curiosities. We no longer have an industrial base whereby thousands of sailors, and tens of thousands of at-shore workers, rely on commercial sailing ships. So, of course, as far as the job market is concerned, the skills have been lost.

It’s true in every field. No one other than historical re-enactors knows how to make a buggy whip. Or a suit of armor. Or a flint knife. Heck, just ask any office worker of a certain age for a sheet of carbon paper! (My mom typed the board minutes of the Trust Company of Georgia, now SunTrust, every month. Twelve copies, eleven sheets of carbon paper. As you can imagine, she learned to type very accurately without touching the backspace key!)

Those aren’t commercially-useful skills anymore. So we don’t learn them, and we don’t teach them.

What do we teach? Look at the last resume that crossed your desk. It probably has a line saying something like “Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.” You can get a degree from Harvard with your sole “quantitative reasoning” class being “Practical Math,” which appears to be a review of basic arithmetic plus tips for using Microsoft Excel.

Does anyone really believe that Microsoft Excel will be a core skill set in forty years? Twenty years? It’d be like telling the first mate on a modern merchant marine ship that you know how to repair a canvas sail by hand.

But, like sailing a barque around Cape Horn by hand, what have we lost? I used to know how to do basic car maintenance. Changed my own oil. Changed fan belts. Changed plugs, points, and condensers. This isn’t special; probably every American male born in the Fifties and early Sixties learned the same. Now, I open the hood of a modern automobile and am baffled by the complexity. So I take it to the dealer, who has $15,000 worth of computer equipment to diagnose its ills. We’re probably not far from the day when, like your iPhone, your car requires special tools just to open the hood.

I’m pretty much the opposite of a Luddite. I think that, in general, new technology makes our lives better… and that when technology has unpleasant consequences (like pollution), the answer is usually more technology, not less. But watching this video, my mind filled in a Jimmy Buffett soundtrack… “Watched the men who rode you switch from sails to steam.” And I wonder if we’ve lost something worth keeping?

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Car and Driver is the latest enthusiast rag to hop onto the hydrogen bandwagon with their article “What the H?” in this month’s issue. I wrote this letter to the editor but, since I doubt it will be printed, I’m reproducing it here.

Editors,

I’m sorry to see that you’ve bought into the hydrogen hype (“What the H”, Jan 2012). Hydrogen fuel cells make for nice demonstration projects, but will never be a meaningful part of the national transportation infrastructure.

Why? First, there are no hydrogen wells. You have to create it, whether from water electrolysis, biomass gasification, or natural gas reformation. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, that’s always going to take significantly more energy than you get out of burning it in a fuel cell. In this sense, hydrogen is just a bulky, expensive, and occasionally-dangerous battery.

Second, hydrogen is incredibly hard to work with. It can’t be transported or stored easily. Standard tools, fittings, tanks, and materials become brittle or leaky. Yes, aerospace companies have solved these problems for rocket engines, but not with parts you can buy at Pep Boys.

Finally, hydrogen is the opposite of dense. Whether as a liquid or a pressurized gas, a hydrogen tank contains only a fraction of the potential energy represented by an equal-size tank filled with liquid hydrocarbons. That’s a fundamental physical limit, and can’t be improved by smart engineering.

If you want to burn hydrogen in your car, the best way is to attach your hydrogen atoms to carbon atoms… and make gasoline.

Thanks for the otherwise-great issue!

Stephen

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I prepared the following document as my testimony to the State Science and Technology Strategic Plan Joint Study Commission, meeting in Columbus on 30 November 2011. It’s going to be available on their website, but I decided to replicate it here.

Supporting Technology Entrepreneurs in Georgia

Stephen Fleming
Vice President, Enterprise Innovation Institute
Georgia Institute of Technology

http://innovate.gatech.edu

I.               Background/Company Overview

The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the nation’s top research universities, distinguished by its commitment to improving the human condition through advanced science and technology. Georgia Tech’s campus occupies 400 acres in the heart of Atlanta, where 20,000 undergraduate and graduate students receive a focused, technologically based education. Georgia Tech is consistently ranked in U.S. News & World Report’s top ten public universities in the United States and has been ranked as #4 among all engineering schools (public and private) for the last six years.

The Enterprise Innovation Institute is Georgia Tech’s primary business outreach organization, and provides a comprehensive program of assistance to business, industry, entrepreneurs, and economic developers. Our goal is to help enterprises of all kinds apply science, technology, and innovation to improve their bottom lines. Specifically for entrepreneurs, our programs include:

• ATDC: The Advanced Technology Development Center is the oldest, largest, and most successful university-based business incubator in the country. Since 1980, ATDC has helped hundreds of Georgia entrepreneurs create great technology companies, and currently has over 500 member companies. Recently, it was honored as one of the ten best incubators in the world by Forbes magazine.
• VentureLab: In cooperation with the Georgia Research Alliance, Georgia Tech’s VentureLab helps launch over a dozen startup companies a year based on Georgia Tech research.
• Flashpoint: An innovative new entrepreneurial accelerator, combining shared learning, mentorship, and cutting-edge approaches to business model generation and startup creation.
• GCMI: The Global Center for Medical Innovation helps physicians and other medical professionals commercialize their inventions with a process based on the successful VentureLab model and a dedicated medical device prototyping facility.

The Enterprise Innovation Institute manages the Georgia Seed Capital Fund, which leverages private-sector investments into technology startups. This fund has not received any state appropriations in several years. EI2 also houses the Georgia SBIR Assistance Program, which has been drastically downsized due to the economic recession and the resulting reductions in the Board of Regents “B” budget in recent years.

II.              Please address the following points:

a.   What policies are currently in place that are barriers to your company/organization’s success?

The prohibition against investing state pension assets into venture capital firms has had a negative impact on local venture funds’ ability to raise capital. Although relaxing this prohibition will not have an immediate “silver bullet” effect, it should be done both for fiduciary and for economic development reasons.

b.   What policies have aided in your company/organization’s success?

The state’s annual appropriation to the Enterprise Innovation Institute (through the Board of Regents “B” budget) is the basis for all of our entrepreneurial assistance programs as well as our other business-support services in 25 locations throughout the state. Due to the economic recession and the resulting reductions in the “B” budget, our appropriations have been cut approximately 30% over the last four years. We have maintained our focus and continue to be recognized as one of the best entrepreneurial programs in the country and as the hub of much of the technology entrepreneurship in Georgia. As tax revenues recover, it’s important to bring the “B” budget back in line with previous funding levels.

In addition, the state’s support of the Georgia Research Alliance has brought dozens of superb scholars to our state, and many of them have launched entrepreneurial startups. Georgia Tech averages over a dozen spinout companies per year; most of these have benefited greatly from the GRA commercialization grant program.

Finally, the recent angel tax credit appears to be stimulating private-sector investment by individuals into Georgia technology startups. This should be monitored and, if justified, extended in future years.

c.   Where do you want to see your company/organization in ten years?

Currently, American business leaders think of Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, and Austin as the centers of technology entrepreneurship in this country. In ten years, I want Atlanta to be on that list.

d.   How can the state of Georgia help your company/organization realize this goal?

Please see policy recommendations below.

III.         Please include a short bio and your company/organization’s background.

Stephen Fleming has over 15 years of private equity experience at the General Partner level. Prior to his venture capital career, he spent 15 years in operations roles at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Nortel Networks, and LICOM (a venture-funded startup).

An Atlanta native and summa cum laude graduate of Georgia Tech, Stephen returned to his alma mater in mid-2005 as Chief Commercialization Officer. In 2009, he was promoted to Vice President, Economic Development and Technology Ventures, and Executive Director of the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech.

In addition to his roles at Georgia Tech, he is also a member of the Investment Committee of the Seraph Group, an early-stage venture capital firm. Stephen is active in the “alternative space” industry; he is an investor in three private aerospace companies and is a founding member of the Space Angels Network. Mr. Fleming also serves on the boards of the Technology Association of Georgia, the Spiritual Living Center of Atlanta, and Tech High School, a charter high school emphasizing science, math, and technology in urban Atlanta.

Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2) helps enterprises of all kinds improve their competitiveness through the application of science, technology, and innovation. During fiscal year 2010, the Enterprise Innovation Institute:

• Helped Georgia manufacturing companies reduce operating costs by $35 million, increase sales by $243 million, and create or save 1,350 jobs. EI2 served 710 manufacturers during the year.
• Evaluated 125 Georgia Tech research innovations and formed 16 new companies based on this intellectual property. Startups based on Georgia Tech innovations attracted $60.5 million in investment.
• Worked with 235 companies interested in collaborations with Georgia Tech, including 17 projects involving state economic development agencies. Projects resulting from those interactions generated 3,693 new jobs and produced $547 million in capital investment.
• Helped Georgia companies win $560 million in government contracts, creating an estimated 11,505 jobs.
• Assisted 71 minority entrepreneurs, who received $31.5 million worth of new contracts, sales increases, and financing.
• Served more than 250 technology startup companies that together generated capital activity (venture capital investment and mergers/acquisitions) of more than $157 million. Companies affiliated with the ATDC program reported revenues totaling more than $1 billion and nearly 3,500 jobs.
• Helped Georgia companies prepare 58 applications for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants. Companies assisted won nearly $7 million in awards.

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There are few things you need to understand. One is the effect on pensioners.

The otherwise-excellent article “Venture capital a top priority” in last Sunday’s AJC (sorry, no web version) perpetuates a common mistake. People immediately focus on the “risky” nature of venture capital and what effect it might have on pension payments. For a classic example, see Russell Grantham’s entire article from the AJC three weeks ago.

State pension plans are an obligation of the state government. State employees pay in with payroll contributions during their working career, and are guaranteed a certain set of pension benefits upon their retirement. Those benefits are independent of how the contributions are invested. [Note that all of this discussion applies to "guaranteed benefit" plans such as the Employees Retirement System (ERS) and Teachers Retirement System (TRS); some state employees, such as me, have a different pension plan that looks much more like a "guaranteed contribution" 401(k).]

Whether the state chooses to invest those contributions in Treasury bills, or venture capital, or Florida swampland, or a portfolio of Van Goghs, the retirees are guaranteed the same pension benefits. The decision to invest or not invest in a particular asset class is a fiduciary decision to be made by the fund managers — and, in 49 out of 50 states, they’ve chosen to invest a portion into venture capital. However, a decision to invest, or the success or failure of those investments, will have no impact on the individual pensioners. Those pensions are guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the state of Georgia, and you can, literally, take that to the bank.

Given that a properly-managed alternative asset allocation can significantly boost the long-term rate of return for a portfolio, it’s a fiduciarily-reasonable thing for the managers to consider, if the state law changes.

Now, what it doesn’t do is guarantee that any of those dollars will be invested in Georgia startups and have an economic development impact on the state. That’s a different kettle of fish, which I’ll address in a future post.

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They’re pitching their tent right behind the Centergy building at Technology Square, and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to play with a little timelapse photography. I set my Canon A710is on a tripod in a north-facing window. By installing CHDK, I was able to set an intervalometer to take one frame every ten minutes. Twelve days later, this is the result. Enjoy!

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Today, I was fortunate enough to enjoy lunch with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, his wife, and their son. (Yes, this is the author of “The Black Swan” among many other accomplishments.) It was an utterly indescribable experience. The best I can do is:

Conversing with Nassim is like conversing with a swarm of butterflies. A swarm of glittering, hyper-intelligent cyborg butterflies. Who aren’t quite sure whether to take over the Earth or migrate to another star system.

In a ninety minute lunch, here is a (possibly incomplete) alphabetical list of the topics we discussed:

• Aerobic exercise
• Angel investing
• Apple laptop design
• Aramaic mistranslations in the Bible
• Asian Silk Road
• Asset allocation
• Battery chemistry
• Best airlines to Abu Dhabi
• Carbohydrate consumption
• Early (1st-6th century) Christianity
• Electric cars
• Elon Musk and SpaceX
• Groupon IPO
• History of jet engines
• Islamic fundamentalism and Lebanese society
• Islamic tolerance/intolerance of alcohol
• Litigation and litigators
• Lost Legion of Rome
• Misunderstood links between science and technology
• NASA politics
• Neurological damage and recovery
• Option pricing
• Poetry of Omar Khayyam
• Risk clipping
• Rocket design
• Teaching birds how to fly
• Undersea treasure hunting
• Wernher von Braun

Taleb has an amazing habit of saying a sentence or two that should rightfully be the subject of an entire conversation (or university lecture)… then, before the surrounding humans have absorbed that thought, leaping to a completely different topic and doing it again. And again.

I like to characterize myself as “a mile wide and an inch deep”… I know a little bit about a lot of different things. This is a man who is a mile wide and a mile deep. I’m going to go re-read his books. Slowly.

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As I discovered to my regret, glaucoma can lead to permanent loss of vision, so it’s important to keep elevated intraocular pressure under control. Cosopt is one of the more powerful anti-glaucoma eyedrops. Unfortunately, it’s mildly acidic. It hurts. Imagine putting a drop of vinegar or lemon juice in your eye. Twice a day. Ouch.

Compliance is a problem.

In other words, people find excuses to skip their eyedrops because they hurt. I’ve been taking Cosopt (and a variety of other eyedrops) for nearly two years now. The morning dose doesn’t hurt so badly, but the evening dose has been really painful. And, weirdly, it’s worse when I’m the most tired. I didn’t understand why; I just gritted my teeth and put up with it. (With, I’m sorry to say, a daily dose of pretty loud obscenities.)

I had discussed the pain with my glaucoma doctor during my regular visits, and the advice was pretty much “Yep, that’s how it works; put up with it.” This week, however, I mentioned how it was worse when I was tired. He matter-of-factly replied “That’s because your eyes are dry.”

And that was, apparently, that. So I followed up with “What if I took lubricant drops before taking the Cosopt?” “Yes, that should help; just wait five minutes before the Cosopt.”

I use non-prescription Systane (preservative-free lubricating drops) when necessary during the day. For the last couple of days, I’ve been using them a few minutes before the Cosopt, and the difference is amazing. The Cosopt still hurts, but 90% less than before. Imagine a drop of seawater, not a drop of vinegar.

I’m posting this with a bit of search-engine optimization in the hope that someone searching for “cosopt pain” will find it, but feel free to forward to anyone you know with glaucoma. I wish I’d known this trick months ago!

(And it’s an interesting commentary on American medicine that my doctor — who I like and respect — didn’t volunteer this suggestion, but had to be dragged into agreeing with it.)

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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/

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