Thomas Schieffer has been hired by Commissioner Bud Selig to run the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Schieffer served as former Texas Rangers president.

Driving and using a phone.

Don’t try to hide the phone, because the police are on to most of the

Texting and driving fines are ready to go up

Right now $20 for first offense for the fine

More than $300 for first offense

More than $500 for second offense

adds a point to driving record

Dog Fighting App

Is it real? or evil? Does it really teach people about the ugly side of dog fighting?

Investment Opportunities in the Digital Age | May 3, 2011 | Los Angeles, California USA Dear Victor: 

Join Thunderbird School of Global Management on May 3, 2011 for our first-ever Private Equity Forum in Los Angeles, California: Investment Opportunities in Digital Media.

MODERATOR:
Lori Murphree, Chair – Los Angeles, Thunderbird Private Equity Center

PANELISTS:
Stephen Hughes, Senior Relationship Manager, Silicon Valley Bank
Stephen Royer, President and CEO, Shamrock Capital
Richard Yen, Director of Private Equity and Head of Digital Media, Saban Capital Group

The panel of leading industry experts will discuss:

• How the economic crisis has affected digital media investments
• What are the hottest areas in digital investment and which promise the greatest returns? Mobile? Advertising? Entertainment? Data Analytics?
• Facebook and Twitter valuations: Is there a bubble in the making?
• What do investors look for when considering an investment in the space?

 

Renewable Energy & the Smarter Grid: Opportunities for the Entrepreneur

Renewable Energy & the Smarter Grid: Opportunities for the Entrepreneur

Saturday, May 7, 2011 at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California Registration and Continental Breakfast: 8:00 a.m. Baxter Lecture Hall Program: 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at Baxter Lecture Hall Networking: 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at Baxter Lecture Hall

Event Preview

The creation of a smarter and greener grid is driven by the opportunity to create significant efficiencies while balancing a new urgency to integrate and accommodate new sources of renewable generation.

As aggressive policies and vigorous investments take hold, newer and smarter technology is rolling out. In California, newly elected Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring state utilities to generate 33 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020. In 2010, investors poured $3.7 billion into cleantech, an increase of 76% over the previous year. Federal stimulus money is playing a major role both nationally and regionally, funding major smart grid efforts in our own backyard. Given all this activity, what are the remaining challenges and opportunities? Why can’t we just add an endless amount of distributed renewable generation onto the grid? Why are the costs so high? Why is the intermittency of renewable generation such a problem and what are the potential solutions?

As utilities roll out new meters and smarter equipment on the grid, there are hundreds of companies looking to integrate exciting new technologies and platforms that promise monetary and environmental savings for both consumers and utilities. We will examine opportunities and strategies being pursued by early stage start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, and discuss remaining gaps and challenges to achieve the full vision of the smarter grid.

Keynote Speaker

Jim Kelly
Senior Vice President, Transmission and Distribution
Southern California Edison Co.
www.sce.com

Venture Capital Outlook on Cleantech

Randy Churchill
Director, Emerging Company Services
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
www.socaltech.com/pwc

For over 25 years, Randy Churchill has served the entrepreneurial community in a variety of roles, including stints as a commercial lender, securities lawyer, financial printer, Internet entrepreneur and, for the past 10 years, Director of Emerging Company Services for PwC’s Southern California Technology practice. In addition to identifying promising venture-backed companies as potential clients, during his tenure with PwC, Randy consistently has worked to connect investors, entrepreneurs and others to promote investment and innovation within the Southern California technology ecosystem. Randy also manages and presents PwC’s Southern California MoneyTree? Report, a quarterly survey of venture capital investment across the nation.

Randy was named Technology Leader of the Year in 2009 by Los Angeles County’s TechWeek, and he currently sits on the advisory boards of several organizations, including: the Los Angeles Venture Association, Caltech MIT Enterprise Forum (past chair), Los Angeles Business Technology Center, USC’s Center for Technology Commercialization, SoCal Tech Group, and the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation’s Green Task Force. Additionally, Randy is an inactive member of the State Bar of California.

Randy received his B.B.A., cum laude, from Western Michigan University, and his J.D., magna cum laude, from Indiana University School of Law.

Panelists

Joseph Perry
Chief Executive Officer
FlexEnergy
www.flexenergy.com

Joseph Perry joined FlexEnergy as its Chief Executive Officer in April 2009. Joe brings to the company over 25 years experience founding, managing and successfully growing early stage ventures. He has a particular focus on nurturing companies with innovative technologies. Most recently, Joe was a founder of ATECC, a firm developing a modular vehicle structure for electric automobiles. Prior to that, he served as a principal for new business venture investments at Paperboy Ventures in Washington, DC. In this capacity, he served as President for: Applied Linguistics, a natural language internet search engine company; Green Earth, a leader in the sustainable biomarine ingredients industry, based in Oslo, Norway; and WaveCrest Laboratories, which developed a family of innovative propulsion systems for the electric transportation industry. Joe holds a BS degree in Physics from Duquesne University.

Neel Master
Vice President, Strategic Development
Petra Solar
www.petrasolar.com

Prior to Petra Solar, Neel Master founded a gasification company based on breakthrough plasma technology. He recruited a world class team with executives responsible for $1B product lines, and an advisory board consisting of senior executives at leading energy and chemical companies. He secured a contract with a major U.S utility and licensed IP from a leading research institution. Previously he was a venture capitalist for 8 years most recently with TL Ventures. He led and worked closely with successful investments in semiconductor and software companies. He co-founded Holochip, a company that designs and manufactures affordable, durable and high quality adaptive lenses for consumer, military and scientific applications. He was on the original management team for Xavient an enterprise software company. Neel spent 5 years as a researcher in the Lab for Computer Science at M.I.T where he worked on a large scale computer vision and machine learning project which led to several peer reviewed publications. He was a research intern at Microsoft Research. He is the author of several patents pending in energy efficiency and generation.

Shahin Farshchi
Senior Associate, Advanced Technology
Lux Capital
www.luxcapital.com

Shahin is a senior associate with Lux Capital, focusing on investments in semiconductor, wireless, and alternative energy technologies. Before joining Lux, Shahin held technical positions at General Motors and several Silicon Valley technology startups. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering Computer Science with College of Engineering Honors from the University of California at Berkeley, and M.S. and Ph.D . degrees in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Management from the University of California at Los Angeles. Shahin has also served as a postdoctoral scholar at the UCLA department of Electrical Engineering. His graduate research on wireless biosignal telemetry has been published in over 10 IEEE conference proceedings and 3 IEEE journals. He sourced Lux’s investment in Silicon Clocks (acquired by NASDAQ:SLAB) and played key roles in Lux’s investment in Everspin and Luxtera. He works closely in supporting all of Lux’s energy and semiconductor companies.

Shahin has been an invited speaker/panelist at a variety of Universities and organizations including the IEEE, UC Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, UCI, the California Cleantech Initiative, Entretec, and the MIT Club of Silicon Valley. He also serves as an advisor to the Clean Energy for Green Industry fellowship program at UCLA.

Aaron Fyke
Founder and President
Energy Cache Inc.

Aaron Fyke has spent seventeen years building successful clean technology companies across a number of technology areas including fuel cell, ocean power, concentrating solar power, advanced automotive engines, and energy storage technologies.

He is currently the founder and President of Energy Cache, developing low cost grid-scale energy storage, serving a multi-billion dollar energy market. Previously he lead the development of an X PRIZE in Energy for the X PRIZE Foundation and was a Partner at Starfish Ventures, Australia’s largest venture capital firm. He has held key positions at other high-growth energy companies, including Soliant Energy, AeroVironment, and Ballard Power Systems.

Aaron earned his MBA and MS in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his BEng in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Victoria. He has achieved certification as a Professional Engineer in Mechanical Engineering both in California and British Columbia.

Moderator

Andre M. Ramirez
Regulatory Policy & Affairs
Southern California Edison Co.
www.sce.com

Andre Ramirez is currently a Project Manager of Regulatory Policy & Affairs at Southern California Edison where he focuses on policy and rate-making efforts. Andre started at SCE as Strategy & Planning rotational analyst with experience in operations, regulatory and business strategies in the areas of electric vehicles, energy storage, R&D and rate design. Prior to joining SCE, Andre led or consulted on several projects on the supply and demand side of the energy space including work on new product and business model development, market entry strategies for new technology, and energy efficiency program development.

Andre earned a MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management and bachelor degrees in Economics and Political Science from UC Irvine. He actively serves on the Board of Directors of the San Gabriel Valley Boy Scouts and is a co-Chair of the MIT Sloan Club of southern California. He can be followed @AndreMRamirez.

Producers

Andre M. Ramirez
Regulatory Policy & Affairs
Southern California Edison Co.
www.sce.com

Stephanie C. Yanchinski
SCY & Associates+

Stephanie C. Yanchinski currently administers the Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum, a unique program in Los Angeles which is celebrating 25 years of assisting entrepreneurs to start their new ventures. She was formerly the founding Executive Director of Entretech, a highly respected non-profit assisting the growth of technology companies in Southern California. Over her eight year involvement with Entretech the organization grew from a founding Board of six people to a membership base of close to 250 organizations. Entretech helped companies raise over $1.5 million in financing. She launched a novel Strategic Partnering Program, matching entrepreneurial ventures with Big Corp participants, which was broadly applied to aerospace, biotechnology, energy and the new materials industries.

Stephanie Yanchinski currently works with cities in their strategic planning for growing tech clusters and completed a major study on behalf of Caltech and the City of Pasadena. She advises and implements strategies to assist large corporations wishing to partner with technology ventures. She is affiliated with Adaptive Business Leaders (ABL), California’s premier Health and Technology Executive Membership Organization, where she facilitates mentoring programs for executives.

An award-winning writer and marketing and communications specialist, Ms. Yanchinski successfully built and managed a business consulting company serving a diverse clientele in the high tech arena. She takes particular pride in the many start-up ventures that used her services to attract finance and partners. Here, her intuitive sense of how business works added value and credibility. First established in London UK, she operated successfully in Europe, Singapore and Toronto. In Toronto, she drove the foundation stages of a $20 million medical science incubator, located in the downtown core and ran a $1.5 million CEO mentoring and training program. She was an early founder, and leading Board member of Canada’s largest and most successful biotechnology industry association.

A graduate of McGill University in Canada, Stephanie C. Yanchinski trained as a scientist and pursued medical research in hormone metabolism in Canada and the UK, where she earned a second degree before turning to a career in science journalism. She worked for the leading British science publication New Scientist as Biosciences Editor, where she won Britain’s foremost prize for science reporting. As European Bureau Chief for McGraw Hill’s newsletter Biotechnology Newswatch, and through her writings for Business Week, the Financial Times newspaper, The Times and Guardian newspapers, and European investment newsletters, she tracked the emergence of the biotechnology industry in Europe. She authored Setting Genes to Work, (Penguin Press) and The Biotechnology Revolution, (Lutterworth), two books on the early development of the biotechnology industry.

Rogelio Nochebuena
President
Nochebuena R&D

Rogelio is President of Nochebuena R&D, a small consulting organization based in Pasadena, CA. His primary industry focus is breakthrough technologies and devices. He is also a Sr. Consultant for MindForce Consulting an international network of consultants that specialize in conducting Technology Assessment and Commercialization of Intellectual Property for companies that range from global telecommunication providers to national laboratories.

Mr. Nochebuena’s areas of expertise include semiconductors design and processing, flexible and lean manufacturing, business strategy, marketing, new product development, and managing R&D.

He is a proven business strategist having assisted companies to expand operations, create additional sources of revenue; and has also worked on divestitures and evaluated M&A deals. He has strong expertise in increasing market share and improving the new product development process, an area where he has demonstrated a consistent ability to introduce novel technologies and design new products and services.

Mr. Nochebuena has more than 20 years of experience in high technology; he has worked in Fortune 100 as well as start-ups, including Agilent Technologies, Xerox Corp, Perkin-Elmer, Carl Zeiss, etc. Having the correct mixture of physical and biological sciences, and has been involved in the development of a variety of projects; serving in senior technical and marketing positions.

While working at world famous Xerox PARC, Rogelio was tutored in Nanotechnology by Prof. Cal Quate the co-inventor of the Atomic Force Microscope, since then he has been involved in a variety of projects that include super capacitors using Nanolaminates, organic nanotubes, and avant-garde Photovoltaics (CIG/CIGS, CdTe and solar concentrators). He holds several patents in lasers and quantum electronics. He also wrote a newsletter with global reach for JETRO on the effect that Nanotechnology has on Biotech, Energy, etc. and a new series on Technology Innovation.

Rogelio is an Executive Coach for Japanese companies that want to enter the US Market where he assists them to write Business Plans, create and execute their Strategy and prepares them to raise capital from Angel and VC’s. He frequently conducts technology assessment and due diligence projects for the Angel Community in: medical devices, advanced materials and photovoltaics and energy storage technologies.

Mr. Nochebuena got his BSEE from National Polytechnic Institute and a Master’s in Electrical Engineering from Brigham Young University; he holds a MBA from Pepperdine University.

He has spoken in a number of panels in local and international seminars and conferences; he is member of the Executive Committee for the Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum and held the position of Chapter Vice-Chair for the IEEE Laser and Electro-Optics Society Los Angeles Chapter. He is an Adjunct Professor of Business Strategy at Pepperdine University.

Michael M. Krieger
Ph.D., J.D., UCLA Computer Science
Willenken Wilson Loh & Lieb
www.willenken.com

Michael Krieger has practiced high technology business and intellectual property law for more than 20 years. A member of the Los Angeles firm Willenken Wilson Loh & Lieb, his practice focuses on strategic counseling, litigation and preventive methods to both secure and exploit clients’ patents and other key IP assets. With degrees in mathematics (B.S., Caltech; Ph.D., UCLA) and law (UCLA), he was on the MIT Mathematics and UCLA Computer Science faculties and also a Fulbright Scholar prior to practicing law. This technical background led to early involvement with encryption, domain name/trademark, and open source issues as well as IP litigation for content providers and patent holders. His clients have ranged from start-ups to industry leaders, as well as counseling for the tech transfer arena and the United Nations as well as other international technology initiatives. He also serves as an expert in technology litigation.

Date

Saturday morning, May 7, 2011

Registration and Continental Breakfast:
8:00 a.m. Baxter Lecture Hall
Program:
9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at Baxter Lecture Hall
Networking:
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at Baxter Lecture Hall

Location

Baxter Lecture Hall
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA

Directions/Maps: Directions to the Forum

Cost

$40 on-line registration fee. $50 at-the-door. $10 for students with full-time student ID (must show at door).

Registrations are taken on-line until 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 5, 2011. There are no refunds for no-shows.

Pasadena Police Department

Taking Back Unwanted Prescription Drugs on April 30th

Pasadena, CA – On April 30, 2011 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. the Pasadena Police Department and

the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will give the public another opportunity to prevent pill abuse and theft by ridding their homes of potentially dangerous expired, unused, and unwanted prescription drugs. Bring your medications for disposal to the front of the Pasadena Police Department building at 207 N. Garfield Avenue. No intravenous solutions, liquids, injectables or needles will be accepted as part of the Take-Back program. The service is free and anonymous, no questions asked.

Last September, Americans turned in 242,000 pounds—121 tons—of prescription drugs at nearly 4,100 sites operated by the DEA and more than 3,000 state and local law enforcement partners, including the Pasadena Police Department.

This initiative addresses a vital public safety and public health issue. Medicines that languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible to diversion, misuse, and abuse. Rates of prescription drug abuse in the U.S. are alarmingly high, as are the number of accidental poisonings and overdoses due to these drugs. Studies show that a majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, including from the home medicine cabinet. In addition, Americans are now advised that their usual methods for disposing of unused medicines— flushing them down the toilet or throwing them in the trash—both pose potential safety and health hazards.

 

Norma Coombs Alternative Elementary School Spring Fair

Saturday, April 30^th

11am to 4pm

2600 Paloma Street, Pasadena (across the street from Victory Park)

This fun and free event will include food trucks, music, raffles, and local crafters selling their art just in time for Mother’s Day! Come play, shop, eat and have fun – all while supporting a local public elementary school!

www.normacoombs.com

springfair@normacoombs.com

 

 

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Kidzmet for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

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