New to Nashville

Thursday, December 04, 2008

So I attended Bloblive last night at Belmont, which was a lot of fun. Here were my favorites:

1) Green Lawn Care

Create a scalable lawn care system using old fashioned non-motor powered lawn mowers loaded onto bicycle carts. Less overhead in terms of gasoline and equipment, but obvious scale issues when it comes to little human-powered lawn mowers (I should know, I own one). Charge a luxury tax to these newfangled urban living communities.

2) Chart Your Career Path

Using sophisticated tagging and meta data, create a job search and career advice site that matches young and experienced professionals based on similar career paths/trajectories. (I think of it as the untapped social graph of LinkedIn - come to think of it, what a great idea for an app!)

3) Airport Strollers (thanks to a friend for this one)

Install airport stroller rentals in major U.S. airports (akin to those in amusement parks or large shopping malls) that are designed for better mobility and to go through security. Check them out upon arrival, use them to easily balance carry on luggage with laptop case plus your kid, and then return them at the gate. Charge $5.

4) Wiimote Smartboard Consultancy (In full discretion, this idea is mine!)

I’ve blogged about this over at my personal Web site, but basically here’s the idea. A graduate student in California, Johnny Lee, developed a Smartboard that can be used together with a Wiimote (that’s right, from the Nintendo Wii) and any PC with Bluetooth capability. (A smartboard, of course, is a fancy interactive whiteboard commonly used by teachers in classrooms).

What’s the point? Well, Lee’s Smartboard is about 80 percent as good as the professional ones at about 1 percent of the cost. (The big boys retail from $3,000-$5,000.)

Of course, the biggest problem with Smartboards, aside from getting the funding, is training teachers to integrate them into their courses. My idea for a company would be a full-service Wiimote Smartboard installation and support service for Metro schools.

(And I got a great comment from someone there suggesting I try to get in business with the big Smartboard retailers and see if they’d want to help fund it. The idea would be, if enough schools adopt this simpler, albeit more rudimentary technology, more would in turn upgrade to the real deal when they received the funds).

5) Bloblive!

At the end, the host stood up and once again explained the idea of Bloblive. Anyone and everyone convenes, volunteers stand before the crowd and take 2-3 minutes to explain an idea, and then people give feedback.

Unlike some other entrepreneurial gatherings I’ve been to, this one was really refreshing. No expectations. No pretense. Just some big thinkers with some big ideas, a bit of free food and a lot of fun. The thing I liked about Bloblive is that it didn’t pretend to be anything more.

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Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Looking at this photo I shot from the backseat of my carpool this morning while exiting I-65 South, it’s tough to tell what the subject of the picture is. If you look closely, however, you can tell what’s missing: merging vehicles!

Just about every day I spend at least 5-10 minutes of my life at a standstill because Nashville drivers don’t understand the simple concept of merging.

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Tuesday, December 02, 2008

When oil tanked and gas prices fell (along with the housing market, 401Ks and the economy in general) my wife and I made a bet as to how far they’d fall. (We established a Mapco near our house as the standard).

My guess? $1.84. No lower.

She bet it’d fall to at least $1.73, maybe further.

And, as usual, she’s right…

Lesson learned...

But on another note, the experiment helped me discover AAA’s gas price Web site - the Fuel Gauge Report. As of December 2nd at 3:00 am CST, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $1.673.

I bet $1.50 is the trough.

In fact, I’m willing to bet $5.00.

Any takers?

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Monday, December 01, 2008

I’m thinking of heading over to Bloblive at Belmont this week.

Any of you out-of-towners who occasionally read this blog have any world-changing business ideas?

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