We'll be providing coverage from Tony Perkins' 5th annual AlwaysOn Stanford Summit - allbeit delayed courtesy of our friends at United Airlines [to be sure, we're pleased they did not fly us off from the other coast with a failed flight control system [!] but a 24-hour delay was a bit extreme!].
This milestone year has the typical assembly of 100 startup companies seeking attention for their new products, panels of leading lights of Silicon Valley, and timely keynotes - all of which are loosely related, a bit like a tag cloud. Currently, Senator [and presidential candidate] John McCain is explaining his willingness to buck public opinion to keep pushing forward in Iraq.
"I would rather lose a campaign, than lose a war," he said, repeating his frequent assertion, while noting also that American forces today were facing temperatures of roughly 130 degrees Farenheit, wearing 40 pounds of equipment, and maintaining excellent morale.
"It's the most professional, it's the best equipped, it's the best trained and it's the most couragious in our history," he said, under questioning by Tony Perkins and one-time Ronald Reagan speach-writer Peter Robinson, who is now with the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
Speaking despite recent concerns over his fundraising shortfalls and upheavals in which he many staff left and were dismissed to preserve funds, McCain said he would continue to run because "I am the most prepared."
He praised Silicon Valley for its recent green investments, saying climate change was no longer in dispute, and added that he would call on Silicon Valley executives to serve America "for free" in a McCain presidency.
Previously, Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale provided a tour of his Second Life virtual worlds, and predicted on a subsequent panel that processing power devoted to virtual worlds would exceed that on the web in general, arguing it made connections between people much more tangible and productive, without direct physical presence.
And Benchmark Capital partner Bill Gurley told a panel entitled "VCs: are you happy" that he did not consider the happiness of venture capitalists to be an issue attracting great sympathy, though as a contrarian he would consider great pessimism on venture returns to be a positive signal for investment.
More to follow.
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