I want to take this opportunity to update our members on the progress and growth NASVF has experienced over the past year. Our membership has grown from 170 to 200, and is up from 120 in 2008. Our 2011 conference in Texas was very successful, and this October year we will be in Cleveland, Ohio with the theme of Innovation Capital: Seeding Tomorrow’s Opportunities.

Cleveland and the entire state of Ohio will mark a milestone and a strategic change for NASVF. We are relocating our headquarters to Elyria, Ohio and will be hosted by Lorain County Community College in their Innovation Center. Our relocation is based on NASVF’s newest initiative to grow the investment community of Ohio through our new NASVF Educational Foundation.

How’s your state doing? In California, where I live, there’s mass outcry over possible state budget cuts that could hamstring public schools, colleges and universities if a tax increase slated for the November ballot doesn’t pass. All this, despite the encouraging news about job creation and rising local tax revenues.

California was one of the states hardest hit by the Great Recession and the housing collapse, but we’re not alone in our current struggle. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that, even though the overall economic picture is improving in most states, many state governments are getting ready to slash spending, cut jobs and take additional steps to get their budgets in line.

When you step back and look at the country as a whole, the United States only generates just small fraction of its electricity from renewable energy sources -- about 10.4 percent in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That's the entire contribution of hydro power, wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and the other assorted green forms of energy that many hope our economy will transition to in the 21st century.

That fraction is growing, but slowly. The EIA expects non-hydro renewables to meet 9 percent of our electricity needs in 2035, up from 4 percent in 2010.

A while back, I wrote about the value of Michael Porter’s Five Forces framework for analyzing the competitive environment, and using every opportunity to highlight and emphasize your relative advantages, whether they be price, features, or bargaining power. But once you start selling products, all of these pale in comparison to the level of customer experience you provide.

I agree with John Spence, in his book “Awesomely Simple,” that in a world of nearly limitless product options and highly educated consumers with instant access to price, features, and benefits of almost every product, delivering consistently superior customer service is the only differentiator left for creating loyal and engaged customers.

Our culture does a very good job of pounding the living "creativity" out of us. Many of the forms of practicing our "creator" expressions such as art or music have been cut in schools. If you did have the opportunity to be in an art class, the D- on your paper collage project likely tattooed "complete creative failure" in your mind forever. In addition, we live in an overstimulated society with electronics buzzing us to the point where our own inspiration malfunctions when it is needed. We're constantly interrupted by texts, calls, Facebook, meetings, emails, etc. It's quite obvious why moments of insight or tangential thoughts that lead to a wave of inspiration have died or are blocked. Not to mention, there's somewhere else that you're always meant to be, something more important that you're meant to be doing... right?

"Leaders who are vulnerable are far more trusted by their employees," says Ori Brafman, bestselling author of Click: The Magic of Instant Connections. Brafman explains that vulnerability, while often seen as a weakness in business, is a valuable skill that can play a critical role in binding deep, immediate relationships in the workplace. To illustrate this point, Brafman shares the unique story of a hostage negotiator's willingness to reveal vulnerability to help form an intense, but unlikely, relationship.

Entrepreneur Sukhinder Singh Cassidy argues the judgment to know at what level to examine your business at any given moment is a vital leadership quality. Using a short anecdote from her time at Google, Singh Cassidy explains successful founders and executives must understand the tactical drivers of a business to effectively manage from the top of an organization.

Some people call what has been happening the last few years “weather weirding,” and March is turning out to be a fine example.

As a surreal heat wave was peaking across much of the nation last week, pools and beaches drew crowds, some farmers planted their crops six weeks early, and trees burst into bloom. “The trees said: ‘Aha! Let’s get going!’ ” said Peter Purinton, a maple syrup producer in Vermont. “ ‘Spring is here!’ ”

Now, of course, a cold snap in Northern states has brought some of the lowest temperatures of the season, with damage to tree crops alone likely to be in the millions of dollars.

As the shock waves of the global recession convulsed Europe and the United States three years ago, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China gathered for a meeting that seemed to signal a new era. They had global buzz as rising economic powers, a catchy acronym, BRIC, and an ambitious agenda to remake an international monetary system long dominated by the West.

The new BRIC era has yet to arrive.

When the group’s leaders meet in New Delhi on Thursday, their biggest achievement will have been adding an S: they took on South Africa last year. The five BRICS nations still rank among the fastest-growing economies in the world, and, even if growth has slowed, individually, their global influence continues to rise. But they have struggled to find the common ground necessary to act as a unified geopolitical alliance.

Nick D’Aloisio is the inventor of Summly, an iPhone app that can reduce any web page into just three key paragraphs. His creation has rightly captured a lot of attention.

Like many young entrepreneurs, Mr. D’Aloisio has a company behind his app, but unlike most other young entrepreneurs, Mr. D’Aloisio had to get his mother to act as a director. Mr. D’Aloisio is 16 years old. He is reckoned to be one of the youngest, if not the youngest, person ever to get venture funding.

The European start-up culture is dominated by fresh-faced young men, maybe not quite as youthful as Mr. D’Aloisio, but certainly in their 20s and 30s. But what of the older entrepreneurs? Where are the 40-, 50- or even 60-year-old entrepreneurs? Is this wave of digital entrepreneurship closed to anyone who has a meaningful memory of the 1991 Gulf War?

Postdoctoral training originated in the late 19th century as a brief pause after thesis work for would-be professors to gain additional training and experience. More than a century later, the number of life sciences postdocs is increasing, with the United States homegrown and visiting postdoc population tripling since 1983, now totaling well above 50,000. And that brief pause is lasting longer and longer. Over the 10 years of The Scientist’s annual Best Places to Work for Postdocs survey, this trend has become clear: the percentage of respondents who have been postdocs for 3 or more years has increased from less than 30 percent in 2007, when The Scientist first started collecting such data, to almost 40 percent this year; postdoc careers lasting 7 or more years have more than doubled in that same time period, as reported by almost 6 percent of this year’s respondents.

Although it’s easy to point fingers at institutional reasons for the increasing length of the postdoc—scarce funding to start labs, elimination of tenure-track positions, and a dearth of faculty openings—it may also be a sign that research itself is changing.

The Michigan Economic Development Corp. is taking on the role of venture capitalist in its latest program to bolster early-stage technology companies.

The MEDC set aside $5 million to match venture capital funding for Michigan-based technology businesses.

The MEDC’s Michigan Strategic Fund Board, appointed by the Governor, approved the Pure Michigan Venture Match Fund at its meeting on Wednesday. It will begin accepting applications on April 2.

The program initially was set to begin this month, but organizers delayed the process to consider public input.

After Wednesday’s passage of a bill aimed at reforming the Federal Communications Commission, I realized it could serve as a good example to help show technologists and entrepreneurs how D.C. works in terms they might relate to. Since D.C. is clearly getting more interested in regulating technology this should come in handy for those who want to get involved.

In reading an article covering the bill’s passage in the House, I noticed the almost identical statements from the CTIA, which represents the wireless industry and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. Both used almost the exact same language to describe the benefits of the bill. So did Greg Walden (R-Ore.), the bill’s sponsor. This is hardly an accident and below, I’ll explain why.

When you think of basic human rights, access to wireless broadband Internet probably isn't at the top of the list. But a new company backed by a Skype cofounder disagrees, and plans to bring free mobile broadband to the U.S. later this year under the slogan "The Internet is a right, not a privilege."

Called FreedomPop, the service will give users roughly a gigabyte of free high-speed mobile Internet access per month on Clearwire's WiMAX network and forthcoming LTE network. It will offer other low-cost prepaid plans that provide access to more data.

Every year on the first of April you’ll see coffee cups glued to car roofs and Facebook statuses claiming surprise marriages. But don’t we deserve a better class of jokester? Is it too much to ask for a little thought and effort? Consider these legendary pranks by college kids as inspiration, and be like them. It doesn’t matter that you’re not drunk, responsibility-free, and reckless. If you want it badly enough, you can make fools of us all.

GEORGE P. BURDELL When your prank becomes a running joke at the school for nearly 100 years, you know it’s legendary. In 1927, when precocious student Ed Smith received two enrollment forms for Georgia Tech, he decided to enroll the imaginary George P. Burdell at the same time. Amazingly, Smith then proceeded to enter Burdell in all his classes and do all his homework and tests twice, changing them slightly, to serve as Burdell’s “work.” Thus began the legend of the “man” who has since received every undergraduate degree at Tech, served in World War II, worked at Mad Magazine, and had a Tech school store named after him.

Michael Snyder knows his body better than anyone in history.

For two-and-a-half years, he's had regular blood samples drawn, and tracked the ebb and flow of 40,000 different molecules within his cells, from hormones to blood sugar, to the proteins of the immune system and mutated genes. Snyder also watched as his genetic vulnerability to diabetes turned into actual disease.

In a paper published today in the journal Cell, Snyder, a genetics professor at Stanford University, and his collaborators recount 14 months of living a Truman Show kind of life, but with a microscope instead of a television camera. His story marks the first time anyone's physiology has ever been followed this closely, and portends the future of personalized medicine, according to Snyder and others.

An initiative aimed at helping Maryland research universities better commercialize technology developments received initial approval by both houses of the General Assembly.

The Maryland Innovation Initiative could provide early funding for tech transfer efforts and encourages collaboration between the University System of Maryland    , Johns Hopkins University    and Morgan State University    . The House of Delegates approved the measure (HB 442) and the Senate approved its companion bill (SB 239).

NASVF was established in 1993 to promote best practices in the formation and deployment of innovation capital across the United States.  NASVF is a leading international voice focused on critical issues around seed and early stage investing and other innovation capital opportunities.  Through its weekly electronic newsletter, NetNews, annual conferences, board committees and research reports, NASVF informs, networks, educates, and advocates on behalf of thousands of innovation capital stakeholders.

NASVF has a growing membership base of over 800 seed and early stage fund managers, angel investors, state and regional economic development offices, and university technology transfer organizations.  NASVF has a core management staff of four professionals with additional support and oversight provided by a 13-member Board of Directors who are prominent fund managers and development officials.

Y Combinator Demo Day is today.

Y Combinator is a startup accelerator program that helps young companies get off the ground. Since it was founded in 2005, Y Combinator has put hundreds of startups through its program.

Some of the startups never made it. Others have become billion-dollar companies or been acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars.