Happy Chinese New Year!

Saturday night Ken and I celebrated Chinese New Year at Jade Garden in the Seattle International District with friends Rick & Christina Tsang and their family.  Course after course of very flavorful food was delivered to the table including jelly fish, crab soup, Peking duck, sweet and sour pork, Shanghai-style noodles, potstickers, honey fried prawns, whole fresh crab plus many other dishes that I cannot describe or recall.  When finally the fresh orange segments and fortune cookies were delivered, we were all groaning a sigh of relief.

Last week, we also had a Chinese New Year celebration with the ZINO Society Year of the Tiger party at the Harbor Club in Seattle.  Guests were encouraged to wear “tiger print” or Chinese red.  See photo above of me along with Anne Marshall, Margaret dell’Osso and Mary Blackburn all wearing our version of tiger prints.  One guest, Eric Moris, chose a different direction to dress “tiger-style” and came dressed as Tiger Woods.  His fiancée, ZINO Society member Connie Blumenthal, was stunning in a Chinese red satin dress.  In the middle photo, ZINO Society Elite Roundtable member Ike Lee, enjoys the party with ZINO Society team members, Robin Moore and Mary Holmes.

We were entertained by an 18 person dance troupe performing the famous Chinese Lion Dance complete with drums (see bottom photo) and enjoyed an excellent Chinese buffet prepared by the chefs from both Harbor Club-Seattle and Bellevue.  The featured wine was Dama Wines poured by their representative, Terry Christiana.

And then last evening, I was invited to a “ladies only” Chinese New Year party at a dear friend’s home where we played Mah Jong, consumed delicious Asian-style food and adult beverages, talked, laughed and shared our Chinese and astrological horoscopes with one another.  I feel that I have thoroughly celebrated Chinese New Year this year!    

Wishing all a very happy Chinese New Year and happy Year of the Tiger!

Save the Planet! ZINO Green is coming! Companies selected.

Last Thursday at Davis Wright Tremaine for the second ZINO Green screening session, the ZINO Society Screening and Coaching Board reviewed another group of 8 companies vying for a space at our upcoming ZINO Green Investment Forum scheduled this year for the first time to be held in both Portland and Seattle.  ZINO Society COO Rob Brown welcomed a new Screening and Coaching Board member to the team – Bob Nowlin.  Each entrepreneur had 5 minutes to pitch their company and 5 minutes for questions and comments from the screeners.  After the screening session and reviewing the input from all the screeners, each of the selected companies was assigned two individual coaches to help the entrepreneur perfect his or her pitch for the upcoming forums.  We are happy to announce the following companies as the ones selected to make 5 minute pitches at both ZINO Green Portland on February 24^th and ZINO Green Seattle on March 4^th:

 AmeriStar Solar Tracker

BioXcelerator Technologies, Inc.

Building Runner

Canvas Solutions, Inc.

Eco Carpet Inc.

EMME

Environmental Energy & Engineering Co.

G.R. Green Building Products Inc.

Hydrovolts, Inc.

KersTech Vehicle Systems

Lagotek Corporation

sengWare

Virticus

Zebigo.com

To register to attend, click here for Portland and here for Seattle.

Yes, Dancing is Harder that it Appears!

Here I am with wet hair with my amazing Bachata dance partner, Marcelo Garces, following a hard dance workout including a difficult grapevine sequence expected to be danced at warp speed.  The second photo is of costume designer, Giuseppe Graziola and my dance style teacher, Naomi Scoggin.  It takes a village to help get ready for the upcoming Seattle Dances competition fundraiser which will occur on March 13, 2010 at the Fremont Studio.  This dance competition is a fundraiser for Plymouth Housing Group, so when people go online and vote (for Marcelo and me of course), all the funds go to support the important mission of Plymouth Housing Group which is to provide permanent homes for the most challenged homeless people in our community—those suffering from long-term homelessness and multiple disabilities.  Click here to vote for me as “Best Cyber Choice Dancer” (best to do it sight unseen though there is a brief video clip on the website of Marcelo and me at rehearsal).

ZINO Society new Members and Coaches

A warm welcome to new ZINO Society Roundtable member, Bill Prater, in the top photo along with guest Barbara Whatley and in lower photo from left to right new Roundtable member and Coach, Skip Walter, along with veteran Coaches, Jackson Weaver and Dave Van Patten.  Our members and those that also take time to coach are so important to the success of our ZINOpreneur Members!  Thank you!

Gaming, Mortgage Banking, Online Investing & Shopping . . . Oh My!

The ZINO Society Roundtable Investment Meetings this past week showcased four excellent investment opportunities on Tuesday evening at the conference center at Davis Wright Tremaine and Wednesday at lunch at the Bellevue Harbor Club.  The brief keynote remarks were provided by Dan Greenshields of ShareBuilder.   Dan serves as President of ShareBuilder Securities Corporation and President and Chief Investment Officer of ShareBuilder Advisors LLC. Over the past 7 years, Dan has been instrumental in building ShareBuilder into the 6th largest online brokerage firm with over $2 billion in assets.  Shannon Jones of Hestia Cellars was our featured winemaker and Charles and Rose Ann Finkel, of Pike Brewing Co. were our featured beermeisters.

The four presenting entrepreneurs received a lot of investor interest following their presentations.  Pictured in the top photo above from left to right are featured entrepreneurs Stephan Roche of Kapitall, Dave Long of Exponential Entertainment, Mark Freedle of NetMore America and Ramu Ramanathan of Mobba.  

Kapitall is a new online investing platform designed to transform investing for the “Gaming Generation” with a rich application modeled on video games.

Exponential Entertainment is building HollywoodPlayer, a multi-platform online service that brings casual gaming, Hollywood content, and social networking together.

NetMore America buys the most secure and marketable mortgages in the U.S. and sells them at a profit.

Mobba is a new online marketplace that leverages social networks to form large groups of like-minded buyers.  Sellers then compete to win a big sale.

We are very happy to announce this week that our facilitated fundraising to-date has increased to $14.2 million.  I won’t be surprised to see all of these companies receive at least a portion of the angel funding they need as a result of their presentations at ZINO Society.  We take huge pride in the entrepreneurs that present through ZINO Society and hope to help each one with capital, mentoring and/or referrals.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

A Seattle treasure is gone!  Ken and I attended the memorial service for our friend, Dick Friel, last week at the Museum of Flight.  I estimate that there were around 1,000 people in attendance of what was organized as a grand celebration of his life.  He was loved by so many of us who had the opportunity to work with him over his lifetime.  Though we served together on the PONCHO board and had the opportunity to work together for many years, my closest association with Dick was when I served as PONCHO President in 1998 and had the benefit of working with him closely to raise $2 million for the arts that year. 

The memorial celebration began with a Missing Man Formation Fly-Over of four jets organized by Joe Clark, Bruce McCaw and Clay Lacey.  We all moved outside to view the fly-over and as the one jet left the formation and began a slow upward ascent away from the other three, I know I certainly got a lump in my throat and saw many others with shiny eyes too.

Once back inside, Bob Flick, Dick’s long-time friend and usual auction item announcer, emceed the celebration.  It began with a welcome from Kevin Callahan, Chairman and Dr. Bonnie Dunbar, President and CEO of the Museum of Flight.  Pastor Bruce Swanson shared the 23^rd Psalm, musical interludes were performed by Melvyn Poll and Dick Foley, a video detailing Dick’s aviation marketing awards was presented and tributes were shared by Joe Clark of Aviation Partners Inc. and Palmer Pettersen.  Others who shared tributes were Carol Munro, Patti Payne and Friel family members, wife Sharon and sons Rick and Chris Friel.

There was a lot of laughter as the speakers fondly reminisced about Dick’s energy and passion for everything he was involved in during his long career in aviation marketing and in his avocation of auctioneering.  Some of his interesting quirks were recalled such as stamping his foot when something sold at an auction, or launching his note cards in flight once he was finished with each one.  An interesting factoid shared was that Dick and Sharon Friel, truly a dynamic duo, have raised more than $300,000,000 for the many charity auctions they have participated in over the years.  Dick’s joke team including Tom Mathers, Don Cohan, Joan Byrne and Brad Goode shared some of Dick’s best jokes over the years and had everyone laughing.

Dick and Sharon’s favorite song, “Moon River” was performed by their daughter-in-law, Kim Virant accompanied by Friel sons Rick and Chris, Mike McCready and Ty Bailey and we concluded the memorial with Dick Foley performing and leading us to participate in the song, “I’ll be Seeing You” .

Following the celebration of Dick’s life was a big reception in the Great Gallery where we had the chance to say hello and visit with hundreds of friends who also cared about honoring the life of Dick Friel.  Though he is gone, he left each of us with special memories and as he often said, I say to him now in hopes he will hear my message,  “Thank you!  Thank you!  Thank you!”   

What is a glassybaby worth?

On Saturday morning, friend Toni Hoffman and I ventured to the semi-annual glassybaby seconds sale in Madrona. I have long been a fan of glassybabys, the little hand blown glass votive candle holders that come in a panoply of colors. They are expensive at $40 retail each and the seconds sale seemed like a good opportunity to pick up a few at the special price of $26 each. So Toni and I arranged to leave early, stop for a Tully's latte on the way, and get there half an hour before the shop was to open at 10:00am.

When we arrived at 9:30 am, the line was two blocks long! People in the know had lined up at 8:00 a.m. and brought their own cloth shopping bags and baskets. See Toni at the right-side of the top photo above standing in the enormous line. We waited outside (brrrrrrrrr!) in line for about an hour and a half.

Once the store opened, they continued to move people into the store as fast as possible and we were finally admitted to the store about an hour and a half later with frozen toes. Once inside, it was total bedlam. There were far too many people in such a small space and it was virtually impossible to move through the store. I quickly became claustrophobic and lost my appetite for shopping so selected the first few bluish glassybabys I saw and headed for the exit. There wasn’t really an organized check-out line, but just people shoving in a maelstrom trying to get close to a cashier. Toni, obviously with more patience than I, took time to select several glassybabys and light candles in each one to see how they actually looked when lit. See photo above of Toni and photo of the crowd inside the store.

I know that the next time I feel I must buy another glassybaby, I will happily pay full price and go on any day BUT the day of the seconds sale!