A New Metcalfe's Law at AlwaysOn Venture Summit East

This week I'm attending AlwaysOn's Venture Summit East conference in Boston.  The conference has been extremely well attended and has covered a broad range of subjects ranging from investment in traditional high-tech to life sciences to alternative energy companies.  The conference also put a spotlight on the top 100 companies in the Northeast.  The list of these companies can be found here. 

Kicking off the second day was Bob Metcalfe, long time industry visionary, inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com, creator of Metcalfe's Law, and now venture capitalist with Polaris Ventures.  Bobs talked about the future of the energy market, which he is calling the Enernec.  In his presentation Bob drew parallels between the development of the Internet over the past 60 years and what can be learned from that experience in the development of the energy/green tech market.  For this attendee, it was a very reassuring presentation.  Given the current price of oil, the geopolitical climate, the worldwide competition for fossil fuel-based energy and the challenges of bringing bio-based fuels to market, it would be easy to see all the problems as almost insurmountable.  But fortunately there are people like Bob out there finding new companies here in the US who are tackling this challenge with new technologies that give us ample reason to be optimistic that our future is still a bright one.