Monday, July 23, 2012

Mentor Team

I've been at Mass Challenge for almost a month now. When they said "accelerator" they meant it. Things have been moving quickly.

One of the first things that we were asked to do was to put together a mentor team from the pool of fantastic execs/lawyers/investors that have generously contributed their time and experience to help out. This was an intense process of multiple "get to know you" events where finalists got to meet and connect with these folks.

When the smoke cleared I had a good idea of who connected well with me and my company. Comparing this with mentor backgrounds and areas of my business that I want to spend time strengthening, I came up with a fantastic team. We met last week and came up with top level goals for our effort over the course of the program. It feels really good to know there is a group of experienced professionals that are on-hand to keep me on track. This is a short summer/program, not a moment of energy or time to waste!

So one of the great benefits to Mass Challenge - a superior group of mentors generous with their time.


Monday, July 2, 2012

Password Security

There was a great article in the WSJ last week regarding password security on the internet. I clipped it, brought it to the office and threw it away :(
I meant to use it to illuminate and inform and instead I couldn't find my coffee cup and got distracted. I think I can hit the high-points though. I'll try.

IMPORTANT: use strong passwords.
Coming up with these is easier than you think. They suggested thinking of a song and using the initials of the title in camel case. Ex. "I Dream of Jeanie" would be "IdOj". Then, add your zip code to make it "IdOj02145". You can change song title to favorite saying and add a bible ref number like "6:14". EZ!

Another suggestion was to have one password for all applications in a specific category. So, categorize for "buying stuff", "family", "web storage" etc. That way you'll have the same password for each site in a specific category. I like this idea, however, I use a password safe (free online) and have a different password for each site. But this idea seems manageable.

Finally, the author said to create throw-away passwords for one time access - like you have to create an account to respond to a blog post that interests you.

So, I think I summed it up. What do you think?

Brian
Atomic Tower - We Power the Cloud!