Gotta love a guy who begins a talk, “I have not found a way not to be annoying.”

I found Bob Metcalfe not annoying, but inspiring.  And thought-provoking in an uneasy, thought-challenging way. 

When Metcalfe questioned the use of terms like “green” and “sustainability” and the premises underlying them, he said, “We’re not going to conserve our way to a solution about energy.”

My bike-riding, no-paper-napkin friends would love that.

What I cherished most was Metcalfe’s prediction of the origin of the solution to finding cheap and clean energy:  research professors at research universities, their graduate students, and “scaling entrepreneurs.”

The synergy of research and "scaling entrepreneurs" is happening right here, right now, at business acceleration center VT KnowledgeWorks.  Metcalfe even referred to two VT KnowledgeWorks companies, TORC Technologies and VPT Energy Systems.

For finding solutions, we’re in good company here.

And Bob Metcalfe was very good company. 

Handshake 2.0 thanks Bob Metcalfe for visiting and thanks Virginia Tech, the MIT Club of the Blue Ridge, and the NewVa Corridor Technology Council for inviting him.

Bob Metcalfe is the founder of 3Com, inventor of Ethernet, and a partner with Polaris Ventures.  He gave a talk entitled “Enernet: Lessons from 62 years of Internet history for how to meet world needs for cheap and clean energy,” at the Skelton Conference Center, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, on November 21, 2008.

Added 12/02/08:  Thanks, Bob Summers, for this link to a video and slides from the event.