I've never actually been to one of these UC Davis Center For Entrepreneurship events, so I can't tell you what to expect. Dave Samuel from Grouper and Tim Westergren from Pandora are speaking on campus on two different dates. I added these events to the SacStarts upcoming events, so RSVP here if you're planning on going so we could all plan on meeting up for beers. Also make sure to RSVP with Nicole Starsinic who is the Program Manager of this UC Davis Center For Entrepreneurship thing.

The first guest speaker event is Dave Samuel on Wednesday, April 4, 2007. Dave is currently President and Co-Founder of Grouper, and previously did Spinner which was one of the first Internet radio thingies. I actually used Spinner back in the day because it was cool and there wasn't a whole lot of options for Internet radio, but Grouper pretty much sucks ass... so much so that Sony bought it because it was a good fit for Sony suck-ass-ness. In any case this ought to be an interesting speech and Dave has sure been around the block, I'm sure we can all learn something from him.

The next guest speaker is Tim Westergren on Thursday, May 10, 2007. Tim is the Founder and Chief Strategist for Pandora, which is a really cool... umm... Internet radio thingie. Actually Pandora is really innovative because they have hordes of musicians cataloging music based on about 400 parameters of the "music genome," which in turn is used to recommend new music to you based on your like/dislike feedback of the music that they play for you. Pandora has been around for quite a while, formerly as the Music Genome Project. There's a new plan on the books from the Copyright Royalty Board that threatens Internet radio as an industry, and for a really great introduction to the debate you should watch this video interview with Tim.