By ANDREW MOORE
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Austin startup Rockify hosted its first inaugural TechTainment retreat last Friday in the West Lake Hills area of Austin. The event was a fundraiser sponsored by Arthur Edstrom and Kathleen Blackwell of XYZ2Y Ventures and was held in the couple’s new home. Deep Eddy Vodka was also a sponsor.
The retreat featured an interview with music legend Gregg Rolie — co-founder of both Santana and Journey – and an intimate living room performance with notable musicians Ron Wikso, Alan Haynes, and Evan “Sticky” Arredondo.
Rockify is currently in the seed round of fundraising and needs to raise $250,000 by the end of the year. They will need another $3 million by the summer of 2013 to hire additional staff and improve their product.

Rockify CEO Joel Korpi, Photos by Samantha Davis

Whoohoo! Media Group CEO David Skye

From left: Austin Technology Incubator Director Kyle Cox, Rockify CEO Joel Korpi, Arthur Edstrom of XYZ2Y Ventures

Music Legend Gregg Rolie

Nearly 20 years ago, President Bill Clinton took over as leader of the United States.
In 1993, an average cell phone weighed five pounds.
Only 50 websites made up the Internet.
And Clinton sent a total of two emails as president.
“It’s all different now,” Clinton told more than 5,000 people gathered for Dell World in Austin. He gave the afternoon keynote address on Wednesday.
“In a world that seems to be full of zero sum games and conflict models that try to hold on to the past, the future belongs to network collaborators,” Clinton said.
Today, the world is more interdependent than at any time in the history of humanity, Clinton said.
“We cannot shut each other out,” Clinton said.
In this interconnected world, defense budgets still matter and so does security, but not as much as they used to, Clinton said. To solve the world’s problems, people need to build inclusive communities and focus on non-zero sum games, he said.
“We like zero sum games,” Clinton said. “But non-zero sum games are making sure you win by making sure everyone else wins. If we want the world to work we have to have more non-zero sum games.”
Non-zero sum games ultimately benefit everyone, Clinton said. For example, during his presidency, Clinton spent $3 billion of taxpayer money to support research to develop the Human Genome. That has led to remarkable new treatments for children’s cancer and an open sharing of information. A genome test now costs $5,000 and will decrease to $1,500 next year, Clinton said.
“Networks of creative collaboration,” have made the advancements in finding cures for cancer possible, Clinton said.
The Hubble telescope and space exploration technology led to the identification of more than ten planets in the solar system that are able to support life, Clinton said.
Clinton said he’s an optimist and he sees “a lot of good things about this world.”
But the world has three huge problems.
“First of all it’s too unequal,” he said.
Nearly half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day, nearly 1 billion people are illiterate and 1 billion do not have safe water, according to United Nations statistics. And 100 million kids don’t go to school.
“Within America and around the world, we have to create ways to share prosperity and reduce inequality,” Clinton said.
Some inequality and some instability are good for the economy, he said. But extremes shut things down and make people entirely too risk averse, he said. The economy needs sufficient instability with the chance to fail as well as the chance to succeed, he said.
Another problem is the world is unsustainable because of the way we consume energy, Clinton said. Climate change is real and the U.S. must consume less energy and do things differently, he said. People need to deal with the problem and not debate whether it exists, he said.
Twenty years ago, Sweden imposed a carbon tax on its business. Swedes are inherently responsible, Clinton said. The government gave the tax money back and told the companies they just wanted them to know how their actions would impact the future. The companies invested more money on reducing energy consumption by putting in more efficient lighting and cooling systems and other infrastructure changes. Between 1997 and 2010, Sweden’s economy grew by 50 percent and it reduced its greenhouse gases by 7 percent mostly through efficiencies, Clinton said.
“That’s the sort of debate we ought to be having,” he said.
Lastly, Clinton is focused on fighting childhood obesity through the “Alliance for a Healthier Generation.”
“Poor, overweight kids were getting more than half their calories from sodas,” Clinton said.
If that trend continued, the soda manufacturers wouldn’t have any customers because they would die an early death from diseases like diabetes. And the children would have their lives cut short. Instead, Clinton worked with the soda manufacturers to create a different future in which everyone makes money in a different way. And in the last five years, there has been a 90 percent reduction in total calories sold to students in 98 percent of schools, Clinton said. Through “a creative network of collaboration” they were able to solve a huge problem, he said. Michael and Susan Dell’s son, Zach, serves on the board of the Alliance for a Healthier Nation, Clinton said. Some of the best ideas they get are from kids, he said.
People also need to become more tolerant of our differences and learn to live together regardless of political or other beliefs.
“If we can get back into the tomorrow business and do it together we’ll be just fine,” he said.
Following his keynote address, Clinton, who wore orange and white Texas Longhorn cowboy boots, sat down with Michael Dell to answer a few questions about the economy. He said the government needs to spend more on research and development and that will help the U.S. remain competitive globally. He pointed out that countries like Singapore are spending $5 billion to become the world’s biotechnology leader. The U.S. faces stiff competition and the government should never let research and development spending fall below three percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. It’s currently in jeopardy of doing so, he said.

In a packed Austin Convention Center ballroom, the lights dim and a video plays.
“In 1984, Dell was one guy with a dream,” says the narrator.
In the last 28 years, Dell has evolved into a $58 billion company with 109,000 employees worldwide. And in the last four years, Dell has pushed to transform itself from a PC maker into a software, services, solutions and hardware company. In the process, it has diversified into new areas like data centers.
“While much has changed in that transformation, much has stayed the same,” the video announcer proclaims.
Michael Dell enters the stage. He’s been actively involved in Dell since he founded the company in his dorm room at the University of Texas. He has articulated the company’s vision and worked to change its culture through organic growth and acquisitions. He’s fired executives, hired new ones, acquired new businesses and shifted the company’s focus from PCs to solutions.
“This is an incredibly powerful moment for me,” Dell tells the audience of more than 5,000 customers, partners, employees, analysts and media. He is delivering the keynote address at the second annual Dell World event. “I’m so proud of what you’ve accomplished with Dell at your side.”
Then Dell shows a video of a rover landing on Mars, exploration at the South Pole, Genomics research and more. Dell’s customers have used its products to solve some of the universe’s most vexing problems.
“From the beginning Dell has been out to power your dreams,” Dell said.
Some of its customers achievements are on display at the Dell World Expo. The showcase has examples of Dell’s customers using its products in a variety of industries. Dell is working on cloud, data center and security solutions for customers and much more.
“We’re working to democratize and simplify these innovations,” Dell said.
A major focus is securing all the devices in a “Bring Your Own Device” environment at companies. It’s all part of Dell’s focus to become the industry’s leading provider of end to end solutions. The company spent $5 billion in the last year to build out its solutions portfolio. But the PC business, or what it refers to as the “client” business, continues to contribute to its bottom line.
“We strongly believe PCs are important,” Dell said. “Overwhelmingly PCs are still how business gets done today.”
Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 8, also brings together PCs with touch screen technology creating more dynamic computing devices. Dell’s Latitude 10 tablets run Windows 8 along with Dell’s XPS 12 Notebook, which transforms from a laptop into a tablet. In addition, Dell just introduced an all in one portable workstation and entertainment center that also runs on Windows 8.
“The possibilities are limitless,” Dell said.
Windows 8 gives the 1.5 billion installed base of PCs worldwide a reason to get a new PC, Dell said.
Dell is also pushing big into the data center industry. It has been in the server business for more than two decades. Dell is number one in North America and Asia in the server market and is only 64,000 servers away from being number one in the world, Dell said.
Dell’s open standards have made it easy to integrate its products into existing data centers. Its software really helps to secure and manage customers’ environments, he said.
“The consistency of our vision and strategy is paying off big time,” Dell said.
The final piece of Dell’s strategy is the services industry, which now employs 47,000 of its workers.
“We’re ready to help you achieve your objectives,” Dell said.
The company manages 32 billion in security incidences every day.
“We know about what’s going on in the world of cyber security more than anyone,” Dell said.
In the healthcare industry, Dell manages 114 million mission critical devices. Dell also prides itself on its customer support and gives a response time of two to four hours, Dell said.

The transformation of Dell into a software solutions, services and cloud computing company is underway.
“We needed to go beyond the origins of the company” into areas like data centers and services “to build out a broad portfolio,” Dell Founder and CEO Michael Dell said during a meeting with media and analysts Tuesday afternoon.
The company has invested $10 billion in the last four years to create an end-to-end solutions company, Dell said. Most notably, the company acquired Quest Software for $2.4 billion in July.
Dell Enterprise Solutions and Services now make up $20 billion, or one-third of its revenue.
But the Round Rock-based company still has its personal computer business and it isn’t getting rid of it anytime soon.
In fact, Dell will unveil a next generation workstation and portable entertainment product during his keynote speech at Dell World 2012 Wednesday morning.
This is the second annual Dell World event. It takes place through Thursday at the Austin Convention Center. More than 6,000 Dell customers, partners, media, analysts and employees are expected to attend. Many of them gathered Tuesday evening at Austin City Limits to listen to music and eat from Austin food trucks.
On Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton and Dell will talk about the Clinton Global Initiative, philanthropy and other issues during the morning keynote.
The authors of the Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics books, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, will deliver the closing keynote address “Think like a Freak.”

Geekdom plans to launch the Open Cloud Academy early next year to teach veterans and the public technology skills.
The Open Cloud Academy will be located on the 6th floor of the Weston Centre downtown. Its eight-week classes will begin in the middle of January.
“We’re still working on the plans,” said Nick Longo, director of Geekdom. “It’s very complex when we’re trying to bring in Rackspace, the military, USAA, Red Hat and us.”

Nick Longo, director and co-founder of Geekdom

Geekdom co-founder and Rackspace Hosting Chairman Graham Weston