In the “truth is stranger than fiction” category, my CU Boulder bathroom donation (well – the gift I gave to CU Boulder that resulted in me getting to name a bathroom) made the TV news tonight in Boston on Fox 25. There’s apparently a new bathroom news cycle because of William Falik’s gift to Harvard Law School for the Falik Men’s Room at Harvard Law School. While my bathroom at CU Boulder doesn’t have the same elegant name (it’s known as RRM 209 in the ATLAS Building, or the Feld Mens Bathroom on Foursquare), I’ve got a better quote: ”“The Best Ideas Often Come At Inconvenient Times – Don’t Ever Close Your Mind To Them.”

The two minute news clip, along with a Skype interview I did this afternoon, follows. MIT – my offer is still open – don’t flush it.

Harvard Law School names restroom after generous alumni: MyFoxBOSTON.com

I’m a big fan of the CLEAR card and the CLEAR service. When it first launched, I got it immediately and used it wherever it was available. Fortunately this included Denver, New York, and San Francisco.

If you don’t know of CLEAR, it’s a biometric card that you use in the exclusive CLEARlane at airports to bypass the security line. It’s saved me from missing plenty of flights over the past few years.

In 2009 the company shut down suddenly. The new owners bought it a year ago, honored the old customers, and are gradually rolling it out across the country (currently Denver and Orlando and opening in San Francisco soon.)

I think CLEAR makes a great gift for any frequent traveller out of DIA. In addition, the folks from CLEAR are running is Community Charity program where they give $2,000 to favorite charities in these cities. We get to pick them, so go to the CLEAR Community Charity blog and vote now.

One of the great things about living in Eldorado Springs, Colorado is interacting with nature on a daily basis.

Protecting the environment has been a priority of mine for many years.  Every now and then I like to call out a non-profit organization that I support that I think does an excellent job of helping protect the environment.

Colorado Conservation Voters is one of these groups.  CCV works to turn conservation values into Colorado priorities by educating legislators and the public about important environmental issues, helping pro-conservation candidates win their elections, and then holding our elected officials accountable. Most importantly, they do it efficiently as they are a group that has influence and reach much larger than their budget would indicate.

In the past six years they have built and protected a conservation majority in the state House, Senate, and Governor’s office. These victories matter – Colorado is a better place for CCV spearheading these pro-environment victories.  For example:

• Colorado now requires that 20% of our electricity come from renewable sources like wind and solar;
• More water is kept in our rivers and streams when they need it most and in crucial areas for habitat protection, protecting the health of our rivers;
• We have the strongest protections in the nation for our drinking water, wildlife, and communities threatened by oil and gas drilling.

This is a group that understands how to make change happen.  They use their money strategically and efficiently.  If you are interested in conserving the environment in Colorado, I encourage you to take a look at the Colorado Conservation Voters website as well as considering making a gift or even becoming a monthly donor.

I think Boulder is one of the absolute best places to start a tech company. The depth of talent and overall strength of our tech community here is superb. It turns out that makes it a great place to start a community-based tech nonprofit startup, too. I’ve written before about SnapImpact’s great work in making doing good easy. Having already created the first volunteering app for the iPhone, they’re started taking on some additional challenges.

Specifically, their developers got the attention of All for Good, a Silicon Valley-based project that managed to make data-sharing agreements with all the major volunteer data providers in the US – not an easy feat. Over the past year, they’ve built the US’s biggest database of volunteer opportunities and are the back-end for the serve.gov website. The SnapImpact crew has been given the go-ahead to create All for Good version 2.0.

They’re kicking it off with SnapCamp on Feb 19-21, an intensive weekend event for non-profit stake-holders, developers, designers, marketing gurus, startup geeks, and anyone else who wants to make it easy for volunteers find ways to contribute. Of note to developers, v2.0 will be utilizing Scala/Lift – with full support of the Lift community and Dave Pollak, it’s creator.

SnapCamp is taking place in the TechStars Bunker and is being fully sponsored by All for Good. I encourage you to show up, have some geeky startup fun, and do something really big with your weekend. Sign up at Eventbrite: http://snapcamp.eventbrite.com.