A night out on the town can be a reminder what an eclectic bunch we are. At dinner on a rainy Tuesday night we ran into Phil and Belinda Carville of the South Yuba Club/Monster Gym; Andrew Meyers and his wife, Andrea, of Four Frog Farms; and Dave Perillo and a team from Grass Valley Group, all in the same dining room. Our son showed off his “NingaGo” playing cards. Only one couple seemed to glare at our table — not bad, I joked to my wife.
We talked politics with the Carville’s, sustainable farming with Andrew, and business with Grass Valley Group (now just called “Grass Valley.”) Being a longtime tech wonk, I was most interested in the update from Grass Valley Group.
The stalwart video tech business is embracing change since their recent acquisition by Francisco Partners, I learned. There have been some good management changes (a blend of old and new), team building and a shorter commute for business meetings in San Francisco instead of Paris (Thomson’s home).
I should add that the execs enjoyed the writeups on Francisco-Grass Valley on this blog. One is here.
Though there’s skepticism in some circles of our community about Francisco’s intentions (as a private equity firm), I’m confident it’s going to be a good fit — helping to build a bridge between Silicon Valley and our community.
Grass Valley’s marketing group is rolling out press releases about new features and functionality to their products — three this month alone.
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It always seemed to me that Grass Valley Group was bought and sold based on brand recognition alone. It’s a nice change to see that Francisco Partners actually seems interested in developing the company and not just wearing out the established product line.
Actually, I think we’ll start seeing GV products being pushed down into the prosumer and consumer markets. I know that their EDIUS editor has an attractive consumer version as well.
Press release gone bad, note nuke reference:
The PlayBook tablet computer, due to launch within weeks after a six-month pitch, is RIM’s first product to use an industrial-strength operating system based on QNX, a powerhouse microkernel (rather than the typical monolithic kernel) which RIM bought last year and aims to incorporate into its future smartphones.
QNX — which also runs nuclear power plants, medical instrumentation and Cisco’s core Internet routers — is the brains behind many of the infotainment systems shipping in new cars, and RIM plans seamless interaction between those dashboards, its PlayBook and its range of BlackBerry smartphones.
BTW, as soon as I get my replacement Toshiba (twas part of the big Intel Bubu with the motherboards in January, recalled the week I got it) I plan on giving the Edius video editor whirl, to see if I like it better than Adobe’s Premiere.