So I finally attended a Phoenix business event – Invest Southwest – and ran into many old friends and clients: Bill Miller, Vomaris Innovations (formerly CEO of AutoXray, one of our LAUNCH PR stars) who was singled out as a successful alumni of the conference, Dave Bittner of Beanstalk CFO Group, who did an amazing job on the conference (I believe they had more attendees than last year) , my friend and mentor Dee Harris of the Arizona Angels , Aly Saxe of Ubiquity PR , my protégé and a tech PR master now herself, a surprise appearance by Julia Francis, formerly with Mobility Electronics and now residing in the Bay Area, and Kari Vanderslice, my golf buddy who is now running ASU’s angel program. I was also so happy to see Anil Jain of Slipstream Labs who I met at TIE, and Michael Hoole, my former attorney for LAUNCH and the incoming president of TIE. What fun, just like the old days.

So now I’ve updated everyone on my new direction: launch flix and our projects. I really appreciate the outpouring of support and kind wishes. My upcoming period drama on the Holocaust is so important. Recently an artist I know, Robert Sutz, had a beautiful survivors exhibit at the Scottsdale Library that was defaced with stickers reading “Biggest Hoax of the 21st Century.” It’s for this reason that I remain committed to my film and to telling my survivors’ story; to continue to educate our youth as well as the rest of the world.

As for the conference, loved Captive Motion , a new animation software program that will save animators thousands of dollars, loved Eco-Pool Technologies , a solar based green filtration solution for pools, liked iMemories – an online resource for converting and storing home movies, and Grip Innovations , a way for event companies to clean up messy and time consuming electronics and audio set ups.

At lunch I met the guys behind Legal Broadcast Network and pitched my gorgeous new attorney, Jill Ormond as their next entertainment law star, and stayed through lunch to listen to Technology Partners’ Ira Ehrenpreis’ compelling talk on why the theme of the day, green tech, will actually be profitable. See photo. Yay Ira.

Funny story from golf outing the next day. First, it was freezing cold when my partner H and I drove out to Legend Trails at practically dawn for a 7:15am check in. He usually golfs in shorts year round here in Arizona but had grabbed a pair of jeans on the way out the door. Ut oh. Legend Trails is one of the “fancy” places – no dice on denim. We frantically tried to find an open retailer but all the big names (Target, Walmart) were closed til 8am. So we reluctantly paid $102.50 at the pro shop for a sporty pair of Nike slacks. Fast forward to the end of the tourney (no need to dwell on my crappy game, I was dressed as if I was going skiing and could barely swing the club) when I was surprised with the Women’s Long Drive prize – yes, a $100 gift certificate to the pro shop where they kindly swapped the prize money for my Amex refund. Things have a funny way of working out sometimes, don’t they? Incidentally it was a great golf group; but next year I might just skip the conference and play golf like the extremely entertaining VC I was paired with. You know who you are. Oh shoot, I just realized I owe you 20% of that prize money!