February saw two big events for the Group, the Startonomics conference and the 8 by 8 dinner.  Here’s a big thank you to Dealmaker for bringing the event to UCLA (no doubt our constant prodding helped move things along).  If you are planning on a event that helps educate the SoCal startup community, please contact us for marketing opportunities.

The 8 by 8 dinner sold out quickly as usual, and featured a really diverse set of smart folks: venture capital, CMOs, startup founders, social media execs, and the mandatory student.  We plan on doing a dinner once a quarter, so please check back for updates on the next dinner date.

Lastly, we definitely need to increase the number of tech geeks since no one correctly answered our geek question: what does 8 by 8 refer to?

Well, 8×8 is the size of the transform matrix used in most image and MPEG video compression techniques.  The is because the 8×8 discrete cosine transform has many symmetric properties, making for efficient computation.  Check out here and here for more insight and info.  It is also the name of an IC company that (used) to focus on multimedia processing.

Yeah this is one that would be hard to google for…