<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Scobleizer]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[http://scobleizer.blog]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[Robert Scoble]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://scobleizer.blog/author/scobleizer/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Thank you Marc and Laura&nbsp;Andreessen]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/11/building-a-stat.html">Marc Andreessen just talked</a> about donating $27.5 million to Stanford University&#8217;s hospital (where my son was born, where Maryam&#8217;s mom had brain surgery). <a href="http://scobleizer.com/2007/10/08/the-stanford-it-doctor-is-in/">I have a video with one of the doctors</a> at the hospital who also works in IT there. Inspiring people all around and great work is done there &#8212; the research that&#8217;s done there is shared around the world because it&#8217;s a teaching/research hospital.</p>
<p>Does this donation affect lives? Very directly. Thank you Marc and Laura, you could have taken this money and done plenty of other stuff with it. I&#8217;ve seen other rich geeks in the valley buy yachts, or expensive homes around the world, or other such toys that really don&#8217;t give back much, if anything, to the world. This directly impacts tons of people and the learning that gets done there will make an impact around the world.</p>
<p>Last night I was at the <a href="http://www.techawards.org/">Tech Museum&#8217;s award show</a>, where they honored geeks around the world who were making a major difference to communities through their technology developments. Very inspiring. Hope to have some videos up soon about that show on PodTech (we were a media sponsor).</p>
<p>One thing both of these do is to challenge me to do more. I don&#8217;t have $27.5 million. I&#8217;m not a technologist. But, I can donate some time. Say 40 hours by the end of the year.</p>
<p>Where would you donate 40 hours of time? I&#8217;d like to bring Patrick along too to teach him there&#8217;s more to life than the next cool tech product that&#8217;s coming out.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m thinking of helping out a food bank with its Thanksgiving meals. What do you think?</p>
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