I wonder if you could get funding from the state this way?
As for the blind leading the blind, how about a teleconferencing link to Boston or Silicon Valley? A company I worked for tried having a couple of webcams/projectors in a meeting room during a Friday social hour to try and link the Connecticut and Houston offices. It only went so far. But maybe if you had an entire wall of an old school "terminal room" style workroom, this could work. Have 3 connected projector/webcam sets linked on a pair of dedicated machines, with software that could quickly and rapidly change functions of the two side screens. (Add some Wiimote hackery for a cheap augmented multi-touch whiteboard, or instant desktop sharing with any machine in the room.)
Hmm, if a rig like this could be scrounged together cheaply enough, one could form a community of such virtually linked hacker-spaces as a network! Maybe use daily round robin, or random pairing. And then, why limit it to just Boston or Silicon Valley? How about Houston-Atlanta for starters?
But this quickly becomes a case of optimizing for the wrong variable -- because it's already become, "How can you find a way for them to stay?" rather than, "How can you find a way for them to be successful?"
I also don't think that you hook up with mentors via teleconferencing. For whatever reason, face to face meetings matter a lot. You don't have dinner with someone via a teleconference. You don't tell stories over beer via a teleconference. There's a rigid formality -- "Why are we having this conversation?" I think mentorship rarely happens within those lines.
One of the comments above talks about the face-to-face networking opportunities. There's a reason he didn't say, "Why would I want that? I can call up people via Skype Video now..." ;-)
I also don't think that you hook up with mentors via teleconferencing. For whatever reason, face to face meetings matter a lot. You don't have dinner with someone via a teleconference. You don't tell stories over beer via a teleconference. There's a rigid formality --
Well, I don't know about mentoring per se, but if you have an "always on" connection in the workspace, then you leave the situation open for serendipity. What I'm envisioning is just a "serendipity conduit" or maybe "serendipity space." The workspace can become a play-space in the evening or on the weekend. I could even envision communal dinners.
I'm not thinking about people "calling up" other people. I'm thinking of communal spaces with "magic walls."
Probably not quite what you mean (focused more on tinkering than startups), but I can't not link to http://hackerspaces.org when I read "a whole network of hackerspaces".
Maybe we should get together and write up a proposal and a standards document? We need something that requires minimal financial outlay, but that can be made up for with a lot of technical skill/knowledge. (Like, with the Wiimote hacking, there would be some soldering, dremeling, and hot glue gun action involved.) A fairly hefty bandwidth requirement seems reasonable, though we would only want to take a minority of what is available. (Caroline Collective has 16mbps down and 8 up.)
Future-proofing the standard will take some thought. We would like the standard to grow as technology becomes available, but still be inclusive of older installations.
As for the blind leading the blind, how about a teleconferencing link to Boston or Silicon Valley? A company I worked for tried having a couple of webcams/projectors in a meeting room during a Friday social hour to try and link the Connecticut and Houston offices. It only went so far. But maybe if you had an entire wall of an old school "terminal room" style workroom, this could work. Have 3 connected projector/webcam sets linked on a pair of dedicated machines, with software that could quickly and rapidly change functions of the two side screens. (Add some Wiimote hackery for a cheap augmented multi-touch whiteboard, or instant desktop sharing with any machine in the room.)
Hmm, if a rig like this could be scrounged together cheaply enough, one could form a community of such virtually linked hacker-spaces as a network! Maybe use daily round robin, or random pairing. And then, why limit it to just Boston or Silicon Valley? How about Houston-Atlanta for starters?