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This morning's Insights & Opinions piece comes from Jim Armstrong , Managing Director at Clearstone Venture Partners . Jim is very active helping Southern California's aspiring entrepreneurs, and has been instrumental in helping to promote the technology industry here. Tags: insights opinions armstrong clearstone venture capita Jim has been giving helpful advice to CEOs recently on his blog , and we're sharing his recent top ten list of board meetings do's and don'ts for CEO. Here Here are my TOP 10 BOARD MEETING DOS AND DONTS FOR CEOS......

Pasadena-based Big Stage Entertainment , the venture-backed startup which is developing photo-realistic avatar technology, has exited its beta and officially launched its site. BigStage is venture backed by Mission Ventures, Selby Ventures, and the Tech Coast Angels, and is based on research from the University of Southern California; the firm's CEO, Phil Ressler, was formerly a venture capitalist at Clearstone Ventures, and the firm was co-founded by Jon Snoddy and Jon Kraft, who also helped co-found music service Pandora. The firm said the official launch will allow users to create what the firm calls an "@actor" -- a 3D avatar which can be inserted into movie and TV clips, music videos, still images, and elsewhere.

The firm said along with the announcement that it will be adding ad serving, forecasting, and other functionality to its system in 2010, and that it is taking an aim at current provider of ad server technology. Rubicon also said in its announcement that it had year-over-year growth of 270%, and that during 2009 it made its first acquisition, of technology firm Others Online. Rubicon Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project , the online ad optimization firm headed by Frank Addante , announced this morning that it has hired investment banker Allen & Company . According to Rubicon, Allen

The goal is to create a place where it's relatively easy to find current content and highly relevant content surrounding Los Angeles Technology. This technology allows us to see what is hot. So here's the Hot List for 1/1/2009 - 1/15/2009 Top 5 Posts The 7 Ways to Get Traffic on the Web Why You Need To Lead A Tribe - Seth Godin LA Gets Dugg, Hammered, Screwed How To Get The World Excited About Your Business I'm happy to announce the launch of the Los Angeles Tech Content Community . This is the beginning of a content community that collects and organizes

Twiistup , the technology conference and networking event, is set for Wednesday evening and Thursday. Also on Thursday, the Founder Institute , an effort by Adeo Ressi of TheFunded to help incubate and mentor startups–with local efforts headed by Ken Rutkowski , is launching at a local event at Clearstone Venture Partners. ...Tags: This week is shaping up to be one of the busiest tech-event weeks so far this year yet, making me think again that a clone would help to actually get to all of these. Among the events happening this week are:

Irvine-based Integrien , a developer of IT analytics software, announced today that it has added Carol Dingle, most recently VP Product Development and Shared Services at Digital Insight/Intuit, to its technology advisory board. Integrien is backed by Acartha Group, Clearstone Venture Partners, and the Tech Coast Angels. Dingle spent the last 12 years at Digital Insight serving as VP Operations and Infrastructure. READ MORE>> ...Tags:

Douglas joins the firm from eHarmony, where he was the firm's Vice President of Technology. Rubicon Project develops technology used to optimize advertising revenues for web publishers. The firm is venture backed by Mayfield Fund, Clearstone Venture Partners and IDG Ventures. READ MOR Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project, which develops online advertising optimization software, announced this morning that it has hired on two executives to the firm. Rubicon said that it has hired Mark Douglas as Vice President of Engineering, and Seizo Welch as Vice President of Finance.

Irvine-based Integrien , a developer of IT performance analytics software, announced this morning that it has received another patent on its technology. Integrien is venture backed by Clearstone Ventures and the Acartha Group. The firm said that the patent is the second issued for the firm, which has another 11 additional patent applications. The patent is U.S.

Los Angeles-based The Rubicon Project , the online advertising optimization firm backed by Clearstone, Mayfield, IDG, and Peacock Equity, said today that it has enhanced its "Certified Inventory" program with a partnership with AdSafe Media. According to Rubicon, it is integrating AdSafe's proprietary content analysis technology to help provide more advanced brand protection for its advertisers. Rubicon's certified inventory program rates publishers' sites for safety, quality, and other factors, so that advertisers can better target their ads to the most appropriate web sites. Financial