After an amazing couple of years at Microsoft as their Evangelist for Startups, I found myself ready to move on. To step it up. I fell in love with Boston’s startup community and wanted to do more.

I spent months trying to figure out what my next thing would be. Talking to to people, brainstorming ideas. I wanted to help the community – but how? What did I know? What could I possibly do as an individual that would make more impact than what I could do with the resources of a big company behind me?

And then, when I figured it out, it was so obvious:

I need to build a hacker space!!

And so, I’m crazy excited to be launching hack/reduce. hack/reduce will be Boston’s big data hacker space with the mission of helping Boston create the talent and technologies that will shape our future in what I believe will be a very (big) data-driven future. A non-profit that I’m creating in partnership with the State of Massachusetts and a kick ass board, whose sole mission will be to help Boston retain it’s title as the most innovative city in the world.

Imagine a place where people come together to create. To take vast amounts of information and turn it into knowledge that we can use for making smarter decisions, for finding better ways to conserve energy, smarter ways to improve our economy, for identifying cures for diseases. The applications become endless as we learn to process the vast amounts of information that are now being created.

And Boston is SO the place to do this. We have all of these wicked smart people working in areas that really matter like life sciences and biotech and clean energy. Pair that with the fact that, per capita, Boston has more programmers and R&D investment than anywhere in the world. Oh, and let’s not forget education: MIT, Harvard… there are 85 colleges & universities in the Boston area. Yep, we can seriously kick ass in any area that has to do with knowledge and solving tough problems.

So – this might be totally crazy. But, I like crazy so I’m giving it a go. And I could super use your help:

If you’d like to use hack/reduce, take this quick survey to help me understand what you’re looking for: http://bit.ly/hackreduce1

You can also like our Facebook page to join the discussion & stay up to date as hack/reduce readies for launch: http://www.facebook.com/hackreduce

And wish me luck! :-) Hope to see you in the space when we open this Fall.