Bantam Live

We like Hugh MacLeod's work and the GapingVoid blog he's created, which is why Bantam Live invited him to create something for our launch this week. Hugh's range goes from abstract drawing to characters with social bite or existential musing. We like the simple "collab" and "oration" words around the tangle of a network abstraction. Thanks, Hugh. (Check out the new "Hugh's Daily Cartoon," the new mailing list to receive a daily cartoon in your inbox.)

The background of our relationship with Hugh goes like this... Bantam Live launched its public-beta last summer onstage at TechCrunch's Real-time Stream Crunchup at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City, Michael Arrington auctioned off copy #1 of "dream big. techcrunch 2009" serigraph by artist Hugh MacLeod. I won the auction. I figured it was a good cause (to the Electronic Frontier Foundation), would give us a promotional bump, and would commemorate for the team an achievement of sorts to have launched in beta as a selected startup from the stage on that day. As Hugh explains, the serigraph was a "social object." It hangs in our loft today.