Hundreds of venture capitalists gathered on the campus of MIT yesterday to celebrate the 65^thanniversary of venture capital in America. Organized and sponsored by Xconomy and held in conjunction with the NVCA Annual Meeting, the VC65 event featured speakers, multimedia presentations and panel discussions about the venture community’s past and future. This blend of classic VC principles and forward looking perspectives provided a persistent thread for the programming. Accomplished VC veterans detailed how they have taken lessons learned from venture investing and applied them successfully to other endeavors – including charitable causes, while emerging directors speculated on how the roles of VCs and entrepreneurs will evolve in the coming decades. (Spoiler alert: Those roles will increasingly intermingle.)

In that regard, the event effectively doubled as a celebration of entrepreneurship and the VC-entrepreneur relationship. Innovators and investors shared the stage to tell the stories of how they have built emerging companies like Kiva Systems and Skype. In their presentation, Robert Langer, of Langer Labs/MIT and Terry McGuire, of Polaris and NVCA chairman emeritus, actually provided a checklist for developing and maintaining a healthy VC-entrepreneur relationship. (So far, their partnership has produced 17 startups, so perhaps they are on to something.) In general, optimism about the future of entrepreneurship ran high, as VCs shared experiences with a new generation of college grads – both in the U.S. and abroad – who are choosing entrepreneurship as their first career path – not as Plan B. Some predicted that both entrepreneurship and venture investing will become more professionalized as a result, but opinions split over whether this will lead to higher success rates in the future.

Overall, the feeling that innovators will always innovate – either here or abroad – and that venture investors will always find those innovators – regardless of economic cycles – seemed to prevail. The VC model is not broken, but rather has entered a perpetual state of evolution and refinement. Another 65 years from now, it figures to look altogether similar and different. If that happensso, the venture community will have cause for yet another celebration.