It’s the beginning of summer. That is a good thing. Spend three minutes watching the amazing video below and get inspired to open your eyes and breath in this weekend.

As I come out of my depression, I’ve been systematically changing many of my tactics and habits. Simple things like deciding not to wake up with an alarm clock. Having a digital sabbath (no email / phone from Friday night to Sunday morning). Talking to Brooks the wonder dog when I take him for a walk, rather than have my thoughts wander around in my head.

This video reminded me to break that patterns that my brain has completely assimilated, in a search for awe, inspiration, and innovation. Thanks Anthony for pointing it out to me.

Startup Weekend and Startup America Partnership are joining forces to create UP Global.  In addition to Startup Weekend, UP Global also runs Next, StartupDigest, and NYSE Big Startup. Marc Nager, the CEO of Startup Weekend, will be the CEO of Up Global. Steve Case, the chairman of Startup America Partnership, will be the chairman of Up Global.

I’m extremely psyched. I’ve been involved in both organizations since inception. The first Startup Weekend happened in Boulder in June 2007 and have been on the board for the past few years. I was at the White House for the launch of Startup America, which included launch of the privately funded Startup America Partnership. NCWIT and TechStars were founding members. I’m the co-chair of Startup Colorado. Many of the ideas in my book Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City have been informed by my experience with both organizations, and they’ve each incorporated many of these ideas into what they are doing.

I’ve made many new entrepreneurial friends on this journey so far. I’ve been absolutely delighted and blown away by the leadership of Marc Nager and his team in the growth of Startup Weekend around the world. Scott Case and Steve Case, along with their team, have done an outstanding job at Startup America Partnership mobilizing broad startup community initiatives across the United States and elevating the understanding and importance of entrepreneurship at a national level. And the Kauffman Foundation – who I continue to have immense respect for – has been an incredibly strong supporter of both organizations.

UP Global is a logical next step in the creation of vibrant entrepreneurial communities around the world. I’m a huge believer in consolidating efforts in the non-profit between complementary organizations. This one was a natural and logical one and I’m excited about what’s coming up.

Two of the public policy things I care about are patent reform and immigration reform. I believe our patent system – especially with regard to software and business method patents – is completely and totally broken. And our immigration system – especially concerning immigrant entrepreneurs – is an embarrassment.

There is suddenly a lot of focus and attention on both of these issues. That’s good, and I’m hopeful that it will result in some meaningful positive changes. It pains me to see other countries – such as Canada, the UK, and New Zealand – be more progressive, open, and forward thinking around entrepreneurship and innovation than the US. There are days when I’m discouraged by our political system, but as I’ve gotten older and spent more time with it the past few years, I’m getting to a zen state of not being discouraged, but rather accepting the reality of the process and just being consistent and clear about what I think is important and how to fix it.

On the patent front, Twitter recently finalized a powerful approach – the Innovator’s Patent Agreement (the IPA). With this, they’ve agreed – as a company – to only use their patents defensively. I think this is extraordinary leadership on Twitter’s part. Our government and the USPTO is not moving aggressively to fix a problem that is now stifling innovation in the software industry, so leaders in the software industry can, and should, take matters into the own hands. As Fred Wilson describes in his post today, the IPA is an incredibly clever and forward looking approach. I’m proud of my friends at Twitter for providing this leadership and I encourage entrepreneurs and investors to understand the IPA and consider applying it to their patent approached.

On the immigration reform front, today is the second to last day of the March for Innovation. Go to the March for Innovation page to tell your Senators how important this issue is and read what a bunch of tech leaders are saying on the Mashable March for Innovation page. If you want just my thoughts, you can go read them at Broken Innovation Shutters Innovation.

First things first – we are fine. Amy had an emergency appendectomy last night. She’s recovering extremely well and feeling great, albeit a little sore, this morning. We’ll be going home in a little bit once the doctor gets here.

Yesterday was a typical Monday. Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion. I went for a run. My partners and I had sushi for lunch. I did a bunch of email and phone calls. I walked 20,000 steps on my treadputer. I gave a talk with Jeff Clavier for one of our LPs (AMG) at Frasca to a bunch of their clients. Normal stuff.

While hanging out at Frasca, I got a text from Amy that said “I might have appendicitis. Getting ready for IV and scan. Can’t find vein, as usual. I’ll keep you posted.” Well – that’ll throw a guy off his game. Amy wasn’t feeling well in the morning and had gut pain – I told her to make sure she went to the doctor if she didn’t feel better by the end of the day. I headed over to CU Boulder to interview David Cohen as part of the Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurs Unplugged event, knowing that I could get textus interruptus at any time.

Five minutes after I started interviewing David, I got a text from Amy that said “It’s appendicitis. I will need surgery at Boulder Community tonight. Boo.” Fortunately, there was another Brad around (Brad Bernthal) who quickly stepped in for me as moderator as I exited stage left to go get Amy and take her to the hospital.

Amy went to urgent care at 5:30. I picked her up at 7:00. She was in surgery by 9:00. She was out by 11:00. We were asleep in our cozy hospital room by midnight, romanced to sleep (her in a hospital bed, me on a cot) by the six second repeating hum of the IV machine.

I’ve never spent the night in a hospital before. I certainly didn’t expect to do it last night. I guess there’s a first time for everything. Boulder Community Hospital and their staff is just awesome – and as the sun comes up on another day we begin again, reminded of our priorities.

Over the past few decades, the most compelling engineers and entrepreneurs I’ve met have tended to be working on problems that can be solved with software. Software has some great advantages but it comes with a few big drawbacks, namely it’s tied to a few standard types of input, although we are trying to impact that with some of our investments in our HCI theme.

Along with the rest of the tech ecosystem, I’m starting to see more and more entrepreneurs with a piece of hardware in their development plan. These are not your parents’ hardware products. Instead, they are software companies that happen to have a physical component in their stack – something I call software wrapped in plastic.

Adding the plastic around the software is no short order. MakerBot, FitBit, Orbotix, Sifteo, Modular Robotics, Pogoplug, Slingbox, and a slew of others have taught me that even though much of the business-side is similar to a software company, the product-side most definitely is not. From an outsider’s perspective, it’s stunning how much damage one bad component on a PCB board can do to a company’s bottom line, or how different industrial design is from software design, or even how the brains of a software person and a hardware person collide in bizarre ways.

I’ve learned how critical it is to get the right kind of help for young companies with a piece of hardware, which is why I invested in Bolt. Bolt is one of the more unique accelerator programs I’ve seen. Ben and his team have designed, developed, manufactured, and financed a long list of successful products and they’ve built Bolt around best-practices for these kinds of companies. Over 6-months, accepted companies get a long list of benefits, the most valuable of which are a full-staff of senior engineers and designers at your disposal and 24×7 access to their $1M of prototyping equipment.

If you’re a startup with a piece of hardware (or plan to have one) check out Bolt and apply to be part of their first accelerator class. Applications close in two days – Wednesday, May 22nd at midnight.