After the chaos of some days, it’s a delight to come home, stand outside, and look at my backyard.

Today was (another) one of those days.

Amy and I love sushi.  While my sushi dining experiences have been limited to the US and Europe, I’ve had a number of amazing sushi dinners, including Masa in New York.  Boulder has a bizarrely large number of sushi restaurants and over the years we’ve frequented them all numerous times.

A year or so ago a new one – Kasa Japanese Grill and Bar – opened up on the corner of Pearl and 15th.  It’s around the corner from our condo in Boulder so we stopped in a few times.  The first time went there it was empty, but the owner and manager Mimi was delightful and upbeat, shining her happiness on us.  As we kept going back, the number of people in the restaurant at any given time increased, but Mimi always welcomed us as if she was welcoming us into her home, doted over us, and made sure we had an amazing time.

Last week Kasa finally got a review that it had long deserved when the Boulder Camera wrote Kasa Japanese Grill review: Delicious excess has its place.  Amy and I had dinner at Kasa tonight with our friends Tim Enwall and Hillary Hall and the place was packed.  It was fun to watch Mimi run from table to table, making sure everyone was having a great time as her staff did the same.

I’m a Kasa regular and hope to be for a long time.  I’m psyched they are getting the recognition they’ve been working hard for.  The next time you think of sushi in Boulder, give them a try.

Andrew Hyde has decided to organize another Boulder Startup Week on May 4 – 8, 2010.  Tons of folks are already committed to host events including Trada, Pivotal Labs, Everlater, QuickLeft, TechStars, Napkin Labs, and SurveyGizmo.  The Boulder New Tech Meetup and Ignite Boulder is also happening that week. 

It’s free – register now and mark it on Plancast.

The Boulder Fiber Forever project to bring Google’s 1 Gbps fiber network to Boulder is having a flash mob at the Walnut Brewery (1123 Walnut Street) today (Sunday) from 3pm – 6pm.  Come join us, but first go to Boulderfiber.com and add your support for the effort.  Then, head over the the Walnut Brewery between 3pm and 6pm, mention Boulderfiber, and get pints of some of the best beer in Boulder for $2.25.

I’m running to town from Eldo today and should be there around 5pm.  I’ll see you there.

If you live in Boulder, it’s time to help bring the Google Fiber experiment to our awesome city.  A bunch of folks from all over Boulder are working on the Boulder Fiber project to help us become one of the cities for the Google Fiber for Communities project. 

Boulder is a perfect city for this.  When I moved here in 1995 I didn’t expect to engage in much business as I was spending most of my time in Boston, NY, and San Francisco.  However, I discovered an incredibly smart community that was extremely computer and Internet savvy.  As the commercial Internet started to take off in the mid-1990’s, Boulder was a hotbed for Internet usage and innovation as we rapidly became an incredibly wired city.  I attributed this to the convergence of (a) a smart, well-educated population, (b) a university at the core of the city, (c) a bunch of national labs, (d) a solid legacy of tech startups, especially around storage, cable, and telecom, and (e) a strong culture of independence which was well suited to all things Internet.

What I didn’t realize at the time were two important metrics that underscore both the technology and the entrepreneurial energy in Boulder.  The two metrics are that on a per-capita basis, Boulder has the highest percentage of computer scientists and the highest percentage of Ph.D.’s in the US.  When combined with a vibrant entrepreneurial community that has deep software and Internet expertise, magic things happen.

We’ve seen a lot of this magic in Boulder in the past five years.  I’m proud of how the city I call home has arisen as one of the most important entrepreneurial communities in the US with much more activity, visibility, and influence than a city with a population of 150,000 typically has.  More importantly, the amount of innovation coming out of Boulder is extraordinary.

Google has put out a challenge to find communities that are willing to be a test bed for an experimental ultra-high speed broadband network to see what kind of innovation will emerge.  If you are a member of the Boulder community, even if you aren’t in the high tech or entrepreneurial sector, help us tell Google why Boulder is the best city in the US for this experiment.

If you are game to help, do the following things:

1. Go to the Boulder Fiber site and follow the directions – it’ll take five minutes.
2. Follow the Boulder Fiber project on Twitter
3. Fan Bring Google Fiber to the City of Boulder on Facebook.

In case you were wondering what the Boulder Snowstorm resulted in (so far – it’s still coming down) at my house in Eldorado Springs, here you go!

So there is no ambiguity, my dog Kenai loves it.

And – no surprise, so does Brooks!

Some folks from the Boulder startup community came together last August to see who could eat the most sushi. I participated in the Sushi Regurge, but (as I promised Amy) stopped once I was full. Actually, I didn’t stop when I was full, I stopped when I couldn’t choke down piece number 55. 

While that was going on, a couple guys who met at Boulder Startup Weekend 2 were over on the side catching up and intelligently observing rather than participating in Sushi Regurge. After realizing they both started out their careers working for nonprofits, they started discussing how they hadn’t volunteered at all recently. Being good techies, they whipped out their iPhones and searched the App Store for "volunteer"  only to find only some apps for Tennessee Volunteers fans. They looked around at the startup talent in the room, busily wolfing down sushi, and said, "This should exist. I bet we could build it."

What followed was a year-long community project involving over 100 volunteers and zero budget. Applying guerrilla startup tactics, they leveraged many parts of Boulder’s startup community: they went to the iPhone Dev Camp, PodCamp, and BarCamp, got lots of help from the crew at TechStars, listened to feedback at Boulder Open Coffee, got help and direction from EFCO and the Community Foundation, and presented at the Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup. The result was a supportive community who continually stepped up to help when needed and a core team of volunteers who met most Tuesday nights through the spring and summer to write code and build the "business."

The result is the SnapImpact and their iPhone app.  Their mantra – "make doing good easy" – is pleasantly consistent with Boulder’s startup community.  Great job everyone!