I’ve been hinting about a new conference that we’ve been working on with Eric Norlin that complements Defrag and Glue.  Eric is about to launch it and the splash page for the Blur Conference is up. 

If you are familiar with Defrag and Glue, you know they are built around two of Foundry Group’s themes (Protocol and Glue respectively).  Blur is being built around our Human Computer Interaction theme, but with a twist.  Instead of simply being able to “see cool stuff up close”, our goal with Blur will be to create an environment where you can actually use and work with this stuff.  We’ll have user-oriented demos, hackathons, and tons of crazy shit no one has ever seen before. 

Plus, we’ll give away a lot of cool toys, have a ton of smart people who are working on the next generation of HCI in one place, and have some fun surprises.  And we are doing it in an environment that is especially tuned for a conference like Blur.

I’m incredibly excited about what Eric has put together for this year’s Glue Conference (as I wrote about the other day).  He’s setting a high bar for Blur, where the goal will now be to have a few brains explode!  Get ready – it’s never dull around here.

I love the conferences we help sponsor (Glue and Defrag).  Eric Norlin is a genius at putting together a specialty technology conference.  He gets amazing people to attend, curates the content meticulously, isn’t afraid to try new things every year (and have some not work), and just keeps at it with single minded commitment.  He also totally gets why to do these things outside of the bay area – there’s a completely different tempo (and magic can happen) when people really commit two days of their life to a conference.

The 2010 Glue Conference is a few months away (5/26/10 and 5/27/10).  Instead of happening in Denver, Eric is doing Glue at the Omni Interlocken Resort on the outskirts of Boulder.  For a taste, here are some of the speakers:

• Michael Barrett, CISO, PayPal
• Professor Eric Brewer, creator of the CAP Theorem
• Chris Hoff, Dir. of Cloud Solutions, Cisco
• Ryan Sarver, Dir. of Platform, Twitter
• Jonathan Ellis, Lead on the Cassandra project

Some of the sessions that are finalized include:

• The Cassandra Database: Inside Twitter’s Choice
• What’s up with OAuth/WRAP?
• 5 Things I Hate about your API Terms of Service
• The Apache Cloud Stack (Hadoop, HBase, Zookeeper, etc)
• App PaaS vs. Enhanced Cloud System Infrastructure
• Inside MongoDB: the internals of a NoSQL database
• Understanding User-managed Access

Take a look at the fuller speaker list and agenda if you want, but beware that it moves around a lot.  If you register for Glue now you can get an additional 10% off the early bird price of $525 if you register by 4/2/10 and use the discount code “twit1” (full price at the door is $695).  As a special bonus, CloudCamp at Denver is happening the day before Glue (5/25/10).  CloudCamp is free, but only 98 tickets are left. 

Sign up for both of them now.  I’ll be there for the whole shebang, along with my partners at Foundry Group.  Plus, May in Boulder is just awesome.  And be on the lookout for an announcement soon about a third conference that you’ll have to really focus on (yeah – inside joke – but you’ll appreciate it.)

If you happen to live in North Carolina or regularly attend the CED Venture Conference (the Southeast US’s longest running early stage company financing conference), come say hello to me on April 21st.  I’ll be spending the day at the conference and am speaking on a panel from 1:30pm to 2:45pm.  We don’t yet appear to have a panel title, but the other participants are Dana Callow (Boston Millennia Partners), Noel Fenton (Trinity Ventures), Todd Forrest (Hummer Winblad), and Patrick Kerins (NEA).  I don’t think I’ve ever been on a panel with any of them before (although I’m pretty certain I’ve fixed Dana Callow’s computer a few times back during my Feld Technologies days), so I’m looking forward to having some fun bwahahahahahahahaha.

On Thursday, March 18th (during CU Entrepreneurship Week) there is going to be a great Silicon Flatirons Conference on “The Role of Place”.  Brad Bernthal, who is chairing the conference, leads with a great quote from Harvard Professor and Monitor Group co-founder Michael Porter.

"Paradoxically, the enduring competitive advantages in a global economy lie increasingly in local things – knowledge, relationships, and motivation – that distant rivals cannot match."

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this personally given all my work around the Boulder entrepreneurial community, TechStars, Foundry Group’s investments in different parts of the US, and the Startup Visa initiative. 

I’ll be on the first panel titled Entrepreneurial Immigration Policy with Lance Nagel (partner in Morgan, Lewis & Bockius’ Labor and Employment Practice) and Vivek Wadhwa (Senior Research Associate, Labor & Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and an Adjunct Professor at the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering).  I expect we’ll get a good chance to cover plenty of ground, including several of the incredible immigrant entrepreneur loci and projects like the Startup Visa initiative.

The second panel is Place and Iteration: Lessons From Storage and includes several folks who have been involved in the Boulder “storage ecosystem” over the past 30 years, including Jesse Aweida (founder of StorageTek) and Kyle Lefkoff (general partner of Boulder Ventures, who has invested in several Boulder storage companies over the years including McData and LeftHand Networks).  Jim Linfield (partner at Cooley Godward, the founder of Cooley’s Colorado office, and counsel for a number of Colorado storage companies) will be anchoring the panel.

The third panel is Innovation and The Architecture of Geography and will explore broader lessons and insight concerning the role of place, regional architecture, and innovation.

Once again, my friends at Silicon Flatiron have put together a rich conference on a very important and timely topic.  It’s taking place at the Wittemyer Courtroom, Wolf Law Building, University of Colorado on Thursday, March 18, 2010 from 2:30PM to 6:30PM.  Register now and come join us.

I’m doing another Beers with Brad – this time in Boulder on next Thursday, February 18th from 6pm to 8pm at Twisted Pine Brewery (3201 Walnut Street).  Lest you think this will be one of those boring events where a bunch of smart, interesting people stand around and drink beer and talk for a few hours, I promise I’ll spice this one up. 

I’m going to tell three entrepreneurial stories I haven’t told in public before in Boulder.  I haven’t decided which ones yet but they’ll be doozies.  I promise a mix of success and failure to go with some very good beer.  All in support of a good cause and some fun. 

There might even be an after party.

My long time friend Warren Katz pointed me out to an event on March 3, 2010 called EO Boston Accelerator Shark Bowl 2010.  It’s a competition for entrepreneurs under 40 with businesses between $100k / year and $1m / year in revenue.  You present to a group of judges including Warren (MAK Technologies), Rich Farrell (Full Armor), Clark Waterfall (Boston Search Group), and Michael Hackel (DiningIN) who are all EO Boston members.

In 1993 I was the founder of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization Boston Chapter and member #1.  My forum group, “Forum Group 1” is apparently still meeting monthly.  And while YEO changed its name to EO, my friend Warren who has been a member from the very beginning tells me the group is still going very strong (the stats look like 88 members with total sales of $427m and 2,231 employees across all of the companies.)

If you fit the qualifications, I’d encourage you to participate.  It’s free, you’ll get some great practice and advice, and meet a bunch of new entrepreneurial peers.  To participate, you must register and to present you must sent your presentation to Caryn Saitz by March 1st. 

Go Boston (and Cambridge) – you are making me proud these days!

I’ve done a few “Beers With Brad” in other cities such as Seattle and Vancouver.  On February 18th from 6 to 8pm, I’m going to be doing Beers with Brad in Boulder at The Twisted Pine Brewery.  It’s a fundraiser for KGNU (88.5 FM and 1390 AM in Denver) – tickets are $10 in advance or $15 at the door.  There will be free munchies, music, and plenty of beer.  Come join us for a fun evening where I’ll talk about whatever comes to my mind about entrepreneurship and innovation – especially ideas fueled by a few beers.

There’s a bunch of other great entrepreneurial stuff going on in Boulder in February.  Don’t miss the Winter in the Bunker series – new things are being added regularly. 

And – if you are a startup that wants to work with some CU students as interns (or recruit them for full time work), don’t miss University of Colorado Startup2Students 2010 on March 11th from 6:30 – 8:00pm.

I love this town.

On Friday I’ll be in LA at Mahalo headquarters at 1pm making a guest appearance on Jason Calacanis’s This Week In Startups show.  I told Jason I’d be happy to discuss whatever he wanted to which I hope includes the Open Angel Forum, Startup Visa, Abolishing Software Patents, and all kinds of fun things around entrepreneurship and venture capital.  Conversations with Jason are never dull so I expect this one to be spicy hot on top of the typical chocolately goodness.

I figured I should do a few Mahalo searches in advance so I looked up Brad Feld, Foundry Group, Sarah Palin, and “How To Cheat on Rock Band”.  I then poked around on Mahalo Answers and Mahalo Tasks to see if I could earn any M$.  So – at least I can now answer Jason’s question “have you played with Mahalo lately.”

Ok – so in addition to the Boulder events, I also go to Bay Area events.  I’ve got a Return Path board meeting on 1/21 in the Bay Area and that evening Matt Blumberg – Return Path’s CEO – is going to be presenting at the great Startup2Startup series that Dave McClure puts on with the help of his glorious sponsors.

I’ll be there along with a bunch of other great folks (I even paid my $90 for my ticket).  Matt’s got a fascinating story and Return Path is another company in my world that had an awesome 2009 and is poised for a phenomenal 2010 (how’s that for adverbs adjectives.)  Matt will be talking about the history of Return Path (dating back to 1999), lessons he’s learned, and best practices in email deliverability.

If you don’t know Matt, he’s got a great blog titled “OnlyOnce” (since you can only be a “first time CEO once and this is Matt’s journey.”)  Some special secrets about Matt – he was on the FeedBurner board so he can tell you funny stories about Twitter’s COO and he’s run two marathons with me so he can tell you funny stories about things I say after 4+ hours running.

January 21st, 6pm – 9:30pm at the Garden Court Hotel on 520 Cowper Street in Palo Alto.  Sign up now.  Be there or be forever destined to have email deliverability issues.

Enough with the calendar stuff.  I promise my next post will be a long essay about some obscure topic that will generate a lot of controversy.  Or maybe I’ll just list out the marathons I’m going to run in 2010.

Well, the world is back at work (as evidenced by the 327 new emails I got today).  And my friends at Silicon Flatirons at CU Boulder are cranking up the head with Crash Courses, Entrepreneurs Unplugged, and Workshops.

1/13/10: 6-8pm @ Wolf: Crash Course: How to Build a Company by Jason Mendelson followed with a “Start-up Internships” networking event for local startups looking for CU students interested in internship opportunities. 

1/25/10: 6:15-7:15pm @ Wolf: Entrepreneurs Unplugged With Ryan Martens (Founder/CTO) and Tim Miller (CEO) of Rally Software.  I’ll be interviewing Ryan and Tim about their experiences with Avitek (their first company together), BEA (which acquired Avitek in 1999), and Rally Software – their second company together which had a spectacular 2009 and is poised for an even better 2010.  Don’t forget to ask them about the really cool thing that they announced between the time I wrote this blog post and 1/25/10.

1/27/10: 6-7pm @ ATLAS: Workshop: Your Market: Connecting with your Customers by Tom Keller.  Tom was most recently the CEO of Intense Debate (a TechStars 2007 company that was acquired by Automattic, the makers of WordPress).  In addition to talking about marketing, Tom might drop a hint or two about his next gig which he’s getting started with the new year.

There is plenty more coming, but don’t miss these – I think they’ll all be great ones.

On Monday, I’ll be interviewing Tim Enwall, the founder, president, and COO of Tendril Networks as part of the Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurs Unplugged series.  The event will be from 6:15pm to 7:15pm at the ATLAS Building at CU Boulder.  As a special bonus, you can use my bathroom on the second floor (if you are a guy). 

I’ve known Tim for many years and he’s another fantastic Boulder entrepreneur.  I met him shortly after he had sold one of his previous companies – Solista – to Gartner Group.  We’ve become good friends since and have done a handful of things together, including getting completely creamed at a monthly poker game we were regulars at (ok – I got creamed, Tim usually held his own and often came out on top.)

Tim and the Tendril team have created a a fast growing Boulder company that crosses over nicely between software and cleantech.  In addition to their Colorado-based investors (Vista Ventures and Appian Ventures), Tendril has raised a substantial amount of capital from VC investors outside of Colorado, including RRE Ventures (NY-based) and VantagePoint (CA-based) as well as strategic partners such as GE Energy and Good Energies.  So, we’ll have a wide range of topics to cover, including bootstrapping a business and then selling it as well as systematically building a business using VC and strategic financing that has the potential to be the undisputed market leader with regard to the smart grid.

Come join us for the last Entrepreneurs Unplugged event of 2009.

I’ve been to my share of tech conferences that either don’t have any music playing or have some horrible mix that the hotel supplies turned up either a little to much or not quite enough.  In contrast, I know that Eric Norlin obsesses over every aspect of his conferences, including the soundtrack.  He knows his audience well and nailed it this year.  He’s published the soundtrack on the Defrag blog. 

I’m now looking forward to the Glue Conference soundtrack (and conference).

My friends at OneRiot and Adaptive Blue are organizing the second annual Add-on-Con.  It is being held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA on Dec 11.  If you are involved in a company that makes browser add-ons of any sort, this conference is for you. 

The conference is a full day of discussions about the browser and browser add-on market.  The closing keynote is on the future of the web browser and is moderated by Douglas Crockford and features representatives from Microsoft, Mozilla and Google.

In addition, if you are a new company and want to get exposure to the community and the browser vendors, Add-on-Con09 has a Sandbox program.  Companies that are accepted into the Sandbox receive promotion on the Add-on-Con website, $75 off the event cost of the event (50% discount), and the ability to demo their product in front of Browser representatives and conference attendees the morning of the conference.

If you aren’t a Sandbox company, you can still get a discount by using the discount code Bfeldaddoncon09 which takes $50 off of the $150 registration fee.

There are two CU Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurs Unplugged events next week – one on Monday November 2nd at CU Boulder in Atlas Room 100 and one on Wednesday November 4th at the Denver Art Museum.

The 11/2 Entrepreneurs Unplugged is with Steve Halstedt, the co-founder of Centennial Ventures.  Steve co-founded Centennial in 1981 and was one of the fathers of the venture capital business in Colorado.  When I moved to Boulder in 1995, Steve was one of the first VCs I met with here and he’s been a great friend and mentor ever since.  I look forward to interviewing him about his experiences, especially how entrepreneurship has evolved in Colorado since the early 1980’s.  Please register and join us!

The 11/4 Entrepreneurs Unplugged is with Nir Barkat, the Mayor of Jerusalem.  This is a special Entrepreneurs Unplugged event Silicon Flatirons is co-hosting with Governor Ritter, the Colorado BioScience Association, CSIA, and the Mizel Family Foundation.  I’ll be in Seattle at the TechStars 2009 Demo Day in Seattle so Brad Bernthal will be interviewing Mayor Barkat.  In addition to being the Mayor of Jerusalem, Barkat is a successful entrepreneur and VC having started BRM Partners and subsequently Backweb Technologies.  While I’ve never met Barkat, I remember Backweb well as SOFTBANK was an investor in the company when I was a SOFTBANK Affiliate – shortly before a group of us created Softbank Technology Ventures.  This promises to be a special event held at the beautiful Denver Art Museum from 2pm to 4pm on Wednesday 11/4.  Registration is now open.

The Defrag Conference in Denver is just around the corner – November 11 and 12 to be exact.  Eric Norlin has put together a remarkable agenda for this one including an incredible closing panel titled Cluetrain at 10 starring JP Rangaswami, Chris Locke, Doc Searls, and Rick Levine.  This will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the The Cluetrain Manifesto and as far as I understand is the first time in a decade that Chris, Doc, and Rick have shared the stage. If we are lucky, Rick might even bring us some Seth Ellis Chocolates.

I’ll be there the entire time as will my Foundry Group partners.  Last year at Defrag was the first time I spent any time with TA McCann and that worked out pretty well for Gist (at least so far) – who knows, maybe this year will be someone else’s turn.

In the spring just before the Glue Conference, I offered up a group dinner event at a Boulder NewTech Meetup for anyone in Colorado that attended.  A bunch of people ended up coming and I never followed through on the event.  I’ve finally started to get my act together – we’re going to do an event in The Bunker (with lots of food and booze) in the January time frame.  As a special bonus, I’m going to open it up to anyone from Colorado that also comes to Defrag (no – you don’t get two events if you went to Glue also, but I’ll give you a hug.)

But wait, there’s more.  Use the discount code “fndry1” to get 20% off of your registration.