Boulder Denver New Technology

I finally decided to see what kind of community there was out there for startups and entrepreneurs within the local area. I guess there is something to be said for a local network as well as a twitter network (or for even having those two things having more overlap).

Some Links:

1. Silicon Flatirons
2. The twitter list I am creating for this event
3. Gnip
4. Foundary Group – A way to fund startups from entrepreneurs.
   
5. Simple Geo
6. Ever Later
7. Let’s Swap – Beta of a way to swap products offline but organize online
   
8. Next Big Sound – Interesting way to track what is going on in the musicsphere.
   
9. The Blog Frog – Mommy bloggers and many other types of blogs that are being turned into communities. My question – How is this different than Friend Connect that google does? Really interesting lessons learned. “Get a board of directors for your life.”
10. Unreasonable institute – Very interesting way to fund social entrepreneurs. Good presentation style. Trying to create a mecca for social change in Boulder. Such a cool idea for the Unreasonable village fund.
11. Equity Compensation for the Start-Up: Letitia Pleis – Some good advice for sharing capital. If you give someone a share of your company, they will have to pay tax on that value as soon as they get that percentage. Look into Sec 83b or Phantom options: Access to future profits without actually giving them shares… However, if your company has no value, it isn’t as much of an issue.
12. HasselBlad – 50-150 megapixel camera
13. Buckyball Magnets – Very cool adult toy
14. Nikon s1000pj – Picture and projector
15. Sonos S5 – Home Theatre stuff
16. Public Earth – “Maps filled with hidded treasures.” Connecting people to places that they love. I like the idea of putting a map on top of a wiki. Not a great sales pitch, however. People are going in and “cleaning up their communities”. Very interesting.
17. CU New Venture Challenge -  Interesting challenge and incubator for CU people. 
18. Real Ski – Doesn’t have a whole bunch of info online, but the video is ridiculously awesome. It is an “augmented reality” app. It doesn’t have to use 3g or any connectivity potentially. Just Wow!

SpeedGeek Learning Update #2

I sent this out to all of the interested parties via e-mail today, but I know that a lot more people are following along, so here is the update on SpeedGeek Learning:

Easy vs. Hard

Sharing content has become easy.

Video has become easy.

Networking has become easy.

Meaning is still hard.

Context is still hard.

Perspective is still hard.

I don’t want to do the easy things. They do not have value and aren’t interesting.

Now that I have outlined the three things that I would like to do with SpeedGeek Learning, I just have to do them. Stay tuned.

Focus on the Geek in SpeedGeek Learning

I have it on some very good authority that geeks are very passionate people. We seem to take much more upon ourselves just so that we can get something to work. We dial down into the minutae. We play around with things that other people seemingly have no time for. And yet, when we are passionate enough to make what we do paletable to the rest of humanity, others seem to value us.

Yes, I put myself among the geeks. I get overly excited when I place my fingers on an incredibly comfortable keyboard and start to type away. I have felt upgrade envy. I have gotten an overwhelming sense of satisfaction that I am the only one who has ever manually edited our Moodle database to allow for integration with our information management system.

So, what does this have to do with my new project, SpeedGeek Learning. Well, in short, I want to Geek out about things with others. I would like a space that makes it okay to know something so in-depth that you can win over even the most reluctant onlookers. I want other geeks to show off their geekdom and get credit for having done something for the first time.

Or, as Maya Bisineer puts it: Geeks are into figuring out Really Cool Stuff, or RCS. I believe that we must embrace the RCS that all of us have the capactity for. For, if our interactions and learning every day leaves out the passion of RCS, what the heck are we doing? Needless to say, Maya’s presentation will be one of the most important SpeedGeek Videos initially available on the site: