Colorado Springs Celebrates Technology too
July 29, 2009
In Colorado Springs, Celebrate Technology recognizes the achievements of companies and individuals that have contributed in a significant way to the technological business landscape of the Pikes Peak region including El Paso, Teller, Douglas, Elbert, Lincoln, Crowley, Pueblo, and Fremont counties. These contributions cross every discipline from the Internet and software to space related and homeland defense technologies and emerging technologies. They’re seeking nominations from the Pikes Peak region including Entrepreneur of the Year and Inventor of the Year. More info about this here. Awards will be announced at a dinner to be held at the Broadmoor Hotel October 14, 2009.
#NameCO - just vote and see what happens
July 28, 2009
Looks like there were over 100 submissions for the effort to come up with a moniker for Colorado’s technology scene. Those names are now in a voting mode for about a week. Go here to allocate your ten points across some of the names you like the most and to check out the leader board.
I’ve heard and read a few grumblings that we should get back to doing stuff and building a reputation instead of trying to come up with a name artificially. While there is some merit to that argument and something that resonates with me personally, my view is that having a consistent name for “us” can’t be a bad thing if it happens to be one lots of us love and it happens to stick. So, why not try? It’s not as if a ton of effort is actually being spent doing this. I think the folks who are organizing it know full well that it could fail. So what - it could also work - so why not? Nobody is officially changing anything - this seems to me to just be an effort to try to create a groundswell and some consensus. There is no man behind the curtain.
Clearly, there is some interest in this. Over 100 names have been suggested so far, and most of them are not jokes. Some are, and that’s great. You get to laugh a little too.
I travel around and interact with other startup communities fairly regularly. I interact with investors and entrepreneurs from all over the country. Here are a couple of things that I’ve heard that drive me a little nuts.
1. “I’m in Denver today.” - This happens often when people come to Boulder. After all, they fly into Denver so that’s where they are, right? This isn’t a Boulder vs Denver thing, it’s just a confusion thing. Having a single name for our technology center (which clear spans from Boulder to Denver) would help with this phenomenon. Nobody says I’m going to San Jose when they mean they’re going to Mountain View. They’re just going to the Valley. It widens the geography and amplifies the signal of the region. I’d rather they just say “I’m going to Colorado.” - it’s more accurate and it ties us together nicely. John Ives actually suggested this moniker - not bad. But think about this for a second. When you hear “San Francisco” or “Silicon Valley”, if you’re thinking about technology centers, you interpret them as the same thing if you’re like me. They’re both just names commonly understood names for the same hot spot of innovation and technology.
2. “Oh, Colorado, yeah, you guys have some catching up to do with places like The Research Triangle“. I’m sure it’s great in North Carolina and all, but I really do suspect that people have simply somehow heard of Research Triangle and therefore assign it some automatic additional credit. Everything coming out of that area goes by Research Triangle. It’s consistent, so instead of hearing “This happens in Raleigh” and “That happens in Durham” and “That company is from Chapel Hill”, we instead consistently hear about Research Triangle companies. In fact, Research Triangle is an eight county area. They’ve established a brand for their community. I had even heard of it years ago, but I couldn’t tell you how. I suppose TechStars could just be that unnamed thing that collects a bunch of mentors and funds early stage startups, but it wouldn’t quite have the same brand equity nationally if that were the case. Names help. They matter.
Whatever. Go vote or add your own names and maybe one day we’ll get some consistent branding going for this great community that we’ve all helped to build.
Eric Ries - Lean Startup coming to Boulder
July 17, 2009
Eric Ries is a serial entrepreneur who has been talking about building Lean Startups in Silicon Valley and on his fantastic blog Startup Lessons Learned. He’s been sharing his ideas about Continuous Deployment, The Five Whys, the Ideas/Code/Data loop, Rapid Split Testing as well as Customer Development. His blog is simply fantastic and all reports are he’s even better in a person.
TechStars has been working with Eric Ries to bring him to Boulder. I’m excited to announce that we’ve now nailed down the dates and we’ve got not one but two great events planned with Eric on August 19th and August 20th.
On August 19th, Eric will be speaking at a dinner in Boulder. The event will include a talk from Eric on The Lean Startup over dinner, followed by moderated table discussion and then final Q&A with Eric. Tickets are available now and include dinner. A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students.
On August 20th, Eric is leading a half day in-depth workshop on the Lean Startup. This is a great chance to really go deep on some of the concepts behind building Lean Startups. A very limited number of tickets are also available for this workshop. Early bird pricing expires on August 6th, so register early.
I’d encourage anyone building, working, or investing in startups to check these events out. We’re lucky to have Eric coming to town, so please help me spread the word about these events. I hope to see you there!
To whet your appetite, here’s an O’Reilly webcast of Eric talking about the Lean Startup.
You name it
July 9, 2009
There’s a discussion going on right now about coming up with a name for Colorado’s Internet scene. Rocky Radar is leading the charge and wrote a post asking for names.
I’ve seen a few comments with some interesting names like Mile Hi Tech, Highway 36, the Boulder/Denver corridor and my personal favorite Feldicon CohenValley.
Others have suggested that you can’t “crowdsource” a name from some central authority, it just has to get started and naturally stick. Probably true, but just to be clear, there is no “authority” behind this. A few people have just gotten together and decided it might be fun to solicit names that don’t suck. There aren’t any expectations about a name actually sticking, but we’re hoping that maybe one will. This is all being done under “you won’t know if you don’t try” theory.
The bigger thing to think about is why this might be important in the first place. Colorado’s tech and internet scene has no real identity at a national scale. Sure, people know that Boulder and Denver and other parts of the state have some interesting stuff going on, but there’s no unifying “tag” for the area that people can refer to. It would be nice if there were, I think. All of the great efforts going on in the state would instantly become more visible as they could associate with this nationally recognized tag, increasing the visibility and amplifying the signal from the region.
I hope you’ll participate and come up with some ideas for what we should call all this great stuff that’s happening here. Name submissions can be offered on Twitter by using the hash tag #nameCO or by emailing nameCO@rockyradar.com.
