Brad Feld

Tag: conference

I’m participating in an event at CU Boulder (sponsored by Silicon Flatirons) on 10/18/18 called Community, Creativity, and #GiveFirst.

#GiveFirst: A New Philosophy for Business in The Era of Entrepreneurship is the name of an upcoming book of mine. It’s also the mantra of Techstars.

In addition to a few of the usual cast of characters (me, Brad Bernthal, Jason Mendelson, Nicole Glaros) and some CU folks, a number of interesting people are joining us including Sam Zell, Stephanie Copeland, AnnaLee (Anno) SaxenianBrian BroughmanSonali Shah, and Krista Marks.

The first panel is titled #GiveFirst and is a moderated chat between me and Sam Zell. I promise it won’t be dull.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, already view #GiveFirst (which I first talked about in my book Startup Communities in the section “Give Before You Get”) as part of your life, or just want to engage in a stimulating SIlicon Flatirons sponsored afternoon, come join us.


My friends at FullContact are having their 2nd annual FullContact Connect Conference. If you are interested, you can get a 50% discount on the ticket price by using the code “Foundry” on the registration page.

Connect ‘18 is bringing together thought leaders and experts – from across industries and verticals – who are experts in the world of data-driven customer intelligence and marketing. At a time when the data industry is under the magnifying glass, Connect ’18 will deliver a mixture of thought leadership and actionable sessions from a range of excellent speakers, to equip marketing leaders to create authentic and lasting relationships with their customers.

The conference schedule has four themes:

The Art and Science of Creating Authentic Connections – how to grow your business by combining the latest technology with the lessons of exceptional customer service

Human to Human Connections – how and why companies need to throw away the traditional B2B and B2C playbooks and focus on building authentic H2H relationships

The Rise of Augmented Humanity – the role artificial intelligence is capable of playing in creating deeper customer connections

The New Dimensions Of Privacy – how can companies thrive and continue to create compelling customer experiences in the new era of data privacy

Some of the speakers include:

  • Niraj Deo, VP Product, Oracle DataCloud
  • Sarah Bird, CEO, Moz
  • Tom Marriott, Principal, Marketing & Communications Leader, Deloitte
  • Beverley Jackson, VP Social Portfolio Strategy, MGM Resorts International
  • Steve Mateer, Data Channel Executive, Pitney Bowes
  • Carley Brantz, VP Revenue Marketing, SendGrid
  • Bryn Weaver, Chief Privacy Officer, Wiland

The weather in Denver is amazing this time of year. So, as a bonus, you can enjoy a delightfully long evening at the Clyfford Still Museum and magnificent early mornings in the mountains.

Remember, if you are interested, you can get a 50% discount on the ticket price by using the code “Foundry” on the registration page. And, there are a few sponsorship opportunities remaining, so reach out to Scott Axcell if you want to be even more engaged.


FullContact is one of our silent killers. Unless you are a customer or partner, you don’t hear much about a silent killer until it’s suddenly everywhere, leading the market it is in, and functioning extremely well at scale. One of the hints of these silent killers is their inaugural user or partner conference. An example of this from our past was the 2013 Big Boulder Conference that Gnip (now part of Twitter) put on.

Connect ‘17 is FullContact’s inaugural conference exploring social and customer intelligence, to help companies reimagine the customer journey. The goal of the conference is to get together professionals in marketing, media, customer intelligence, and other roles which focus on knowing and serving their customers better.

While this is not a new idea, we are at another inflection point in the development of tools, technology, products, and processes around this. As an industry, we’ve learned a lot about this over the past decade since web 2.0 started to emerge. Today, the components are there to once again completely redefine the customer journey and the business of personalized marketing.

In addition to speakers from large media companies like Joe Pindell (Pitney Bowes), Tod Szewczyk, (Leo Burnett), and Doug Kaczmarek, (Wiland), you’ll get to engage with:

  • Falon Fatemi, CEO Node, Google’s youngest ever employee
  • Chris Voss, CEO The Black Swan Group, former FBI hostage negotiator
  • Ryan Leslie, Founder Disruptive Multimedia, former hip hop recording artist/producer, accepted to Harvard at age 14

And yes, I’ll be there the morning of May 11th hanging out and participating on a panel.

The conference is from May 10th through 12th at the Curtis Hotel in Denver, Colorado. While they are close to selling out, I got them to give me some discount registration codes. If you want to join us, use the code HalfOff on the registration page.

I love silent killers.

 


I’ve talked openly about my struggles with depression over the years and have engaged deeply in an explorations of entrepreneurship and mental health through several different organizations I’m involved in.

On February 16th, from 3pm to 5pm, I’m doing a free public event with the Carson J Spencer Foundation about entrepreneurship and mental health. For some quick context, they did a short intro video with me on the topic.

If you are interested in participating, please register and join us on February 16th at the Museum of Boulder.


Forget those business conferences with long speeches and boring panel discussions. On November 18, Boulder’s most innovative businesses will open their doors to the public to celebrate Boulder companies who drive the networked economy. NewCo Boulder is a city-wide event that takes you right into the corporate offices of over 40 of the most innovative and successful companies around Boulder, offering attendees a tour rather than a company description packet.

At NewCo, attendees will sign up for a free pass to visit any of the participating organizations, from software companies, to restaurants, to non-profits and more. During the event attendees will check out the offices of the some of the most interesting and inventive companies around the city and take part in an interactive presentation about what each organization is doing to make an impact on the global landscape.

I am proud to serve on the Board of Advisors alongside Nicole Glaros, Larry Gold, Walter Knapp, Seth Levine, Sean Maher, Jane Miller, and Kimbal Musk. Boulder’s NewCo team, Rich Maloy and Tim O’Shea, have pulled together an impressive group of organizations across a wide range of industries in the community.

It’s an opportunity to see what Boulder businesses are doing and where it actually takes place: offices, breweries, bakeries etc.  Attendees can learn from their strategies and executions, gain some insights from their successes, maybe even drop off a business card or resume. The event is open to everyone and it’s free for the Boulder community.

For more information on NewCo Boulder including the companies participating, please visit: https://bdr.newco.co

Have questions about NewCo Boulder 2014? Contact Rich Maloy, Engage Colorado: rich@engagecolorado.com


A little over eight years ago, Eric Norlin and I decided to start Defrag. It all started with an email exchange, wherein Eric thought one of my posts would make a good conference, I told him how much I disliked tech conferences, and we resolved to go build one that was done the right way.

Since that point, Defrag has grown into what I think is one of the most influential conversations in technology. Several years back, we consciously decided to limit Defrag’s size (number of attendees) because we were afraid of losing the intimacy of the networking. The result has been the growth of a community that gathers every year at the Omni Interlocken for two days plus of really amazing ideas, relationship building, and conversations.

Along those lines, just take a look at some of this year’s speakers:

Chris Anderson, 3D Robotics (ex-editor of Wired)
George Dyson (author of “Turing’s Cathedral”)
Amber Case (Esri)
Penny Herscher (FirstRain)
Helen Greiner (CyPhy Works)
John Wilbanks (Sage Bionetworks)
Shireen Yates (6Sensor Labs)
Paul Kedrosky (Bloomberg)
Kin Lane (API Evangelist)
Laura Merling (AT&T)
Danielle Morrill (Mattermark)

In short, drones, robots, APIs, big data, mobile, and history all coming together in one compact place.

Defrag is a unique experience, and if you’re local to Colorado, it brings some of the most influential names in tech into your backyard.

Lastly, I’d like to recognize how much work Eric has put into achieving some level of gender parity on the agenda, especially at the keynote level. Far too many conferences these days are doing a horrible job at this. Defrag has been out in front of this issue for a long-time, and I know that we work every year to get better at it. And, if you’d like to apply for a “Women in Tech” scholarship to Defrag, you can do so here.

Don’t miss out. Register now. Use the code “brad14″ to get $200 of the registration.


disciplinedent

On Friday July 19th, I’ll be hosting Bill Aulet in Boulder to discuss his new book, Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Lessons To A Successful Startup.

Bill, the managing director for the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, is a close friend and amazing thinker on entrepreneurship. The book is a result of many years of his work and thinking on creating and scaling startups.

The event will take place at Rally Software in Boulder, CO from 9am – 12pm. Seating will be limited to 150 people which means you better get your tickets NOW!

Tickets are free and you can register for them on our Eventbrite page found here.

Bill’s book Disciplined Entrepreneurship is currently available for pre-order, but will officially go on sale August 13th.

I hope you will join us!


Enterprise development is once again white hot. More evidence is this year’s Gluecon. Not only does Gluecon have the usual raft of amazing startup/early stage sponsors, but this year, the “big guys” are showing up (SAP, Intel, HP, Google, IBM, General Motors, Rackspace). And, I also know (because Eric’s told me) that we’re seeing a leap in the number of enterprise developers that are registering for the show.

Is it cloud computing adoption that’s driving this? Or mobile? or Big Data, or APIs? I’m not sure if it’s one topically-driven thing, but it sure does seem like the little developer conference that we helped to start just over five years ago is turning into *the* place to be if you’re looking for technical content.

The most recent agenda is here. Click on the link and you’ll see loads of juicy, technical content. I don’t know of anywhere you can go to get this depth of content.

So, I hope to see you at Gluecon (in just under 3 weeks). I’ll be there  – absorbing everything that I can along with the rest of you. Use “gluespring” to take 10% off of the registration price.


As we enter the 5th year of Gluecon, I’m very excited to see it come together. Eric Norlin has been saying year after year that his goal is to make Gluecon “the most technical, developer-focused conference” out there and I love watching him try.

You can check out the most recent agenda here, but some of the sessions that are indicative of what Eric’s talking about include:

  • Building a distributed data platform with Node.js, Storm, Kafka, and ZeroMQ
  • An Enterprise Mobile Reference Architecture
  • Building using Netflix’s Open Source Architecture (a 4 hour workshop)
  • Using Swagger to Build a Great API Interface
  • The Pros and Cons of Choosing Go
  • Availability During Cloud Outages: Multi-Regional, Self-Healing MySQL
  • Node.js is for APIs

Beyond the content, I can personally testify that you’ll find an amazing group of people to hang out with, a truly welcoming atmosphere, and the best conference wifi you’ll find anywhere. Plus, it’s in Boulder at the beginning of summer!

Be sure to grab the early bird price (which ends April 7th) while you can — and use “brad12” to take an additional 10% off.