I’m not at SXSW this year. I sort of miss it, but not really. Last year I cancelled at the last minute (the day before – I was already in San Antonio at TechStars Cloud) to come back to Boulder after Amy fell and broke her wrist. This year I just didn’t feel like I had enough extrovert reserves in my tank to deal with it. I stayed home and am hanging out at my house in Eldorado Canyon enjoying what looks like at least 12 inches of snow in the last 12 hours. And yes, I’m heading out later for a very quiet and transcendent run.
I got an email this morning from Ethan Duggan who is at SXSW in the #VegasTech booth with his dad Rick. I met Ethan when I was in Las Vegas in January for CES – he came up to me at the VegasTech event I did and showed me the beta of LazyHusband. It’s a cool app, but what’s even more awesome is that Ethan is 12. I met his dad Rick the previous year at CES at a breakfast we had talking about the Las Vegas tech community and how they could use some of the principals I was working on at the time around building Startup Communities that have since shown up in Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City.
I loved Ethan’s demo energy. He literally forced me to go through all the options while a crowd of people were waiting patiently, and respectfully, to talk to me. I think they were just as amazed as I was that a 12 year old was so enthusiastic about he app he’d created. And, out of the corner of my eye, I saw his proud dad smiling and thought of my dad. I started programming at the age of 12 (my first language was APL on an IBM mainframe in the basement of a Frito-Lay datacenter) and my dad – and my uncle Charlie (who was the VP MIS at Frito-Lay at the time) supported my enthusiasm for computers.
Ethan – I’m psyched for you. I just downloaded LazyHusband. Enjoy SXSW. And for all you out there at SXSW, go check out #VegasTech and see what Ethan is up to. If you are a husband (or a boyfriend) it’ll help you out!