Defrag 2009 is happening in Denver on November 11th and 12th. As this is Defrag’s third year, I can say with great confidence that it will be an amazing experience. I’ve watched Eric Norlin orchestrate two Defrag’s and one Glue conference and he is a master at the small, intimate, high quality tech conference. The simple metaphor for Defrag versus all of the other tech conferences that exist can be summarized in one question: “Would you rather eat at TGI Fridays or the family owned restaurant, where the owner brings the food to your table?"
The agenda is taking shape on the web site. As is Eric’s style he’ll keep fiddling with it until the actual event. He recently wrote a post about the keynotes which include Andy Kessler, Lili Cheng, Chris Sacca, John Winsor, Scoble + Bruggeman, Feld + Wilson + Lindzon + Ehrenberg + Tybur, Paul Kedrosky, and Searls + Locke + Levine + Rangaswami. Go read Eric’s post for more details including info on the “fragments’” from Stowe Boyd, Anil Dash, Kevin Marks, Jeff Dachis, and Kim Cameron. Or look at some of the topical explorations being led by Andrea Baker, Dan Neely, Micah Baldwin, Maggie Fox, and Laura Fitton.
Eric always has a bunch of tricks up his sleeve as the event gets closer – I know a few of them and they are doozies – but am also pleasantly surprised every year. In an email today explaining one of them to me, Eric said “this year’s Defrag is going to make the other Defrag’s look like child’s play on the content side.” And – for any of you that attended the past Defrag’s, you can confirm that the content was some of the best that is out there.
Eric is running an end of September discount – if you register today or tomorrow and use the code septspecial1 you will get $300 of the normal registration price. This is the cheapest it gets so if you are thinking about coming, decide now and register.
All four of the Foundry Group partners will be there – come join us for two great days.
As I continue to walk the earth, like Caine in Kung-Fu, I’m enjoying another early morning in Mountain View. I look forward to getting back home to Boulder late tonight, just in time to have avoided the crummy weather this week.
Next week has plenty of walking the earth, starting in Boulder, then Mountain View, then Boston, then back to Boulder. I’ve had a number of requests to publish an “event calendar” of stuff I’m doing that’s public – look for that on this blog soon. In the mean time, following is info about where I’ll be and what I’ll be up to in case you want to come hang out with me.
Monday 9/28 (Boulder): Entrepreneurs Unplugged with Niel Robertson (founder – Service Metrics, Newmerix, Trada). Last year I was a participant in the CU Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurs Unplugged series. This year I am the moderator / interviewer. On Monday I’ll spend an hour asking Niel Roberston questions about his amazing career to date. I’ve been – first thought Mobius and now through Foundry Group – an investor in each of the three companies Niel has founded and have known / worked with Niel since 1996 when I met him as an engineer straight out of MIT working at NetGenesis (I was chairman of NetGenesis at the time.) Niel is a superb serial entrepreneur who has seen huge success as well as plenty of failure and has developed a unique and insightful view on how to run a VC-backed company as founder / CEO. Come help us kick off the first of this year’s Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurs Unplugged events.
Wednesday 9/30 (Mountain View): TechStars Bay Area Demo Day: As I wrote about last week, we’re going to have our annual TechStars Bay Area Demo Day at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Conference Center. The event is only for accredited angel investors and VCs – if you are interested in attending drop me an email for an invitation.
Thursday 10/1 (Boston): MassTLC Innovation 2009 Unconference: Ah – Virgin American redeyes – how I love you. I also wrote several weeks ago about the MassTLC Innovation Unconference. I’m psyched about this event – created by Bill Warner (who was instrumental in bringing TechStars to Boston) – now in it’s second year. For a taste of last year’s event, take a look at a great three minute video. Plus, if you come, you get to see me totally ragged out from the redeye (which I’m getting too old to do, at least according to Amy – and my body.)
Friday 10/2 (Boulder): Boco: I finish the week in Boulder at a new event that Andrew Hyde has cooked up. Boco is “a mountain conference about the best things in tech, music, and food with the charm of Boulder.” There is a very cool list of presenters and the agenda is shaping up nicely. Register, attend, and help us make the first year a success.
After the week is done, I’m heading up to Keystone for the weekend to work with David Cohen on a top secret special project. And play Beatles Rock Band. And sleep.
When I was last on the grid, I was returning to NY from Boston on the Acela Express after the first TechStars Boston Investor Day. It was a tremendous experience and a great first year for TechStars in Boston that was captured nicely by Xconomy, Mass High Tech, TechCrunch, and Boston.com. There’s currently a ton of software / Internet entrepreneurial activity in Boston these days and it’s fun to be in the mix.
I’m back on the Acela Express – this time from NY to Boston after spending four days off the grid with Amy. We spent the weekend immersed in the US Open, spending the full day Sunday at the semi-finals and Monday at the finals. I think the experience was enhanced by being off the grid – I was able to focus 100% of my energy watching the tennis (which was amazing) and being with my wife as she celebrated another birthday (she’s a prime number again – which also means “she’s in her prime.”)
For those in Boston who emailed me about getting together, I’ve got a jam packed three days in Boston before heading back home to Boulder for the weekend. However, I will be back in Boston on 10/1 for the MassTLC Innovation 2009 Unconference. Bill Warner (the founder of Avid and Wildfire) – who was the motive force behind bringing TechStars to Boston – is at it again as this is the second year for the Unconference that Bill founded.
The event takes place from 7:30am – 5:00pm on 10/1/09 at the Sun Microsystems Conference Center in Burlington, MA. The list of “experts” (experienced entrepreneurs, VCs, and service providers) is extensive and includes a wide variety of Boston’s well known entrepreneurs. As with any Unconference, the attendees get to shape the agenda in real time. The focus is getting first time entrepreneurs together with the “experts” and see what kind of magic emerges. From the registration page:
“Four generations of entrepreneurs will gather on October 1, 2009 with the focus on early stage entrepreneurship and driving innovation. Unlike the planned sessions and passive audiences of typical conferences, MassTLC’s Innovation 2009 is an unConference where the agenda is formed organically by all attendees the day of the event. No podiums. No stages. Just small interactive sessions taking a deep dive into issues that drive innovation and the success of your company. A professional facilitator helps make it happen.”
So – if you are a first time entrepreneur in the New England area – come join us and apply to be a sponsored entrepreneur. And – if you are one of the people that reached out to me to get together “on my next trip to Boston”, I’ll be there all day.
The Cash for Clunkers program worked – at least according to our government.
“The CARS program ended sales on the Monday night with nearly 700,000 clunkers taken off the roads, replaced by far more fuel efficient vehicles. Rebate applications worth $2.877 billion were submitted by the 8 p.m. deadline, under the $3 billion provided by Congress to run the program.”
Ok. Whatever. Now the Cash for Appliances program is coming.
“Beginning late this fall, the program authorizes rebates of $50 to $200 for purchases of high-efficiency household appliances. The money is part of the broader economic stimulus bill passed earlier this year. Program details will vary by state, and the Energy Dept. has set a deadline of Oct. 15 for states to file formal applications. The Energy Dept. expects the bulk of the $300 million to be awarded by the end of November. (Unlike the clunkers auto program, consumers won’t have to trade in their old appliances.)”
Yeah, well, whatever. Let’s deal with the real opportunity – cash for bad conference wifi. From Eric Norlin over at the Defrag Conference blog:
“Defrag’s “cash for bad conference wifi” is based on a simple premise: some tech conferences can’t manage to have good wifi, but over here at Defrag, we know how to get it right. And we’re gonna help you trade in your bad conference wifi experience for a good one! Here’s how it works:
1. Just email me (enorlin AT mac.com) any type of proof that you went to a conference and include a statement to the effect of “Hey eric – I went to this conference and the wifi SUCKED.”
2. I’ll respond to your email with a discount code that will save you some greenbacks on defrag registration, and help you trade in your bad conference wifi experience for a brand new good conference wifi experience.”
Now that’s something you can really use. The Defrag agenda is evolving nicely – it’s going to be here sooner than we think (11/11 – 11/12 in Denver, Colorado). Don’t miss this opportunity to stimulate your brain.
Long time readers of this blog know that we helped put together the Defrag Conference series and are enormous fans of Eric Norlin and everything he does. Well – we’re starting to gear up for Defrag 2009 on November 11th and 12th in Boulder, Colorado. The agenda is starting to take shape (anyone that knows Eric knows that he tunes it all the way up to the event.) As usual, Eric has some tricks up his sleeve (Mwahahahahahahaha).
Eric wrote a post today titled Come Early, Stay Late. In it he discusses the reason he has Defrag in Boulder (rather than in the bay area). If you want some more recent chatter on Boulder (on the heals of TechStars Investor Day) take a look at Fred Wilson’s post TechStars and Mark Solon’s post Boulder, Colorado.
Come join us. I promise it will be worth your time.
I’ve been interested in different approaches to software development going back to 1987 when – in my first company Feld Technologies – my partner Dave Jilk and I started talking about “semi-custom software development” (way ahead of its time). During the same period (1987 – 1990) and I did some work at MIT under Eric von Hippel on “user driven innovation with regard to software development” which today would probably fall under the heading of “open source software development approaches.”
In 2002 I became exposed to the idea of “agile software development” and subsequently was a first round investor in Rally Software which is now the market leader in Agile application lifecycle management software. Building on this, I’ve recently become fascinated with the notion of continuous deployment, a concept that has been popularized by Eric Ries and others.
I gave a talk at the fbFund Rev program about a month ago on the same day that Eric gave a talk. Since I was hanging around for the day, I listened to Eric’s talk, which was great. I mentioned it to David Cohen at TechStars who told me that he had been emailing with Eric about having Eric come to Boulder to do his thing.
Eric has decided to come to Boulder on 8/19 and 8/20 and give two talks. The first – on 8/19 – will be about The Lean Startup and will happen over dinner, followed by a moderated table discussion and then a final Q&A with Eric. Tickets include dinner with a discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students.
On 8/20, Eric will lead 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 limited number of tickets are also available for this workshop. Early bird pricing expires on August 6th.
Eric has superb ideas around software development and lots of experience to back it up – it’s awesome that he’s coming to Boulder to share some of this with the community here.
Jean-Gabriel Morard – formerly of SugarSync – has a great post up on GigaOm titled Why Sync Is So Difficult. It was one of the things I read before my run yesterday and it was in my head the entire time. Jean-Gabriel’s main points are:
I sent the URL to Hong Bui, the CEO of Memeo (one of our investments) who responded with “Great article. I agree. Our approach is zen-like, on one use case at a time.”
I’ve been thinking about sync for a long time. I fondly remember when “replication” first appeared on the scene with Lotus Notes around 1985. I was fascinated with the idea then and remain fascinated with it today. It remains a perplexing unsolved problem at the core of both our Glue and Digital Life themes and I expect there will be plenty of talk about it at the Glue Conference in Denver this week.
We have four investments that care deeply about sync: Gist, Gnip, Memeo, and NewsGator. And – we’ve got a new one that we’ll be talking about later this week that turns the notion of sync – and cloud computing – completely on its side.
Now – before you say “yes, but cloud computing solves the need for sync”, thing about what you are saying. Go back and read Why Sync Is So Difficult. Try again.
Eric Norlin has a great post up this morning titled A conference is about community. In it, he describes clearly the difference between a conference and a trade show, what makes a great conference, and what you’ll get at a great conference.
Having been involved in Defrag since it was a germ of an idea and now watching Eric put together the first Glue Conference, he knows of what he speaks. I won’t try to summarize – go read the post (it’ll take you two minutes.)
If I’ve learned two things from Eric (and I’ve actually learned a lot more), the key to a great conference is (a) a superb list of presenters and (b) plenty of whitespace around them for everyone to talk. You can see this in the Glue agenda which is pretty much locked down at this point.
The presenters include Josh Ellman (Facebook), Aaron Fulkerson (Mindtouch), Andre Durand (Ping), Eric Marcoullier (Gnip), Peter Coffee (Salesforce.com), Tim Young (Socialcast), Mitch Kapor, Phil Wainewright, Kevin Matheny (Best Buy), Oren Michels (Mashery), Lew Moorman (Rackspace), Drummon Reed (InfoCard), and Bob Frankston.
Oh – and then there are all the folks on the panels: Steven Greenberg, Ben Metcalfe, Chris Saad, Stewart Alsop, Danny Kolke, Andrew Nash, Naveen Agarwal, Chris Shipley, Rick Nucci, Pam Dingle, George Reese, Jackson Miller, Sam Charrington, Jeff Fedor, Jeff Collins, Zoli Erdos, Peter Saint-Andre, Jack Moffitt, Seth Fitzsimmons, Jeff Nolan, Jud Valeski, Shane Pearson, Alex Iskold, Stu Charleton, Albert Wenger, T.A. McCann, Jeff Lawson, David Weekly,
Jason Milgram, John Minnihan, Jim Reavis, Jeff Lindsay, Kevin Mullins, Kevin Marks, Mike Clymer, Randy Bias, Patrick Harding, Kyle Roche, Phil Windley, Todd Clayton, Angus Logan, Dave McClure, Andy Morgan, Jake Sorofman, and Celeste Merryman.
I hate trade shows. But I love conferences. When Eric and I first started talking about Defrag several years ago, I told him I wanted to get a bunch of super smart people together to talk about the Implicit Web, which was a theme we were starting to invest in. Last year, my partner Seth Levine and Eric had a similar conversation around our Glue theme and Gluecon was the result. I can’t wait to go hang out with the awesome people above and immerse myself in Glue for a few days. Come join us.
There are piles of great things going on all over the place right now. I’m really psyched about the energy level I’m seeing around entrepreneurship throughout the country, as well as the willingness of great entrepreneurs to get out there, tell their stories, and lead by example.
Here’s a handful of fun things going on, along with a few highlights from some from some of the companies I’m involved in.
Today is one of the big CU Entrepreneurship week events. Governor Bill Ritter will be speaking and making some interesting announcements from 3:10pm – 3:40pm. The topic is putting the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Perspective. The event starts at 2:45pm in the Wittemeyer Courtroom in the Wolf Law Building.
Sam Zell will be talking at CU on 4/22 at Noon. If you’ve never heard Sam Zell speak, this is not to be missed. He’s brilliant, blunt, controversial, and often hysterically witty. The event it free but you must register.
I’m doing Beers with Brad in Vancouver on 4/22 at Night. The attendee list looks great – if you are in / near Vancouver join us!
I’m talking at the Boulder Theater on 5/6. I’ll be there along with some of my closest friends, including Top Chef Hosea Rosenberg, Threadless’ Jeffrey Kalmikoff, and Lijit’s Micah Baldwin. Paper Bird will be playing some tunes – I promise not to sing.
The University of Michigan School of Information Executive Ed program is teaching a course from 6/1 – 6/3 on Making Social Computing Work in Your Enterprise. This is being done in conjunction with NewsGator.
Slice of Lime is a Webby Honoree in two categories for their work on Big Green Rabbit. Congrats guys on recognition in the Youth and the Best Use of Animation or Motion Graphics categories.
And – if you are bored – here’s 2:37 from my talk with Phil Weiser on The Entrepreneurial Ecosystem as part of CU Entrepreneurship Week.
Brad Feld and Phil Weiser One-on-One: Feld on The Entrepreneurial Ecosystem from Andrew on Vimeo.