*Matt Blumberg‘s amazing new book Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business is out and shipping. The early reviews are great, including this detailed one from Tech Cocktail. * Matt’s book is already having an impact in my world. At Cheezburger, we just added Scott Moore to the leadership team. Ben Huh, the founder/CEO who I adore and love working with, send out a powerful email about how he’s approaching Cheezburger’s next stage of growth, and how he’s thinking about building the business operating system. He builds off many of the concepts in Matt’s book and told me I was free to blog this for the world to see.

It’s no secret that many companies in the Boulder/Denver area are looking for talent — there are dozens posted on the Foundry Group and Techstars job pages alone. If you’re looking to meet some great Boulder companies looking for technical help in person, check out the Boulder Tech Job Fair Sept. 11 from 3-7 p.m. at the Boulder Chamber building, 2440 Pearl Street in Boulder. A total of 13 companies are looking to fill more than 100 technical positions covering a wide variety of programming languages and ranging from entry-level positions to senior embedded engineers with 10 or more years of experience. These companies are interested in speaking with qualified applicants from not only Colorado’s Front Range, but from other cities as well. While most positions are based in the Boulder/Denver area, some companies are looking to fill openings in other cities.

We just led an investment in Kato and I’ll be joining the board. If the headline sounds familiar, it’s because it’s similar to the one I wrote a year ago when we led an investment in FullContact. The headline then was One Address Book To Rule Them All. Like the contact management problem, the real-time communication problem is a total mess. In the last decade, there has been a proliferation of efforts to address real-time communications in the enterprise. New collaboration systems, such as Microsoft SharePoint and Lotus Connections emerged. This evolved into enterprise social computing systems, such as NewsGator (which I’m on the board of) and Jive. Lightweight approaches that tried to emulate Facebook, such as Yammer (now owned by Microsoft) became visible, chat got integrated in broader messaging systems like Skype and Google Hangouts, which in turn were subsumed by larger messaging systems at Microsoft and Google, and the result is that the default continues to be the soul-crushing and mind-numbing least common denominator known as email.

I’m a huge fan of the The Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. In fact, Foundry Group is such a fan that we’ve donated a part of our profits to this state-wide organization that gives back to local communities through the success of our entrepreneurs. This Saturday, September 7th, EFCO is holding a big fundraiser. It’s at the Boulder Theater and should be a ton of fun. It also happens to be the 20th Anniversary of Cooley’s office in Colorado. Cooley is being incredible generous donating the resources to make this event happen. I hope everyone can attend, have a good time and support a great cause.

Doc Searls wrote a great, very detailed post this weekend titled Thoughts on privacy where he argues we have passed the point of “Peak Surveillance.” He says, about halfway through the post: “I can’t prove it, but I do believe we have passed Peak Surveillance. When Edward Snowden’s shit hit the fan in May, lots of people said the controversy would blow over. It hasn’t, and it won’t. Our frogs are not fully boiled, and we’re jumping out of the pot. New personal powers will be decentralized. And in cases where those powers are centralized, it will be in ways that are better aligned with individual and social power than the feudal systems of today. End-to-end principles are still there, and still apply. “

Last night Amy and I saw Closed Circuit. We both walked out of there completely bummed out. It was a good movie, but the arrogance of some government agencies (in this case British MI-5) was overwhelmingly real and upsetting. We went to bed when we got home and I tossed and turned for awhile, thinking about nasty government shit. I had a crazy dream that seemed to go on forever about being tangled up in some kind of spy related thing with old college buddies and woke up with it completely unresolved.

A few weeks ago I did an event with Built In Denver where I interviewed Tim Miller and Ryan Martens, the founders of Rally Software, on their journey from a startup to a public company (NYSE: RALY). As part of the event – held at Mateo in Boulder – the gang from Built In Denver announced they were rebranding as Built In Colorado. The attendance at the event was roughly 50% Boulder entrepreneurs and 50% Denver entrepreneurs.

I’m spending the new two days filming the content for a MOOC on raising venture capital. The content is based on my book with Jason titled Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist. After exploring a few different MOOCs for this, I think NovoED is the most interesting platform. I’ve been impressed with the quality of the courses that currently exist. Several of my friends have done courses, including Chuck Eesley, a professor in Stanford University’s Management Science & Engineering group. Among other things, he’s got a great NovoEd course starting in a month titled Technology Entrepreneurship as well as a superb reading list for anyone interested in entrepreneurship.

Join the Application Developers Alliance at a Boulder Developer Patent Summit August 28 at 6 PM at FUSE Coworking. The event is a chance to share stories of demand letters and lawsuits from trolls, discuss legal strategies and litigation costs, and share ideas for software patent reform. DATE: August 28th | FREE | 6pm LOCATION: The Riverside (FUSE Coworking) | 1724 Broadway | Boulder, CO 80302 AGENDA: 6:00pm Welcome (registration, drinks, food, and mingling) 6:30-8:00pm Brief Presentation, Panel Discussion, and Q&A 8:00pm Enjoy food and drinks, meet the panel, and network