Periodically I promote the conferences we helped create with Eric Norlin – Defrag, Glue, and most recently Blur. If you’ve been to any of these conferences, you know why I get so excited about them – it’s a chance for me and my partners to spend two days immersed in a theme we are investing in while surrounded with some of the smartest people working in that area. Blur is all about human computer interaction (HCI). We’ve done a bunch of HCI investments, including Orbotix, Fitbit, Sifteo, Oblong, and Organic Motion and we’ve spent a bunch of time exploring HCI as we believe the way we will use and interact with computers will be radically different in 20 years than it is today. As a hedge, we believe that if the robots are really going to take over, we at least want a hand in creating some of their software to improve the odds that they’ll be nice to us.

Want to see a robotic ball controlled by a smartphone? Take a look at the Orbotix Sphero Sneak Peek Video below. Sphero Sneak Peek from Paul Berberian on Vimeo. My friends at Orbortix will be at CES in Booth #5422 North Hall from January 6th to 9th showing off real working robotic balls. So psyched.

I’ve been quiet since the weekend. It’s not because I’ve had nothing to say (that would be a first), but because I was absolutely slaughtered by the flu. I spent all of Sunday and Monday in bed. I managed to work yesterday and stay on top of the things flying around and today was more or less normal (with a long afternoon nap). But that was easily the worst kick in the ass I’ve had from a cold in many years.

Gist just released their Chrome extension for Gist in Gmail. Chrome is my browser of choice for Gmail and I’ve been anxiously awaiting this release. It’s just awesome. It’s tightly integrated with both consumer and enterprise Gmail. It’s fast, light weight, and takes advantage of the huge amount of data discovery that Gist does via the cloud (rather than in-browser). It’s been really fun to watch my friends at Gist really come into their own in the past six month. With the release of Gist in Gmail on both Firefox and Chrome, along with the Gist Gadget for Google Apps, they’ve got Gmail now totally wired.

I recently sat through an annual CEO 360 review at a company that has been very serious about executive development since inception. It reminded me how powerful this is when it’s done correctly. In this particular case, the entire board and management team had an hour-long facilitated discussion without the CEO in the room. The facilitator is not an employee of the company but has worked with the entire management team on executive development as they’ve grown over the past 5+ years.

The latest Brad Feld Amazing Deal is online. A few weeks ago I was approached by Sympoz, a company in Boulder that is excited about building online classrooms where anyone can take a courses in categories like Wine, Personal Finance, Cooking, etc. The have a nice looking site, and their classes are self serve, at your own pace, in HD. They have forums where you can interact with fellow classmates and teachers. Classes range in price from $39 to $99.

Wow – I had a deeply awesome week off the grid. I really really really needed a break. I had a magnificent birthday (thanks Amy and everyone who came and hung out), ran for 10 days straight (including Thanksgiving – boy does it feel awesome to be running again), and finally got enough rest to feel normal again (or at least as normal as I ever feel.) As with most birthdays, I spent a lot of time reflecting on turning 45. I’ll toss out some posts about this in a bit, but one thing I realized was that I haven’t been going as deep as I’d like on specific technologies recently. We had a Foundry Group offsite the past two days and discussed the idea of more “nourishment of our inner nerds” and I’ve decided to try something new.

I’m turning 45 next week and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. For some reason this seems like a more significant birthday to me than 30 or 40 was. I know some of my thoughts are a result of a few colleagues dying recently (in their 50’s and 60’s), me completely wearing myself out this fall, and spending about half the year struggling with a back injury, but I think something deeper is going on.

Today Howard Lindzon takes on Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC in his Do More Faster interview series. Jeff has been an awesome TechStars mentor since the very first Boulder program in 2007, has made a number of investments in TechStars companies, and has co-invested with me and my partners at Foundry Group in several companies, including SendGrid, Gnip, and Next Big Sound. Jeff has been Doing More Faster since I met him – he’s one of the most prolific investors in consumer Internet companies and his firm SoftTech VC was the original “micro-VC firm.” He also has thought hard about how to Do More Faster by “decoupling value provided from time spent”, something that is key for anyone who is as an active investor as Jeff is.