After spending the last seven hours in front of my computer, a phrase came to mind that my brother Daniel recently said to me in response to reading The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Daniel said: “What if we we are already working for the computers?” While The Matrix and Horton Hears a Who! come immediately to mind, his comment was subtler than that. What if we turn the entire paradigm on its side? In our biological realm we “evolve”; in our computing realm we “innovate.” What if the computers are actually evolving and have figured out that the best way for them to evolve more quickly is to convince us to “innovate” for them.

Well – the 2010 marathon season is upon us. As I prepare to head out for a three hour run, I decided to finalize my 2010 calendar. 2009 sucked for me – I didn’t complete any marathons on my way to doing a marathon in every state by the time I’m 50. Mild injuries, several colds, fatigue from work and travel, and general lack of rhythm are my excuses while a temporary failing of my iron will is the real reason. 

I’m doing another Beers with Brad – this time in Boulder on next Thursday, February 18th from 6pm to 8pm at Twisted Pine Brewery (3201 Walnut Street). Lest you think this will be one of those boring events where a bunch of smart, interesting people stand around and drink beer and talk for a few hours, I promise I’ll spice this one up. I’m going to tell three entrepreneurial stories I haven’t told in public before in Boulder. I haven’t decided which ones yet but they’ll be doozies. I promise a mix of success and failure to go with some very good beer. All in support of a good cause and some fun. 

My long time friend Warren Katz pointed me out to an event on March 3, 2010 called EO Boston Accelerator Shark Bowl 2010. It’s a competition for entrepreneurs under 40 with businesses between $100k / year and $1m / year in revenue. You present to a group of judges including Warren (MAK Technologies), Rich Farrell (Full Armor), Clark Waterfall (Boston Search Group), and Michael Hackel (DiningIN) who are all EO Boston members.

Standing Cloud, one of the Boulder-based companies we seed funded last year, is hiring a Java Developer. They are a provider of software and services that facilitate deployment and management of application software, using on-demand cloud servers from providers such as Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Cloud, GoGrid, and others. The role is to build, maintain, and support client code that interacts with third party cloud services and virtualization APIs. You’ll be deep in the weeds with the various emerging cloud services and part of a young team of eight other people.

Scott Kirsner had a fun article in Boston.com today titled The Red Line Tour of Innovation in Boston. Several of the stops were regularly hang outs of mine between 1983 and 1995 most notably #10 (Miracle of Science) and #11 (Toscanini’s) but also including #5 (MIT Media Lab), #6 (Muddy Charles Pub), #7 (MIT Lobby 7), and #8 (Central Square and the Necco Factory – back when they made Necco wafers.)

Lots of little things go into building a great company over the long term. Rally Software is one that I’m proud to have been involved in from the beginning. I remember when Ryan Martens, the founder, would sit for entire days in a small conference room near my office covering the white boards on the walls with his scribblings. Today Rally is a 150 person company that plans to add another 75 people in 2010 on the heels of Rally’s $16 million financing led by Greylock. And – since their birth in 2002, Rally has had 17 babies (well – people that work for Rally have had the babies, but you probably figured that out.) Recently, Rally’s leadership team decided to do something about this.

When I wrote my post titled An Angel Investor Group Move That Makes Me Vomit I expected to write my little rant and be done with it. A month or so later Jason Calacanis picked up the mantle and started a Jihad against the idea of angel groups charging entrepreneurs to pitch to them. The result is the Open Angel Forum. I participated in the second event last week in Boulder. I thought it was spectacular and the twitter stream from #OAFCO reflected this sentiment. About 20 active (at least four investments in the past year) early stage investors (angels and seed stage VCs) attended. Six entrepreneurs presented their companies in short seven minute pitches. Five sponsors underwrote the food and drink at the event. There was plenty of networking before and after. That was it – small, intimate, and highly relevant to all.

I think Boulder is one of the absolute best places to start a tech company. The depth of talent and overall strength of our tech community here is superb. It turns out that makes it a great place to start a community-based tech nonprofit startup, too. I’ve written before about SnapImpact’s great work in making doing good easy. Having already created the first volunteering app for the iPhone, they’re started taking on some additional challenges.