I recently turned 44. As I was driving in to the office the other day, I was talking to my dad and we were reminiscing about something. He’s one of my closest friends and I’ve learned such an amazing amount from him over my 44 years on this planet. He’s been blogging for a while about Repairing the Healthcare System and periodically tosses in a personal blog post about one of his life experiences.

Amy Cosper, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, swung through Boulder recently and interviewed me, Scott McDaniel & Christian Vaneh of Survey Gizmo, Ari Newman of Filtrbox (recently acquired by Jive Software), Todd Vernon of Lijit Networks, and Tim Enwall of Tendril Networks. Unlike my two hour TWiST interview with Jason Calacanis, these are all short (less than three minutes each), punchy, and give you a great feel for some of my favorite Boulder entrepreneurs.

A few weeks ago Fast Company published an interview between me and Laura Rich titled Why You Should Start a Company in… Boulder*.* This morning I woke up to Fred Wilson’s discussion of his article Why You Should Start a Company in… New York. Fred and I did our interviews separately – there was no coordination between us. I was struck by a common theme – startup hubs take a while to develop. Fred says:

I’ve really enjoyed my time on this planet so far and look forward to many other years here. If Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, and Robert Heinlein are to be believed, I should be able to travel to other planets by now. Since I can’t, I’m limited to looking at really cool photos. Guess the planet. No clicking through to the APOD site until after you’ve made a guess. I’m 44 – wouldn’t it be cool if in my lifetime I could go to this planet? Oh – and where’s my jetpack – NASA promised me that when I was a kid.

I hate the telephone. I hate voice mail. I’ve tried hard to simplify how this works in my world. I only have two phone numbers (my cell phone and my work phone, which is an IP phone that rings in all the different houses / offices that I have), schedule all phone calls, and use PhoneTag as my voicemail transcription service (both my cell phone and my desk phone forward to it when I don’t answer.) I never listen to voice mails (everything is an email), rarely get phone calls during the day, and have done a pretty good job of getting rid of phone interruptions in my life given how busy I am.

On Friday I spent two hours at Mahalo headquarters in Jason Calacanis’ studio filming This Week In Startups Episode #35. Jason and I have known each other since the mid 1990’s – the last time he interviewed me was at Josh Harris’ Pseudo.com thingymabob as part of a roundtable with Fred Wilson, Jerry Colonna, and Matt Ocko (can’t find the audio on the web – I know it’s out there somewhere.) No – I wasn’t naked during the interview, but I was a lot younger and thinner. And I think there were some naked people wandering around. If you know Pseudo, you know what I’m referring to. If you don’t, then Steaming Video will give you a few hints.

A week or so ago, Fred Wilson Dictated a Blog Post. In it he dictated a blog post on his Nexus One phone. He then discovered Swype which now has an unofficial Android app. As usual the comment threads on AVC were very active and had lots of thoughts about the future (and past) of voice and keyboard input. When I talk about Human Computer Interaction, I regularly say that “in 20 years from now, we will look back on the mouse and keyboard as input devices the same way we currently look back on punch cards.”

I’ve done a few “Beers With Brad” in other cities such as Seattle and Vancouver. On February 18th from 6 to 8pm, I’m going to be doing Beers with Brad in Boulder at The Twisted Pine Brewery. It’s a fundraiser for KGNU (88.5 FM and 1390 AM in Denver) – tickets are $10 in advance or $15 at the door. There will be free munchies, music, and plenty of beer. Come join us for a fun evening where I’ll talk about whatever comes to my mind about entrepreneurship and innovation – especially ideas fueled by a few beers.

The Open Angel Forum is coming to Colorado and having it’s first event in Boulder on 2/3/10. David Cohen – the CEO of TechStars – has written an extensive post titled Open Angel Forum – Colorado bound! which includes all the background leading up to this, along with information about: Attending OAFCO as an angel investor Presenting at OAFCO as an entrepreneur Sponsoring the event if you are a service provider Each event will only have 10-15 angels in attendance – all will be active investors. We’ll have five companies presenting. It will be an intimate event – if you want to get a feel for the chatter check out the twitter stream on Open Angel Forum take a look at Mark Suster’s post on the Inaugural Open Angel Forum.