Conferences

GlueCon will occur for the thirteenth time, on May 24th-25th, in Broomfield, Colorado. My Foundry partners and I helped Kim and Eric Norlin create Gluecon in 2009 because we saw the need for a developer-focused event to explore emerging technologies around the cloud and APIs. The first year that GlueCon occurred, it seemed like nearly every session began with someone defining “what cloud computing is.” In the interim years, dozens of products and startups have launched or used GlueCon as one of the venues for their early premieres. Twilio, Docker, and Kubernetes all appeared on the GlueCon stage long before they were known by the wider tech community. ...

I’m keynoting the Authors and Innovators Business Ideas Festival on 10/24/19 at the UMASS campus in Newton, MA. As a writer, I’m excited to see events like this happening. When I got the invite from Larry Gennari , I was delighted that it overlapped with a Wellesley College board meeting that Amy was attending. So, while we won’t be together (she’ll be in Wellesley and I’ll be in Newton), we’ll be near each other. ...

I arrived this morning to a downpour and a city that feels exceedingly waterlogged. I’m sitting at a coffee shop in Berkeley in advance of a talk I’m giving on Startup Communities , a topic that to me suddenly feels even more relevant than before given the self-inflicted chaos going on at a macro level in America. As things unfold, I’m calmly pondering the next 20 years as I put the final touches on a presentation for a talk at the Greenspring Associates annual meeting later this week. ...

I’ll be at CES from Wednesday to Friday. I went for many years, punted for the past few years, but decided to go again this year. Techstars runs a big program called the Startup Stage that has three days of programming. It also co-hosts Eureka Park, at the Sands, Level 1, Hall G which is a collection of around 600 startups. I’ll be hanging out there when I’m not walking to CES floor, which typically takes me a day. ...

This week is Denver Startup Week 2014 . Seth, Ryan, and I are spending all day Thursday in Denver doing startup week stuff. If you are looking for me, I’ll be hanging out all day at Basecamp, which is sponsored by Chase. Following are the events I’m participating in. 8:00 – 9:00: Building Great Entrepreneurial Communities 1:00 – 2:00: Feld and Friends 2:00 – 4:00: Mentor Hours (special Foundry/Galvanize/Techstars Edition). People can sign up here (sorry – they don’t have this organized by day, just by mentor). ...

We’re just under one month until Defrag, and if you’re a startup founder, a VC, and IT exec, or anyone that wants to have their brain stretched, I hope you’ll join me in being there. The agenda is now about 90% complete (check the google doc for real-time updates) and Eric tells me that he’ll be finalizing everything in the next week or so. For those of you who attended two years ago, you may remember my “Resistance is Inevitable” talk about the rise of the machines. This year, I’ll be leading two different sessions. ...

Defrag is entering its seventh year of existence. That’s kind of amazing to me. What started as a simple email exchange between myself and Eric Norlin almost eight years ago resulted in a conference that has grown in importance, had meaningful impact on my thinking (and that of many others), and spawned other shows, most notably Gluecon . Most tech conferences don’t last seven years, and they certainly don’t get better with time. Defrag has and is. ...

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. ...

A few weeks ago at Thinc Iowa I noticed the tradition they had of giving a standing ovation to the speaker when the speaker took the stage. I had never seen that before and thought it was awesome. Speakers also got a standing ovation after their talk. As someone who does a lot of public talks, the first sixty seconds of warming up a room are often awkward (even if well executed) and the standing ovation at the beginning eliminated all of this for me. ...

In approximately seven weeks, Defrag will be happening again. It’s the sixth incarnation of Defrag, and over time it seems to have become an annual Fall rite of passage. This year’s Defrag is no different: an intimate gathering and great conversations. Speakers like Kevin Kelly (founder of Wired Magazine), Jeff Ma (inspiration for the movie, “21”), Bre Pettis (of Makerbot ), and many, many others . Topics like mobile development, identity management, social business, big data, and APIs. ...