Toluu : Andrew Hyde

Andrew Hyde

Founder of Startup Weekend and Startup Enthusiast Based in Boulder, Colorado

BarCamp is an amazing event. When planning Boulder’s third BarCamp (which will take place in two weekends, October 17-18th), I was asked many times what it is. From the website:

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.

For me the best way to capture just what barcamp is would be to think of a gathering of bright tech minds that are are engaged in passionate conversations in a small conference like setting. BarCamp has the ‘rule of two feet’ that dictates ‘if you are not enjoying the conversation you are in, use your two feet to leave and start one of your own.’

BarCamp changed my professional life.

Joe Pezzillo first introduced me to the concept. He was on the local radio station, KGNU, talking about how random the meeting can be. Attending my first BarCamp (it was in Denver) I was blown away by the people that attended. It was the first time I heard of people working passionately in small tech startups. They loved what they did. I wanted to find out how they did it, and spend the next three months meeting and expanding my Boulder network.

So what should you expect:

Date: October 17-18

Time: Friday 6-9ish Saturday 9-5

The Startup RollercoasterOctober 5

First, a great post from Tim Ferris’s blog on the “Transition Curve” of being at a startup (written by Cameron Herold).

Stage 1: The first stage of the concept is called “Uninformed Optimism”
Stage 2: The second stage is called “Informed Pessimism”
Stage 3 – The third stage is called “Crisis of Meaning”
Stage 4 – Informed Optimism.

Check out the full post, worth a read. Tim talks about entrepreneurship manic depression, with the rise and falls of your product, attitude and company. I found myself having more ups and downs working in politics personally, but find this to be spot on. Generally, the more mentorship you have, the fewer free falls you have.

Yesterday there was a fantastic post from randomwalker: Lessons from the failure of Livejournal: when NOT to listen to your users:

In the last couple of months, there have been multiple developments that seem to indicate that the combination of a blogging platform/commenting system and social network is finally becoming widespre

DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge 2008October 3

DonorsChoose is a great organization that raises money that goes directly for teachers. They have done yearly challenges to raise money, targeting bloggers. Now it is our turn. Quite a few Colorado bloggers are looking to raise money to go directly for schools. There are quite a few interesting projects to fund, and most of them are looking for a small about. Any donation helps, lets get Colorado up on the list!

See the sidebar of the blog ——>

Let’s do it!

Blog For HumansSeptember 30

I was sitting at Trident, the usual place for me to drink some quality tea and think about what to do with my week, when Michael Tseng (who was also an Interaction Designer at CP+B) and I got into a conversation about the latest trends (the social echo chamber, iPhone app sales and recent acquisitions around town). He told me he started blogging, and I checked it out and quickly read all of his posts. Brilliant stuff.

Look at the Segway, elegant engineering but completely missed the point. You can’t give those things away because no one wants to look like an idiot crawling down the street on their Dr. Evil Mobile. Ask yourself, what’s the first thing that anyone says when they see someone on a Segway? Invariably, while pointing it’s always, “check out that idiot!”. Want a tip? If you’re going to design a vehicle make sure people look cool riding in/on it. And for good measure when they are standing around it make sure that looks cool too.

from design for humans

It is the right mix of great design, solid commentary and commons sense.

And I liked it because he wrote, well, blogs for humans. His posts are meant for his friends to read.

Which creates such a great feel, don’t you think?

Boulder.Me Job FairSeptember 26

I am very excited about this event.

From the site:

The Boulder tech scene is growing like crazy. Twenty of our top tech startups (you can see a few in the sidebar) have banded together to fly in one hundred top software developers, programmers and engineers from across the country, all expenses paid.

So if you are a developer, and have thought to yourself “Boulder looks cool!” why don’t you come out, on our dime, and have 20 companies waiting to interview you. Apply today to be one of a hundred.

Hiring companies include Aegis Analytical, EventVue, Filtrbox, Fuser, Gnip, HiveLive, Me.dium, Printfection, Rally Software, Return Path, and socialthing! (and that list will expand).

So who is behind it? Eric Marcoullier, Chris Wand, David Cohen, Josh Fraser,