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Initiative aimed at company creation along the Front Range
1133_ 12/30/11 - At the Startup Colorado Public Launch at Silicon Flatirons, University of Colorado Law School in November, Brad Feld chaired the panel titled ‘Why Boulder?’ with panelists: Yoav Lurie, Founder & CEO, Simple Energy; Justin Segall, Founder & EVP, Simple Energy; Alexander White, Co-Founder & CEO, Next Big Sound, Inc.; and Dave Wright, Founder & CEO, Solid Fire. Startup Colorado, an initiative aimed at company creation along the Front Range, publicly launched in Boulder. It is affiliated with the Startup America Partnership, announced earlier this year to bring together entrepreneurs, investors, top-level executives and educators to foster the growth of innovative companies. Startup Colorado is chaired by Brad Feld and Phil Weiser in Boulder and Jan Horsfall in Colorado Springs. Startup Colorado is a regional initiative, with a heavy focus on Boulder, at least initially. In addition to launching in Boulder, the program plans to create an entrepreneurial summer camp in Boulder where college students from throughout Colorado will work as interns for Boulder startups. The New York Times featured the city last year with the headline 'a magnet for high-tech startups.' Phil Weiser, Dean of the Law School at CU and founder and director of the Silicon Flatirons Center has worked tirelessly for years, even serving two years in Washington D.C. at the White House and is credited by many for the federal focus on Boulder. Of course, Brad Feld and the Foundry Group, local Boulder based venture capitalists, along with Tech Stars has garnered much attention for Boulder as well. Vic Ahmed from TiE Rockies delivered opening remarks and represents a strong Denver influence with the Innovation Pavilion and the Governor's initiative called COIN. This panel, Why Boulder, features young Boulder business leaders who have flourished under the mentoring and guidance of local Boulder TechStars. More than 50 companies, including w3w3.com, have committed over $1 billion in products and services to help young companies grow. Brad says...Listen for more ideas and details... .
Related Links: Startup Colorado || Startup Colorado public launch || Silicon Flatirons Home || Economy Builders || Foundry Group || Event Photos || Keywords: Brad Feld, Boulder Colorado, Startup Colorado, Silicon Flatirons, Yoav Lurie, Simple Energy; Justin Segall, Simple Energy; Alexander White, Next Big Sound, Dave Wright, Solid Fire - Bytes: 21608388
LISTEN to Why Boulder - Startup CO with Brad Feld

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Eco system for people to build and accelerate companies
1132_ 12/28/11 - We are here at for an exciting event; the building is fabulous, 80,000 square feet, called the Innovation Pavilion, and we are talking with the chairman Vic Ahmed also CEO of Plug and Play Colorado and President of TiE Rockies. We asked Vic for an overview and he tells us this is a conglomeration of a number of things that form the eco system for people to be able to build and accelerate companies. Vic has formed a partnership with Plug and Play which is the most successful incubator ever, based out of Silicon Valley, started by the visionary entrepreneur, Saeed Amidi. This incubator has helped over 600 companies with over $750 million, and at any one point in time there are about 350 companies they incubate. It is quite a phenomenon and they have unbelievable access to investors, VC's, angel investors and corporate partners to make investments. "So now, said Vic, "with our situation, with investments in Colorado being rather weak, we're going to be able to provide access for Colorado companies to this network. The time has come for innovation, the time has come for entrepreneurship to go mainstream. We have always been innovative, but it has been left to a small percent to carry the burden of innovation and entrepreneurship. Our whole country is becoming a country of innovators and entrepreneurs. The little boy or girl who grows up is no longer looking to join a big corporation, but are looking to start their own company." Vic believes the whole scenario has changed now. Vic is working with Governor Hickenlooper's office and a number of departments and areas within the state. He said he believes Colorado is really fortunate at this critical juncture in time to have a governor who is all about job creation through innovation and entrepreneurship. Vic feels fortunate too, to have the opportunity to work with the governor, his cabinet, Kristen Russell, Ken Lund - Office of Information Technology who heads the Office of Economic Development and International Trade, and also TJ Deora, Director of Governor’s Energy Office. Recently the Governor announced the formation of the Colorado Innovation Network [COIN] and Kelly Quann is the Executive Director, a very exciting development as it is the mission of this organization is to make Colorado the most innovative state in the country...There's more...
Related Links: Plug and Play Tech Center || TIE Rockies || BusinessGenetics || Event Photos || Mastering Change Book || Vic Ahmed, Innovation Pavilion Startup Colorado Launch Nov. 2011 || Keywords: Vic Ahmed, Innovation Pavilion, Plug and Play, Entrepreneurs, VC's, Angel Investors, Incubator, Governor Hickenlooper, Kristen Russell, Ken Lund, TJ Deora, Kelly Quann - Bytes: 5698772
LISTEN to Vic Ahmed, Innovation Pavilion

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Focusing on the area of organizational design and transformation
1134_ 12/29/11 - We're here today with a person, right here in Denver. However this person goes all over the world, from Argentina to Europe, all over the place. Laurie Fitzgerald, PhD is the founder and president of The Consultancy Inc. Larry loves her website, one of his favorite topics is chaos [author of Mastering Change in the Midst of Chaos]. Laurie has, for the past 30 years focused in the area of organizational design and transformation. That is bringing about whole system, profound change in organizations. Laurie's interest is really drawn to those organizations that see a need to bring themselves into the future by changing fundamentally who they are and what they do. Laurie in her own words, "If you recognize as do we the dire necessity of replacing the conventional wisdom with a new and more powerful lens on reality, you will certainly appreciate the fact that a profound shift in our understanding of how our organizations work has been triggered in the 20th century by an astonishing explosion of scientific discoveries culminating in what we know simply as Chaos. We invite you to join us on our mission to make the principles of this so-called "new science" both applicable to and actionable in the design and transformation of the 21st century business enterprise. Laurie goes onto explain the chaos theory, "Formal moniker - the 'Theory of Complex, Dynamical, Non-linear, Far-From-Equilibrium (FFE) Systems' - perhaps you can see why its formulators, a hodgepodge of post-grad students at the University of California at Santa Cruz representing a variety of disciplines ranging from astrophysics to mathematics, chose to speak of it by its nickname instead. In any event, suffice to say that their chaos theory stands right up there along with Einstein's Relativity and quantum mechanics as one of the most paradigm-shattering discoveries of 20th century science. Dr. Fitzgerald has partnered with executive teams in the implementation and management of large system change in a wide variety of industries including manufacturing, engineering, retail, service, healthcare, medical, pharmaceutical, banking, insurance & finance, aerospace, mining, and telecommunications, as well as with local, national and international government, and law enforcement. Laurie also shares some insights and experiences with an international client...
Related Links: The Consultancy, Inc || Chaos ThinkSite || Mastering Change Blog || In the News || Beyond the Trends || Keywords: Dr. Laurie Fitzgerald, The Consultancy Inc, Chaos, Theory of Complex, Dynamical, Non-linear, Far-From-Equilibrium (FFE) Systems, Transformation, International - Bytes: 6806363
LISTEN to Laurie Fitzgerald, Founder, The Consultancy

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Entrepreneur secrets of the past, present, future
1131_ 12/27/11 - As co-founder and COO, Nancy Phillips has a vested interest in establishing ViaWest as a leader in the market. Phillips, who has over 15 years of management experience in technology, oversees ViaWest's operations, engineering and technical support divisions. Silicon Flatirons, ATLAS, and ITP present Nancy Phillips as the featured entrepreneur with moderators Brad Bernthal, Brad Feld and Jill Van Matre as part of their Entrepreneurs Unplugged series. Previously the Vice President of Operations for RMI.net. Phillips was integral in managing the company's network and technical growth. Prior to helping this struggling Internet Service Provider back to profitability, Phillips also was Vice President of Operations for ITC Worldwide (now Genesys Conferencing) and was Senior Vice President of Operations for ConferTech International (now Global Crossing). Phillips has also been a principal, executive and consultant for numerous successful telecommunications companies including France Telecom, MCI and Qwest. She began her career with Teleconferencing Systems Canada as Vice President of Sales and it was in this role that she met Roy Dimoff - the two have been loyal business partners ever since. In addition to being recognized by ViaWest for her outstanding contributions, Phillips has earned a reputation for excellence throughout the industry. In 2010, she received CSIA's prestigious "Bob Newman Lifetime Achievement Award." She has been named the Denver Business Journal's "Outstanding Woman in Business" in the high-tech category, and...
Related Links: ViaWest || Entrepreneurs Unplugged || Silicon Flatirons || Podcasting Directory || Event Photos ||
Watch a partial VIDEO - or enjoy LISTENing to the full audio program on MP3 Keywords: Nancy Phillips, ViaWest, Data Centers, Brad Feld, Jill VanMatre, Brad Bernthal Entrepreneurs, France Telecom, MCI, Qwest, Silicon Flatirons, Internet Service Provider - Bytes: 62201420
LISTEN to Nancy Phillips, COO/CoFounder, ViaWest - Entrepreneurs Unplugged

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It's all about the data and how it's presented
1129_ 12/23/11 - We're back at the Defrag Conference, lot of great speakers, super booths, lot of executives, some very interesting people and some money walking around too. Based in San Francisco with offices in New York and London, we're speaking with Ian Brown, Director, Demand Generation (for the rest of us, that's marketing) at Mashery. So, what does Mashery do? They help companies with APIs, essentially get those APIs out to developers, whether that be internal or external, but essentially they provide a layer of infrastructure that allows the developers to be able to scale, allows them to analyze who is actually using their APIs. In addition to that Mashery also provide a developers outreach center. At w3w3.com we find this all rather amazing. We started our Internet Talk Radio Show in 1999 and it's changed a little bit since then. Ian agrees, just thinking back to last year, "You would hear API and every once-and-awhile you'd have to throw in what API means [Application Programming Interface], you'd have to actually say that. This year people are throwing API around very nonchalantly assuming everyone knows what that is." On the horizon Ian expects to see APIs forward to individual businesses - more like turning business into a platform. Where now you have individuals accessing data via APIs and to then build other things. Now what's happening is you're seeing a variety of different applications being built based on these APIs and in some cases you're seeing brand-new partnerships being formed thanks to these APIs. It's pretty amazing and from there you can see almost anything happening because it's all about the data and how it's presented. Again, it's up to the smart individuals at Defrag to one day make that happen.
Related Links: Defrag 2011 || Defrag 2012 || Defrag Photos || Software Channel || Mashery || Keywords: Ian Brown, Mashery, API, Defrag, Accelerating the AHA Moment, Digital Identity, API's, Mobile, Social Customer, Platform Shift, Collaboration, Social Networks, Activity Streams - bytes=3100319
LISTEN TO: Ian Brown, Dir, Demand Generation Mashery

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Couple of years after you start your venture
1130_ 12/22/11 - At Defrag 2011 we met and talked with Bart Lorang, CEO and Founder of FullContact. Attracted to his booth by all of the activity, Larry asked Bart to give us an overview of what FullContact was. Bart replied, “FullContact is the API that keeps contact information current. Any software application can 'bake' our capability inside their APP to improve, enrich and de-duplicate their people data.” “That's mailing lists and everything else?” asked Larry. “Yes, emails, phone numbers, titles, photos, addresses, names, all that core contact information that lives inside of software. FullContact's customers are CRM platforms, email marketing tools, marketing automation tools - we work with a lot of people data and make that data better. This is an API for software developers, it's technical, but it's very simple to consume for a developer. It really takes only a few lines of code. Larry asked Bart who runs into many businesses, big and small, entrepreneurs and the like, “What advice would he give business people today?” Bart's reply, "My advice to entrepreneurs is follow your passion, because as an entrepreneur you're facing long odds and if you don't have passion for it, you're not going to love it, and you can't do great work if you don't love it. Most importantly you're going to need persistence to go along with that passion. Because, it really doesn't start kicking in until a couple of years after you start your venture that you really start seeing success. It doesn't ever happen overnight."
Related Links: Defrag 2011 || Defrag 2012 || Defrag Photos || Software Channel || FullContact || Keywords: Bart Lorang, FullContact, API, Defrag, Accelerating the AHA Moment, Digital Identity, API's, Mobile, Social Customer, Platform Shift, Collaboration, Social Networks, Activity Streams - bytes=2760101
LISTEN TO: Bart Lorang, CEO/Founder, Full Contact

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Getting technology to leverage and access what is needed
1128 12/21/11 - We're talking to Phil Becker, PLB Ventures, today at the DefragCon 2011. Phil is one of the cofounders of Defrag, although his career began in the aerospace industry [with some pretty impressive accomplishments]. Phil has been in the computer industry since 1967 and has his signature on both the Moon and Mars as part of computer communications projects he built for the Apollo and Viking missions. He has created technology to link computers for both the pre-Internet and Internet eras. As an entrepreneur he has built and taken public companies in the computer communications space. In 1992 he founded ISPCON and grew it to be the premiere Internet Service Provider Trade Show. Phil was the former Editor-in-Chief of Digital ID World and former Managing Partner of Digital Identity World, LLC before selling DIDW to IDG in 2007. Phil tells us that today, that throughout his varied career, he realizes now that what he's always been focused on is the way technology amplifies each of us individually and gives us more autonomy and more control over our world. He said, "I think here at Defrag you're seeing the same thing show up again, sometimes recognized and sometimes unrecognized. That is whether talking about the consumerization of IT in the enterprise, the access to data wherever we are, or whether it's mobile computing - it's really all about how does the individual who is trying to get something in their life, get the technology to help them have the leverage and access that they need. In Larry's latest book, Mastering Change in the Midst of Chaos, he says, "People are the source of all problems and people are the source of all solutions." Phil says, yes and in the end that's what this technology is all for. I mean we aren't building robots to take care of other robots. We're building them to take care of us and make life easier. This conference which Brad Feld, Eric Norlin and Phil Becker put together, is really all about that wave of where it all comes together, what it looks like and to take that next step. What solutions are created by the next step and what new problems are created by the next step. "Every solution is the source of its own problem." There's more....
Related Links: Defrag 2011 || Defrag 2012 || Defrag Photos || Software Channel || Mastering Change Book || Keywords: Phil Becker, Defrag, Accelerating the AHA Moment, Moon, Mars, Apollo, Viking missions, IPSCON, Digital ID World, Digital Identity World, New Wave, Brad Feld, Eric Norlin - bytes=3789534
LISTEN TO: Phil Becker, CoFounder, Defrag Con

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Getting Internet access for the entire State of Colorado
1127_ 12/20/11 - We are at the Colorado Rotary State of the State and Culmination of 100 Years Anniversary Celebration of Rotary in Colorado and joined by Ron Burton, President Nominee of Rotary International. Ron explains the way their system works, he is currently the president nominee, will be elected at the Bangkok convention in May as president elect and then becomes president of Rotary International and serves in 2013-2014. Larry asked Ron, “What's happening in Rotary now?” A very big deal, Rotarians are trying to complete the "End Polio Now" (Polio Irradiation Campaign) which has been going on longer than many would like. (Larry has much interest in the topic of polio, as he had it as a youth.) Ron tells us we are getting very close. There have been about 570 cases in the world this year, which is about 37-40% of what it was last year. "But", says Ron, “we still have to finish the job. We promised the children of the world in 1987 they would live in a polio free world - and we're making progress but we have to finish the job." Rotary has stellar partners in that process. There is the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control, UNICEF, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and of course, the World Rotarians are on that list. There are 34,000 Rotary Clubs in the world and 200 countries and political subdivisions. Every Rotary club is autonomous, so they can pick and choose the projects they want to do. But every Rotary Club does many, many things around the community. One of the big catalysts that occurred here in Colorado is the Internet access for the entire State which puts Colorado in First Place! And, the catalyst for that was a network of 174 Rotary Clubs in the State of Colorado. It wouldn't have happened without them! Rotarians live by the four-way test, Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Does it build goodwill and better friendship? Is it beneficial to all concerned? If you can answer those four questions in a positive way...there's much more to listen to...
Related Links: Rotary International || Global Polio Eradication Initiative || End Polio Now (UN Foundation) || Gates Foundation || Rotary International || Keywords: Ron Burton, Rotary, International, Polio, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Colorado, Global Health Program, High Speed Internet Project, EAGLE-Net, Educational Access Gateway, Learning Environment Network, Points - bytes=5772332
LISTEN TO: Ron Burton, Pres. Nominee 2013-14, Rotary International

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Expert advice for managing social media
1126_ 12/16/11 - Today Lucy Sanders, CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Larry Nelson, Director of w3w3® Media Network are interviewing Clara Shih the best selling author of The Facebook Era and founder/CEO of Sequoia-backed Hearsay Social, one of the fastest-growing and most exciting technology companies in Silicon Valley. Clara is a renowned social media authority and technology leader whose New York Times-featured book has been translated into nine languages and is used as a textbook at Harvard Business School. Hearsay Social develops social media software to enable large franchise brands to create, measure and distribute content out to local reps, agents, and franchisees' Facebook or Twitter pages. Consider insurance agents, financial advisors, coffee houses or restaurant chains. They are part of important corporate brands, but what makes them thrive are local relationships. Social media can help, but it needs to be managed in a way that supports the brand, customer satisfaction and hence the business bottom line. Our listeners are familiar with “customer relationship management” for businesses this is something like, social media relationship management. In 2007, Clara created the first business application on Facebook and subsequently authored the New York Times-featured best selling book The Facebook Era, which has sold over 21,000 copies worldwide. Previously, Clara was a marketing executive at salesforce.com, and held technology and product positions at Google and Microsoft. Clara has a BS in computer science and economics and MS in computer science from Stanford. She is a frequently invited keynote speaker on social media at global conferences including AlwaysOn, Web 2.0 Expo, Enterprise 2.0, CRM Evolution, Social-Loco, American Marketing Association, Toronto TechWeek, and Social Ad Summit. There are a number of learning points for entrepreneurs and leaders offered by Clara...listen for more...
Related Links: Hearsay Social || Find Clara on Facebook || and Twitter @clarashih || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Why Facebook Matters for B2B || Keywords: Clara Shih, Hearsay Social, National Center for Women in Technology, Lucy Sanders, NCWIT, Entrepreneurs, The Facebook Era, Facebook, Twitter, Social Media, - bytes=152933443
LISTEN TO: Clara Shih, CEO/Founder, Hearsay Social

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Building a phenomenal culture and a real value proposition
1125_ 12/15/11 - We're back at the Defrag Conference, lot of great speakers, super booths, lot of executives, some very interesting people and some money walking around too, by the way. We're talking with Bill Heuston who is senior account executive at ViaWest. We interviewed Bill a few years ago. Bill has been with ViaWest for nine years. Via West is 12 years old so Bill has been around for a good chunk of it. When we last interviewed the co-founder, Roy Dimoff, he pointed out they have a lot of long term employees. Bill adds, "There are. We've got a phenomenal culture - not much turnover, people like to stay here." Larry asked for an overview. Bill replied, "ViaWest, got started in 1999" [Coincidentally that's the same year w3w3.com got started.], "here in Denver, Colorado, slowly growing in the hosting business, and acquiring data centers around the country. And, 12 years later, fast-forward, we are now the largest privately held collocation hosting company in North America." That's quite a success story. Bill's focus is in sales on the entrepreneurial and enterprise space. It's a big gambit, but any company that has a mission critical web application, are the people Bill loves to talk to. He likes to solve problems in a hybrid manner. The thing that ViaWest brings to the table, that's a real value proposition vs. all the other hosting companies that they compete with, is that they have all the core competencies under one roof. They have collocation, dedicated hosting and cloud computing. All three of those are core competencies to ViaWest and value to clients in that they can build solutions that are what Bill calls 'hybrid' and use pieces and parts of each one, all under one roof and cross connected to make it a seamless connection. Larry recalls, way back when ViaWest was first launching there were many other hosting companies that had started but are no longer in business. Bill tells us that seven out of ten of ViaWest competitors when they got started are not longer here. That's 70% and ViaWest continued on to become this super success.
Related Links: Viawest || Green Solutions || Defrag 2011 || Software Channel || Keywords:Bill Heuston, Viawest, Collocation Hosting Company, Dedicated Hosting, Cloud Computing, Green Grid, Defrag, Accelerating the AHA Moment, Value Proposition - bytes=3403340
LISTEN TO: Bill Heuston, ViaWest

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