Jeremy Tanner Life in Boulder: Every day an adventure.

Phoenix brings the heat

In October I flew down to Phoenix twice, first to run Startup Weekend Phoenix, then for PodCampAZ. Had a great time and made quite a few friends. Startup Weekend came off great, due to on-the-ground planners Gregg Drennan and Brian Shaler. Gangplank was a perfect location with plenty of space and several breakout rooms for the individual teams.  Fruits of the teams labor were TechCrunched.  I’ll be watching Twitrratr develop and anxiously awaiting the public launch of Reserve Chute (Back that SaaS up!)

I was back 11 days later for PodcampAZ. Brent Spore, Evo Terra and a small army of other volunteers pulled off a solid event. Sessions were great, I caught video with Clintus, Jack Mangan’s Pod Taint, Jeremy Vaught and Pam Slim on making real money, introduced Andrew Hyde and saw more Shaler than you can shake a stick at. Also made it to Austin Baker’s ‘How Social Media changed my life’ and was there for the temporary death of TheMacMommy’s car.  I nearly pulled a Raising Arizona and stole a baby, but carry on luggage has been limited to one piece.

I came away with an appreciation of Phoenix and a strong desire to return, especialy over the winter when it’ll be something like 80º there. Anchored by Gangplank and several local coffee meetups, the Phoenix tech community is building, slowed slightly by covering an enormous land area (5th or US City) There are upsides to this, since there’s space for it, everyone seems to have a huge house. “Why are you renting a 6,000 square foot place with a ballroom?” “Because it’s cheaper than the house with the indoor tennis courts.”

Keep rockin’ Phoenix, see you soon.

Ignite Boulder

I’ve been off the keys for a while.  I know.  I’m back now.  Excited inspired.  Committed to bleeding off a bit less of my energy on Twitter.  Now that that’s out of the way…

I gave the first of what I hope turns into many Ignite Boulder presentations a week ago.  Ignite allows 20 slides that auto-advance at 15 second intervals making for a 5 minute presentation.  Topics are incredibly varied, rules are, no spam, no pitches, be interesting, have fun.  Sort of a Turbo TED for the rest of us.  I presented Practical Party Crashing, a mini boot camp aimed at those about to rock (in a stranger’s house)  That was the most fun I’ve had at a tech event in quite some time.  Tseng, Tara and our Australian visitor John Allsopp KILLED it.  I can see doing this quarterly in Boulder going forward.  Below is most of my presentation.  Big thanks to Chip for manning the camera.

Be Different

Mitch Joel asked for social media best practices earlier in the week, tagging Chris Brogan, who tagged Micah who ended up tagging me.  For wearing a kilt of all reasons.  Though I suppose the kilt could be considered inline with this social media best practice: BE DIFFERENT. Facebook now has 100 Million members.  Twitter has millions of users.  What makes a person or brand both noticeable and memorable is standing out from the millions that surround you.  Face to face that may mean having a different dress or look about you.  One can also be different by joining a circle outside your usual path.  Example: Micah, Andrew and the other men who attended the BlogHer conference this year.  Being men in a sea of lady bloggers made them easy to find and hard to forget.

BE DIFFERENT, BE REMEMBERED.

Wrapping up, I’d like to get my friends, Sally Strebel, Joel Postman and Devin Reams to weigh in.

Startup Weekend: A Report From The Cleaner

I’m Winston Wolfe Jeremy Tanner, I solve problems.