I know some people still consider Denver a cow-town, but after last night’s Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup, maybe we’re more of a cow and bunny town…
If you haven’t made it to one of these Meetups yet, here’s what it’s all about:
The 1st Tuesday each month at 6PM, five people get five minutes each to demo something. Five companies each have five minutes to demonstrate their new technology, followed by five minutes for Q&A from the audience. The event is designed to provide a time and place for technologists and entrepreneurs to showcase the new technology developing in Boulder/Denver tech community (geeks, investors, entrepreneurs, hackers, etc). The event is also designed to create networking opportunities for anyone interested in new technology.
Fun, right? And since I happened to have free babysitting services last night (thank you for in-laws visiting from out of town!), I hopped in the car and made the quick trip downtown to the Tivoli.
(Note to self: Check parking maps *before* heading out. Especially when you’re headed to a college campus and school is in session.)
CowPotato: Using Android to whack cows with spuds
After welcoming remarks from Robert Reich (OneRiot) and Brad Bernthal (Silicon Flatirons), Jeremy Slade kicked off the presentations with a demo of his Android-based game: CowPotato (yes, you shoot cows with a potato gun.) I would have been more interested to hear about developing for Android versus for the iPhone, but that’s probably more of a Boulder Open Coffee Club topic. Crowd consensus: meh (although for some reason mooing cows does consistently cause crowd giggling.)
vPo.st: Mobile to Social
After the cows, we moved on to…bunnies? David Rudder used these awesome electronic rabbits to demo his mobile to social networking platform, vPo.st. With vPo.st, you can use your mobile phone to call in a message, that would then get transcribed (via Twilio) and posted to your social network (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace). In this example, a call to vPo.st sent a message to Twitter that prompted the electro-bunnies to start lighting up and twitching their ears. Cool. (Check out the Violet RFID Mirror package on ThinkGeek or buy the stand-alone bunnies directly from Violet.)
Boulder Digital Works: Transdisciplinary learning
David Slayden took us briefly out of the cow and bunny farm with an overview of the new Boulder Digital Works “60Weeks” program starting this fall. Generally, it’s a non-degree university-based program combining the schools of journalism and mass communication with engineering for a yummy art+technology blend of goodness. Anyone want to loan give me $25K to check it out?
LocalBunny: Smart and automatic responses for your business on Twitter
And then, just in case you were starting to miss them, we were back to the bunnies. This time LocalBunny wrapped it up with an overview of their keyword-based Twitter auto-responder for businesses. Think TextMarks, but with Twitter instead of SMS. It’s an interesting concept and I think it will be great for businesses… once they can get *users* effectively using keywords. Not a huge hurdle, but something to think about.
If this sounded like fun…
Join me (and 300+ others) at the next Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup on September 1st in Boulder. Tweet “presenters” to @bdnt to get up to date presenter information (thanks to LocalBunny).
{ 3 comments }
Hey,
I don't remember having so much fun while living in Denver (of course I was there in the mid 90's when the Denver Tech Center (DTC) was the heart of tech. Now everyone's coming meeting in the middle at the Tivoli?
Sounds like a great time along with some very creative minds. I guess that I can't really complain though. Plenty of great minds around here in Cambridge, MA. I'm just missing those Rockies a little bit. Thanks for sharing some Colorado news for us out here on the east coast.
There used to be tech in the DTC? (LOL) It's mostly banks, finance, and insurance now.
Since you're in Cambridge, you should keep an eye on TechStars (techstars.org) – which expanded to include Boulder *and* Boston this year. Those guys are well connected and always doing something fun with startups.
There used to be tech in the DTC? (LOL) It's mostly banks, finance, and insurance now.
Since you're in Cambridge, you should keep an eye on TechStars (techstars.org) – which expanded to include Boulder *and* Boston this year. Those guys are well connected and always doing something fun with startups.
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