Posted at 06:31 PM in Boulder, Colorado, Business | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: Boulder, marijuana, vinyl, weed
Arapaho youth participated in a run from the Sand Creek Massacre site in eastern Colorado, ending with a run along the Creek Path into downtown Boulder, where the Arapaho Tribe held dances, sold crafts and food and met the Boulder community on the Pearl Street Mall.
The plaque, located on the 17th Street overpass on the Creek Path, was chosen by the Boulder Sesquicentennial Committee to be a lasting remembrance of the event in Boulder's 150th anniversary.
Posted at 11:18 AM in Boulder, Colorado | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: Arapaho, Boulder Sesquicentennial, Sand Creek Massacre
Mary Ann Mahoney, left, director of the Boulder Convention and Visitor's Bureau, with Heather Clisby, project coordinator for the inaugural DiMe symposium at the St. Julien Hotel in Boulder.
Don Hall, left, producer of Disney's The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, was a panelist for DiMe. He also directed Walking Sleeping Beauty, a documentary being shown at the Boulder International Film Festival.
Who's a creative? Just about everyone, a panel of exceptionally creative people agreed at Boulder's DiMe Digital Media Convergence Symposium -- the inaugural year for the event that helped kick off the Boulder International Film Festival weekend.
But the emergence of a plethora of easier-to-use and often mobile technologies and media is widening how many people, including many children, are starting to put themselves into the rather loosely defined category of "creatives."
The huge acceptance of blogging and social media now makes millions of people across the globe into published writers. "I think self-publishing has widened the world" of creatives, said David Rolfe, a producer with Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Boulder.
The symposium, organized by the Colorado Governor's new office of Film Television & Media and the Boulder Convention and Visitor's Bureau, packed the St. Julien Hotel room with about 200 people to hear a panel of eight experts talk about what's hot in the fast-changing world of new media. Robert Reich, founder of Boulder's OneRiot who also has grown the Boulder Denver Tech Meetup from about 50 to 5,000 registered users, moderated the panel.
With the success of the 3-D Avatar movie, the topic of how quickly 3-D will be adopted was high on the list. Calling the hit movie a "significant event," Rolfe said the movie has changed viewers attitudes from whether they thought it was a good movie plot or not to "Wow, that was quite an experience."
Theaters are now in a catch-up mode, said Don Hahn, a producer with Disney, to jump on the more profitable 3-D movie experience. "It's a real game changer," he said, adding that there are now about 80 3D theaters being installed each week. The 3D theaters, he said, generate about 50 percent more profit than standard movies.
The panel also debated whether the new Apple iPad would be another "game changer." Boulder-based venture capitalist Jason Mendelson, a partner in the Foundry Group, had his doubts, saying he wasn't that sold on it yet, although he certainly was going to buy one.
But other panelists, including Aidan Chopra, with Google's Sketchup office in Boulder, and Krista Marks, one of the founders of Kerpoof that was bought by Disney Interactive Media Group in 2008, quickly disagreed, saying the iPad 's tablet functionality will start to change the way people can access both entertainment and games as well as their work.
The more ways kids can start to use creative platforms like Kerpoof on the Internet, the more they will continue to expand their skills to become the future technologists and engineers, Marks said.
Life is not all roses with so many emerging technologies, the panel agreed, citing how different platforms -- everything from the Apple iPhone to Google's Android and the new Palm Pre -- fracture the the playing field for software developers.
Brian Robbins, a game developer who started his own company Riptide Games, says his goal is to attract attention quickly in the very crowded world of mobile game apps, but getting each game to work on the different platforms makes his business much tougher.
Competing against some 30,000 to 40,000 game apps right now for mobile phones, Robbins said, "If you're not looked at in the first 30 seconds to a minute, they're (the user) are gone."
Other conclusions by the panel included:
* Internet users may have to realize that not everything is going to be free on the Internet. "We need to teach people to pay for stuff again," Sketchup's Chopra said. Sketchup has grown rapidly since its acquisition by Google because a "free" version is offered. But the company also sells a "pro" version with more features.
* No matter the media, the story and content is still critical. "Storytelling is in our caveman genes," Hahn said.
* The DVD format could soon be in trouble, as more people begin to download their media. Younger people are downloading more movies, and "they are totally satisfied," said Michael Brown, founder of Serac Adventure Films and Film School.
The panel forecast that it won't be long before the movie industry will offer new releases in DVD format and download formats on the same day as the movie is released. Piracy is one of the factors creating change. "If you don't give consumers exactly what they want, they will just take it," Mendelson said.
After the symposium, Mary Ann Mahoney, director of the Boulder Convention and Visitor's Bureau, said there's a good chance that DiMe might be expanded next year, perhaps to include some interactive workshops and more presentations.
Posted at 11:04 AM in Boulder, Colorado, Business, Film, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: 3D, Avatar, BIFF, Boulder, convergence, creatives, DiMe, new media, Sketchup
A one-stop virtual gateway to the 2010 Winter Olympics, including bios, medals won and hometowns of all the U.S. Olympians, is now online at www.olympicsin3D.com.
Boulder-based EarthvisionZ created the fun, dynamic site that lets you experience the Olympics in a 3D world without ever leaving home.
Posted at 09:57 AM in Boulder, Colorado, Business, Sports, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: 3D, athletes, Boulder, Google Earth, olympians, olympics, Vancouver, winter olympics
Boulder artist and author Tina Collen is hoping for some fast-moving sales of her book "Storm of the i: An Artobiography" with a release party on Friday, Feb. 12 at the downtown Boulder showroom of the Tesla electric sports car.
Collen says she'll talk about her memoir as an artist trying to understand her turbulent relationship with her father, and the astonishing event that occurred after she finished the book.
Collen's writing is interwoven with her memorabilia, her art and her work as a graphic designer.
The event runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., and guests will be able to look over the all-electric Tesla Roadster, with a range of about 244 miles per charge. The Tesla Gallery is located at 915 Pearl St.
To learn more about Tina Collen and her new book "Storm of the i,", visit www.TinaCollen.com.
Posted at 10:19 PM in Boulder, Colorado, Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: Boulder, Collen, Tesla
Are you a Front Range blogger looking to get ideas, tips and network with others creating blogs on just about anything under the Colorado sun?
Well, just like you have to think everyday what you might write as a blogger, just do it and attend the Meetup of Front Range bloggers, alternating meeting sites currently between the Uptown Tavern in Denver and Gordon Biersch Brewery at Flatirons Crossing Mall in Broomfield.
Maybe you're just thinking you would like to start a blog. That's OK, too. In the meetups I've attended so far, there's always several people just getting started. I wish I had found the meetup before I started blogging, I would have done some things differently from what I've learned.
My 2010 resolution: Try harder to write shorter posts on my blog. So here goes. There's never enough time to get around and meet everyone at the meetups, but I'm always impressed by the blogging talent. Here are some quick links to some very cool bloggers I just met at the January meetup.
* BloginSong.com Camille Bright-Smith introduces herself as a blogger who sings rather than writes her blog. It's a different approach for sure. She's also starting to add other songwriters to her blog.
* Effortlesseating.com Elizabeth Yarnell, a natural health expert, as well as publicity coach, is hoping to create a cooking TV show. For now, follow her blog as well as www.gloriousonepotmeals.com. Oh yes, she writes a third blog, www.recipesforpublicity.com. Several bloggers at the meetup manage to keep several blogs going. I'm impressed.
* callisto.fm Michael Sitarzewski is changing the way we listen to podcasts. You can browse different podcasts by channel. I haven't dug into this very far, but if you listen to podcasts,give it a try. He also blogs at zerologic.com.
* Macgetit.com There was a lot of talk about Apple's new iPad since it was released on the same day as the meetup. And Kevin Cullis, who blogs about using Macs, has a post on Why I Probably Won't Get an iPad. That was before the announcement. Wonder if he still thinks the same way?
I could go on but just remembered, I'm supposed to keep my posts shorter. The Bloggers Meetup has more than 300 members, although the meetups usually have about 20 to 30 attending.
Posted at 10:47 PM in Boulder, Colorado, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: blogger meetup, boulder, colorado, denver
It’s
an interesting dilemma for Colorado.
·
Social
services are being squeezed throughout state and local governments.
·
Diminishing
tax revenues are casting a big shadow over education funding, with cuts
imminent.
·
Two, several
people in a household are living off the income of a single worker. In other
words, one person may have been hired, and the entire family of 4 or 5 moved
here, adding to the net migration number.
·
Three, it’s
also possible someone in a new Colorado household continues to hold down a job
in another state, but is able to commute or even work virtually on that job. I
personally know of one woman, laid off from her job in Colorado, who recently
accepted a position out of state but as a Web editor on the Internet, she’s
able to continue to live here.
Posted at 05:30 PM in Boulder, Colorado, Business | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
This is part of a column I wrote in Boulder in March 2007, when I went to a very small bloggers meeting with Twitter founder Evan Williams speaking. Imagine the crowd he would draw now. I wonder what he charges now to speak?
At the time, Williams had 1,500 followers on Twitter. Today, I just checked and the Twitter CEO now has about 1.16 million followers. How far this company has come in the three years since I first heard of Twitter. You can now follow him on Twitter @ev and read his blog at evhead.com.
Here's what I had to say in 2007.
"I'm writing my story about Twitter."
Answering the question "What are you doing?" in 140 characters or less is the very simple business model of one of the newest social networking sites on the Web, Twitter.com.
It's called twittering, and founder Evan Williams said the site was created "more or less on a whim." Now, with the site getting rants and raves from bloggers around the world and user updates reaching 900,000 so far in March, Williams told attendees at a Boulder conference on Weblogs and Social Media that it's "taking over our lives."
Williams, also a founder of ODEO.com and before that, co-founder of Blogger.com, drew laughs showing some of the Twitter posts, including one of his own recently - "I just wrecked my car. I'm fine." Another example: "Internet. I'm in labor."
His audience at the Boulder Marriott, most surfing wirelessly on their laptops and one posting to the live demonstration of Twitter, seemed enthralled with yet another way to communicate to friends instantly.
Twitter, Williams explained, has been called everything from "blogging on crack" to "dodgeball but boring." He liked one blogger's description of "ambient intimacy." For a site that's only nine months old and still trying to figure out what it will be, Williams described it as simply a "blogging tool."
Already new applications are springing up, including Twitterific, a small desktop app for Macs, and Twittervision, which maps the location of anyone posting to Twitter. Another site, Twitterholic.com, lists the top 100 "Twits" ranked by their following of friends.
Williams is No. 5 on the list with 1,500 people - something he says he's not really encouraging because he doesn't want to see Twitter become another popularity contest.
Posted at 11:00 AM in Boulder, Colorado, Business | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: evan williams, ODEO, twitter
Doug Gaddy, owner of Absolute Vinyl in N. Boulder, played some albums for customers at the store's grand opening. He shares the space with Little Horse Books, owned by Michael Price.
“A Hard Day’s Night,” the soundtrack to the 1964 British comedy film starring the Beatles, is playing on my turntable.
· Go to YouTube, again to listen to many of the songs, some often rare, that other collectors have uploaded.
· EBay also is good to get a feel for prices, as well as details on rarer and collectible releases.
· Discogs is another huge online community-built database of music information.
· When you travel, visit vinyl stores in different cities, gathering information as well as supporting independent retail.
Posted at 07:51 PM in Boulder, Colorado, Business | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: absolute vinyl, albums, Boulder, little horse, vinyl
A "power panel" of Boulder business leaders said things are looking better for the Boulder area economy in 2010. Scott Green, Google, left, and Pat O'Brien, Guaranty Bank and Trust Co., shared the panel with Stephen Tebo, Tebo Development Co.; Chuck Porter, Crispin Porter + Bogusky; and Kim Campbell, Twenty Ninth Street.
A funny thing happened on the way through the Boulder Economic Council’s economic forecast Wednesday night.
But that chart was just a mere diversion from the real localized message of the evening looking at 2010 for “Boulder & Beyond.”
And both Wobbekind and a “power panel” of local business leaders examining retail, banking, technology, real estate and advertising generally had some good things to say this year’s local economy.
If there was a consensus, it probably goes something like this: The U.S. recession was really nasty, and Colorado, which lost about 100,000 jobs in 2009, didn’t too so good either. But if you live in Boulder County and still have your job, you should be thankful that the area’s combination of government, professional services, university and manufacturing jobs at least made it better here than a lot of other places.
In a nutshell, here’s what the business experts see:
· Banking: Federal examiners are softening a bit, and healthier banks that have raised capital and improved their portfolios should start to lend more this year, said Pat O’Brien, market president of Guaranty Bank and Trust Co. Banks’ loan portfolios in the county area are healthier than many across the state. Across the country, there are still about 575 problem banks being watched closely by regulators, but what he described as a “classic credit crunch” should be loosening.
· Commercial real estate: Tebo Development Co. Stephen Tebo talked about the difficulty of borrowing against “more conservative” appraisals on commercial properties, but said his business had gotten back on pace in the fourth quarter after a slow nine months. “I think there was pent-up demand,” for space, he said. A perception of a glut of commercial space for lease, especially in downtown Boulder, isn’t true, he said, although cities in the county like Longmont, Louisville and Lafayette are not yet filling up vacant space. “If we were willing to rent” to medical marijuana dispensaries and growers, he added, “we would not have a vacancy.”
· Retail: Retailers didn’t see a rebound until the holiday season, which turned out to be the best since 2006, said Kim Campbell, senior property manager for Boulder’s Twenty Ninth Street shopping district. While the news has been glum, luxury chains like Saks and Nordstrom are doing better after consumers retreated to discounters for most of the year. In Boulder, Arhaus Furniture, the Colorado Athletic Club and several new restaurants have opened, with three retailers, the Container Store, XXI Forever and Ultimate Electronics filling up the empty anchor space at Broomfield’s Flatiron Crossing vacated by Lord & Taylor. “Game changers” in retail include mobile applications like Red Laser for consumers to scan prices in stores from their smart phones, and social media getting the word out fast on events and special promotions.
· Technology: The mobile Internet is a powerful trend in 2010, predicted Scott Green, engineering site director for Google in Boulder. A surge in sales of smart phones is completely changing the way people interact and work. Cloud computing is also making it easier for startups to run without their own IT person, and a trend for more vertical and “end-to-end” markets, such as Google selling its own phones, Amazon selling the Kindle reader and Apple selling both music and players is only going to accelerate. This will be good news for smaller entrepreneurs in the Boulder area who come up with innovative products.
· Advertising: Smart marketers are going to get more into the “core” of the product, said Chuck Porter, co-chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which picked Boulder for a new office because they wanted something completely “opposite” of their offices in Miami. Boulder has the “right kind of juice” for the trend to more interactive digital media. CP+B created one Facebook promotion for Burger King, telling people if they would “unfriend” 10 of their friends, they’d get a free Whopper. After some 233,000 friends were dropped, Facebook asked them if they would pull the application, he said.
CP+B recently helped launch a new Boulder Digital Works program at CU, and although Porter agreed Boulder could keep moving toward become a “digital media Mecca,” he’d rather not have the word get out too much. “I want to hire” the graduates of the school we started, he said.
Posted at 09:34 AM in Boulder, Colorado, Business | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: boulder, crispin porter + bogusky, economy, Tebo, university of colorado
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