So, I'm outfitting my office which has me thinking back to all the great articles I've read over the years about offices. There's Joel on Software's 12 Steps to Better Code which is largely just common sense of developer types explained using traditional business language. And Jason Calacanis about how to save money running a startup which is largely more of the same.

Cheap tables and Expensive Chairs (like... Aeron chairs)

Jason's tip that really resonated with me was this one:

Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are a complete rip off. We buy stainless steel restaurant tables that are $100 and $600 Areon[sic] chairs. Total cost per workstation? $700. Compare that to buying a $500-$1,500 cube/designer workstation. The chair is the only thing that matters... invest in it.

We're just a few days away from DrupalCamp Colorado 2008 and things are becoming more and more tangible by the minute. Just now I got a package in the mail at the new offices.

The stickers just happen to be 2"x4" which is exactly the right size to emblazon them on the back of your iPhone. Ever since lijit gave it to me my phone has rocked a lijit sticker:

This was the first "New Tech Meetup" that I've attended. It was quite interesting. Perhaps more interesting was the before the session I was at "The Cup" in Boulder talking to a VC/Consultant/Entrepreneur type and comparing Boulder to Denver he said something like "The thing about Boulder is that there's more VCs up here so the Entrepreneurs from Denver have to come here."

At that exact moment, sitting in the Cup working on their presentation was Dandyid. Point proven?

Without further ado - my notes on the sessions.

Gnip (Guh - nip)

Used OpenOffice.org Impress and Ubuntu.

Basically they want to go from the "polling" model (think of all the rss requests that your rss reader makes in a day) to a push model. But it has to be polling, so they will do the polling in one big poll and then share the resulting data with you either by polling or pushing. Their model seems to be like Facebook, but in a B2B way. I'm not sure that I see the problem that they are solving, but they already have several big name partners which means that those big name partners see a business model which is really all that they need.

I like them more now that I see their website: "We got $h*t to pop". Ok, fair enough. They had a real demo - well done. The demo didn't 100% work. Oh well.

Question from the audience: Who saves money? Who spends money? What's the revenue module?
Answer: Uh, this is the new _tech meetup. I'm not a business guy....Let's say for now we're doing this for public benefit._

mobileXware (nice site!)

Used OpenOffice.org Impress and WindowsXP and they couldn't get the presentation to work. Whoops.

All presentation, no demo (it's hard to demo handheld stuff). Basically it's a fitness guide via cell phone that's for sale now.

So...we're back in Denver. Of course, our house is rented out to some Democrats until September (they're throwing a party you may have heard about) so we're not 100% "back home" but it sure feels close to that.

Knaddison Spanish Tour

We were gone for a little while. 9 months. Where were we? See, we went to Spain and then Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Denver, California, Denver. We even wrote a ton about our trip if you like to read about those places. But, now we're back in Denver and are excited to be home. In fact, a large part of the trip was learning about the Spanish Language and Culture. We did really fun stuff like take this video of winemaking in Argentina and then cut it together into this movie:

Spanish School - Denver Spanish House

Ah, it's that time again. Time to plan for summer concerts. A quick review of all the craptastic concert calendar sites shows me too many artists coming to town this summer. Who should I see?

• ColoradoInfo.com which is pretty disorganized...but seems decent.
• Westwords Concert Search which is just plain overwhelming
• DenverPost.com Summer Concert Calendar
• Boulder Daily Camera less complete, easier to digest, not Boulder focused (odd, that last bit)
• Denver Botanic Gardens Concerts which are, at least somewhat, already sold out!
• KBCO Concert List which should be awesome but, is kind of hard to navigate. What's up with the website, guys, 3 clicks to get to the concert list?

Let's say that you live in Denver and you have an old bike that you're getting rid of. Or, let's say that you don't really like our petroleum-economy. Or, both! The solution is, frankly, quite simple: Derailer Bicycle Collective.

As you can read from their own website, the organization is based on the idea that