Just a few days away from Ignite Boulder 12, this Thursday at Chautauqua!

Here is a list of the speakers:

Amy C. Christensen @expandoutdoors Stripping down on  Kaua’i
Jeremy Tanner @penguin On Travel
Stephanie Lee Su-Ling @nuancechaser The Rationality of Fear
John Common @johncommon Beautiful Empty
Andrew Hyde @andrewhyde How To Build a Trail
Kendall Ruth @iamkendal Inconceivable or That Word Doesn’t Mean What You Think it Means
Jesse Weaver @jweav1 The Independence Day Theory: Why an Alien Visit may be Humanity’s Only Hope for Survival
Mary Kuehner @daisycakes Life Lessons of a Children’s Librarian
Rise Keller @vanillagrrl Baking at High Altitude: It’s All About Atmospheric Pressure
Sam Stauffer @redhead_wilma Take a Chill Pill: Dealing with Anxiety Disorders and other Mental Illnesses
Kate Brown @invinciblekate Lunch Lady Land – Food Activists on the Front Lines of the Childhood Obesity Battle
Danya Michael @theroseinbloom Fairy Tales as Education, or Why It’s OK to Read Harry Potter after High School
Emma Nicoletti @dollemma A Post Apocalyptic Experience without an Apocalypse: Working as a Waitress.
Joel Gratz @gratzo Hire a Meteorologist, Not a Stock Broker.

1/3 organizer picks, 2/3 community picks.  You can follow them all on twitter with this handy link.

Tickets are on sale now!  http://bit.ly/igniteboulder12

This Wednesday, August 25th from 6pm to 9pm, Quickleft will be hosting a ruby-centric hack fest at their offices with a few other of Boulder’s dev shops. Helping out are…

• Pivotal Labs
• Viget
• Slice of Lime
• Imulus
• GB Studios

The general theme is test driven development (TDD). For a full list of potential topics and all other details, see the announcement. Come hungry!

The address:
1919 14th Street
Suite 714
Boulder, CO 80302

[Disclosure: I work at Quickleft.]

With a name like dojo4, you would expect quite the story to explain how the Boulder-based design and development company got started. David Clements, one of the founders, did not disappoint. David described meeting with Jeff Larrimore, Justin Crawford, and Ara Howard (the other founders) over drinks at Bacaro when the idea of collaboration was first discussed. Initially, they had hoped to share office space – to create a collaborative environment where they could meet and if not work together then at least share ideas, chat and share. They also wanted to open this area to other designers and developers – friends in the field, to drop in and chat, work and maybe share a beer. But first they decided to name their effort and with the help of the good vibes at Bacaro came up with Death Ninja Squad.

Fortunately, after the hangover wore off they decided upon dojo4. But they kept the swords and a bit of the theme – 4 is the Japanese symbol for death. Then something strange happened. David said once they named their space, the work began pouring in. Now, they are helping start-ups and other more established companies with their branding, video production, development, packaging, photography – essentially any creative development concept. The folks at dojo4 aim to use art and technology to help companies with their development projects. As important as the creative and technical development of a project is the relationship doJo4 establishes with a client. Jeff stressed how important this component of their business is and in many ways builds on their ideas around community space. They want to get to know their clients, understand their needs and figure out how dojo4 can help – they want their clients to be as proud of the end-result as Dojo4 will be to include it in their portfolio!

The dojo4 group is comprised of Corey Kohn, Dave Clements, Jeff Larrimore, Justin Crawford and Ara Howard.

Alchemist is a very new arrival on the start-up scene. If you are looking for athletic wear for both cycling up to Ward or grabbing a coffee, then Alchemist with their unique designs and sustainable fabrics is a great local choice. Jeff, who is the owner and Claire, the VP, opened their online presence in January of this year and they have been really excited by the response. They are receiving requests from as faraway as Australia, Finland and Switzerland but are getting great local feedback, as well. They have been selling at the Louisville Farmer’s Market and had a booth at Community Cycles on Bike to Work day.

Sustainability and performance are key elements to the clothing they produce. The shirts are stamped instead of labeled on the back, and the tags that are safety-pinned to each shirt are wild flower seed tags – soak them overnight and plant. The shirts are printed locally and are produced using phthalate-free and pvc-free water-based inks. Jeff and Claire have really thought through the production of their designs, the choice of fabric and how they market their products to ensure they have the smallest footprint.

Alchemist provides casual, earth-friendly clothing for athletes who live and play in the outdoors. They fuse premium, sustainable materials with smart, original graphics for the active outdoor community. Organic and recycled materials come together to create threads that are buttery soft and comfortable. Green never felt so good.

I’m getting this one for my husband.

Photo by Andrew Hyde

It turns out that my Cheap Seat for yesterday’s TechStars Demo Day was more expensive than the investors’ seats (free), but I’d happily make another donation to the Entrepreneurs’ Foundation of Colorado for a spot next year.

Just about every seat reserved in the balcony of the Boulder Theater for the community at large was filled – more people were there yesterday than last year, if memory serves.   It looks like the word is getting out that this is a great event to attend.  Deservedly so.

The entire first floor was reserved for investors, with many from out of town already in attendance at Boulder’s second Open Angel Forum the previous night.  Laptops and smartphones were everywhere to be seen.  A busy couple of days in Boulder for the investor community.

TechStars co-founders David Cohen, Congressman Jared Polis, and Brad Feld kicked things off with a few updates on TechStars’ alumni, the TechStars Global Affiliate program (expect 5-10 more Global Affiliates to pop up in the next year or so) and the Startup Visa Movement, among other things.  The co-founders continue to have their hands full with developing the startup ecosystem here and abroad.

Once the presentations got going, it was slide deck after slide deck of polished pitches (in this order):

ScriptPad lets doctors write prescriptions safer and easier than traditional handwritten notes, saving lives and saving money.  ScriptPad offers a freemium app to doctors and receives a per prescription fee from pharmacies.

Omniar wants to make the real world clickable, Terminator style.  Find information attached to an object by taking a picture of it with a smartphone, allowing Omniar’s mobile app or apps developed on Omniar’s API to visually recognize it and retrieve any data attached.

StatsMix creates custom dashboards to help businesses aggregate, visualize, and draw insights from a variety of metrics.  Drag-and-drop what you want from Google Analytics, WordPress, MailChimp, and more into a single place.  StatsMix even helps analyze your data for you.

RoundPegg helps companies hire for cultural fit, evaluating job candidates on a variety of traits, comparing them to current employees, and measuring for an overall match.  RoundPegg is built on a process developed by Chief Psychologist Dr. Natalie Baumgartner, putting “The Doc in a box”.

RentMonitor aims to make being a landlord easy by streamlining their Circle of Pain – marketing, tenant screening, rent collection, and property maintenance – into a Circle of Profit, especially for owners of multiple rentals.  RentMonitor also helps come tax time.

GearBox has developed a robotic ball controlled by a smartphone as it rolls across the floor, entering the new “smart toy” market.  GearBox plans to sell the ball and allow developers to create a myriad of games and other apps on its API.

Vacation Rental Partner takes the work out of renting out a second home.  Vacation Rental Partner goes beyond marketing, allowing renters to book your property as easily as they would a hotel room, with online payment processing, booking management, and more.

BlipSnips lets you share a moment of time.  Rather than sending a link to a video with a note “the clip I want you to see starts at 10:24″, BlipSnips lets you tag a particular clip from a longer video and share it with others.

Spot Influence find key influencers across the web based on your keyword search.  Spot Influence grabs data from a variety of sources to calculate the Reach, Relevance, and Impact of individuals, resulting in their overall Influence score for a particular keyword.

ADstruc has created a marketplace for outdoor advertising to make selecting and bidding on billboards as easy as PPC.  ADstruc allows advertisers to view available locations on Google Maps, retrieve valuable data, see their own ads superimposed on a street view of the billboard, and to bid accordingly.

Kapost is a content marketplace connecting writers with publishers.  Kapost lets publishers find strong writing, facilitate payments, manage rights, and plug that content into a variety of popular content management systems.

One of the first things that jumped out at me was that many of the “asks” were for more money this year than last (again, if memory serves).  Four of this year’s 11 teams were raising $500k or more, while none were in 2009.  What didn’t change from last year, however, was the quality of the pitches.

The presentations were strong across the board, with each team refining and rehearsing throughout the TechStars program this summer – an entire summer’s worth of blood, sweat, and tears, distilled into 5 minutes on stage (if you haven’t seen their level of commitment in The Founders yet, you should).  For anybody wanting to learn how a pitch is done, TechStars Demo Day is a great classroom.  I’ll be there again in 2011.

Congratulations to all the TechStars Boulder 2010 teams for surviving the summer – I can’t wait to see what you all do next.  Which of you will be the first to earn a gold shirt for being acquired?

Lyn Bain from Chili Interactive is trying to help small businesses better understand their customers to not only improve their Web site but also improve their business. I met with Lyn from Chili Interactive, LLC recently to talk about her consulting group’s new, low-cost, high value product offering called Usable Feedback. Usable Feedback is a service offered by Chili Interactive, LLC.

The goal of the offering is to make usability best practices and user interface design techniques based on 20 years of web usability experience accessible to even the smallest of companies at an affordable price. The Web site review works in the following way:

1. Sign up.
2. Provide some typical customer information.
3. Define a scenario. A scenario is what you want a customer to do when they get to your site
   • For example, a customer visiting a jewelry store’s Web site may search on necklaces and compare prices on two of them in a similar price range.
4. Review the video. After a two to three day turn around, Lyn and her team will provide you with a video, including recommendations.

The charge for this service is $139 and is really tailored-made for small businesses, small design shops or web design groups wanting a second set of eyes to review their work.

According to Lyn, there has been some push back from the usability community regarding the low cost of the offering and assertions that real recommendations can’t be provided without substantial audience analysis. It’s a point Lyn concedes but she asserts that her and her team have over 20 years of experience in the usability and UI field and are applying industry best practices and methodologies to each review. Further, it’s a chance for businesses unfamiliar with usability testing to learn of the real value of testing and user interface design. Unlike the many online “remote usability” sites that are available, usablefeedback.com’s site does not require companies to know how to design research studies, write research questions, or interpret data from the feedback.  But the service can help companies understand why something is happening on their site and how to fix it, which is the key to effectively redesigning a site.

Overhearing a conversation between customers is interesting and revealing especially if it is about a service or product your company offers. But how much more valuable would that information be if you could analyze those conversations over time and were able to apply filters like sentiment, terms and themes. Then you would have information about your customer and actionable insights into your relationship with that customer.

A new Social CRM tool from Collective Intellect does exactly that. Their new Social CRM tool goes beyond simply monitoring social media conversations to allow businesses to analyze the sentiment, considerations and true voice of a customer. This type of analysis allows businesses to better understand the true nature of customer sentiment – the ‘heart of the conversation‘. The tool is web-based, automated and real-time, which can give companies timely, relevant and actionable insights into their customer’s experience. One of the distinguishing features of the tool is its ability to provide trending details. In other words, a company can get a clearer picture of customer sentiment over a period of time, which provides a much broader and deeper understanding of customer feedback than a daily or even monthly view. This type of detail allows companies to establish baselines and dig deeper into their competitive analysis.

I had the chance to speak with Greg Greenstreet, CTO & SVP Engineering, about the new product offering and he is excited by the feedback they have received so far.  He mentioned that many of their newer customers end up trying out Collective Intellect after becoming frustrated with other tools that simply monitor customer conversations. According to Greg, what differentiates Collective Intellect Social CRM is that although you can still view the snippets of customer conversations you can pull back and study the full expression of conversations and glean so much more.

Collective Intellect just moved offices but is still located in downtown Boulder. Greg is excited about the new place but even more enthusiastic about the company itself.   He said, ‘…we have a great culture here, and some truly talented and amazing people. It’s an exciting place to be.”