Boulder has friends in high places these days.  Yesterday “Boulder Is for Startups” was posted on WhiteHouse.gov, shining yet another light on the entrepreneurial ecosystem here.  Boulder Startup Week, TechStars, and Silicon Flatirons all got some love.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• Boulder was one of eight cities on the Startup American Roadshow.
• “Today, Boulder is home to one of the strongest entrepreneurial communities in the country, with close to 200 fledgling tech companies and a city campaign that proclaims ‘Boulder is for startups.’”  Note: boulder.me is not a city campaign – it’s a volunteer campaign.
• “The rabbi of the Boulder entrepreneurial ecosystem…is my good friend Brad Feld.”
• “From May 18-22, the city’s startups will be rolling out the red carpet for talented developers, designers, marketers, and general startup enthusiasts.”  If you haven’t registered for Boulder Startup Week events yet, register now.
• “Many entrepreneurial communities ask how they can be the next Silicon Valley?  As Brad has often explained, that’s the wrong question.”

If you’re interested in reading the post in its entirety, check out “Boulder Is for Startups” on WhiteHouse.gov.

A recent Gallup poll revealed that Boulder is America’s happiest city, so it must be true.

It’s the second annual Boulder Startup week! During the week of May 18-22, 2011, there will be tons of events, lots of people and lots of reasons to visit Boulder.  You can RSVP for any of the events on their plancast page (which they’ll be updating as more events get scheduled).  Nearly all the events are free, with the exception of Ignite Boulder – an event that will bring more than a thousand people together for a night of fast-paced creativity.

So, if you are curious about the Boulder startup scene, looking to get more involved in the Boulder community, or want to show-off Boulder to guests then get started planning your week!

This is an invitation to a crash course on the first steps to building a tech company, with talks by Aaron Patzer and other accomplished tech entrepreneurs (including Jim Franklin).

The Founder Institute and StartupDigest University have teamed up to give you “Startup and Go” – a crash course on the initial steps to creating a meaningful and enduring technology company.

“Startup and Go” is a collection of talks from the very beginning of the Founder Institute’s startup incubator program – which, in less than two years, has launched over 250 technology companies in over 15 cities worldwide. Taught by some of the program’s highest-rated Mentors, this course helps you create a strong foundation for a technology startup – from a properly vetted and researched idea, to a strong initial team. We’ve also included some follow-on assignments to help you turn these lessons into immediate action. The goal? To help you finally Startup and Go build your dream company.

This course includes three topics – Startup Ideation, Startup Research, and Startup Hiring, Firing & Co-Founders.

Turning a hobby into a business is hard work. Just ask Rachel Ryle, co-founder of Tweety Got Back. I did exactly that a couple of weeks ago and learned that she and co-founder Heather Capri aren’t afraid of hard work, as long as they can make some time for fun (and plenty of puns) along the way.

Calling Tweety Got Back a hobby may be a bit of sandbagging on Rachel’s part. After all, she and Heather had some success creating its predecessor My Space or Yours to offer free layouts and themes for MySpace users a few years ago.  They rode a whirlwind of referral marketing and started generating real ad revenue before MySpace faded away.

With the idea of what could have been fresh in their minds and Sir Mix-a-Lot on the brain, they launched Tweety Got Back to offer a similar product for Twitter users.  It’s dead simple to use: 1) sign in with your Twitter credentials, 2) choose a theme, and 3) click “apply”.

I fly the Red Sox colors with a Tweety Got Back theme.

In some ways, trying to turn Tweety Got Back into a full time business for Rachel and Heather is like trying to get lightning to strike twice, but they’re okay with that.  Rather than stand around with their fingers crossed, the two are using what they’ve learned from My Space or Yours to get to high ground, prop up their lightning rods, and get their rain dance on.  It seems to be working.

Tweety Got Back has gotten love from TechCrunch, PCWorld, Sir Mix-a-Lot himself (@therealmix), and a recent blog post from the Twitter mothership.  Not too shabby, but there’s still work to be done to get to the level they had with My Space or Yours.

Sitting with Rachel in Atlas Purveyors, I asked what replicating their past success would look like in the context of Tweety Got Back.  I got a tongue-in-cheek but telling answer: “I’d be buying Atlas and turning it into a dance club.”  A promising future awaits if they can build up their user base a bit.

Other examples of Tweety Got Back’s tongue-in-cheek awesomeness:

• Tweety Gives Back: every now and again Rachel and Heather will bake a few snacks and drop them off at other local startups.
• Tweety Got Backup Dancers: Rachel and Heather helped raise a bunch of money for local charities during Cause To Rock by joining the bands as backup dancers for extra donations.  Rachel: “I dance for money.”

Yes, they love a pun (Rachel has no shortage of these things), but are serious about giving back to the Boulder community, where they both grew up in the same neighborhood.  ”So many people in the community influence what we do and why we do it,” Rachel says.

It only seems fair that we give back too, so lets help Rachel and Heather build up their user base.  If you’re not a Tweety Got Back user already, go find a theme you like and apply it now: rep your favorite sports team, check out backgrounds from their 12 Featured Artists (6 of whom are Boulder’s own), or pick from 900+ other themes.  You might even have some fun while you’re doing it.

As far as hobbies go, Tweety Got Back is a pretty good one.  I, for one, would like to see it grow blossom into a full time business.  Maybe someday I’ll even hear “I like big butts and I cannot lie…” echoing late at night on Pearl after Rachel’s had a chance to open her dance club.

Last week TechStars co-founder David Cohen made an appearance on This Week in Venture Capital.  In doing so, he showed tons of love for the Boulder entrepreneurial community by talking about TechStars generally and slipping a slew of Boulder startups into the conversation.

Here’s my BlipSnips breakdown of the episode for your viewing pleasure: