{"id":554,"date":"2009-11-12T11:26:07","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T17:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/000554"},"modified":"2010-03-25T22:08:23","modified_gmt":"2010-03-26T04:08:23","slug":"list-of-front-range-software-networking-events-and-conferences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/554","title":{"rendered":"List of Front Range Software Networking Events <strike>and Conferences<\/strike>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Updated March 21: crossed out &#8216;conferences&#8217; because I don&#8217;t do a good job of listing those<\/em>.<br \/>\nBoulder, Colorado, has a great tech scene, that I&#8217;ve been a peripheral member of for a while now.\u00a0 I thought I&#8217;d share a few of the places I go to network.\u00a0 And by &#8220;network&#8221;, I mean learn about cool new technologies, get a feel for the state of the scene (are companies hiring?\u00a0 Firing?\u00a0 What technologies are in high demand?) and chat with interesting people.\u00a0 All of the events below focus on software, except where noted.<\/p>\n<p>NB: I have not found work through any of these events.\u00a0 But if I needed work, these communities are the second place I&#8217;d look.\u00a0 (The first place would be my personal network.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bdnewtech.com\/\">Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>5 minute presentions.\u00a0 Two times a month.\u00a0 Audience varies wildly from hard core developers to marketing folks to graphic designers to upper level execs.\u00a0 Focus is on new technologies and companies.\u00a0 Arrive early, because once the presentations start, it&#8217;s hard to talk to people.<\/li>\n<li>Good for: energy, free food, broad overviews, regular meetings, reminding you of the glory days in 1999.<\/li>\n<li>Bad for: diving deep into a subject, expanding your technical knowledge<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>User groups: <a href=\"http:\/\/boulderjug.org\/\">Boulder Java Users Group<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/lug.boulder.co.us\/\">Boulder Linux Users Group<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rmaug.com\/\">Rocky Mountain Adobe Users Group<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.drupal.org\/denverboulder-colorado-user-group-dbug\">Denver\/Boulder Drupal Users Group<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.denverjug.org\/\">Denver Java Users Group<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?hl=en&#038;q=user%20group%20colorado\">others<\/a> <em>updated 11\/12 8:51: added Denver JUG<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Typically one or two presentations each meeting, for an hour or two.\u00a0 Tend to focus on a specific technology, as indicated by the names.\u00a0 Sometimes food is provided.<\/li>\n<li>Good for: diving deep into a technology, networking amongst fellow nerds, regular meetings<\/li>\n<li>Bad for: anyone not interested in what they&#8217;re presenting that night, non technical folks<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Meetups (of which BDNT, covered above, is one)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There&#8217;s a meetup for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/search\/?keywords=technology+&#038;country=us&#038;locationPickerRef=0&#038;dbCo=&#038;dbOutsideUsLink=&#038;zip=80302\">everything under the sun<\/a>.\u00a0 Well, almost.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re looking to focus on a particular subject, consider starting one (not free) or joining one&#8211;typically free.<\/li>\n<li>Good for: breadth of possibility&#8211;you want to talk about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/Boulder-Official-Google-Meetup\/\">Google<\/a>?\u00a0 How about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/Serious-SL\/\">SecondLife<\/a>?<\/li>\n<li>Bad for: many are kind of small<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/boulder.startupdrinks.com\/\">Startup Drinks<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Get together in a bar and mingle. Talk about your startups dreams or realities.<\/li>\n<li>Good: have a beer, talk tech&#8211;what&#8217;s not to like?, takes place after working hours, casual<\/li>\n<li>Bad: hard to target who to talk to, intermittent, takes place after working hours.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/barcamp.org\/#USAalsoseeUSAbyLocation\">BarCamp<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Originally started, I believe, in response to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Foo_Camp\">FooCamp<\/a>, this is an unconference. On Friday attendees get together and assemble an interim conference schedule.\u00a0 On Saturday, they present, in about an hour or so.\u00a0 Some slots are group activities (&#8220;let&#8217;s talk about technology X&#8221;) rather than presentations.\u00a0 Very free form.<\/li>\n<li>Good: for meeting people interested in technologies, can be relatively deep introduction to a technology<\/li>\n<li>Bad: if you need lots of structure, if you want a goodie bag from a conference, presentations can be uneven in quality, hasn&#8217;t been one in a while around here (that I know of)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ignite<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Presentations on a variety of topics, some geeky, some not.\u00a0 Presentations determined by vote.\u00a0 Presentations are 20 slide and 5 minutes total.\u00a0 Costs something (~$10).<\/li>\n<li>Good: happens in several cities (<a href=\"http:\/\/ignitedenver.org\/\">Denver<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/igniteboulder.com\/\">Boulder<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ignitefortcollins.com\/\">Fort Collins<\/a>) so gives you chance to meet folks in your community, presentations tend to be funny, wide range of audience<\/li>\n<li>Bad: skim surface of topic, presentation quality can vary significantly, not a lot of time to talk to people as you&#8217;re mostly watching presentations<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cs.colorado.edu\/events\/colloquia\/current\/\">CU Computer Science colloquia<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Run by the CU CS department, these are technical presentations.\u00a0 Usually given by a visiting PhD.<\/li>\n<li>Good: Good to see what is coming down the pike, deep exposure to topics you might never think about (&#8220;Effective and Ubiquitous Access for Blind People&#8221;, &#8220;Optimal-Rate Routing in Adversarial Networks&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li>Bad: The ones I&#8217;ve been to had no professionals there that I could see, happen during the middle of the work day, deep exposure to topics you might not care about<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/wiki.workatjelly.com\/JellyinDenver\">Jelly<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cooperative work environments, hosted at a coffee shop or location.<\/li>\n<li>Good: informal, could be plenty of time to talk to peers<\/li>\n<li>Bad: not sure I&#8217;ve ever heard of one happening on the front range, not that different from going to your local coffee shop<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.boulderopencoffeeclub.com\/\">Boulder Open Coffee Club<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>From the website: it &#8220;encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organize real-world informal meetups&#8221;.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t have enough data to give you good\/bad points.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/boulder.startupweekend.org\/\">Startup Weekend<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>BarCamp with a focus&#8211;build a startup company.\u00a0 With whoever shows up.<\/li>\n<li>Good: focus, interesting people, you know they&#8217;re entrepeneurial to give a up a weekend to attend, broad cross section of skills<\/li>\n<li>Bad: you give up a weekend to attend<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/refreshdenver.org\/\">Refresh Denver<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Another group that leverages meetup.com, these folks are in Denver.\u00a0 Focus on web developers and designers.\u00a0 Again, I don&#8217;t have enough to give good\/bad points.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Except for Ignite, everything above is free or donation-based.\u00a0 The paid conferences around Colorado that I know about, I&#8217;ll cover in a future post.<\/p>\n<p>What am I missing?\u00a0 I know the list is skewed towards Boulder&#8211;I haven&#8217;t really been to conferences more than an hours drive from Boulder.<\/p>\n<p>Do you use these events as a chance to network?\u00a0 Catch up with friends?\u00a0 Learn about new technologies, processes and companies?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Updated March 21: crossed out &#8216;conferences&#8217; because I don&#8217;t do a good job of listing those. Boulder, Colorado, has a great tech scene, that I&#8217;ve been a peripheral member of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,22,34,21,38,5,23,31,36,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barcamp","category-bjug","category-conferences","category-cu-colloquia","category-drupal","category-java","category-new-tech-meetup","category-presentations","category-ria","category-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}