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Trevor F. Smith: Exterior

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Resources for Seattle Startups

Robert Eickmann just sent this list of resources for Seattle startups to the Saturday House mailing list but it's so handy that I'm republishing it here:


Seattle Startup Resources, This is the list of organizations that I
wish that I had known about when I came out here. Its broken into
Frequent events, Infrequent events, Entrepreneur support/educational
institutions, Funding sources, Web Resources and Job boards.

Startup Minded Events:  where in Seattle where you are likely find
technical people, hanging out having fun while working on changing the
world.

Frequent Events (Every week or month):

Eastside Startup Meeting: Every Wednesday morning at 9:00am At Tully's Coffee
8862 161st Ave NE, Redmond, WA

Hops and Chops: A weekly meet-up of entrepreneurs and startup junkies
who like to get together, drink beer, and talk shop. on Thursday
Nights after 7Pm at Linda's Tavern 707 E. Pine St
www.hopsandchops.com

Open Coffee at Louisa's Coffee on Tuesday mornings: Early stage
entrepreneur and investor networking in Seattle.
Occurs Every Tuesday Morning at 8:30Am 2379 Eastlake Ave E Seattle, Washington
http://asack.typepad.com/a_sack_of_seattle/2007/04/seattle_open_co.html

Saturday House: Seattle Saturday House is a weekly gathering of
several people who meet and do ... whatever they want! People work on
projects, people talk about ideas, people conspire and hatch plans,
and people play games with each other.
Every Saturday at Giraffe Labs in Pinoeer Square
 http://www.saturdayhouse.org

Seattle Lunch 2.0: Learn about cool local companies and technologies
over your lunch hour - Various locations and times
http://seattlelunch20.wetpaint.com/?t=anon

Seattle Startup Drinks: A simple concept: startup culture in cities
around the world gathers around a bar to have a pint and discuss
what they are working on, what they need help with and what they can
do for each other.
Occurs the Last Friday of every month at various locations.
http://seattle.startupdrinks.com

Seattle Tech Startups (STS): A group of entrepreneurs in the Seattle
area who give and seek advice on running technology startups.
We meet about once or twice a month. This is targeted at founders of,
employees of, or those folks interested in joining local technology
companies. Be ready to talk shop, get into technical arcana, and
discuss the nitty-gritties of running/working at/launching a tech
startup.
Occurs first or second week of the month at The Douglas Forum at the
Executive Education Center, University of Washington
http://www.seattletechstartups.com

Six Hour Startup: A group of hackers/designers/entrepreneurs meeting
to try and build and lunch a startup in less than six hours.
Second Weekend of every month at various locations.
http://www.sixhourstartup.com

Venture Breakfasts (NWEN): A monthly breakfast with a featured speaker
talking about startup related issues.
http://www.nwen.org/index.php?option=com_events&Itemid=15&cat=Venture...

Infrequent Events:

(Every few months, it is best to find out about when these events
occur from sites like MeetAtThePig
http://meetatthepig.com or Seattle 2.0 http://seattle20.sampasite.com,
or Gary's Guide http://seattle.garysguide.org)

Barcamp: An ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share
and learn in an open environment.
http://barcamp.org/seattle

Ignite Seattle: Ignite Seattle is a geek event that combines on-site
geekery, sharing, and innovation (and drinking)
http://igniteseattle.com/

Mindcamp: Seattle Mind Camp is an unconference that is held annually
in Seattle. http://mindcamp.gearlive.com/

NPost: nPost networking Event for tech startups, Demos and getting to
meet members of the local startup community.
http://www.npost.com

Think Tanks (NWEN): Evening Knowledge Exchanges that are recognized as
the go to forums for new ideas.
http://www.nwen.org/index.php?option=com_events&Itemid=15&cat=Think+T...

Workshops (NWEN): Graduate School level workshops on various topics
such as VC Financing, Human Resource, Bootstrapping, IP Protection and
more.
http://www.nwen.org/index.php?option=com_events&Itemid=15&cat=Workshops

There are a lot of other events that occur here in Seattle which
attract interesting, smart technical people : Bizjam, Startup Weekend,
Dorkbot, Powertool drag strip races, Seattle Scrum, Seattle X-Coders,
Seattle Ruby Brigade, Python Users group.... Its best to subscribe to
a few of the calendars above to find out about those events.

Entrepreneur Support/Educational Institutions:

Biznik: Is a Seattle based social network for entrepreneurs, they have
a wealth of events and information on starting up a company.
http://biznik.com/

Score: Small Business Administration, hosts workshops, offers
conseling and has a wealth of resources for startup entruperumers.
http://www.seattlescore.org

Freelance Seattle: good for finding freelancers to help with
design/code/branding/localization/etc...
http://freelance-seattle.net/

MIT Enterprise Forum: Hosts several different types of events though
out the year, Dinner Programs which can be a companies presentation of
key issues the company is experiencing or has experienced or an
experts panel with a featured topic of interest, Venture Lab workshops
which is a lecture series on various topics and Global Broadcasts from
Cambridge aimed at different topics.
http://www.mitwa.org/

NorthWest Enrepreneur Network (NWEN): Has Venture breakfasts,
workshops, pub nights, and hosts the Early Stage Investment Forum
yearly.
http://www.nwen.org

Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA): Offers several
events though out the year, becoming a member gets you into their
partner program which offers discounts on health/dental/vision
insurance, business supplies, classes and more. They have a focus on
legislative change though lobbying and government afairs.
http://www.washingtontechnology.org

Funding Organizations:

Alliance of Angels: www.allianceofangels.com

ARCH Venture Parners: www.archventure.com

Bezos Expeditions: www.bezosexpeditions.com

Draper Fisher Jurvetson: www.dfj.com

Frazier Healthcare and Technology Ventures: www.frazierco.com

Fluke Venture Partners: www.flukeventures.com

Founders Co-op: www.founderscoop.com

Funding Universe: www.fundinguniverse.com

Ignition Partners: www.ignitionpartners.com

Keiretsu Forum: www.k4seattle.com

Madrona Venture Group: www.madrona.com

OVP Venture Partners: www.ovp.com

Polaris Ventures: www.polarisventures.com

Voyager Capital: www.voyagercapital.com

Vulcan: capital.vulcan.com

Web Resources:

Meetatthepig: A calendar for geeks, makers and other world changers.
http://meetatthepig.com

Seattle 2.0: Marcelo Calbucci's website with local startup events, and
the Seattle Startup List of Seattle Internet startups, includes an
extensive list of Seattle Startup Blogs.
seattle20.sampasite.com/

Seattle Tech Startups: A fairly high traffic email list of various
founders and others involved creating new internet companies.
http://seattletechstartups.com/doku.php

TechFlash: John Cook and Tod Bishop's new news site on important local
technology news. Has a strong focus on startups and Microsoft related
information. Is frequently the first website with important local
news.
http://techflash.com

Seattle Startup Job websites: Besides the job sites that everyone
knows about like craigslist.org and indeed.com there are several sites
that offer a focus on Seattle startups.

Npost: One of the stronger job boards, with openings in Seattle and
other technology hubs. Has in-depth interviews of many of the startups
with job openings in the area. Also they throw frequent networking
events which enable you to meet potential employers face to face.
www.npost.com

Startuply: A job search site with a focus on Startup jobs.
http://startuply.com

Seattle 2.0: An aggregation of various openings here in the Seattle
area from different websites.
http://www.seattle20.com/startup-jobs.aspx


On The Demise of Google Lively

I don't have a lot to add beyond what has been covered by people like Sibley, but most people aren't calling for Google to do the right thing and open the code and content. From my comment on Sibley's post:

There’s another important aspect of this shutdown: What will happen to the Lively content and code.

Google is encouraging people to take screenshots and make machinima to save their work, but that’s pretty weak for a company with a track record for opening both content and code.

Google should immediately open source as much of the platform as possible and set out a clear path for developers (inside or outside of Google) to run Lively spaces on the Google App Engine.

They may be smart to shut down the Google managed 3D spaces, but they have an opportunity to completely change the face of 3D on the web by releasing Lively to the community.

A Start

In between talking to people about new ventures, I'm working on a ludic collective intelligence project of my own. Here's a series of tweets which reveals a little of where my head is:

Dear smart ones: Is a WPA scale project for collective intelligence the keystone to the next jump in accelerating change?

Instead of building a highway system, run huge prediction markets and mechanical turk tribes.

The soup line as smart mob.

Workgangs covering the nation bearing uplinked sensor packages.

New Directions

Lisa Albers (editor at Crosscut) has written up a nice summary of what's happening at Crosscut.

I've been working as part-time deputy editor for Crosscut.com, a Northwest news Web site, since February of this year after getting to know the excellent staff as a freelance contributor. This fall it became clear that Crosscut is best suited to the non-profit model, given our mission to promote public service journalism, especially as it is created by a diverse group of contributors, comprised both of professionals and "citizen journalists."

Unfortunately, the transition necessitates running the site for a time on less people-power than we've had. My fantastic editor-in-chief and mentor, Chuck Taylor, and the intrepid chief technology officer, Trevor Smith, have bowed out for now. I'll most likely continue helping out when I can, as will Yazmin Mehdi, business development director, and a slew of faithful volunteers. Crosscut founder and publisher David Brewster will continue to lead the way.

And yes, that means I'm once again a free agent looking for people who are out to change the world for the better.

A Service I Care to Pimp

Basecamp

Darkness Lifting

Tonight we made the choice between an angry techno-illiterate and a hopeful community organizer who is curious about online social networks. With that done, it is now our responsibility as net infrastructure creators to give the new administration and other leaders a clear path towards a superorganism in which we can respond to our self destructive tendencies in ways which the organelles of present culture cannot.

No president has understood the web since it came into being. That changes on inauguration day and we must be ready.