Last week was Denver Startup Week here in beautiful Colorado, and man was it epic! DSW is a weeklong event where the coolest people in Denver get together to learn, network, and celebrate Denver’s startup culture. This year’s event was the best yet, with just over 8,000 attendees.
I started the week off attending a panel discussion about bringing together the oil & gas industry with the tech industry, hosted by the relatively new group Energy Tech Mashup. Energy and tech are two of the largest industries in our state, so it only makes sense that we start talking with each other at some point! It was a pretty interesting session, but I had to leave early to prepare for an event I was participating in: Google Glass, Wearable Computing and More.
The Glass event was hosted by a new co-working space in town, ModWorks, and our backdrop was gorgeous; Denver Civic Center, the state capitol building and panoramic views of the Rocky Mountains. The event started out with a thought-provoking presentation by Cecilia Abadie about wearable technology. If you aren’t familiar with her work, I suggest watching her TED Talk. I am so happy that the Denver Google Developer’s Group sponsored her trip to Colorado for the event! Her presentation was amazing, and set a great tone for the second part of the event: a panel of Glass Explorers.
Cecilia’s presentation, through Glass
I was super excited and honored to be invited to sit on this panel. I joined Cecilia Abadie and Hussain Chinoy, with Mark moderating the discussion. Mark led the first part of the discussion, with great questions about the way we use Glass, what it’s like to develop for Glass, and privacy issues related to Glass. Then we moved on to audience questions. I was thrilled to see that we had nearly 100 people in attendance, and all the questions were really amazing. Thanks everyone! 🙂 Mark wrote a great recap of the panel here on the iTriage Tech Blog.
Looking super serious on the DSW Google Glass Panel
After the Glass panel, we all raced down to Union Station for the kick off bash. I was excited to meet several panel attendees as we walked to the party, and let them demo Glass. Here’s a great shot a new friend took, while we waited in line.
We finally made it in, and spent the night meeting all the coolest people in Denver. The whole place was wall to wall people!
One of my most favorite sessions of the week was on Tuesday night, the Women Who Startup panel. It was so inspiring! My favorite quote from this event was “Its not about fixing women. Its not about blaming men. It’s about blowing up a system that doesn’t work for either of us.” I was also stoked about how many men attended the event. And Dave McClure, who flew in to give the DSW keynote, spent the night tweeting about it!
watching, listening 500+ woman founders @galvanize Denver @WomenWhoStartup #DENStartupWeek #WomenWhoStartup pic.twitter.com/2q6rjY1dxc
— Dave McClure (@davemcclure) September 17, 2014
I also had a blast at the Denver Founders Network panel, titled “Blowing the F#*k Up, ” featuring panelists Elaine Feeney Wood (CEO of WayIn), Bryan Leach (Founder/CEO of iBotta), and Mark Geene (Co-Founder/CEO of Cloud Elements). Not only were the panel guests phenomenal, the moderators did a great job of pacing the conversation and asking follow up questions.
These are just a fraction of the events I was able to attend! I spent the whole week running between my office and sessions during the day, and attending parties, after-parties, and after-after parties (!!) in the evening. I was certainly dragging by the closing bash on Friday night, but it was all worth it. I met a lot of phenomenal people, and am so excited to see the great things Denver will accomplish in the coming year!