EntConnect 2007

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I attended EntConnect 2007 last weekend in Denver. Previously, the conference was called Entcon and was affiliated with Midnight Engineering magazine. Midnight Engineering was a magazine dedicated to people who were running their own tech ventures, mostly entrepreneurial engineers, and was published for about 8 years. I really enjoyed the magazine and it was what got me to start attending the conference. I have been going for a few years now and it’s starting to get the feeling of a college reunion, as Dave Shaver of Corepoint Health described it. We typically get approximately the same 20 to 30 people showing up each year, although it changes a little bit from year-to-year as some people drop in and out depending on their schedules. Jack has put together a few blog entries of some of the topics discussed. At the end of each conference we always talk about getting some new members to attend. At one point the conference had grown to over 200 attendees when the magazine was still being published, but that was actually too large and the regular attendees would like to keep it small, perhaps to around 50 people or less. Still, even to get to 50 attendees, we’d have to double the traditional attendance from where it has leveled out over the past few years.

My involvement in the conference has been more as an observer since for all the time I’ve been going, I’ve not been making my living as an entrepreneur, but rather as an employee of HP. I’ve presented on a number of products that I worked on during that time since they have all been related to new product categories for HP and my division has had the feeling of an entrepreneurial startup. I also have an unusual method of supporting these products using my personal web site to host the FAQs and I use community forums at Yahoo Groups that are collectively approaching more than 3500 members. John Gaudio who runs the conference has described me as an ‘Intrepreneur’, which I guess puts me somewhere in between an employee and an entrepreneur.

This year I announced my upcoming early retirement from HP which will occur at the end of May. I am hoping to use the time off to engage in some entrepreneurial pursuits, Adaptive Interfaces being one of them. I’ve not had the time to help push that venture much closer to reality, and my business partner, Mark, has been working at day jobs to pay the bills. There will be a lot of curiosity next year as I talk with the group about the transition from being an employee for the past 24 years into the new world of entrepreneurship. A little twist of irony is that several long-time entrepreneurs who regularly attend the conference have migrated into the workplace as employees over the past year. It’s all OK though because even if you have a day job it doesn’t mean you can’t be an entrepreneur and vice-versa. Everyone is welcome at the conference and the people who attend have a wealth of experience that they are willing to share. I have already paid to attend next year’s conference which is scheduled for March 27th through March 30th, 2008.

EntConnect 2006

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The EntConnect conference is scheduled for March 23-26th, 2006. It has been going on for over 10 years in Denver and it centers around startups and entrepreneurship. I’ve been a regular attendee and always find it valuable and fun. The conference started with a magazine called Midnight Engineering that was all about running bootstrap businesses. Sadly, the magazine is no longer in print, but one of the original conference organizers, John Gaudio, continued to host the conference and a loyal core group of regulars continues to meet each year.

The conference includes a day of skiing in Colorado’s legendary champagne powder (which is optional) followed by several days of informal meetings and presentations about various topics of interest to entrepreneurs. Some topics covered in the past have included entrepreneurial law, marketing, blogging, company valuation, search engine optimization, and much more. I usually find the personal stories behind each of the attendees’ businesses the most enlightening part of the conference.

The cost of the conference is $199, but if you sign up early (by next Tuesday 2/28), the cost is only $99. The room rates are also very reasonable.

The webpage for the conference can be found here.

Entconnect 2005

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We had another successful Entconnect meeting in Denver this year thanks to all the hard work by John Gaudio. You can see me in the photo, one of several photos taken by Dave Shaver of Corepoint Health, looking at a project that Mark Pelletier and I are working on that is related to aircraft instrumentation. I’ll post about it later when we are further along. Entcon was originally started back around 1992 and was affiliated with Midnight Engineering magazine. This magazine was founded by William E. Gates, not to be confused with the Bill Gates of Microsoft, and focused on starting and running small companies, usually related to technology. Unfortunately, Midnight Engineering is no longer in print, but John and a loyal group of enthusiasts continued having the meetings and gave it a slightly different name, just to make sure we didn’t abscond with the original name of the meeting, Entcon.

I’ve been taking a young friend, Court Rye to Entconnect for the past several years. Court was a summer intern at HP and so I became somewhat of a mentor to him and invited him to Entcon in 2002 and we’ve been attending it ever since. Court is quite experienced in web design and he won a coveted door prize, a Gold blog site from Myst Technologies (a $3500 value) and so he’ll get a chance to learn about this impressive platform. This year, I also brought along Mark Pelletier, and he put together a great little display case for our project, and gave a nice presentation and demo of it.

There were about 25 people there, including about 5 or 6 who were attending for their very first time. The keynote speaker was Bill French, co-founder of MyST Technology. We also got to meet Bill’s son, Loren, and Bill’s dad, Gerry, who gave us a presentation on submarine development for the U.S. Navy, where he spent a 35-year career during the height of the Cold War and nuclear submarine development. It was great to get some feedback on our project from Loren since he is a very experienced pilot with virtually every rating imaginable.

It was good catching up with old friends and making some new ones and I very much look forward to going back next year.