Boulder Denver New Technology Meetup Featuring Don Dodge

Last night was another great Boulder Denver Tech Meetup, where 5 companies take the stage for 10 minutes each--5 minutes to demo and 5 minutes to answer questions. The event was very well attended.

Don Dodge of Microsoft's Emerging Business Team began the night with a brief keynote. Don was on the founding team of Alta Vista, was VP of product development at Napster, and prior to Microsoft worked at Groove Networks with Ray Ozzie.

Don talked briefly through some of the experiences from his resume and described his present role at Microsoft working exclusively with startups. Don pointed to Microsoft's Empower program, which for $375 annually, provides software startups with $10k+ in Microsoft software and support. He also referred to Boulder as a hidden gem in terms of the quality of its tech startups.

Andrew Hyde then gave a great rundown on StartupWeekend. While VoSnap has not yet launched (hopefully this will happen soon as the site received 5,000 hits last night), several cities around the U.S., and several abroad, have expressed interest in holding their own StartupWeekends later this year. As someone who participated in the inaugural StartupWeekend, I believe Andrew will be very successful in taking this concept to the masses.

Post-Don and Andrew, some great companies presented last night. Here's a brief rundown:

• Feed - Facilitates the use of SMS to make payments in retail locations. Feed is now testing in Boulder and San Francisco.
• ShareYourLook - A social network for fashionistas allowing users to upload their pictures and share their style with the world. As you can imagine, the user demographic is overwhelmingly female, except for in Asia where it is mostly male, which I thought was very interesting.
• LocalGuides - A place where users can create and explore user generated "local guides" on everything from Colorado road trips to San Francisco's Chinatown.
• Villij - A cool "people recommendation" engine. Villij in some ways takes social networking to another level in that it proactively looks to connect people based upon mutual interests inside and outside the platform. Villij needs beta testers so check them out.
• Printfection - Self-described as "technologists who do screen printing", Printfection differs from CafePress in that they focus on allowing anyone to use their API to open their own online store. They also claim their quality is much better. You can try it and get a T-shirt for $2.

See you at the next Meetup.