It’s been a roller coaster for sure, in both good and bad ways.

I had to cancel (sort of) my first event. 360|MacDev 2011 had to be pushed out until this year (in fact it’s next month, you should check it out and spread the word) because another event scheduled themselves right on top of me, and while their event isn’t known to be very good or in the same realm as mine, they had way more marketing money, so I didn’t want to compete. In the end it was probably a good thing, since I could focus on 360|Flex 2011, which for the second time ever, sold out.

For 2011 we decided to move from our 2x a year schedule to a annual event model. I loved doing two events a year for the various communities, but as more me-too confs started popping up it got harder and harder, plus the community it turns out doesn’t have 2 events a year in them for the most part. Many treated the 2/year model as 1, just picking one to attend and skipping the other. Plus as Flex matured there wasn’t much new stuff happening every 6 months. Adobe released major versions closer to yearly, so the odd event wasn’t a news event. It definitely helps to have big announcements at events.

360|Flex has only sold out one other time that I recall, the very first one in 2007 at Ebay. Since then we’ve gotten very close, but never hit it. This past year we sold out, and over sold by 22. It’s typical in conferences to have a no-show rate close to 15%. the last 2 360|Flex’s had rates closer to 3% which is incredible.

Towards the end of 2011 Adobe thru some serious monkey wrenches my way. They made some very big business decisions, that coupled with their truly terrible PR efforts made it seem like the world was ending for the Flash/Flex community. In the end after a whole lot of damage control, it’s clear the future is still bright, if not a little less shiny for Flex. At first my heart sank, coming out of a hugely successful 360|Flex 2011 and lots of excitement for 2012, to “OH no, Flex is dead” was a huge bummer. After talking to Adobe, and making sure I was on the same page tho, I’m very excited for 360|Flex 2012 and what the future holds.

360|iDev 2011 also sold out. It went to an annual model and sold out more than 50 over what we planned. That of course was a problem given our venue’s size, but the event was still a huge success. 360|iDev has never sold out before that, so that was a huge milestone for us! The iOS community is incredible! I can’t wait for 360|iDev 2012 and some other stuff that is still in the planning phases.

2011 taught me that too many businesses are out for theirs, fuck you. They’ll act nice, they’ll smile, but in the end they want their money and to hell with you. That’s counter to how I run my business so it pains me to have to act like that, but 2011 showed me that in the end, no one is interested in my business succeeding but me. That sucks. Business (to me) should help each other when they can. It’s not a zero sum game despite what they think. Screw you pay me, is a terrible business motto that leads to bad things, and everyone loses.

Ignite Denver had an interesting year. We ended 2011 with a GABF themed event. Much like communism and other -ism’s GABF/Free beer seemed like a great idea on paper. By intermission much of the beer was gone, and the crowd was very drunk. That kinda sucked and the second half presenters really had to work to be heard and i hate seeing that. Overall everyone had a blast, but from an organizational standpoint it was a night mare. Ignite Denver in 2012 is up in the air.

Never one to bitch about being too busy, i just keep finding new things to do. Along with my friends Jake and Rich, I opened a coworking space. Denver has no shortage of coworking spaces, but few are aimed at actual community and none were aimed at creatives alone. We don’t want realtors, lawyers, telemarketers, or acupuncturists at Uncubed. We want developers, designers, startup’ers, etc. Our goal is to make Uncubed the Tech hub of Denver. Sadly until now there really wasn’t one. Tech meet ups had to suffer at Forest Room 5 and their shitty meeting space, or at other bars that were happy to have them and their money but provided little else, least of all internet! Denver needs and deserves a space that the tech community can rely on and hang out at, that’s Uncubed. Whether a member of coworking or not, techies are welcome. Meetups are welcome. let’s Hack!

It’s been a long time since I had an office to go to, and it’s been nice having a place to show up each morning and hang out with other people doing awesome things. Conversations on coding, business practice, etc break out, and it’s awesome. We’ve even entered an autonomous vehicle competition with some of our members, so Team Uncubed will be rocking a robot soon.

Travel wise 2011 was a slow year. Since we home based the conferences in Denver and went to an annual model we didn’t have excuses to travel. So long status with Frontier. I definitely miss traveling, I love Denver but love seeing new places too. 2012 is shaping up to be a heavy travel year, which is cool, and stressful, LOL.

My sort of personal motto is don’t talk about how busy you are, be busy.

Personally 2011 was a good year, it marked one more year with my awesome wife Nicole. It marked the first full year with our new puppies Paco and Winston and it showed me that while things are tough, there’s good to be seen and had everywhere. It also more than any other year saw me thinking more about mortality. Steve Jobs passing was a huge hit for me. Not because he was an idol of mine, all evidence seems to point to his being a complete dick head. BUT he was a visionary and we need those, we have too few, and they’re getting fewer. I thought about my legacy should I die sooner than I plan, and the legacy of those around me in technology and business. Not a cheery thing to think about but needed.

2011 was shitty for more folks than it should have been and that’s never good. Especially since in most cases it wasn’t their faults. I’m glad to see the economy is starting to turn around, even if only a little.

Lastly I guess 2011 was great in that I spent as much time as i could with friends and family. Whether out camping or just enjoying Denver’s warmer months on rooftop decks and bars enjoying good beer. I’m sure there’s a lot of things that happened this year that I’ve overlooked, but hopefully I caught the important ones.

Thanks to all my friends and family for 2011 and here’s to making 2012 kick ass like Chuck Norris.

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I have something to share with you ‘busy’ people. We’re all busy, just some of us are busy doing shit instead of just saying it. Shut your pie hole, and get shit done!

I’m sure it’s a ‘for lack of more interesting things to say’ type of problem, but really if you’ve got time in your startup or whatever to tweet about being busy… you’re doing it wrong. Run your damn business, stop telling us about it.

I have no respect for people who say (or tweet) that type of thing. As if running 360|Conferences, Cocoa Magazine, and everything else I do, didn’t keep me busy, you don’t see me telling anyone who’ll listen how many hours a day I put in, what time I get up or go to bed, etc.

It’s simple, when you think to yourself, “Oh I should tweet some cryptic tweet about how awesome I am because I’m really busy, and that will make people think i’m even cooler…. STOP don’t do it, take 30 seconds… breathe, then get back to work.

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360|Conferences is a weird startup. Well not really, but in the circles I travel it is. People I know and interact with are starting the next foursquare, the next yelp, etc. I’m running a services business, organizing conferences. Something that very few do outside publishing companies… I am in a venture with two friends, that while not in stealth because that’s lame, there’s just not much to talk about yet except to say go here

I’ve wanted to quit several times. Back when my business partner was Tom, and even more recently when it was just Nicole and I. Whether it was the fickle nature of speakers and attendees or sponsors who I give my all to, to support them, and who in turn also sponsor events that treat them like just one more logo on the site.

I stole this from Jason’s post (which if you haven’t already, go read in it’s entirety!)

This graphic really sums up the experience for me, so far.

It’s a roller coaster and I wouldn’t trade, but like all things theres lots of lows, to slog thru if you want to succeed.

The post is a good read and I’ve had similar experiences where the value of my product (the conference, my email list, the attendees) has been under valued, and bargained for, and where I’ve had to choose the high road or the low. I’ll be honest I’ve chosen both, but am now more comfortable taking the high, and living the the nagging feeling i chose wrong (even when I know I didn’t)

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We’re in our 5th year. They (i hate ‘they’ and if I meet them they’re getting punched in the neck) say most startups don’t make it past the 5th year. This year is truly going to be 360|Conferences’ crucible. We’re doing 3 events (plus a few of our smaller things) and if they don’t make enough money to buy out Tom’s interest and pay me a salary that’s livable… That’s probably the end of things.

This post isn’t doom and gloom tho, quite the opposite. This the year I’m rocking the business. Sponsorship for 360|Flex is the best it’s ever been, even when we were doing two events a year. Attendance while lower than I’d like, is going well and there’s still a few weeks for the fence sitters to realize what they’re missing. 360|iDev is already 1/3 sold out, so that event is likely to be a complete sell-out show!

This short clip is why I’m doing what I’m doing, it meant a ton, more than I can express to have Tom ask Gary for his thoughts, and to capture them on video for me. If you think I don’t play this video every morning, you’d be wrong.

I love what I do for many reasons.

1. I want to support the Flex and iOS/Mac (and maybe Android ;) ) communities. I want to give them a place to share and learn that’s about them, not someone else, not about greed and milking attendees, etc.

2. because I want to have the free time (i know that comes later, LOL) of running my own business, to work where I went when I want so that Nicole and I can enjoy our lives together

3. Because I want to become financially stable in this business to be able to grow, maybe hire people and contribute to the economy, and most definitely start taking vacations with my family again. For the last several years those have been back burnered.

I can’t wait to say hi to Gary when he comes through Denver in April.

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It worked awesome!

There were two things we used, Eventbrite’s iPhone app and the Square reader and iPhone app.

First eventbrite’s app

The Upside

It worked really well. We loaded the Ignite Denver account onto Nicole and Shelly’s phones and as people came for Ignite, we were able to to check them off. It was great not needing printed lists, and sharpies to cross off names, etc.

It was great that one phone could see who the other had checked off.

The downside

I doesn’t show “will call” people. Or rather it shows them but doesn’t indicate that they still need to pay. The printed check in lists, put an orange highlight with a note about needing to pay at the door. The iPone app doesn’t do that so folks who don’t remember or choose not to remember that they need to pay, slide right in. Not a really big deal, since there’s ever only a few of those types of tickets at Ignite Denver, but I can see that being a problem for other events.

Square Reader

When I first got my Square at WWDC, I figured I’d have little to no use for it. Maybe we’d be the only garage sale around that took credit cards, but otherwise I couldn’t see many uses. Until we decided that to continue existing, Ignite Denver had to charge $5.

We used Eventbrite, to sell tickets, but always (unless we sell out) sell tickets at the door. Normally it’s cash (or check) only.

This time we could take credit cards, and it rocked!!  I actually wish we used the iPad app, which supports custom “items” but it was still easy to use the iPhone version.

I will say this, the android version. SUCKS. We tried to use it first and got nothing. No user feedback, etc. switched to the iPhone version and it was cake. “swipe faster, bad read” Etc. it was easy to get it figured out.

We didn’t sell a bunch of at the door tickets, but it was nice to just be able to accept credit cards and be done with it.

The app worked great, as did the service. We might have even convinced the theater to look into using Square vs. their existing, expensive POS system.

Over all I’m very very happy with our use of technology, and look forward to using these tools at our larger events. Especially Eventbrite’s app.

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Still there’s so little that would have to be done to make the iPad SO incredibly awesome for creators, and open doors left and right. I know it’s possible, iThoughtsHD (iTunes Link), a great mind mapping app has already done it!

When building a mind map, like many tools on the iPad, you can save off to the cloud somewhere, box.net, dropbox,etc. Unlike many apps, and all Apple apps. You can load from cloud.

It’s that easy. They did why didn’t/hasn’t Apple?

I caved, and paid $10 for Pages. Complete waste of money. I edit a lot of pages files. Sponsor packets,etc. All the time. I’d love to pull one up on my iPad, edit, and without having to think about plugging into iTunes, copying the files out of iTunes back to my iDisk where they live, overwriting the old one.

Pages, and most apps, come kinda close, you can access the file, pull it in locally, make edits, but then you’re stuck, the document is trapped in the iPad and iTunes.

Why not make the iPad apps (at least the Apple ones) more connected to Oh I dunno, say Apple’s own cloud services. iWork.com and mobileMe. Some of us (still) pay for mobileMe hoping it’ll mature and actually be useful. I have no idea what iWork.com is for, but it seems like it’d make perfect sense to tie the iWork iPad apps (maybe the new iLife ones too) to Apple’s own (though dropbox, et. al. would be nice too) services to extend their usefulness.

Please Apple here my plea! The iPad is great for games and consumer shit, hook those of us who create up! It can’t be hard, a third party did it! You can too!

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Sure there’s a part of all of us that wants to do things on our own, or own way. But in business especially I think that’s a kiss of death more often than not.

In particular I’m talking about conferences. I’m pretty good at it. I find interesting people, technical experts, etc and get all together under one roof. It’s a ton of fun, I wake up every day loving it. The actual days of the event, I’m moderately calm and collected, because I have my shit together. I obsess, and freak out up until the first day, after that I’m reasonably sure I’m good to go.

So yeah, the days that people actually see me, I’m happy, I’m talking to people, hanging out an joking. That doesn’t in any way shape or form, mean the 6 or so months leading up to that aren’t full of stress, craziness, and working my ass off.

Yet somehow it’s caused at least a few folks I know of to decide they want in on the action. Fair enough, after all, it’s business.

It’s business!

You don’t go into business without a plan. Heck, the first 360|Flex, wasn’t a business, it was a one off, a completely lark. After that Tom and I realized it was fun and we enjoyed it, and other people seemed to like the event. THEN it became a business. A not profitable business the first few events.

This ain’t the field of dreams!

You can’t just say, “Hey everyone! I just made up a new event, come on out” and expect to be a success. Well if you live in Boulder that seems to work ok, otherwise not really. You have to get people involved, wrangle speakers and sponsors, etc. I’ve seen one event almost implode costing the organizer a buttload of money because it seemed they thought, that just organizing the event was enough. That people would flock from near and far to attend. I’ve also seen a recent event (most likely, sadly I’m the only conference organizer that believes in transparency as far as I know) lose a ton of money because the organizer didn’t realize how much everything costs, didn’t realize how much to charge attendees, etc.

I’m no expert, I don’t intend to stop learning, but I did learn the hard way, what works and what doesn’t. I’m still learning that.

What really irks me about this “problem” is that not only does it impact my business in the short term, people choosing that event over mine (when they’re in the same space) but it hurts consumers/attendees, and even sponsors. They waste their money on what turns out to be a less than awesome event, with little chance of repeating, and are now jaded.

Thankfully I have a history of success now, but still, kinda bums me out.

Oh and if someone tries to tell you conferences are dead, just turn around and walk away. They’re either an online event snake oil peddler, or out of touch with the realities of business and events.

Just sayin.

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Decade first:

in 2000 I worked for a company that was basically an IT Staffing firm that decided to get into software. I worked internally on a web app that would (in their terms) revolutionize staffing. I bailed, they failed, it was 2000, that happened a lot to a lot of people and companies.

I spent most of the 2000′s as a programmer, first doing ColdFusion, then moving to Flex. It never occurred to me to try out M$ tools, or any other. I liked Macromedia (Now Adobe) offerings and stuck with them.

I was my own boss several times as an Indie contractor, and was a cube monkey several times. Each (except one) was a good experience, a ton of fun, and formed lasting personal and business friendships.

I bought my first house in Perris CA, and my second in Riverside CA. Both were awesome in their own ways, despite being an hour or more from where I worked.

Most importantly, I met my wife Nicole.

We met thru a mutual friend whom I used to work with years past, and she was currently working with (Props to Scott Dunn for the intr0)

We moved to Denver. We were supposed to move a few months after meeting. Before I proposed, even. She had an opportunity to come out to Denver, and I had no major ties to CA. That opportunity dried up, and re-emerged 6 months later, and here we are.

We bought a house in Highlands Ranch, before we realized what Highlands Ranch was. 2 years after that, we moved to downtown Denver.

I started a conference that was supposed to be a one off, just for kicks event. It’s grown to be 3 distinct events, a few one off events around the world here and there, and my full time job (more in 2009)

2009

I’ve gone full time, totally dependent on 360|Conferences for income, lost a business partner, brought Nicole into the business, learned how to use Quickbooks, stopped writing code, just to name the big ones.

Going full time with the conference business wasn’t part of the plan, not in 2009 anyway. I was at EffectiveUI as the Community Evangelist, sadly a position, not enough of the company was on board with. When i left, I decided, well if the conferences are going to support me ever, they might as well start now. Since taking the job at EUI, i had stopped writing code, well I wrote a little, building small apps for internal/sales use, but by and large, i had stopped being a full time developer.

So I jumped. Eyes wide open.

All in all it’s been what I expected, stressful, awesome, a struggle, the best decision (Next to marrying Nicole) I’ve ever made.

Tom leaving was a shock in many ways, though I suspected we wouldn’t stay partners thru 2010, I just wasn’t sure how it would come down.

Our approaches to business are too different. When we’re “on”, we’re “ON” a totally creative innovative powerhouse. When we’re “off”, we’re “OFF” sadly we were off more than on.

After dealing with the shock and other feelings associated with going from partnership to “just me” basically, i had to learn to use quickbooks. That ain’t fun. I’m fairly comfortable with book keeping but quickbooks is a kludge IMHO. But oh well it’s what we’ve got. I’ve paid a book keeper to clean the books up, then I’ll take 100% ownership of that.

What am I looking at for 2010?

360|iDev will over take 360|Flex as my biggest event. Short of Adobe being more supportive of it’s third party developer eco system that is. If they figure out how to make third party developers thrive on their platforms, 360|Flex will grow. 360|Flex will and does rock, but there’s a distinct lack of love for third party tools built on and around Flex. That will be HUGE.

Apple may not give them love, but they at least don’t hinder their third parties.

360|Mobile, which was the ill-fated InsideMobile will grow and become it’s own thing. I’ll keep it small, but the non apple mobile space is hot, and quite frankly exciting, I can’t wait to see what’s going on there.

360|Whisperings will reach critical mass. Of the small amount of content on the site right now, it all sells monthly. A few purchased only, but something. The day I write checks to the authors, will be a huge day for me!

I’ll have a reliable, livable income coming from conferences/events. The business will reach an as yet unattained level of stability.

I’ll spend more time with Nicole, we’ll do more fun things, travel more, and enjoy life and each other’s company even more than we already do.

I really want to see The Flex Show grow. jeff and I love doing the show, and I want to see more the Flex Community get involved.

i’d like to do some more Denver community stuff. Ignite Denver is going strong, and I hope 2010 sees it grow and become a staple of the community. I really want to see something eventwise around literacy. A Festival of Books, something.

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For the most up to date info, make sure you follow the Ignite Denver blog, that’s where speaker and sponsor announcements are made, etc.

We’re looking for help! Ignite Denver is looking to grow from a 2 people operation, to a committee run deal! We need more awesomeness to grow Ignite Denver!

Denver, raise your hands! Get involved!

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We’re going to have some seats setup in the front area nearest the screen for folks who just want to sit and watch. Behind the screen will be tables and such for the folks that want to chit chat through the entire event (there’s always a few, and usually they’re also the “this isn’t Ignite Boulder” complainers). The audio is piped through the rooms speakers, so there shouldn’t be an “I can’t hear” problems.

I’m torn on weather to have a brightkite wall. thinking I’ll set it up before we start the presos and during the break, but will learn from Refresh and not have the wall up during presos, LOL. Not a good idea.

• Booze on the Brain! (or the neuropharmacology of alcohol)
• Does This Make My Ass Look Fat?
• Ignite the entrepreneur within: 50 Interviews
• History of Rome (For those have have been to Ignite Denver 1 and 2, RJ promises he will not have family trouble and scheduling conflicts! He swore it on the flying Spaghetti Monster.)
• Trinkets and Nuggets about the Modern Japan
• The Similarities Between Emperor Palpatine & Our History
• Leveraging the Internet To Land a Book Deal
• Pie and the contemporary psyche
• Mucking Out Your Inbox: How to Be More Productive with Email
• Toys for relieving stress in the office
• Slammed Doors and Phones: Or the Saga of a Young Organizer
• How a Video becomes Public Access TV in a Web2.0 World

There’s a few tickets left, and if we sell out I’ll have to actually have some one man the door and check names, and do the whole waiting list thing. Make sure you RSVP, we’re gonna have a good time. Ignite is an excellent time to meet people you might not otherwise meet in your regular circles, which is reat because it opens so many more doors and opportunities.

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