Whew. Day 2 is done.

As some of you may know, and I learned from Jared Ewy today, it is well known that the second day of a conference/industry gathering is the hardest. See, the day you get in, if you aren’t a regular traveler, it feels new and exciting. A deviation from the norm as Geddy Lee puts it. So you are kind of artificially strengthened.

The first day of a conference is all a whirlwind of acclimation. Meeting a bunch of people outside of your normal day to day life. This is also exhilarating.

So you burn it out the first day. You push yourself. Then, you get to bed late and wake up feeling like you are dying the next day… Day two. Now, day two, you say to yourself, “I can do this. I am HERE to do this. I was MADE to do this”, so you push. Hard.

Night two is the killer. The last half of the day I literally felt like my body was breaking into pieces. Like they were taking turns breaking down. It was rough.

BUT, as I was telling myself that I needed to sleep and would do the blog in the morning, I realized that I needed to push through. In spite of the comfy bed, I needed to get out what Boulder Start Up Day Two was like.

The morning started ridiculously early. Not because of poor planning on the organizer’s part, but because I am a slow riser and my lodging is 15 minutes from the event. So, your faithful blogger got up at 6am. In… the… morning. Note that, Pacific time, this is 5am. In… the… morning.

I stumble into the shower, dress, look for coffee at the Inn (too early, not even the proprietors are awake) and drive into town.

Boulder is an amazing town, not the least of which is it’s organization. Everything is on Pearl street. The end. That is it. AND, all parking is on Walnut street. 9th, 11th, Broadway, all have parking garages. What is even better is that the parking attendants seem to have a “30 minutes on, 2 hours off” policy. In the two days, and 4 parking episodes I have had, I paid once. The other times the gates were open and there was a sign saying “drive through”. Excellent.

I head to the Boomtown offices for the Open Coffee Club. This is an AMAZING event. It is a somewhat informal gathering of tech people, drinking coffee and chatting about the industry both local and national. Yees, there is a stage and, yes, there are people who run the event, but it is mostly everyone discussing, for example, the Verizon purchase of AOL or the new Tesla Power sources. So many interesting takes on these things. I will absolutely be starting one of these in the King County area. It is not only fun and interesting it is simply important.

Next, Jared and I harassed Boulder. We taped a bunch of “Man on the street” videos which, frankly, included 4 women so I feel that is a misnomer and should be called Person On The Street.

Watching Jared connect with people is a treat to watch. Such a natural conversationalist I couldn’t help but feel like I was watching a clinic on making people feel at ease.

After that was some badly needed food at Illegal Pete’s, who has an amazing breakfast menu made to order.

Next, work got in the way and I had to run back to the room for some furious typing and swift emails. and, yes, a 20 minute power nap. Because I am insanely old.

Next, the Job fair at Lyfe Kitchen.

I met so many amazing people and, while I was a bit dismayed at the lack of awareness about new domain extensions, I was encouraged by the excitement I saw when people heard about them.

Them: “Why would I want one of those?!?!?! Dot Dom is awesome!”

Me: “Yep, it is. But if I tell you to check out my twitter at Aich Tee Pee Pee twitter dot com slash RghtSideeSean without the first “i”, how will you spell that? Now, if I tell you to just go to Evangelist.Ninja, which will you remember tomorrow?”

There were a ton of converts. And it was glorious.

Next was a quick meal at an Italian place I can’t recall the name of, Great food and, when I asked for a box, they said “We can wrap it in aluminum foil”.

Great, right? Yep. Until the thunder storm. When I realized I was walking down the street with a bunch of exposed metal in my hand.

See Sean Run. See Sean not get killed by weather. See Sean feel lucky.

Another great day. Andrew Hyde is simply KILLING it running this thing. Always a smile, always glad to chat. I can’t wait for tomorrow.

S