An article from Brad Feld today on how they’re trying to come up with a name for the Colorado tech scene got me thinking about a few things.

For those who don’t know, Colorado is turning into a real 2nd-tier tech startup centre in the US (and, as such, the world)

A lot of that would have to do with Feld’s TechStars:

TechStars is a mentorship-driven seed stage investment fund. Each year we run a summer-long program in Boulder, Colorado and Cambridge, Massachusetts. We’re very selective - each year hundreds of companies apply to the program and we only take about ten per city. These companies get up to $18,000 in seed funding, a summer of intensive top-notch mentorship, and the chance to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the summer.

Of course, as Paul Graham explains, you need a lot of things to be in place to create a startup-hub, i.e. you can’t just create a TechStars anywhere, so no doubt a lot of work was done by a lot of people to get Boulder to where it could have a chance of success.

So, what’s intesting about the article? My first thoughts were:

1. Hey, we’ve been there in Sydney, trying to figure out what a good brand for the local scene is. Good to see that someone like Brad Feld thinks branding his local scene is important too.
2. Feld seems to share the same disdain as I do for putting the word “Silicon” in the brand of any area outside of Silicon Valley (maybe that’s just interesting form a personal POV…)
3. They’ve managed to get the Governor of Colorado to recognise ICT (with an understanding that that incorporates tech startups!) as the fifth pillar of economic development in Colorado, joining bio, aerospace, tourism, and the new energy economy.

The last one of these freaked me out a little. I mean - they got the state Governor, Bill Ritter, to realise that ICT should form part of the economic development strategy of the state - wow.

And check out this quote from the Governor (bold is mine):

Brad Feld has been this remarkable presence in Colorado and as Governor, I can take advantage of having a person like Brad talk to me, help me, mentor me about this field, about ICT (Information, Communications, Technology) and about the world of entrepreneurship and his cohort in this is Phil Weiser

Is there any state Premier (or territory Chief Minister) in Australia you can think of that:

1. Is paying more than lip-service to entrepreneurs in the ICT space?
2. Appears to be open-minded enough to publicly say they want to be helped and mentored by a tech startup person on how to build a tech entrepreneurship industry?

That got me thinking.

Is it us? i.e. Have we just not argued our case well enough inside Govenment?

Is it them? i.e. are they just unwilling to listen?

No doubt the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but if Boulder, a city with less than 100,000 people, a city that is only the 11th most populous city in the state of Colorado, a city that is 1/3 the size of Wollongong, FFS - if that city can organise themselves, get the government behind them, and get themselves recognised as a real startup-hub, then surely Sydney can too.

There are some obvious things we need to build on - working more closely with Universities, building a better investment environment, making it more acceptable for people to choose tech startups as a career path - but we’re much closer to the goal than we were just a couple of years ago. I mean, there is a genuine community now, built from the ground up. There is a growing awareness and support of local tech startup endeavours and a slowly growing number of cool tech startups and entrepreneurs that are going out and conquering not only Australia, but the world. That having been said, there’s still a lot of work to be done, so let’s not get complacent.

Oh yeah, and about that naming thing…Scott Yates weighs into the argument with his article “Don’t Name That Trend… Be The Trend!” saying, essentially, ”who cares about the name?”. 

He probably sums it up best when he says:

I don’t know if you noticed, but the people behind the aforementioned revolutionary changes…are not the ones trying to put a name on it. They are too busy doing what they do.

Word!

It’s no secret I’m a big fan of PocketLIfe. I love the fact that it was originally developed by a team at Vodafone Australia and how that is more proof to the world that Australia can be more than just a sales and marketing office for large multi-nationals. I also think the technology is sweet and has the potential to be one of the winners in the location-based services race that’s currently going on.

I’ve been helping test PocketLife on the iPhone for a few weeks now but it was a bit hard to get the full benefit of the app as it was a closed-beta.  As such, I’m glad to say that as of earlier this week PocketLife has been accepted into the iPhone App Store, which means hopefully I’ll be seeing more people I know on there soon

You can get all the details on the PocketLife Blog, but one thing to note is that while the current AppStore version is v0.5 there are upgrades ready to roll as soon as they’re also accepted. (I’ve been testing v1.1 so I can tell you there’s an improved, functioning, version out there). 

Hanno Blankenstein, the leader of the team, tells me that as those new releases are accepted the app will auto-update - so expect the full v1.1 goodness in the near future once you install the app.

I’m looking forward to seeing if this helps PocketLife start to get the critical mass needed to help it reach its full potential.