anything media

This past two weeks I had the opportunity to participate in an awesome project. The Silicon Flatirons Center (out of CU Boulder) was having a pseudo-gala event honoring several individuals and companies for their work in the entrepreneurial world and for who they were in business in general. One of the awards was a Lifetime Achievement Award for Brad Feld, who is as Jack Tankersley of Meritage Funds put it, “one of the preeminent venture capitalists in the country”. I was enlisted to interview eleven of his colleagues, friends, and family (which I quickly found out most fall into at least two of those categories if they are in one because of the type person Brad is) and to compile sections of those interviews into an hommage video to be shown the night of the gala. Here’s the video:

Brad Feld – Lifetime Entreprenurial Achievement award video from Kendall Media Group on Vimeo.

As you can see, he’s quite a guy. I’m delighted I got to do the project, but more delighted I got to learn more about Brad and the influence he, and others through his inspiration have been able to do in this exciting area.

Organizations all over the world could learn a lot from what I observed the night of the awards. While a number of highly respected and influential people were in the room that night, there was also a league of young entrepreneurs floating around the room taking it all in. It appears the leadership for the event, knowing the audience created a great environment where the two subcultures could meet and “play well” together picked a unique venue in The Dairy Center for the Arts to host the event, and, they facilitated some interaction between folks by, among other things, assigning every attendee to a team for a Rock Band tournament. It was an awesome way to see merging of two generations who love the same thing… starting businesses.

Props to the folks at Silicon Flatirons, to those who have inspired them (like Brad, Jason Mendelson, Brad Bernthal, and Phil Weiser). It’s special what’s happening in what used to be lazy little Boulder.