The Cyber Scene in Denver ~ by Suzanne Lainson

The last two weeks in August were slow ones for tech networking events so other than music there hasn't been much to cover. On August 29 some of us were catching Chris Daniels & the Kings (http://www.chrisdaniels.com) at downtown Boulder's last outdoor concert of the season. Listening to the brass-loaded mixture of jive, blues, and rock and watching some women doing a mean jitterbug, were myself, Yvonne Lynott of Lynott & Associates (http://www.lynottpr.com), serial entrepreneurs Deborah Arhelger and Wayne Citrin, and Dan Murray, marketing director of Persona (http://www.persona.com).

On August 30, advertising and design firm ProMotif (http://www.promotif.com) held an open house in Denver to find ways to spend George W.'s rebate checks. Alas, article deadlines kept me from attending.

From August 10 to 13, Telluride had its second annual Tech Festival (http://www.telluridetechfestival.com). I talked by phone to organizer Scott Brown. He told me about how some of Telluride's more famous festivals got started. "The music festival became a bluegrass festival because that was the only band available. The film festival got started because Bill Pence had a movie theater here. We were so far at the end of the road that we got the worst movies imaginable. He had a friend, James Card, who had a collection of old movies, which he brought to town. Some of them were so old they were silent films. And the whole town packed the movie theater. Standing room only. James said if ever there was a place that needed a movie festival, it was Telluride because the people would come and see anything."

Among the invited guests at this year Tech Festival were David Clark, who played an important role in the Internet as a member ARPANET, John Dvorak, contributing editor of PC Magazine, Danny Hillis, co-founder of Thinking Machines Corp, Jill Tarter, director of the SETI Institute, Lewis Branscomb, former director of the National Science Board, and Nick DeWolf, co-founder of Teradyne Corp.

Also attending were last year's award winners Richard Stallman, of GNU/Linux fame, and John Perry Barlow, Wyoming rancher, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a lyricist for the Grateful Dead.
Scott had an exclusive bit of news. "Last year when Barlow was here, we hooked him up with [popular touring band] String Cheese Incident (http://www.stringcheeseincident.com). He is now their lyricist and they are off writing songs. Telluride along with Crested Butte both claim to be the towns where String Cheese started. Half of the band started playing in Crested Butte and the other half in Telluride. They kind of met up and started playing in both towns. Their big break was the Bluegrass Festival. They won the band contest one year. We were a bit amazed because these kids were practicing on Main Street."
Yes, the tech/music connection is alive and well in Colorado.