I’m happy to announce that we’ve successfully launched a Hacks/Hackers Meetup in Colorado.  We now have two Meetups under our belt and both have gone great.

Both Denver and Boulder have a strong history in both publishing and technology.  Two of the largest publishing startups in the past decade, The Examiner and Associated Content, both came from this area.  With Techstars, the five-year-old incubator that was just voted the top ranked in the country, Boulder’s startup ecosystem continues to grow and produce more and more innovative companies.  Given the success, we found it to be completely ridiculous that there wasn’t a Hacks/Hackers Meetup in the area.

I recently went to a H/H Meetup in NYC, saw first-hand the energy and excitement these meetups generate and was immediately jealous that we didn’t have a casual, relaxed get -together in my home town —  meetup where I could meet other people in the industry and learn of interesting new technologies and techniques in the space.  Well, now we do.

Our second session was done in a typical demo-day fashion with five presentations:

Street Fight. This is a new website covering the hyperlocal space.  Founder and CEO Laura Rich gave a great talk about what’s learned going from journalist (at Conde Nast and NY Times) to entrepreneur and how the business model for publishers today are quite different than in the past (hint: they’re not advertising-based)

The Digital Media Test Kitchen at Colorado University. Steve Outing, who runs the SMTK, talked about some of the interesting projects that have emerged from there and what the future holds for CU and Journalism.

Callisto.fm. Everything you could ever want about podcasting.  Callisto.fm is a better and sophisticated place to discover and a easier way to play back podcasts.

Kapost.com. Kapost is a tool for publishers that help them manage both their writers and content.  It’s an online suite that has an editorial calendar (see when posts should be published), invoice creation and payment tracking (pay your freelancers from Kapost), workflow management, and performance tracking (see which writers are getting the most traffic and retweets).  (disclosure: I’m the co-founder of Kapost)

Media Salad. The co-founder of Media Salad, Christine Tatum, formerly of the Chicago Tribune and The Denver Post, spoke about her company which is a research and reporting service.  Media Salad provides research and market intelligence to help their clients make better and more informed decisions.

The event was held on the CU campus at the Atlas Institute.  It was a great venue and the talks led to some great discussion afterwards at Atlas and even later at The Sink.  Thanks again to everyone who helped make it a success and RSVP here for next month’s event.