Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good

Sarah Browne has a post on Facebook about Girly Glam being back, and yours truly is cited for my fashion sense, in particular one pair of boots I own. Although, here at TechTicker, said fashion sense only gets mocked. Mocked in the form of graphics no less!

Here's Howard and Brad's commentary on my lovely DVF outfit today:

Is it me or do I look like some host of a children's show from the 1970s?

Ahem. Back to Sarah Browne's post. Beyond the shout out, it is an interesting one, and hopefully the link above works within FB's digital walls. If not, here's an excerpt:

"So does all this girly glam mean that voila! women have finally achieved so much equality that we can now afford to literally let it all hang out? That women no longer need to dress or behave like men? That we have choices — every permutation of chic from chictini to Hillary’s custom pantsuits to Sarah Palin’s much ballyhooed booty from Saks?"

It's a thorny issue, as I've written about before. But I'm a big believer that it should be a non-issue. The key isn't "Oh, now we're all wearing dresses." It's that women are free to wear whatever they want: jeans, dresses or VC-esque khakis and blue shirts. Sometimes--gasp!-- professional women rock different looks depending on the day. At Yahoo I wear a dress almost every day; when I was writing my book I wore jeans and a t-shirt almost every day. Paul Carr-- never missing an opportunity to mock me-- calls it the difference between SarahLacy.com and Sarah Lacy. But I think they're both me.

Sure, I dress a little girlier than your average CNBC host when I'm on camera, but that's because I think suits are unflattering. I mean, really, if someone wants to count me out because I wear a dress and not a boxy 1980s suit: Go right ahead. As far as I'm concerned, that only gives me more of an advantage. 

While we had Mr. Matt Galligan in front of us, we decided to fill him up with beer and then pump him for some information- namely, Social Thing's recent sale to AOL. Sarah adores AOL because it makes Yahoo look like a sexy young thing. However, all snark aside, a huge platform is still a huge platform. Or at least that's what an AOL sell-out (Matt) and a Yahoo sell-out (Sarah) discuss in this clip...

Yeah, so yesterday's trek to Boulder could have been a recipe for disaster:

-Waking up at 4:30 am for an early morning flight (woof)
- Wandering aimlessly around the confusing Denver airport (two levels and four "islands" for passenger pick-up? seriously?)
- Walking in circles for 30 minutes in search of a burger joint. That was 300 feet away (left means right at 5400 feet apparently)
- Waiting on the street corner like idiots for a taxi cab that was dispatched to Denver by mistake (and accidentally clotheslining a monk with a heavy bag of books...yay karma)

Mix in some preconceived notions (which Sarah touched on here) and things were not looking so good. That is, until Matt Galligan changed our minds and stepped up to bat for a little one on one with the Sarahcuda (video after the jump)

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Om and I seem to be of the same mind. Biggest gamble on this deal: What the currency of Facebook stock is worth. That, and I take Evan at his word that he wants to keep building Twitter. After all, it's not all about money, particularly for people who've already made money. Twitter is a one of the biggest ideas in Web 2.0 and the team knows that doesn't just come around because you decide, "Ok we sold that one, what next?"

I think they made the right call. More in my Dirt segment on TechTicker today below:

OK. Boulder. What a roller coaster!

Let's set aside the lack of sleep, charmingly odd doll house we stayed in, and continuation of bizarre UGBT cab drivers for a minute. As I've said, it was our last stop on the whirlwind, and honestly career-changing, User Generated Book Tour.   I already had mixed feelings about it coming to a close, but I'll save all that for another post. And as we've detailed even more I was getting a less-than enthusiastic response to my impending arrival. Still, I knew there was something in Boulder. And I was right.

Here's the thing. Boulder has a ton to offer. The companies that presented at New Tech were pretty amazing, and the people we hung out with where smart, confident, collegial and surprisingly effortless to be around. They just, um, don't want anyone to know?

This is what puzzles me about Boulder. It's a very, very tight-knit community. While entrepreneurs from London, D.C., Memphis, Los Angeles and several other cities have complained that it is hard to develop a regular startup "crew" because the cities were so spread apart geographically, Boulder is only a cuddly 100,000 people or so. There are twice as many bikes as people, so either people have calves of steel or everyone is just a quick cycle away. The New Tech event itself was like a more earth-conscious, savvy version of a Town Hall meeting in Stars Hollow. There was something so genuine and non-poser about it. It was unlike another one I've seen.

But for whatever reason, there's a general desire to protect that unique vibe by fencing out everyone else. More on this in the next post, which features a point-counterpoint between Matt Galligan of Social Thing/AOL and me, so I won't belabor my thoughts now.

But while my gut still tells me that kind of thinking inherently limits companies in Boulder, I love that the scene is its own animal and it feels utterly different than any other stop on the tour. As I've written throughout the tour, the single most important thing is that cities play to their own strengths. In Boulder, a core strength is clearly this community, cooperative vibe. After all, one of the biggest entrepreneur success stories is Celestial Seasonings-- right down to the early days when town's folk helped the founder pick herbs from around the town to go in our teas. (Which I'm inhaling as I write, thanks to a nasty cold.)

I'll be interested to see what develops out of Boulder over the next few years. Hopefully, some new hot shot will actually return a Silicon Valley call...

Now to that dollhouse...this video was shot before our pleasant surprise of an evening, hence the apprehension. (and Olivia's hair in progress)