Lee Devlin's Weblog

Each year I attend a conference in Denver that grew out of a magazine called 'Midnight Engineering'. The magazine was dedicated to engineers that loved the work so much they could be found doing it at all hours, even in their spare time, hence the magazine's name. Many of the readers were entrepreneurial types engaged in moonlighting activities. A yearly conference called Entcon was started that became like a 'real-time version of the magazine'. It was a great networking event with lots of interesting people that kicked off with skiing in the Rocky Mountains followed by a weekend of presentations and informal networking sessions.

The magazine is out of print, but a conference which is now called Entconnect is still going on each year in Denver around the last week of March. Next year's conference is scheduled for March 26-29, 2009 in Lakewood, CO.

We don't get a chance to talk much with the other conference participants throughout the year, so I've put together a forum on Yahoo Groups to see if it will help. If discussions about entrepreneurship, tech startups, and free agent engineering appeal to you, perhaps you'd like to join the group.

Labels: entconnect, entrepreneur, technology

EntConnect 2008 is over and it was another great conference. We had a number of new people there this year, thanks to the efforts of our regular attendees in recruiting like-minded individuals. Historically, our attendees were primarily made up of those who were Midnight Engineering Magazine readers or who had attended previous conferences. With the magazine out of print, we recognized EntConnect was taking on the feel of a reunion which is not a sustainable way to run an annual conference. People often acquire other responsibilities so eventually, without new recruits, a conference that depends only on previous attendees will shrink down to the point where it makes no sense to continue holding it. We all enjoy the conference too much to let that happen.

At the end of each conference in the past, we had brainstormed on ways to make it better, but in the time that elapses between the conference, everyone gets busy and no one has the time to do the promotion. EntConnect is a small conference and it's not a money-making venture, just a labor of love that barely covers its expenses, so we don't have a big budget for promoting it. This year a small group of volunteers started having regular conference calls about 8 weeks before the event. We offered a substantial discount for early bird pricing (which is now in effect for the 2009 conference), and we also enabled the ability to register and take credit cards on-line via a service called RegOnline. In addition, more of us have the administration privileges to modify the website, which reduces the workload for John Gaudio, the conference organizer.

After the early bird pricing expired, we offered discount codes of up to 1/3 off the cost of the conference and promoted it to local groups and individuals who would be a good fit for EntConnect. That effort didn't really produce the results we had hoped for. I'd estimate that more than 1000 people became aware of the conference through various email and on-line promotions, but only one person signed up with a discount code. Most thought that the reason for the low response rate was that it was done within 4 weeks of the conference and people have their plans already solidified by that time. So it may have been too late for this kind of last minute conference promoting. It seems that word-of-mouth has remained our most effective form of recruiting.

As much as I enjoy seeing the regular attendees, the highlight of the show this year was meeting the new attendees who are engaged in startups and other entrepreneurial activities. Several of the new attendees also gave presentations. Nathan Seidle of Spark Fun Electronics gave a great presentation on how he started his company while a junior in college and has experienced 100% year-on-year growth in his business for the past 4 years. Rob McNealy of Startup Story Radio talked about his startup experiences and gave a great storyboard presentation about his thoughts on entrepreneurship. Howard Keating of ZANA Network talked about his company's mission and on the topic of intellectual property as it applies to the small business owner. Steve Schmutzer of Firefly Medical gave an engaging presentation entitled 'Ten Lessons I Learned as an Entrepreneur' as well as bringing along a prototype of his company's revolutionary Infusion Management System.

We had 35 people sign up for the conference and with 5 cancellations, we ended up with 30 attendees. Of the 30 attendees, we had 11 first-timers, which is probably a new record. In addition to those I mentioned previously, we had Mike O'Neil of Integrated Alliances who gave a presentation on using LinkedIn, Gary Lundquist who talked about his latest venture, InnoSearch Colorado, and Andrea Shaver, the 13-year-old daughter of Dave Shaver, who gave an outstanding presentation on leadership and how she helped raise money for a specially-designed wheelchair for a disabled girl.

It was also great to meet other first-time attendees, including Kristie Colby of Colby Creating Consulting, Isaac Davenport of Syncroness Product Development, and Susan and Christopher Smith.

This was the first year I had time to participate in the pre-conference activities. We had intended to go skiing, but after having a delayed start on Thursday morning, my friend Court and I decided to just do some sight-seeing in Denver instead. First we stopped at the REI Denver flagship store and Court demonstrated his rock climbing prowess, quickly ascending a 5.10 level difficulty climb on one of the the tallest indoor freestanding climbing walls in the world. Next we went to Casa Bonita for lunch. I had never been there before, but had heard so much about it. It's a combination of carnival, theater, indoor theme park, arcade, and yes, you can eat there too. We explored many of the restaurant's 52,000 sq. ft. which seats approximately 1100 people in a number of areas with different themes. After that, it was off to do some Indoor Skydiving where I got to experience a whole new sensation of flying on a column of air. Later that evening we met at the hotel lounge for some dinner and conversation with several other conference attendees.

On Friday, we had a very late breakfast, which actually became our lunch, and about a dozen of us went out for some high performance go cart racing. The carts will go over 50 mph, so it was quite a thrill the drive them around a track which bore more than a passing resemblance to a scaled down Formula One track, complete with tight hairpin turns and super fast straight-aways that really required one's full concentration to stay in control. After that, we went to the Cherry Creek Family Shooting Center to do some trap shooting. It had been about 20 years since I had last gone trap shooting, so I struggled to break just over half the clay targets, but it was still a lot of fun. In the evening, we headed across the street from the hotel along with about two dozen other conference attendees to the Black Angus Steak House for dinner. There we met Nathan Seidle, who entertained us with his Port-o-Rotary phone. Later, we assembled in the hotel bar until they told us they were ready to close.

On Saturday I went down to the conference room about 8:00 to see if they needed any help setting up. I won't go into the details of the speakers, but you can get an idea of the speakers/topics from the 2008 schedule. We broke for dinner and got back a little late, around 7:30 p.m., and launched into the evening presentations. After the last presentation was over at 11:00 p.m. I got to play some poker, a game of Texas Hold 'em, which I had never played before but the rest of the players were familiar enough to talk me through the number of chips I needed to put in to keep up with the others. It wasn't like any other poker game I've ever played, but I ended up coming in second. Surprisingly, the winner, Rob Packard, passed on the Garmin C340 GPS and so I walked away with the grand prize. My wife is thrilled with it ;-). I didn't get back to my hotel room until nearly 2:00 a.m.

Sunday morning I was able to wake up at 7:00 a.m. without too much trouble and met some of the others in the restaurant where we had breakfast. The presentations started at 9:00 a.m. and continued until about 2:00 p.m.. We then packed up the conference room and about 16 of us headed out for a late lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant. After that, I drove Court to the airport for his flight back to California and then headed home myself. I was tired but content that the conference had gone very well and that we'll have a number of new recruiters to help expand next year's conference.

If you're reading this and are interested in running your own small business or startup, you should consider coming to the 2009 EntConnect conference. It's 50% off if you sign up now, and you can keep you calendar clear so you know that you'll make it. There's no better way to learn than to get advice from those who have gone before you and you'll certainly meet many of them at EntConnect which will be held in Lakewood, CO March 26-29, 2009.

Labels: entconnect

I was just talking with a colleague at HP and they've decided to help with a sponsorship at EntConnect by providing us with the newest version of the HP Media Vault Pro to give to some lucky attendee. As many of you know who read the blog, I worked for this HP division until last year when I took an early retirement. I support the Media Vault products on my support website and Yahoo Group and am very pleased to be able to have such a nice door prize for EntConnect. Thanks to the Media Vault Team!

Win a new HP Media Vault Pro!

Each attendee will have a chance to win the very latest 1.5TB HP Media Vault, a $799 value, compliments of HP. Check out the specifications of this incredible product. The HP Media Vault Pro is easy Network Storage, best suited for small businesses or workgroups that need to protect critical business files and other data on their PCs, and want a central location to share files with across their network.

Labels: entconnect, hp

I first found out about LinkedIn from my friend Jack Krupansky a few years ago at the EntConnect conference. At the time, we didn't know what LinkedIn would become, but both Jack and I are curious individuals and so I decided to join him on LinkedIn. For several months, Jack was my only connection. Over time, I got a few more invitations from people who I didn't know but who had many connections already. These were people who sought to become 'super-connected' individuals. They had impressive credentials and I was happy to connect with them. But after a few years, I still only had a handful of connections because I had never invited anyone to join my network. From what I understand, this is fairly typical behavior of most new initiates to LinkedIn. About a year ago, I decided to be more proactive about connecting to people on LinkedIn and subsequently did much more investigation of it by taking a class from Integrated Alliances and reading the books, 'I'm on LinkedIn, Now What?' by Jason Alba and 'The Virtual Handshake' by Scott Allen and David Teten. After joining NoCoNet, a local career networking group, I found that I had many more opportunities to meet and connect with people. I later became the chairman of NoCoNet's LinkedIn committee and so I'm much more proficient with using it and helping others to use it.

About a month ago, Peter Olins, our NoCoNet president, asked me to prepare a 'LinkedIn Tip of the Week' for our members and so I have started doing that and will be sharing them in the blog for everyone's benefit after I've presented them. I posted one earlier about using the 'Groups and Affiliations'.

This week's tip is on how to avoid having multiple LinkedIn accounts. Everyone seems to have more than one email address these days, and if a LinkedIn member were to invite you to connect using an email address that LinkedIn does not know about, it's possible to end up with an extra LinkedIn account. This may happen when someone uploads his Outlook contacts list and then uses a feature of LinkedIn that allows him to invite everyone in that list. You may find yourself getting multiple invitations, possibly from someone to whom you're already connected. If LinkedIn thinks you're an entirely new person based on an email address it does not recognize, it will set up a separate account and if you click on the link to respond, you may find it asking for your name and to fill in your profile again. I've seen this happen when people use email forwarders. For example, say you have an address that is for your college's alumni association looks like "your.name@csu.org" or something similar that simply forwards mail to a Yahoo email account. It's possible you've given out both addresses to people over the years and you may appear twice in their Outlook contacts lists. If you don't have both your "your.name@csu.org" AND your Yahoo email address in LinkedIn's database, you might get multiple invitations to connect to a person and if you respond to the invitation sent to the address that LinkedIn does not know about, you can end up with two separate accounts.

If you didn't know about this little feature, you may end up with an extra LinkedIn account. The only way to delete a duplicate account is to send an email to LinkedIn's customer support (cs@linkedin.com). Make sure to let them know which account you want deleted.

To avoid this situation, you should put all your email addresses in your profile. LinkedIn will only use the one you designate as a primary address to send you email. However, it will know that if someone sends an invitation to any of your email addresses, it will recognize it as an existing account and not try to set up a new account for you.


The way to do that is to go the upper right hand corner of a LinkedIn screen and select Account and Settings. Then, from the menu that appears, under Personal Settings select Email Addresses. Add every email address that you use. If you're about to leave an employer, make sure to do this before you leave, because you do have to verify the address by responding to a link that LinkedIn will send to that address.

Labels: entconnect, linkedin

I am trying to recruit one of my favorite gurus to attend the EntConnect conference this year. If you're into electronics, you've no doubt heard of Don Lancaster. Don is a prolific writer and has written numerous columns in most of the electronics hobbiest magazines over the years. He's also authored numerous electronics books such as the TTL Cookbook and the CMOS Cookbook. Nowadays, his columns can be found on his website.

Don was responsible for my finding out about Midnight Engineering magazine and so he's indirectly responsible for my involvement with the EntConnect conference. Similarly, many other conference attendees give him credit for their discovery of it as well.

My favorite articles that Don writes about are related to energy, especially his energy fundamentals article. He recently followed it up with another one entitled more energy fundamentals. I also appreciate his take on patents.

I've asked him to run a banner ad on his site for the conference. I've combined two elements that are distinctly Don, the aqua blue color of his website and the word 'tinaja'. We'll see if he chooses to run it as is or if I'll be doing some editing of it. You can see the example below. And...if you're interested in coming to EntConnect, please note the discount code available in the banner ad when you register.

Labels: energy, entconnect

John Gaudio, the keeper of the flame as far as EntConnect goes, has a recent blog entry about its history. Today I thought I would include an image from a 'sampler' magazine that Bill Gates used to send out to stir up interest in Midnight Engineering.


You can get an idea of the agenda of the very first 1992 ME-Ski conference and above that, there's an advertisement for some ME back issues, including some of the topics covered in those issues.

I still have many of my Midnight Engineering back issues since I felt there was something unique and irreplaceable about them and couldn't bear to throw them out. I'm sure they are destined to become collectibles.

I often wonder if Midnight Engineering magazine will ever be relaunched or if a similar magazine (or possibly a website) may appear. Catering to high tech entrepreneurs and bootstrappers is a niche, but probably even more relevant today than ever as few engineers have the option of working for a large and secure employer from their first job until they are ready to retire.

We are all self-employed in many respects and developing one's entrepreneurial instincts is as essential for an engineer as it is for a CEO running her own show.

Labels: entconnect

As I mentioned in a previous posting, I'm helping to organize an entrepreneurial conference called EntConnect in Denver on March 27-30th. One of our regular conference attendees, Gary Skinner, will talk about a home he built recently that was profiled on EcoTech on the Discovery Science channel. You can catch a 2 minute clip of it here:



There are always glimpses of the future that I get from other attendees at EntConnect. Whether you're a freelancer, a business owner, or an employee, if you have an entrepreneurial spirit, you should consider joining us in 6 weeks.

The conference fee is 50% off if you sign up before March 1st.

Labels: energy, entconnect

I am helping to organize an entrepreneurial conference called EntConnect that runs from March 27th-30th, 2008 at the Sheraton West Denver hotel in Lakewood, CO. This conference has been held each year since 1992 and initially grew out of a conference organized by the publisher of Midnight Engineering magazine. Midnight Engineering was published for about 8 years in the 1990s and was targeted at engineers and technologists who engaged in entrepreneurial activities, often in their spare time, as its name suggests. Even though the magazine is no longer published, many of us had enjoyed the conferences so much that we kept them going. I say ‘we’, but I should mention that it’s the hard work and dedication of John Gaudio who pulls the conference together each year. This year a few of us have stepped up to give John a helping hand. He's letting me take care of the website and on-line registration system.

The conference has taken on the feeling of a reunion. We sometimes bring in new members and friends which helps to keep things interesting. This year we decided to make an effort to recruit other like-minded people to participate. If you're interested in entrepreneurial pursuits perhaps you may like to join us.

The conference runs from Thursday through Sunday starting off with a ski day at one of Colorado’s world renowned Summit county ski areas. We generally choose the ski area depending on snow conditions at the time. Past ski trips have been to Keystone, Breckenridge, and Arapahoe Basin. Friday, March 28th has a number of fun activities starting with high performance go-cart racing and/or indoor skydiving and ending with an Italian feast at Valente’s restaurant in Wheat Ridge. After dinner, some conference participants meet for drinks and conversation at the hotel lounge.

The main part of the conference takes place on Saturday with presentations from conference participants on subjects mostly related to entrepreneurial activities. In the past we’ve had topics that included how to improve your company’s ability to show up in web search results or improving your marketing effectiveness as well as many, many other subjects. Some of our members are quite skilled at spotting technology trends and letting us know about them far in advance of their arrival or widespread adoption. The conference goes on all day Saturday with morning, afternoon, and evening presentations. We take a break to go out to dinner at one of the local restaurants in the evening. The late evening activity planned for Saturday night this year is an informal poker game.

The conference is very relaxed and allows for numerous opportunities to have side discussions with people who have entrepreneurial interests. A few of our past participants have grown their businesses from garage startups and sold them for enough money that they could comfortably retire. Curiously, no one has opted to retire. We’ve also had people who have made fortunes and then lost everything during a market shift. A few of us are not entrepreneurs by the strict definition of the word, but enjoy networking with entrepreneurs in the hope that some of it may rub off on us.

The regular cost of admission to the conference is $299 and we have special discounts for rooms at the Sheraton Denver West hotel for $75 per night. There is a period where you can receive a substantial discount if you sign up early. If you sign up before Feb 11^th, the cost of the conference is only $99. The cost after Feb 11th will be $149 up until Feb 29^th. After that, it will be the full $299. Junior registrants (age 21 and under) are admitted at half of the regular prices. The cost covers the conference admission only. All other activities are pay-as-you-go. For example, if you participate in the ski day, then the lift tickets, meals, and equipment rental are the responsibility of the individual. Similarly, the Friday afternoon events this year are expected to run approximately $30 to $50 depending on which ones you choose. The Friday evening Italian dinner at Valente’s is $35. The Saturday lunch at the hotel is often picked up by one of our sponsors, as are the refreshments on Saturday evening. Thus there is a lot of flexibility on which activities you'd like to participate. You may opt to attend for the entire 4 days or just for the weekend conference.

EntConnect is a great place to network with others and to give and receive advice on running a business. There are many opportunities to participate in the discussion and you can even present a topic of your own. The schedule of topics and speakers comes together on the website as the start date approaches. You can follow its development at www.entconnect.org. You can see a representative Entconnect agenda by looking at last year’s agenda which is linked to the website.

Entconnect has a guarantee that if you are not delighted with the conference, you can request and receive a full refund. I don’t know of many conferences that offer a guarantee like that. Similarly, if you find that you cannot attend for after you’ve paid, you can request a refund or have your registration fee applied to next year’s conference.

We have resisted promoting the conference for fear it may to grow too large since we did see it expand to over 250 attendees one year. After that, it was decided to scale it back in size to give it a much more relaxed and friendly feel. For the past few years, it has averaged around 25 to 30 attendees, but we would be happy to increase to double that size.

Please feel free to contact me if you’d like more details on the conference or visit the website at www.entconnect.org.

Labels: entconnect

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I attended EntConnect 2007 last weekend in Denver. Previously, the conference was called Entcon and was affiliated with Midnight Engineering magazine. Midnight Engineering was a magazine dedicated to people who were running their own tech ventures, mostly entrepreneurial engineers, and was published for about 8 years. I really enjoyed the magazine and it was what got me to start attending the conference. I have been going for a few years now and it's starting to get the feeling of a college reunion, as Dave Shaver of Neotool described it. We typically get approximately the same 20 to 30 people showing up each year, although it changes a little bit from year-to-year as some people drop in and out depending on their schedules. Jack has put together a few blog entries of some of the topics discussed. At the end of each conference we always talk about getting some new members to attend. At one point the conference had grown to over 200 attendees when the magazine was still being published, but that was actually too large and the regular attendees would like to keep it small, perhaps to around 50 people or less. Still, even to get to 50 attendees, we'd have to double the traditional attendance from where it has leveled out over the past few years.

My involvement in the conference has been more as an observer since for all the time I've been going, I've not been making my living as an entrepreneur, but rather as an employee of HP. I've presented on a number of products that I worked on during that time since they have all been related to new product categories for HP and my division has had the feeling of an entrepreneurial startup. I also have an unusual method of supporting these products using my personal web site to host the FAQs and I use community forums at Yahoo Groups that are collectively approaching more than 3500 members. John Gaudio who runs the conference has described me as an 'Intrepreneur', which I guess puts me somewhere in between an employee and an entrepreneur.

This year I announced my upcoming early retirement from HP which will occur at the end of May. I am hoping to use the time off to engage in some entrepreneurial pursuits, Adaptive Interfaces being one of them. I've not had the time to help push that venture much closer to reality, and my business partner, Mark, has been working at day jobs to pay the bills. There will be a lot of curiosity next year as I talk with the group about the transition from being an employee for the past 24 years into the new world of entrepreneurship. A little twist of irony is that several long-time entrepreneurs who regularly attend the conference have migrated into the workplace as employees over the past year. It's all OK though because even if you have a day job it doesn't mean you can't be an entrepreneur and vice-versa. Everyone is welcome at the conference and the people who attend have a wealth of experience that they are willing to share. I have already paid to attend next year's conference which is scheduled for March 27th through March 30th, 2008.

Labels: entconnect, entrepreneur

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The EntConnect conference is scheduled for March 23-26th, 2006. It has been going on for over 10 years in Denver and it centers around startups and entrepreneurship. I've been a regular attendee and always find it valuable and fun. The conference started with a magazine called Midnight Engineering that was all about running bootstrap businesses. Sadly, the magazine is no longer in print, but one of the original conference organizers, John Gaudio, continued to host the conference and a loyal core group of regulars continues to meet each year.

The conference includes a day of skiing in Colorado's legendary champagne powder (which is optional) followed by several days of informal meetings and presentations about various topics of interest to entrepreneurs. Some topics covered in the past have included entrepreneurial law, marketing, blogging, company valuation, search engine optimization, and much more. I usually find the personal stories behind each of the attendees' businesses the most enlightening part of the conference.

The cost of the conference is $199, but if you sign up early (by next Tuesday 2/28), the cost is only $99. The room rates are also very reasonable.

The webpage for the conference can be found here.

Jack Krupansky, one of our regulars, also has a page on it that has some photos and links to previous years' conferences here. It can help give you a flavor for what the conference is like.

Labels: entconnect

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We had another successful Entconnect meeting in Denver this year thanks to all the hard work by John Gaudio. You can see me in the photo, one of several photos taken by Dave Shaver of NeoTool, looking at a project that Mark Pelletier and I are working on that is related to aircraft instrumentation. I'll post about it later when we are further along. Entcon was originally started back around 1992 and was affiliated with Midnight Engineering magazine. This magazine was founded by William E. Gates, not to be confused with the Bill Gates of Microsoft, and focused on starting and running small companies, usually related to technology. Unfortunately, Midnight Engineering is no longer in print, but John and a loyal group of enthusiasts continued having the meetings and gave it a slightly different name, just to make sure we didn't abscond with the original name of the meeting, Entcon.

I've been taking a young friend, Court Rye to Entconnect for the past several years. Court was a summer intern at HP and so I became somewhat of a mentor to him and invited him to Entcon in 2002 and we've been attending it ever since. Court is quite experienced in web design and he won a coveted door prize, a Gold blog site from Myst Technologies (a $3500 value) and so he'll get a chance to learn about this impressive platform. This year, I also brought along Mark Pelletier, and he put together a great little display case for our project, and gave a nice presentation and demo of it.

There were about 25 people there, including about 5 or 6 who were attending for their very first time. The keynote speaker was Bill French, co-founder of MyST Technology. We also got to meet Bill's son, Loren, and Bill's dad, Gerry, who gave us a presentation on submarine development for the U.S. Navy, where he spent a 35-year career during the height of the Cold War and nuclear submarine development. It was great to get some feedback on our project from Loren since he is a very experienced pilot with virtually every rating imaginable. As you can see from his resume, he is quite the Renaissance Man.

It was good catching up with old friends and making some new ones and I very much look forward to going back next year.

Labels: entconnect

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