FULL HOUSE: Andrew Hyde, the major driving force behind TedXBoulder, minutes before the event began. (Reporter photo)

A young, enthusaistic crowd packed into Chautauqua Auditorium Saturday afternoon and evening, August 7, for the first TedXBoulder, a local incarnation of the brainy TED Conference phenom.

Some 22 speakers gave short talks on topics ranging from energy efficiency to electric cars to psychotherapy and mobile crowdsourcing in a five-hour talkfest punctuated halfway by an hour or so for a bit of beer and schmoozing, and twice for musical interludes. Nonprofits had set up booths to share their enthusiasm for good causes. Here’s part of what Sarah Welch said on her blog in a review of the event:

There were many talks that followed the theme of finding and loving your true self. There were talks out to save the planet and its people. There was a former professional triathelete, Buddhist monk, school board member, venture capitalist, improv theater owner, astrophysicist, graphics designer, and much more.

Sarah noted that Boulder venture capital investor and all-around tech startup cheerleader Brad Feld had a decidedly un-businessy theme in his remarks:

He spoke candidly about his marriage and all of the things that can get in the way. His solution, or perhaps more accurately, his wife’s solution? A quarterly week off the grid. No phones. No email. No contact with the outside world–just time, solitude, and each other. This is quite a lovely idea, and this idea may have been the most practical of the night. It’s also the one I heard most discussed afterwards.

Yes, it was warm under the Chautauqua big top on an August night (we went and sat on the side, near open doors, and felt a cool breeze and had elbow room). But, all in all, it was an inspiring undertaking by the can-do, inspiringly enthusiastic organizers led by Andrew Hyde and Dan Storch. They merit our admiration and thanks.

AVID: Audience gave Jeff Finkelstein of Customer Paradigm close attention for his tips on search engine optimization. (Photo: Bob Wells)

Oh sure. It’s easy to laugh now. But yesterday was grueling, me . . . trapped inside the Boulder Theatre for a day-long WordCamp Boulder, a geeky gathering of the WordPress faithful for five consecutive hour-long tutorials and a schmoozy social hour as the summer sun shone relentlessly outside.

Was it worth it to me, a WordPress user? Oh my yes, but then I’d only traveled two miles to get there. What, I wondered, were the afterthoughts of the eager young man I met who’d driven 11 hours to get here from Las Cruces, N.M.?

WordPress, for the uninitiated, provides the software underpinnings (geekspeak: “platform”) for publishing blogs, and is being increasingly used as a content management system (geekspeak acronym: CMS) for publishing all manners of websites. It’s powerful all right, especially with all the third-party predesigned formats (“themes”) and add-on tools (plug-ins”) available for it, many of them (like WordPress itself) for the price of (drum roll) free.

Powerful, yes. Easy to learn, alas, not terribly. Not if you want to do more than produce a garden-variety blog using default values for about a zillion different variables you might prefer to change. That’s where WordCamp and a bustling industry of people teaching and learning WordPress come in.

As for our cult gathering in Boulder, I thoroughly enjoyed the session with Boulder’s Mayor of the Internet Dave Taylor and Doyle Albee of Metzger Associates holding forth on how to create a community around your blog or website. Good stuff, especially their dissecting of the Daily Camera’s free-for-all commenting policy. And I took copious notes for the session, pictured above, with Jeff Finkelstein of Customer Paradigm in Ft. Collins, handing out tips about SEO (that acronym, for the hideously out of touch, stands for search engine optimization).

Additional sessions on “blogging for your business” and “do-it-yourself usability testing” were also densely loaded with very usable information for this web publisher and website strategy consultant. I pounded away on my iPad taking down gems of wisdom from the assembled experts.

Someone remarked that it kind of felt like going back to college, as we sallied forth from topic to topic, some of us moving as needed between the Boulder Theatre and two other nearby venues.

Last year’s WordCamp for the region had been in Denver. Congrats to those who made the bid and did the work to bring it to Boulder this year. I counted roughly 400 attendees, equally divided between professionals (web designers and developers who use WordPress for client sites) and users (people who blog on WordPress individually and those whose enterprises use it as a platform).

Did you attend? What did you think?

Are you a WordPress cult member? If you’d like a reasonably coherent copy of my notes from the sessions I attended, e-mail me at bobwells2 [at] me [dot] com.

A lengthier video featuring the demographic insights of Richard Florida appears later in this blog.

For some of us with more than a few gray hairs, insights into younger people can be extremely useful, both in navigating life and in our marketing and business activities. Rebecca Thorman, writing in the blog modite.com, shares insights in her post, “Generation Y is too quiet, too conservative.” Source of her insight? She is one. Excerpt: “Generation Y is so overly focused on the yin of consensus that we’ve lost its yang of conflict.” Read story.

The Economist penned this very revealing article pointing out that, somewhat counterintuitively, PR is thriving despite the recession. The reasons are many, and the article has major insights about why firms are stepping up their use of PR in a time of turmoil. Read article.

A talk by futurist Gerd Leonhardt at Google, March 13, 2009. Extremely thought-provoking and highly recommended for media professionals.

No, social media isn’t the quick cure to marketing ailments, but it can invite prospective customers and clients to get to know you better, writes Jay Baer in his interesting blog, Convince&Convert. I particularly liked this point:

Social media is the perfect conversion half-step. Not sure whether you’re ready to buy a Toyota? Visit us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter, or read our blog, or watch our videos. Each of them will show you what our brand is REALLY like, and you won’t have to wade through all this pesky navigation and flash movies to get what you need.

You may find value in reading the whole post.

This is an MP3 audio file of a talk by Robert McChesney in Portland, February, 2009, “Journalism and the Future of Democracy.” McChesney is Professor of Communications at University Of indiana. (Audio file courtesy of Alternative Radio, Boulder, Colorado). Play or download MP3 file

Very useful insights into how innovators all rush to live together in about 40 regions worldwide. That’s just one “big idea” from this presentation by author Richard Florida, delivered earlier this year on the Google campus in Silicon Valley.

Richard Florida, “Who’s Your City?” from Bob Wells on Vimeo.