What is SIEA? Something Independent invited business from all around Colorado to compete for a grand prize of $1,500 in a video competition. More than that, to hold an event that would show case all the business and bring them them to the public attention. In their words: “Across Colorado there exists a distinct independent spirit that is nowhere more evident than in those Colorado entrepreneurs living at the intersection of business and lifestyle. In recognition of their commitment, their accomplishments and their passion…This is not a business plan competition. This is 90 seconds to make our judges believe in you.”

23 participants from all over Colorado participated, some were entrants from last year producing new videos for 2012:

(Active Junky, Alkaline, Apex Sports Group, Astis, Bould, condorcam, Denver Beer Co, Evol, Folsom, Grace, In the Soup, MHM, Mobile Canning, Oogave, Shredly, Oz Longboards, Pakems, Peakvibe, Skea, Snug Organics, Street Swell, White Girl Salsa, Wild Goose Canning)

It was a tremendous event, we had a great turn out here at Battery 621! The top three finalists were Apex Sports Group, Condorcam (our friend here at Batter and a returning finalist), and MHM (also a returning applicant). But there could only be one winner…

Entry 11 – Mile High Mountaineering from Something Independent on Vimeo.

Congratulations, MHM – Mile High Mountaineering on your terrific video!

Check out more pictures from the event on our facebook page. We’re excited to be a part of it next year.

We had such a great time at LeanUX Denver last week meeting a ton of great new people and catching up with old friends. Thank you to everyone who stopped by our table to chat with us and find out about some of our UX/UI positions—Even if you were just swinging by to pick up some of our gourmet chocolate covered bacon.

It was a superb event! We loved the excitement and energy of everyone involved. There were fantastic companies, phenomenal workshop leaders & speakers, and plenty of talented folks interested in learning more about LeanUX. Attendees included people from all over the globe: everyone from Boston to New Zealand, and yet, it was still an intimate enough event for everyone to be able to get to know each other….

I was even lucky enough to attend two of the half-day workshops on Wednesday and can personally attest to how informative and fun they were.

We look forward to attending this event again. Great job to all the people who worked on making this event a success! We are glad we could help through sponsorship. See you all next year!

BWBacon is a proud flute sponsor for the next Playing for Change Day event, scheduled for September 22!

PFC Day is a global benefit event to promote peace and positive change through music. The Playing for Change Foundation makes it its mission to create positive social change in the world through music education. By providing children a safe place to learn, flourish and express themselves, PFCF helps provide a creative alternative to the struggles many of these children face daily. To date, they’ve built eight schools, often in locations that suffer from extreme poverty, lack of basic resources, limited medical care and educational resources, past conflicts and genocide, unstable governments, and a host of infectious diseases.

BWBacon has a long history of supporting Playing for Change and it’s missions in a variety of ways. Dave Bacon himself acts on the board of the directors. BWB has also connected them with some of our BWBacon’s friends like HiDef, Inc. and mGive to support last year’s Playing for Change Day event. Recently, BWBacon Group has connected them with Denver’s very own music project, Flobot.org’s Youth Media Studio, being built In the South Lincoln/Mariposa community near the 10th & Osage station.

And finally, if you were appreciating those sponsorship icons, yours truly is thrilled to be able to actively support them through an in-kind donation of design work:

These are the sponsorship icon’s Jacklynn from BWB developed for the event. They feature some of the instruments the children of the Playing for Change school’s learn: the flute, the sarangi, and the djembe.

Brilliant.

The team at a Japanese news site ordered one with a total of 1,050 strips of bacon. Yeah, that’s an 58,000 calories to a Whopper, but what’s a few calories for the price of happiness?

(via Shortlist)

We’d like six to go, please.

TedxMileHigh emcee Jeremy Duhon

TedxMileHigh was this Saturday and I know everyone who went would agree it was an incredible experience. I feel so fortunate to have heard all of these stories from the amazing Coloradans and Colorado businesses. To those of you lucky enough to attend, I know you’re attacking this week with renewed zeal with the volume on your heart turned all the way up like I am (yes, that’s a reference to the riveting slam poetry champ finale from Ken Arkind, Bobby Lefbre, and Theo Wilson).

The theme of this year’s conference was Risk Rewards. Maybe some of you–like those of you who are always have a pair of skis, some camping gear, and climbing ropes in the athletic salad that is your Subaru’s trunk–think you know what it could have been about. But, no, it wasn’t about the thrill of climbing Long’s, it was about the leaps of faith–big or small–that we can all take everyday to change our lives, our communities, or the world. Whether its finding a new job that makes you happier or supporting women’s rights in Israel.

Some of my favorite talks were…

Natalie Baumgartner (from RoundPegg) on “fit.” Natalie is a psychologist who has made a career of studying culture fit and currently works for RoundPegg. I was surprised to find out that a staggering 49% of new hires fail and 89% of the time it’s because they were not a culture fit. Changing jobs is a dramatic change for both the employees and the companies hiring them–both are taking a risk and hoping for the best. Natalie talked about the absolute necessity of ensuring that you are happy at your work by taking to time to ensure the place you want to work reflects and encourages your natural disposition and talents. She explained that, by the time we start our first careers jobs our personalities are established so we shouldn’t try to cram ourselves into a someone else’s box in order to “get by” at work. We spend the majority of our day and lives at work, so find the place that brings out the best in you. Leaving your current job might seem like a precarious step, but “it’s a greater risk to stay where you don’t fit,” as Natalie said. She found that companies that take the time to ensure that their employees mesh with the true culture of the company were six times more profitable and that the employees were much more likely to be happy and more loyal to the company.

Ryan Martens (from Rally Software) on bring your values to your work. When someone asks you how you’re doing, you should be saying “I’m doing well and good*.” Ryan gave and persuasive talk in investing in social enterprise, harnessing the power of business in order to create social change. Using your work as an outlet for your values, which should go hand in hand. He did a fantastic job in outlining the ways in which businesses can take simple steps to applying these steps in order to ensure that you’re getting the most fulfillment out of your work. (*Does anyone else always think of this skit when someone asks them?)

Adam Lerners from MCA and Mixed Tastes (formally The Lab). Adam gave an entertaining talk on his journey to work for the MCA and to create the internationally recognized Mixed Tastes lectures series.  Like others, he talked about the shift from wanting working towards the desire to impress others with a lifetime worth of intellectual accolades, to doing things for himself that matched his own interests— and how the latter brought him much more joy. Dropping the routine of semi-pretentious art talks of abstract ideas and obscure artists, Adam accepted a lecture series request from Belmar (a new suburban district being developed in Lakewood, Colorado) and decided to have a creative discussion on two completely unrelated topics. Like “Andy Warhol & Artificial Lighting” or “Bananas Foster & Emily Dickinson.” The program slowly generated more and more popularity while the Adam and his team felt like it was just fun. For example they started a series called “MISHUGAS!” that were recorded interviews of Adam’s Aunt Mirim and gags like offering gigantic sacks of rubble “free to new members!” Eventually the Mixed Tastes was being discussed nationally in the New York Times and had a joint project featured at the Pompidou Center in Paris. It goes to show, the reward can become so much more than the risk.

Of course there were too many good talks to describe in depth here, and I can’t do them justice anyway….Woody Roseland‘s fluidly motivational reflection on surviving cancer five times. Very moving philanthropic stories from Jeremy Bloom, Jessica Posner, and Laura Merage. An incredible violin performance from Kayvon Coffey and a musical performance from Gregory Alan Isakov, to name a few more.

Towards the end the atmosphere was so electrifying and momentum was building up so much so that we couldn’t help but give robust applause and rise from our chairs after each new speaker, the event capping off with the heart-stopping joint-performance from the three poetry slammers I mentioned at the top of this post.

I encourage you all to watch the videos of the lecturers that should be posted in the coming weeks. But in the mean time, just remember that the little positive changes in your life can compound to make big differences:

(source)

If you haven’t cracked open your June issue of ColoradoBiz yet, time to find the nearest easy-chair and snap open this article: “50 Colorado Companies to Watch.” There is a huge spectrum of Colorado business showcased: everything from popcorn to solar thermal technology. We are proud to see three of our very own clients and another three of our partners were finalists. These are companies that have been Fueling the Economic Fires of Colorado, continuing to grow and innovate in an unstable economic climate. Not to mention our own hand in helping these companies build strong teams.

While I’m sure this might actually frighten my own mother, I still think it’s awesome. It’s amazing how quickly technologies are growing and morphing into things we wouldn’t have thought was possible a few years ago.

Just thought you’d like this. Maybe you’re ready for bigger challenge too?

Our BW Giving program helps us acknowledge the hard work our resources do for the companies we’ve connected them with by supporting the causes they care about. They represent us and so we want to represent them.

This quarter, we donated over $600 dollars in our candidate’s names towards organizations they choose, including these eight new foundations! This brings our grand total to $10,062 we have donated to charities since beginning this program.

• Project Yes: Provides leadership opportunities for young people through the arts and service-learning located in Lafayette, Colorado.
• UNICEF:  Helping to build a world where the rights of every child are realized by providing child survival development, education, gender equality, medical aid, and protection.
• Electronic Frontier Foundation: Defends people’s rights in an increasingly digital world.
• Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters:  Whether a child needs hospitalization, ongoing care for a chronic illness, outpatient surgery or primary care, CHKD Health System provides the staff, facilities and technologies that address the unique demands of childhood.
• Mountain States Children’s Home: For 50 years on 155 acres, MSCH has provided room for a child to find peace, protection, and a place in a world where their needs will be met.
• Denver’s Road Home: Denver’s Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness approved by Mayor Hickenlooper and the Denver City Council.
• American Cancer Society: A nationwide, community-based voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem.
• Camp Kesem:  A college-student-run summer camp for kids whose parents have (or have had) cancer whose goal is to provide plenty of laughs and lots of emotional but non-therapeutic support for their campers.

Did you all have a great time at our First Friday part last weekend? We were so excited to introduce everyone to Playing for Change through our close ties with the foundation! What you might not have known is that we also invited the two PFC band members, Jason Tamba & Mermans Mosengo, to visit Place Bridge Academy before coming to Battery 621 to jam out with you all. Place Bridge is a wonderful school that includes nine Newcomer Centers for English Language Learners. 30+ different languages and over 50 difference countries are represented in their student body! Also there were some of the staff and teachers from the amazing Flobots.org Foundation.

Mermans and Jason performed a number of wonderful songs you might have heard if you listen watch their YouTube videos as obsessively as we have been in our offices: Stand By Me, One Love…etc, but a personal favorite was a song that Jason wrote about finding wandering goats in the evening back in Congo. It was called “bahhhh.” It was so interesting to hear the stories their stories of growing up and how they began playing music.

They also played with the kids a lot. Above is one of the boys performing a song he wrote himself about not letting mean people bother you. Adorable.

Kids dancing and playing.

I hope you know better than to miss out on our great events  now!