EventVue

In 1914 Ernest Shackleton placed the following ad in a London newspaper seeking recruits for his imperial trans-antarctic expedition:

“MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS.”

Recruiting people to work for a startup can feel a lot like this classified ad. Startup life often means working long hours, taking less than competitive pay and accepting the fact that there are plenty of unknown variables that could affect your success.

Why did thousands of people respond to Shackleton’s ad? Why are so many people signing up for startup life?

It turns out your answer to “how was your day?” really matters. No one wants to work on something boring. We want to work somewhere where we can see our ideas become a reality. Life is too short to hate what you do all day. Life is too short to spend your life doing stuff that doesn’t matter. Life is too short to work in a cubicle.

Safe jobs aren’t safe anymore. Companies that have been around for decades are closing their doors. All of a sudden, startups don’t seem so risky anymore.

The reality is that you will spend a huge percentage of your life working at a job. Many people are realizing that working on stuff you believe in is much more satisfying than just getting a paycheck. Why sit around waiting for something to happen when you could be busy advancing something you believe in?

A few months ago I started talking to a few friends about a crazy idea. I’d noticed that every startup in Boulder was needing developers. At the same time, I had a gut feeling that there were hundreds of geeks across America that would love a chance to work at a startup, but just didn’t know how to get started. I enlisted some friends and we banded together to put on the boulder.me job fair. We’ve received hundreds of job applications and we’re now in the process of picking out 100 developers for will get a free trip to Boulder to interview with our companies. I’ve been blown away by both the response and the quality of applicants we’ve received. We’ve got some brilliant people heading to Boulder and all that’s left is to convince you why you should quit your job, move to Boulder and join this team of people who are obsessed with making conferences better.

EventVue is growing like crazy and we need passionate people to join us. More than anything we’re looking for smart people who believe in what we’re doing.

Conferences are where people gather to share ideas. Those ideas spread. Those ideas ultimately change the world.

By helping the right people connect at conferences, we’re helping those ideas spread faster. The conference industry has been stagnant for way too long. But it’s beginning to change. Conferences are waking up to the new reality of a connected world. With the cost of travel going up and the stock market going down, conference organizers are searching for new ways to convince people that their show is worth the trip.

I really believe a day is coming where every conference will use online tools to help their attendees connect. We’re going to be a part of that. We have the opportunity to determine what those tools should look like and then go out and build them. We’re going to take EventVue to conferences everywhere. We’re going to get to hear some amazing stories of what happens when the right people get together.

Want to be a part of that?

EventVue is built in PHP, so it would help if you’re good at writing code that starts with <?php and ends with ?>. There are an awful lot of conferences that still need to be introduced to EventVue. That means that we’re going to need a lot more servers and some smart people who know how to manage them. With thousands of people using our product, our user interface is going to be pretty important. Want to help us design that? We are driven by ideas. We dream big and work hard. If you can see yourself fitting in an entrepreneurial environment that demands a broad range of skills, we’d like to talk to you.

We’re hiring people who want to change the world. If that’s you, let’s talk. Email me at josh@eventvue.com.

We’re continually looking for new ways to help the right people connect at conferences.

Our latest feature helps you make those connections by making it easier for you to note the people you want to meet. Our new favorites feature lets you make a personalized list of the people that you find interesting. Adding or removing people from your favorites is as simple as clicking a star. We’ve even included a print-friendly version that you can take to the conference.

Included with this release are a few design tweaks. We’ve redesigned our profiles to make them more streamlined. You can now send messages and favorite people directly from the search results. We’ve also added paging to the top of the search results so you don’t have to scroll so much.

We’re excited about the tools we are building and we would love to hear your feedback. Let us know what you think.

We have been very lucky to have some amazing advisors help us make EventVue a success. Their voices of experience have been invaluable over the past year to help us avoid many pitfalls that could have derailed our initiatives.

Today, we’re extremely proud to announce that two of these advisors, Wendy Lea and Paul Berberian, have been appointed to our board of directors (pending the legal stuff that makes it official). Both are successful, trusted, and well respected entrepreneurs with long track records for getting early-stage startup companies up and running. Wendy has some of the sharpest marketing instincts in the country and Paul has previously taken a company public. We are very pleased to have their continued support to guide EventVue’s future growth.

A hearty and warm welcome to Paul and Wendy from the entire EventVue team! Feel free to leave a comment welcoming them as well.