How many of you remember what the gaming ecosystem looked like in 2007? There were consoles, PC gaming, Macs were practically a no-show except for “light” games, and mobile gaming was ports of 8 bit gaming engines and evolved versions of snake.

No one cared about playing games on the phone, that’s not what they were for, they were for email (Windows CE, Blackberry), messaging, and phone calls. Nokia’s N-Gage platform notwithstanding

Fast forward to today, iOS and Android (phones) own the market that was created when the iPhone was released… that market is called “Casual Games.” There’s been no shortage of debate about how powerful the phones are, and how well they can play games, but without a doubt, nearly everyone plays games on their phones.

These games aren’t typically using the latest whiz-bang graphics, or VR, or or even team play. They’re nothing like what a “gamer” would play. They’re far to uninteresting. The gamer wants wicked refresh rates, absurd FPS, and the latest and greatest GPUs and CPUs with as much memory as possible. Add a VR headset and the requirements increase further.

The casual gamer wants to be able to enjoy themselves, play puzzle games, grow farms, checkers, peer to peer backgammon, and so on. Things that run perfectly on their mobile devices.

What’s happening today is a very similar revolution. Oculus released the Oculus go, powered by what amounts to a mobile phone’s core. They’ve stripped the non-essential software and hardware and put it in the market.

What’s different this time? The Oculus Go leverages a well tuned app store ecosystem, developed with their partners at Samsung while building Gear VR. Why does the app store matter? Says Greg Joswiak, Apple vice president of iOS, iPad and iPhone marketing, in a Rolling Stone story called “Apple: How iPhone Gaming Revolutionized Video Games”

“We thought maybe we’d get 50 apps to start, but on the first day we had 500, and we thought that was an omen. But I’d be lying if I said we thought it would be as revolutionary as it would become. It’s changed the world. It’s changed the way software is written and distributed. It’s changed the gaming industry.”

Simply? Consumers want an easy button. The Oculus Go is incredibly simple, and easy. The Oculus Go is not for the “gamers” among us. It’s a very simple and elegant entry into the consumer VR space. It provides exactly the same experience that the current casual games do on iOS and Android, but in VR. You can play with friends, watch movies and TV, and of course you can do most of it in real time with friends.

Here’s a quote from a friend of mine, and new Go convert/evangelist Elie Finegold: “Got another one today for my wife so we can hang together while I’m traveling.” This comes from our first experience in Oculus Rooms. He and I spent the better part of an hour just chatting and catching up. He was so taken by it, well, you see what happened.

We’re on the edge of something great here. I hope you’ll follow along for more as it unfolds.

Previous Go stories:
New to the Oculus Go? Here are 10 apps to get you started.
Wireless consumer VR: slip it on and Go. Anywhere.

You may know the game Breakout, which originally appeared on the Atari gaming system in 1976. From there we had Super Breakout and a whole host of clones and variations in the 90’s an 2000’s. Arkanoid on the Mac platform was another of my favorites. Then came along Vector Ball 3D which turned the axis 90 degrees, so instead of a paddle moving left to right along the bottom of the play area, it now moved up/down, left and right. In Vector Ball 3D allowed forward and backwards as well.. This gave us a great glimpse of what would become possible once we could play in a truly immersive 3d experience.

This brings us to ZeroTransform’s Proton Pulse, one of my 10 must haves for new Oculus Go users. I posted to Reddit shortly after picking my Oculus Go asking if anyone had a recommendation for a breakout style game. Proton Pulse was one of the games mentioned, so I went directly to the Oculus Store and purchased it.

The game itself was written for the Gear VR years ago, and hadn’t been updated since. The tracking of the paddle uses head movements, as the default Gear VR didn’t have a hand held controller. Even with that limitation, the game play was still great.

What strikes me most about Proton Pulse is the environment itself. It’s very bright, very neon, and full of color and movement. I can’t help but think about the early visions of what VR would look like in the future (circa 1995) via Lawnmower Man, Hackers, Johnny Mnemonic and other scifi movies. Maybe the word I’m looking for is Cyberpunk. The soundtrack lends itself to this as well, with original music from Jake Kaufman [Virt], Dan Behrens [Danimal Cannon], and the developer himself, Justin Moravetz [Rave-TZ]. It’s pulsating and electric.

The updated Proton Pulse leverages the Oculus Go controller, and the game itself has been upgraded to Proton Pulse Plus, the same game that’s available across all of the other VR platforms.

This is a casual arcade style game that requires your attention. It causes you to put your thoughts on hold while you focus on getting to that next level. This is a good thing, and precisely the promise of virtual reality.

Proton Pulse Plus from Zero Transform is available for $4.99 (a steal in my opinion) from the Oculus Store. Yes, I did in fact buy it twice. It’s that good.

The Oculus Go is available starting at $199 for the 32GB model from your local Best Buy, or from Amazon. Yes, the link to Amazon is an affiliate link, so I will earn either $1.99 or $2.49 if you buy the Oculus Go with that link. If you do, thank you!

Without further ado…

1. Claro. Claro is an incredibly detailed puzzle game that uses sounds and fine motion to great a serene setting. It’s one of the best examples of what the Oculus Go platform can be. It’s not a AAA VR gaming title with blood and gore, it’s far better. It’s peaceful and makes you think.
2. Amaze 3D Videos. The Amaze team is building a platform with true 3D videos. They’re not full 360, and frankly they don’t need to be. While the Oculus Go certainly can do 360° video, and well, most people I know use it sitting down. Have you ever watched a 360° video sitting on a couch?
3. Facebook 360. There are many different type of videos within the Facebook 360 app, but I found the true 360 experiences to be the best. Specifically, watch the video with Bill Gates in Africa (and be prepared to look around in his car. It’s fascinating.).
4. Proton Pulse. One of my favorite types of games is the breakout game. In these games your job is to move a paddle across the screen to keep a ball bouncing into bricks. It’s a classic game. The goal is to clear the bricks and move to the next level. Proton Pulse takes this into VR, and changes the plane of play. You use your head to move the “paddle” and clear the bricks. There are power-ups and interesting treats as you get better at the game. This one experience solidified the value of the purchase. It’s a great example of an immersive world, straight out of 90’s scifi. It’s now been updated to use the Oculus Go controller!
5. Wonderglade. This casual game caught me by surprise. The graphics are incredibly detailed, and the app itself is constructed like a board game. It’s not a board game by any means, but it has that feel – it’s more like a launch pad. You move a character to each experience, then enter the experience. Your view turns into the game you selected, and you play away. My favorites are the putt putt game, and the basketball challenge. Neither of which are what you just imagined. At all.
6. Retarget. This is a puzzle game, with a casual “toss” game play. You toss a red ball toward glass containers, and if you shatter the wrong objects, you lose the level. It felt a lot like an Angry Birds wherein you can complete the level with grading. You can immediate try again to improve your finish. It’s very addicting, and uses the 3D space well.
7. Art Plunge. If you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like to go into a painting like the Mona Lisa, now is your chance. The world inside the painting has been meticulously recreated to show action and scenes that would have surrounded the setting of the painting. You have to see this to believe it. What caught my eye more than anything though is the navigation technique. Incredibly creative… pick it up to see what it’s like.
8. Gala360. This is a very simple concept – take incredible 360° photos and show them in a slide show. The unique value here is that in some cases the artists that have taken the photos are available for hire. There are photos from all over the world. Jungles, cityscapes, rooms… everything you can imagine. It’s well worth the $3.99 to unlock all of the images. That’s a Latte from your favorite coffee shop, and it goes to the photographers that have included their works.
9. Oculus Venues. A few nights ago, Vance Joy graced the stage at Red Rocks Amphitheater and along for the ride was NextVR. This particular experience gave you several views of the venue, changing intermittently as you chat with your seat mates. If you choose to, you’ll have up to four seat mates, with the full ability to chat. If you turn and look around, you’ll be surrounded by other people wearing the Oculus Go or Gear VR. The Facebook details of your seat mates play a role in who you’re seated next to. It’s incredibly helpful to see what things you have in common (friends, groups, etc.) before engaging in conversation. The content is still evolving, but I can’t recommend it enough. Social VR is the future, and Venues does a great job of showing us how and why.
10. Along Together. I’ll be completely frank, I haven’t purchased this one… yet. It’s two to three times as much as the average title in the Go store, but based on the reviews it’s worth every penny. Out of 37 reviews, 92% are 5 stars, the rest are four stars. Right, nothing below four stars. It’s billed as a VR platformer with problem solving and puzzles that will keep you entertained for hours. It certainly is nice to look at, and showcases what’s possible when experiences leverage the available hardware.

Of course there’s always Oculus Rooms (social game play, like checkers, boggle, etc.) with fellow Oculus Go users, Netflix, Hulu, the web browser (YouTube, gmail, Flipboard, Reddit, etc.) and other things you’ll find entertaining. Look at the reviews of the things I posted above, and view similar things. Also, be sure to keep up with the What’s New section. Find and join the Facebook Oculus Go groups (here, here), and the Reddit dedicated to the device.

If you haven’t yet picked up the go, here’s a link to Amazon. Yes, it’s an affiliate link, so I will earn either $1.99 or $2.49 if you buy the Oculus Go with that link. If you do, thank you!

I live in 350 sq ft. with my wife, daughter, and two dogs. It’s nice to be able to zone out and be in my own space without having to be tethered to the PC and the Samsung HMD Odyssey. I’ve even used it outside in a camping chair.

My current usage patterns suggest that it’s a replacement for using Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Flipboard, and so on on my iPhone X. I set up a couple of web based Google Mail accounts too. It’s remarkably usable for these things. I have bookmarks set for all of them, so they’re just a click away.

As far as VR experiences, there are several things I keep going back to. Wonder Glade has several mini games. For some reason, I really enjoy the basketball and mini-golf.

Proton Pulse is a great breakout/bricks type game apparently made for Gear VR as it uses head motions, not the controller. I expect that’ll be updated, but it’s well worth the $2.99.

A couple of other interesting things: Mondly (interactive language practice) and MelodyVR (360° live concerts with multiple camera positions).

I also love that Altspace is here. That brings the promise of social VR to an untethered, inexpensive headset. I haven’t tested all of the games, but being able to play with others, cross platform, is intriguing.

I haven’t test the party feature yet. I have a few friends with Go, but if you’re ever online at the same time I am, I’d be happy to give it a shot.

Of course the consumption experiences are great too. Hulu, Netflix, Amaze, Gala… they all do exactly what you expect.

There are some things that would make the experience better, but they’re certainly not show stoppers. Copy and pasting text, a “right click” somehow in the browser, pairing of other Bluetooth devices (keyboard, mouse, headphones), and a way to view a computer’s screen interactively. Think Bigscreen, but two way.

Imagine setting up a virtual server at Digital Ocean with Ubuntu, and being able to control that machine from your Go, anywhere with WIFI. I’d love to use this for work, but like with VR in general, this is still a wide open area for devs to tackle.

More soon.

You can pick one up at Best Buy, or follow this link to Amazon. It is an affiliate link, so if you make a purchase there, Heather and I will receive a small percentage of the sale.

A license is granted once the applicant, typically a spry and eager teenager, passes a written test and the state sponsored or licensed driving test. Permits are issued under certain circumstances, but require a fully licensed driver to be present at all times while the permitted driver is behind the wheel. There is an early age requirement for both the license and the permit, and both require a very basic understanding of the laws of the road and basic vehicle operation.

Likewise, a license can be revoked by the issuer for many reasons… DUI, medical issues, too many “points” for infractions, etc.

It is a license to drive. There is no right to drive. It’s a privilege, earned by proving your understanding of the law and basic vehicle operation.

I have a simple proposal that would revolutionize the safety of drivers and pedestrians, and would lead to a guaranteed increases of funding for public roads.

Ready for it?

This is an idea so simple, it’s unbelievable.

I’m a software developer by trade with 25 years of experience behind me. One of the items I have to deal with on a regular basis, and something everyone reading this is familiar with is the “Software License Agreement.” License agreements are the little modal boxes that appear when you open software for the first time. Or when boot your new phone for the first time. Your computer, tablet, TV… they’are all bound by license agreements.

My proposal is to tie a similar license agreement to the driver’s license. This license agreement could be updated whenever necessary to incorporate new technologies related to driving, tolling, and public safety. It would require that each licensee have a correct and current method of contact tied to their license (as is already required by law).

Every update to the physical license requires a new agreement. Get a new license? Change your address? Renew your license? Lose it? You must agree to the new terms. This would ensure that every US citizen would have to agree to the terms within the next 5 to 10 years.

Typically it’s incumbent upon the user to check the license agreement for changes periodically, but the grantor also sends update notifications via email, text message, or snail mail. In this case, media would most certainly cover changes. Each state office can issue updates via social media channels, or via a simple newsletter subscription.

Why on earth would I propose such a preposterous scenario? It’s simple. While most people are good honest law abiding citizens, there is an ever growing group of individuals that would follow the law to the T with a little more encouragement. States and municipalities have tried various versions of automating the law – red light cameras, speed traps (vans with speed sensitive cameras and measurement), and more.

If your state sees it fit to implement automated methods to ensure public safety, that could easily be incorporated into the agreement.

For example, all toll roads could become speed monitors. They know when you enter and when you leave each entrance and exit. This is a math problem. They already have the vehicle’s license plate, so tying this back to the licensed vehicle and its owner is simple. Other automated means of speed patrol could be implemented – autonomous drones, sign affixed apparatus, etc. If given a range of tolerance (+10%), this would be highly effective at deterring speeding.

Another item in the agreement is red light cameras, and other automated traffic safety items. Driving through a crosswalk when the pedestrian present notification lights are flashing, school zone infractions, passing on the right, trucks in the left lane on freeways, and the list goes on and on. All of these can be automated, and should be.

Imagine going through a toll booth, then hearing your favorite navigation app tell you that you’ve just earned a point on your license and a $75 bill from the state because your average speed between booths was more than 10% of the stated speed limit. That $75 would be charged directly to your toll bill. It’s simple.

This could be implemented in no time, and with a relatively small budget (that would pay for itself quickly), with a simple state issued Mandatory Driver’s License Agreement.

A state mandated license agreement could be updated when new technologies enter the market. For example, what needs to change when autonomous vehicles enter the retail landscape?

If you oppose this idea, I encourage you to take a step back and think about why. It will always come down to the law. Rules are made to be broken, laws are not. If you speed (like I do, mind you) then you’re knowingly and intentionally breaking the law. Any aversion to automated testing is a personal plea to allow you to break the law. I know for a fact that I’d speed less (I’ve already been far more aware, and try to stay under 10%).

Pedestrian safety is an issue that needs to be addressed, and current methods are falling short. We have the technology to solve this. And we should.

The idea was simple really – a central repository for your digital persona. Create an account with your email address, upload a photo (or photos), and any developer that uses the Gravatar APIs would automatically have access to your data to fill in profile information. It meant you could update and maintain your profile in one place and that data would be updated all over. It’s a one to many internet profile.

The time is now for a multi-dimensional version of this application. Here are a few ideas:

• Open, and decentralized using an IPFS style storage engine
• 3D avatars – as many as the user can create, but only one active at a time
• Support for the major model formats (3ds, max, c4d, maya, blend, obj, fbx)
• All avatars would have a well documented skeletal API for movement controls when used in 3rd party systems
• Tight integration with OpenSVR – the Social VR API
• Character inventory storage and retrieval – think cloud storage for the “bag of holding” with pouches for each application using the APIs.
• Toggles for things like user name display, microphone control, bubbles, and content rating controls
• Enable API based import – Sketchfab -> OpenAvatar with one click.

This concept would allow developers to spend less time building avatar systems, allowing them to focus on the thing that matters most – the experience. Users benefit by having the same avatar everywhere that matters. If you want to play Robo Recall as a fairy princess from wherever… well this makes that possible.

Being able to recognize other players by their avatar across all Social VR experiences would make the experience feel closer to reality. It might seem strange to see a photo realistic avatar in a cartoon world (like Rec Room), but that’s what needs to happen.

What do you think? Leave a comment below?

Here are more stories in the VR category.

The individual titles available are getting more immersive and users are spending hours, hundreds of hours, with HMDs engaged. Game titles like VRChat, Rec Room, and OrbusVR are taking off. Their common theme? They’re Social VR.

Each of the major players in the space have some form of home (or house) as their default location when you dawn the gear. All of them act as launchers for other experiences and applications. Steam VR launches and interacts with the Steam platform, Oculus Home/Dash interact with the Oculus ecosystem, and Microsoft and Sony have their own. Oculus Dash 2 is a step in the right direction, and even has some elements of Ready Player One. But what happens with Vive or Windows Mixed Reality users?

Facebook took a remarkable step last week by opening the once Rift exclusive Facebook Spaces to Vive users. Of course anyone could use it with Revive, but this is official support. It’s a recognition that the combined market is a much larger opportunity. But I digress.

One thing they all have in common is that these core launchers are not social in any way. I can’t invite you to hang out in my Cliff House, then jump into a game of Rec Room together and return the house upon exit. None of them work this way. Why? More importantly, why should they be?

Let’s liberate Social VR and make it open source and cross platform. Not just OS, but dev environment too. Maybe OpenSVR?

What if we could build an open API for Unity, Unreal, and WebXR that remembers the state of a user’s VR experience? As the user exits, this object would collect data about that specific point in time then save a 360 degree “live” image (like Apple’s iOS) of the exit point. It could track play/use over time and dozens of data points that could come in handy.

The 360 degree image captured at the time of exit could wrap the inner sphere of a teleportation portal. We’ve seen a form of this with 360 degree videos in Facebook Spaces. To play the game again, tap the sphere in High Fidelity or your preferred open Social VR platform. To play with friends, have them tap the same sphere, anywhere in the metaverse.

This sounds way harder than it is. This is a layer that gets built into the developer’s tools of choice. Similar things exist for iOS (Game Center) and Android, and Microsoft has the XBOX platform. What I’m proposing is 100% open source.

As we move toward work in VR, shared experiences with friends and colleagues will be transformative to human relationships. This is an important step.

What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below!

The early days of VR were research (funded by the military), big business, health, and science. The latest generation is about intense immersive gaming – sweat, fatigue, adrenaline, and anxiety all present. The experiences are as genuine to your brain as they need to be.

As we move toward the future of VR, it’s important that we recognize its strengths and weaknesses. The immersion is real, the interaction is real, and the relationships are real, too. Affordability is no longer the barrier, with incredibly immersive HMD (Head Mounted Display) experiences starting at $276 and VR ready PCs at around $719 (less if you build your own). If you’re on a budget, Google’s Daydream platform is a good starting point, as is Samsung’s Gear VR platform– each under $100.

So what’s the opportunity? Here’s a fact: I haven’t seen a VR native spreadsheet, presentation software, or a word processor. No calendaring, time tracking, coding environments, email, you get the idea. In fact, I’ve seen very little in the productivity space that isn’t a simple github proof of concept done over a weekend to prove it can be done.

This isn’t to belittle the efforts of pioneers, to the contrary. It’s to point out that many of these were built before Sony sold 2 million PSVR systems, and Microsoft threw their hat into the VR ring with Windows Mixed Reality.

The opportunity is now.

Opportunity 1) games don’t require much in the way of input. In fact, many of today’s use cases don’t require a keyboard at all, and this is a good thing. Getting text into VR is a slow process: a) you learn to touch type, b) use a virtual keyboard with the same level of patience (and time) it took to learn the physical one (sometimes decades), or c) wait until dictation isn’t awkward in a shared physical space.

Opportunity 2) In the same way that the web changed what it meant to compute (“The network is the computer.” John Gage, Sun Microsystems, 1984), the web can change what it means to experience work. All of the major technology companies have web based versions of the basic productivity suites, and they’re all solid implementations. What does it look like to combine these with WebVR, an open, web based graphics library for virtual and augmented reality?

What’s stopping you from building TextEdit or Notepad for VR, using the WebVR A-Frame as the framework? Companies building VR tools for work today are going to be the Apple, Microsoft, and Google of the future. It’s an open, green pasture, and no one is on the field.

What do you think? Are we ready to start thinking about what it means to work in VR? Are you ready for meetings in a virtual shared space? Does VR allow home office workers to feel like a part of the team?

Thirty years later, computing has moved from a silo on a desktop to a globally disbursed, always connected network. Sure we still have machines in front of us, but they’re used largely to do things with the internet.

Consumers have never had more choice in platforms – all most people need is a way to access the things they’ve stored somewhere in “the cloud.” More and more, the consumer desktop/laptop is being cast aside in favor of smaller and lighter devices, like tablets and large screen smart phones.

It’s with this realization decided that I’ve decided to transcend the idea of an operating system, and move even further toward platform independence. Over the next several years, computing will go through another massive change, moving away from LCD displays placed 16 – 24 inches from your nose to displays resting quite literally on it.

As importantly, the resulting ecosystem will be, by necessity, platform independent. To use the social VR spaces and to participate in the future of work, you’ll need a machine capable of rendering the environment and a headset. There is no place for vendor lock-in in this space.

Great work is being done for the next generation of human computer interaction. Oculus, Vive, Samsung, Pimax, and many others are working on their best versions of VR displays. Room-scale VR is more than a sci-fi feature, it’s available today. The VR market is heating up, with competition in every space – input devices, displays, head and motion tracking, and even in world building. Apple is also on board, and that in itself should serve as notice to the market that a major shift is coming.

But VR is the future, right? Kind of.

On Wednesday of this week, I’ll be assembling my first Windows powered desktop PC in dangerously close to 10 years. It’s a workhorse, with plenty of power for the future. Today it’ll allow me to edit 360° video with ease, and of course edit traditional video as well – all in the name of Epic Mini Life.

It’ll also allow me to use any VR software title on the market with no frame skipping or delays what so ever. I won’t have a “monitor” attached to it, it’ll be “headless.” I’ll be using Virtual Desktop and Leap Motion VR instead of a mouse/trackpad.

It’s going to be an interesting experiment, and it may not work out exactly as I expect, but doing anything worth a damn is filled with the unexpected isn’t it? This is my sweet spot… doing things that have never been done, working on technologies that aren’t yet mainstream, and creating things that most don’t even know they need. Yet.

In case you’re wondering, I’ll be using the 4k Pimax headset instead of Oculus or Vive solutions. I’ll lay out more of that decision as the experiment begins.

You read it here… I’m building a PC, powered by Windows 10. I’ll keep my iPad Pro for portability, and I’ll hand my 2012 MacBook Pro down to my daughter, keeping it in the family.

Here’s to the future.

DFW Nouveau. 2013 to Present.

You’ve more than likely been a part of an event I’ve led (Dallas Startup Week, Dallas New Tech, BigDOCC (the 8 other spinoffs technically count as there were zero when I started the first two), Ignite DFW, Player’s Lunch, the “tunnel tour,” or you’ve at least heard my name attached to DFW and startups. It’s appeared in Dallas News, D-Magazine, Dallas Business Journal, Launch DFW (of course) and many others outside of the region. I’ve mentored and judged at The DEC, Startup Weekend, Lean Startup Machine, and dozens of other events.

None of this happens in a vacuum. When I first arrived in 2013, remarkable people welcomed me. Gabriella Draney Zielke started it all, Trey Bowles, Jennifer Conley, Joel Fontenot, George Barber, Matt Himelfarb, Matt Alexander, Pam Gerber, Daniel Oney, and many, many more helped the new guy from Boulder understand what was here, and who was doing what. That’s community. Every one of them: “How can I help?”

And that’s the “startup” side of my life. I’ve also been entrenched in the homelessness conversation: a dozen 40+ people meetings at Dallas City Hall that produced the Commission on Homelessness, and of course Dignity Field. I was the President of the Cedars Neighborhood Association (2015-2017), and routinely meet with people about my ideas in solving poverty issues. That too has landed my name in the press.

But that’s 2013 to present. To understand why I’m leaving you have to understand the full story. Some of you have heard this, hang in there, I’ll make it quick.

Early Dallas: 1994 to 2006

My good friend Bracken and I built several internet things in Dallas in the 1990’s: Apartments On-Demand (1994), Coupons On-Demand (1995), Classifieds On-Demand (1996), and finally sold one in MeetMeOnline.com (1997-1999). We did this with no support, no formal education (business, technical, etc.). In fact, we didn’t know a soul building anything like this in the 90’s. It was just us, building. I also ran Intelligent Networks, and zerologic corporation – both Apple related technology consulting companies (1993-2001). There are at least a dozen other experiments that never succeeded/got traction.

Boulder, CO. 2006 to 2013

While building HyperSites (in Dallas, 2001-2007), we decided to move the operation to Boulder, CO. We’d end up selling it in Boulder in 2007 (coincidentally, to Dallas based investors). That’s an important point, but the Boulder story doesn’t end there. Later came Callisto.fm (2010 to present), which evolved into Epic Playground (and MediaGauge). I also dabbled with GrillM (2009), Michael’s Garage (videos produced in my garage on how to build PCs from scratch), four podcasts (Boulder Open Podcast, Three Insight, Blipcasts, and OS Perspectives) and produced This Week in Techstars w/ David Cohen. I took over BOCC (2010) and started DOCC (open coffee clubs).

But Boulder was different. The power and confidence of being a part of that community was something that I hope everyone feels at some point. Sure it had its pain points (right Andrew?), but over all the experience was like getting a PHD in “startups.”

In fact, Andrew Hyde is one of the most influential people in my life. He gave of his time and energy constantly to help foster the very things I remember as great. He started Startup Weekend. By that, I don’t mean Startup Weekend Boulder. I mean Startup Weekend, period. He launched Boulder Startup Week, which I’d later implement in Dallas, and hundreds of others would all over the world. He also ran the largest Ignite event ever, in Boulder. But I digress.

Techstars would have a tremendous impact as well. Not just because two of the founders had committed a little money to the HyperSites round if we could get a lead (didn’t work out), but because that accelerator would bring in 10 new teams to Boulder every year, feeding the ecosystem with new blood. Eventually, it would have a more direct impact as my team and I went through Techstars Cloud in 2012.

Exodus 1.0

Over the course of the seven years in Boulder, several of its high profile members would leave – Andrew Hyde, Matt Galligan, Micah Baldwin, Rachel Ryle… and many more. Many of the teams that came in for Techstars would leave too, going back to their home towns, or on to other adventures.

How does the community respond with changes like this? There’s the natural “OMG, everyone’s leaving! What are we going to do!?” reaction. There’s the “I guess they weren’t committed to the community, man!” response. And the “Who needs them anyway, this place rocks!” response.

Something remarkable happens in a strong community though, as we’d come to find out. Other people step in, and step up. People that have played a role increase their visibility, and become the next change agents. New events, new relationships, and new opportunities for serendipity. Growth happens.

Today.

Instead of casting any doubt on the state of the DFW startup community, I’d encourage you instead figure out how to step up and take an active role in building the next version. Don’t just go to events, participate. Don’t just talk about a startup idea, build it. Don’t complain about things, take actionable steps to fix them (see The Five Why’s). Every strength and weakness in this community starts with you, dear reader. Be a part of something. Make it better by participating. Reporters/journalists, focus on the great things, and not the obvious drama… we need more from you. Use your power for good.

Back to us, and the fact that we’re leaving Dallas. The “why” is actually quite simple. Frankly, it has nothing at all to do with the Dallas Startup Community, and has everything to do with the fact that Heather and I want to do something epic. We want to travel the country in an RV for a few months, to experiment with a truly mobile lifestyle. We want to build a mini (550 sq. ft.) home by hand, and we want to be near Disney World when we do it. Remember, Heather is a Disney travel planner. But the bottom line is that we want to get the most out of life – today.

Heather and I wish you the best, and we’d be thrilled to have you along for the adventure. If you’ve ever dreamed of selling everything and hitting the road… follow us as we do exactly that: EpicMini.life. It might just inspire you to do the same.