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Boulder is truly an amazing city. The people here swear by it. I’ve been here for a few months so far and I know that I’m not leaving anytime soon. There are three major things that contribute to my assurance: the people, accessibility to the outdoors, and the business culture.

From what I’ve noticed so far, the people in Boulder are awesome. Since I’ve been here I’ve found a group of people to play sand volleyball with twice a week, was welcomed in to an entrepreneur community that meets semimonthly, and have started hanging around with a fun startup-centric group that meets every so often to have drinks. Also, the community formed at the New Tech Meetups is awesome for meeting new people, finding jobs, or talking up your company. Overall, there is a huge sense of community here. Small communities with focused purposes extend in to other communities and eventually, everyone is a part of the largest community that is Boulder.

For those that don’t know, Boulder is bordered to the West by the Rocky Mountains. Nestled in to the foothills itself, Boulder lends itself to amazing activities and views. From almost anywhere in the city, the iconic Flatirons of Boulder are always in view and the trails that lead to their peaks are always open. The Chautauqua and Sanitas trials are reachable from most places in Boulder by a ten or so minute bike ride. The system of parks within the city is great as well. Its hard to go very far without running in to a well maintained and usable park. Other activities such as climbing, mountain and trail biking, backpacking, and water sports are all popular as well. The other outdoor activity that is popular here in Boulder that was rather new to me is community gardening. I hope to get my own plot next season.

Finally, the business culture in Boulder is overwhelmingly positive. It has a very strong focus on entrepreneurship and thus venture capital. This mix of interested and ambitious individuals with seasoned veterans from many industries, especially high technology and the internet, combines for awesome potential. It is hard to meet a person in Boulder that hasn’t or isn’t trying or succeeding at starting their own business. For example, a person that I randomly started conversing with at the BolderBoulder 10k had a work from home career and was also overnighting the creation of a business service to translate blueprints for multilingual construction crews.

All this being said, I feel like I have succeeded in finding a place that fits me right for my post-graduate life. I am inspired by the atmosphere here in Boulder and excited to make my own move in to the world of entrepreneurship, comfortable that this is the place to be.

P.S. :: If you want to get in touch with cool Boulder folk, check out Boulder+Me, a new project by Andrew Hyde to promote Boulder.

-Ryan Cook

A botanist by degree, developer by trade, and entrepreneur by aspiration, Ryan recently graduated from Miami University in Ohio and moved to Boulder to pursue his goals of using his multidisciplinary skills and interests to start businesses. You can get in touch with Ryan at ryan at wheretocaptain dot com or through his website :: where.to.captain?

dynamIt Confidant:

We’ve worked with some great people over the years, however, there are a choice few on which we bestow the title “dynamIt Confidant“. Our list of confidants is short and includes IA people, programmers, designers and a few bus. dev. guys who we know are ridiculously talented and who we also know we can count in our circle. Our confidants get dynamIt email addresses, are part of the family, eat Thurman with us, wear dynamIt t-shirts and are, in general, people we can count on in life, yes, but more importantly in WEB.

Ryan Cook:

One of our confidants is Ryan Cook (cook, cookie, ry-guy, vooder, etc). Ryan has worked with us in strategy, research, IA and programming capacities. He is absurdly talented and has an acute sense of detail. His curiosity and (to quench that curiosity) knowledge of web is seldom matched. Ryan takes the initiative to be up-to-date on the industry/world (if that’s possible) and looks constantly to contribute to it. His skills include IA and database schema, XHTML, PHP, MySQL, CSS, JS, AS and anything else that he’s researching at the time. His official academic accomplishments decorate him with a degree in botany and minors in computer science and computer engineering (typical diversity exhibited by a member of dynamIt). I had the pleasure of gallivanting around Europe with Ry for about 6 months a few years ago including sailing the Greek Isles for a week. Those months gave us plenty of time for other conversation [read lack of consistent connectivity in hostels and on night trains]. Ryan’s complexity doesn’t end at algorithms. In fact, it only begins. Ryan happens to be a certified tracker and talented in wilderness survival. He’s a great skier, an entrepreneur, an avid reader (loves philosophy/religion), eclectic music lover and passionate outdoorsman and extreme athlete.

Ryan has recently, well, in the last 2 months, moved out to Boulder - an incredible natural environment and a hotbed for entrepreneurship, technology and business. He is currently the head of operations for VC Wear and is also the founder and facilitator of TechTreks.

Ryan’s move to Colorado was somewhat catalyzed when he pursued an idea that came from StartUp Weekend Bloomington in the spring, but has since found his place in the diverse and progressive community.

Look for Ryan to guest post on the dynamIt blog soon. All of you StartUp Weekend Junkies may be interested as Boulder is where Andrew Hyde resides and where the whole idea was born. Ryan will be shedding some light on the scene out there.

Follow Ryan on Twitter: @protonron; Check out Ryan’s site: WhereToCaptain.com.

Who are your Confidants?

What does your network look like? Do you work closely with industry-folk, strategists, programmers or designers around the country?

one.

nick