It is absolutely incredible to observe the amount of activity, innovation and inclusiveness within the town of Boulder, Colorado. There are many elements that can be attributed to the success of Boulder’s start-up-community. For the sake of generating more efficient start-up communities throughout the world, our class has come to Boulder to critically propose patterns of the collisions responsible for community success. In order to propose the logical patterns of collisions of Boulder, each member of our class put forth the effort to explore local businesses within the community. My exploration of Boulder led me to the Boulder International Film Festival (BIFF), Emilia Ceramics, and Fiske Planetarium.

     On Saturday, Mach 8th, Eric, Simba, and I went to the Boulder International Film Festival (BIFF).  We arrived at the Boulder Theater at 10:00 am to observe five back to back short films. The short films that we saw during the film festival were Rabbit, Boogaloo and Graham, Every Day, Sprout, and Pony Place.    Lots of locals and tourists of Boulder attended BIFF and supported all of the films. Based on personal observation, the open mindfulness necessary to support BIFF is correlated to the open mindfulness that is required to support the start-up businesses of Boulder.  Following BIFF, I went into Emilia Ceramics to learn how the community of Boulder has impacted this local business.

Emilia Ceramics is located on 2232 Pearl St., Boulder, Co. Emilia Ceramics collects high end ceramics from Mexico, France, Spain, and Italy. Emila moved from the San Francisco Bay. When asking why Boulder, Emilia responded by explaining that Boulder was cheaper than the San Francisco Bay and that the people within the Boulder community were more supportive of her business. It seemed as though the open mindfulness of the Boulder community allowed Emilia Ceramics to prosper as a company. Boulder has led to the success of BIFF and Emilia Ceramics by displaying “inclusiveness”, an important element of the start-up community as noted by Brad Feld in his book, Startup Communities . The University of Colorado is a large feeder of the passion that makes up the entrepreneurial community of Boulder.

     To explore the University of Colorado, Boulder, Ethan, Josie, Eric, and I walked around the campus.  As we were walking, we encountered Fiske Planetarium. Nicholas, from Fiske Planetarium, greeted us and gave us some presentations on astronomy and high resolution special effects that can only be displayed through the technology of the planetarium. We did not rearrange to meet with Nicholas, yet when we arrived, he took the time out of his day of the explain his job and show us his work. Nick’s presentations were out of this world and he wanted to show us these presentations because he had pride in his talents and job. The passion that Nick displayed to us seems to be the reflective attitude of successful companies in the Boulder community.

From the four days I have spent trying to understand Boulder’s start-up community I believe that I can propose that  inclusiveness and passion appear to be factors, among many other  factors, that combine to describe the patterns of successful collisions in Boulder. Boulder produces passionate people who are willing to inclusively accept other passionate people.

  Jason Mendelson explained that creativity is highly correlated with success in a start-up community. According to Jason, creativity can be found in a small confined area within another small confined area. Creativity can therefore come from a box within a box. Jason reasoned this belief by comparing the idea to the creative music that is produced, from his band, in the studio. The studio is an insulated box within another insulated box. Similar to Jason’s analogy, the passions and inclusiveness represented at BIFF, Emilia Ceramics, and Fiske Planetarium are examples of a box promoting start-up success within the larger box of the town..