Name Awards

Silicon Valley networking group names

My friends over at Bootstrappers Breakfast® were a little miffed when I laughed on hearing they had received their registered trademark certificate, but it had no image anywhere -not even the accompanying paperwork. Then I explained I had looked for mine too when I got my first trademark registered. After all the fuss the USPTO makes to ensure you give them an acceptable image, it is a surprise when it does not get echoed back on the certificate – but that means you filed for a Word Mark, rather than a logo itself.

So the words Bootstrappers Breakfast are now a registered trademark, and no one else can use that name for business networking meetings. But it is not tied to any specific graphics logo. The one submitted with the application was just to prove they are using it somewhere.

Another very effective networking group, this one for programmers, is called Silicon Valley Code Camp. Where else would hundreds of programmers come together for one weekend just to hang out and learn programming tricks and tools? And no one pays to attend, no one gets paid to present and no one pays for advertising. Peter Kellner, the ultimate .net and independent Microsoft development guru, manages it all from blogging tools and his email lists.

This year some big sponsors (read developer groups at major software tool vendors) have already stepped up – mostly providing fuel for hungry hackers so they don’t need to miss anything. And the event is not even until October so it will surely full up again as over 300 people are already registered.

Since I once was a techy (including supporting Peter), I am one of the few marketing people invited. Now let’s see if enough programmers are interested in my talk on how to make complete products for the session to actually fly. Then they can move on to Sean Murphy’s talk on bootstrapping a business – a mini version of his breakfast series – to learn how to launch a company.

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