The sun finally came out and heated up the day a bit yesterday—and at our XSITE 2011 conference at Babson College, things were smoking. We had a great crowd of close to 400 speakers and attendees, among them nearly 100 startups, for this year’s event, themed The Entrepreneurship Era. We had inspiring keynotes, insightful chats, and lively debates—all followed by a reception in the Babson pub where we continued to congratulate each other on the Bruins’ victory.

We will soon be posting some recaps from the day—including the audience selections from our XSITE Xpo startup competition and highlights from Sound Off, where five esteemed members of the innovation community ranted about what needs to change here in New England, and how to bring that change about. And we will be posting photos, videos, and more next week. But right now I wanted to take a little time to thank our speakers and all the great supporters who made XSITE 2011 such a success.

First, our speakers, several of whom journey from across the country, or up from New York (which is like another country) to take part. In approximate order of appearance, they were: Rick Miller, Len Schlesinger, Desh Deshpande, Stephen Friend, Phil Sharp, Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, Edward Jung, Pattie Maes, Stephen Kaufer, Drew Hession-Kunz, Jason Evanish, Chris Palatucci, Josh Bob, Martin LaMonica, Paul Sellew, Brian Chemel, Frank van Mierlo, Aaron Mandell, Troy Campione, Bob Fabbio, Veer Gidwaney, Michael Martino, Norm Wu, Joe Chung, Ellen Rubin, Jules Pieri, John Landry, Jason Jacobs, Sean Creeley, Charlotte Hubbert, Ziad Sultan, Daniel Isenberg, Todd Dagres, Jamie Goldstein, Lee Hower, Jeanne Sullivan, Katie Rae, Pedro Santos, Jordy Leiser, Timo Platt, Seph Skerritt, Michael Raybman, Karan Singh, Heather Keith, Alain Goubau, Jennifer Fremont-Smith, William Sanchez, Justin Shaka, and Shanker Sahai.

Great thanks as well to our wonderful event hosts, Babson College and Olin College—to their two presidents, Len Schlesinger and Rick Miller, respectively, and to their great staffs. You guys rock!

Another round of heartfelt thanks goes to our event sponsors, starting with Gold Sponsor Microsoft; Cleantech Track Sponsor, Latham & Watkins; Healthtech Track Sponsors AT&T and MFA—Moody, Famiglietti & Andronico; and our IT Track Sponsors, Invest Northern Ireland; Next Stage Solutions; Turnstone; and Windstream Hosted Solutions.

I’d also like to thank our event partners, Dog Patch Labs; MassBio; MassChallenge; The Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council; MITX; New England Venture Capital Association; and TIE Boston.

Thanks, too, to our Event Supporter Nutter McLennan & Fish; our Lanyard Sponsor, Carbonite; and our Startup Supporters, Flybridge Capital Partners; Redstar; and Spark Capital.

Our elegant, beautiful stage furniture was provided once again by Turnstone.

We’d also like to thank the underwriters and venture members who support us throughout the year. Without you, Xconomy would not be possible. First, our charter underwriters, who have supported us since our launch in mid-2007: Alexandria Real Estate Equities; Biogen Idec; Science and Technology Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; and WilmerHale.

Our other great underwriters are: Aderly/Only Lyon; AT&T; BNY Mellon Wealth Management ; Goodwin Procter; Invest Northern Ireland; J. Robert Scott Executive Search; the Kauffman Foundation; Latham & Watkins; MFA—Moody, Famiglietti & Andronico; Next Stage Solutions; NYSE Euronext; SRI International
; Turnstone; UK Trade & Investment; and Windstream Hosted Solutions.

Our venture capital members include: Advanced Technology Ventures; Arch Venture Partners; Atlas Venture; Avalon Ventures; Bain Capital Ventures; Boston Millennia Partners; Excel Venture Management; Flagship Ventures; HLM Venture Partners; LaunchCapital; North Bridge Venture Partners; and Polaris Venture Partners.

And, last but certainly not least, thanks to you, our fantastic audience.

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Xconomy held a great party last Thursday on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The only caveats from our fantastic host NYSE Euronext was that if I rang the bell, the symbol XCON would never trade…(well, they didn’t actually say that, but I felt the hint was there).

So we didn’t ring any bells, and we don’t have any plans to go public anytime soon—but you can tell from the photo (click on it for a full-sized view) I had a good time anyway. So did our guests, we hope. And we’d like to thank NYSE Euronext and all the underwriters, venture and investment banking members, sponsors, and partners who made our first event in New York so memorable.

Our event sponsors for the evening, in addition to NYSE Euronext, were Halloran Consulting Group, IDA Ireland, and Sorin Royer Cooper. Thanks so much to all of you!

Our New York underwriters are not to be forgotten either—they made our first two months in the Big Apple so successful. Thanks to Alexandria Real Estate Equities; Goodwin Procter; NYSE Euronext; Sorin Royer Cooper; SRI International; and WilmerHale.

The same holds true for our venture members—Avalon Ventures; Boston Millennia Partners; Dogpatch Labs; and Penny Black—as well as our investment banking member Progress Partners and our partner the New York Academy of Sciences. Thanks to one and all.

Finally, thanks to our guests for perhaps delaying their Memorial Day weekend plans just a bit to come on down to Wall Street for the event. See you soon!

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Our big VC65 event in MIT’s Kresge Auditorium was a tremendous success. The intent of course, was to celebrate the 65th anniversary of venture capital in America—but in a way that drew out lessons and insights about building great companies and great partnerships between VCs and entrepreneurs.

We drew an amazing crowd of nearly 1,000 people, including 500 from the National Venture Capital Association’s annual meeting. The speakers included leading venture capitalists and entrepreneurs from around the country. There was lively repartee on the “speed-dating” panels, capped by incredible stores of entrepreneurial and venture success—all followed by a reception in the MIT Museum’s MIT 150 Exhibit celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Institute.

You will soon be able to read our recap of the afternoon, and see photos of the speakers and crowd, elsewhere on Xconomy.com. But I wanted to take a moment to thank all the great partners and participants who made it happen.

First, our speakers, some of whom flew across the country to join us, in order of appearance,: Jack Lasersohn, Bob Metcalfe, Henry McCance, Mick Mountz, Ajay Agarwal, Ed Roberts, Bryan Roberts, Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, Noubar Afeyan, Jason Mendelson, Howard Hartenbaum, Scott Kupor, Bob Langer, Terry McGuire, Phil Sharp, John Durant, Bill Sahlman, Peter Brooke, Linda Rottenberg, and Tim Draper.

Thanks to our event sponsors, starting with Platinum Sponsor Microsoft, Gold Sponsors Silicon Valley Bank and WilmerHale, and Silver sponsors Advent International and SNR Denton. We really appreciate your support!

I’d also like to thank our event partners, the NVCA and the MIT Museum. The great teams at both of these organizations made the day smooth and successful.

Thanks as well to our Event Supporters: MFA–Moody, Famiglietti & Andronico; Mintz Levin; Charles River Ventures; TA Associates; and Wolf & Company.

Our excellent Design Partners were Mixture and Upstatement, and our great and comfortable stage furniture was provided by Turnstone.

We’d also like to thank the underwriters and venture members who support us throughout the year. Without you, none of this would be possible. First, our charter underwriters, who have supported us since our launch in mid-2007: Alexandria Real Estate Equities; Biogen Idec; Science and Technology Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; and WilmerHale.

Our other great underwrites are: BNY Mellon Wealth Management ; Goodwin Procter; Invest Northern Ireland; J. Robert Scott Executive Search; Kauffman Foundation; Latham & Watkins; Schwartz Communications; SRI International
; Turnstone; and UK Trade & Investment.

Our venture capital members include: Advanced Technology Ventures; Arch Venture Partners; Atlas Venture; Avalon Ventures; Boston Millennia Partners; Flagship Ventures; LaunchCapital; North Bridge Venture Partners; and Polaris Venture Partners.

Thanks to one and all again. And, finally, thanks to you, our great audience. We look forward to seeing you at our next big event here in Boston, XSITE 2011 (the Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship), which will take place at Babson College on June 16. A formal announcement will be coming soon, but save the date, and we will hope to see you there.

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Xconomy held another sold out forum yesterday afternoon, with more than 225 people pouring into Microsoft’s New England Research & Development Center for our Mobile Madness conference.

A writeup and photo spread of the afternoon’s events and the insights provided by the great array of speakers—including the results of the Mobile Smackdown between iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone advocates—are coming soon. But right now, we wanted to reiterate our deep thanks to the speakers, sponsors, and underwriters who made it possible.

First, a special thank you to Microsoft and Gus Weber, for once again opening the beautiful NERD facility to the innovation community.

A big thanks as well to our event sponsors, each of whom supports the mobile community in a variety of ways: AT&T, Cisco, Hosted Solutions, Invest Northern Ireland, McCarter & English, and UK Trade & Investment.

As always, we’d also like to thank our underwriters and venture members, who support what we do on an ongoing basis. In reverse alphabetical order, our underwriters are: Wolf & Company, WilmerHale , UK Trade & Investment, the Science & Technology Directorate of U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Schwartz Communications, MFA—Moody, Famiglietti, & Andronico , McCarter & English, the Kauffman Foundation, J. Robert Scott Executive Search, Invest Northern Ireland, EMC, Cisco, Biogen Idec, AT&T, and Alexandria Real Estate Equities.

The venture member list includes: Polaris Venture Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Launch Capital, Flybridge Capital Partners, Flagship Ventures, Boston Millennia Partners, Atlas Venture, and Advanced Technology Ventures.

We’d also like to thank our Mobile Madness event partners: the Mass Technology Leadership Council, MITX, Mobile Monday, and MOITI, the Massachusetts Office of International Trade & Investment.

And needless to say, the stars of all of Xconomy’s events are the leaders and innovators who volunteer to speak. We’re enormously grateful to our Mobile Madness speakers and showcase participants; you can see the whole list here.

It was another great day-and we couldn’t have done it without you! And there are plenty of other Mass Mobile Month events coming up—hope to see you at one of them soon.

One last thank you on a different front—to Mozy, which will now be providing its MozyPro online backup service to all Xconomy computers across our network. Thank you to the folks at Mozy and its parent, EMC. Our writers will no longer be able to say the computer ate their story!

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I still have one more feature story I hope to bang out this afternoon, but the Xconomy team will soon be heading over to Seattle Biomedical Research Institute tonight for our big event on the 20-year outlook for the Northwest’s life sciences cluster.

This sold-out event will bring together some of the world’s leading life sciences visionaries, who have rarely, if ever, appeared on the same stage. The highlight will be a panel discussion, moderated by Carl Weissman of Accelerator and OVP Venture Partners, that will include Steve Gillis of Arch Venture Partners; Ben Shapiro, former executive vice president of worldwide basic research at Merck; and Stephen Friend, the co-founder of Rosetta Inpharmatics, and now co-founder and CEO of Sage Bionetworks. We will then feature short presentations from some of the potentially transformative life sciences startups in the region, before the networking portion of the evening.

Thanks to the many people who have helped make this happen. That includes our event sponsors: Fenwick & West, Cooley Godward Kronish, and Christensen O’ Connor Johnson Kindness. We also want to thank our underwriters—Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Fenwick & West, Cooley Godward Kronish, and the Science and Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as well as our venture members, Arch Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners. Thanks also to SBRI for serving as the event host, and to the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association for serving as our event partner. Lastly, we have to give a shout out to all the Xconomy Seattle partners: The Alliance of Angels, Northwest Entrepreneurs Network, Technology Alliance, the WBBA, and the Washington Technology Industry Association.

We expect this event to be a highly interactive conversation, so come ready to fire away with some questions.

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We are taking a deep breath here at Xconomy. On Wednesday we held our biggest, most ambitious event ever: the Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship, aka XSITE 2009, at Boston University.

All told, some 400 people attended the all-day event at BU’s School of Management, which featured what we think is the year’s greatest lineup of leading innovators, entrepreneurs, and public company executives from around New England. It was a rousing day, kicked off by morning keynote speeches by Juan Enriquez and Dean Kamen and culminating in the XSITE Xpo, where 12 leadings startups wowed the audience with back-to-back presentations about how they plan to change the world.

You can read Ryan’s report on the day’s highlights here. But we’d like to take time in this space to thank everyone who made it possible, starting with our fantastic event host, BU’s Office of Technology Development, and all the officials, faculty, staff, and students at Boston University who helped make it possible. Thank you!

We were also supported by a group of gracious sponsors. They include our Gold sponsors: Microsoft and Schwartz Communications, as well as Xconomy’s Charter Underwriters: Alexandria Real Estate Equities,
Biogen Idec, EMC, Invest Northern Ireland, J. Robert Scott, Jones Lang LaSalle, the Science & Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, UK Trade & Investment, and WilmerHale.

Our track sponsors included: Finnegan (Cleantech), MFA: Moody, Famiglietti and Andronico (Information Technology), CCR (Life Sciences), and McCarter & English (Life Sciences).

We had a great group of event partners as well: the Business Innovation Factory, Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, Massachusetts High Technology Council, MassNetComms, and MITX.

Our warmest thanks to all these great sponsors, as well as to the more than 50 speakers and panelists who generously gave of their time—far too many to name here—and to all our attendees, who helped make the day a lively and productive one, and the event a great success.

And there was one great friend who played an instrumental role in making this all happen. In fact, without him, it may well not have happened: Noubar Afeyan, managing partner and CEO of Flagship Ventures. A big shout out to you, Noubar!

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We had a jammed-packed, illuminating afternoon yesterday, with more than 200 people streaming into Biogen Idec’s headquarters in Kendall Square for our latest Xconomy Forum: Tomorrow’s Biotech–Innovators and Innovations. Luke posted a writeup earlier today, and will have more next week. But meanwhile, we’d also like to give a big shout out to our sponsors, who made it all possible.

A heartfelt special thank you to Biogen Idec for hosting this tremendous event, and for welcoming the entire community into its home. It was a perfect venue, with plenty of great food and drink, and Biogen was a fantastic host.

We also had a suite of other great sponsors: the law firms of Fish & Richardson and Proskauer Rose, certified public accounting and business advisory firm CCR, and Schwartz Communications.

We’d also like to thank our other underwriters, who support everything we do: Alexandria Real Estate Equities, EMC, Invest Northern Ireland, Jones Lang LaSalle, J. Robert Scott, the Science & Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, UK Trade & Investment, and WilmerHale.

Finally, thanks to our event partners, the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge.

It was a great day—and we couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you!

And thanks to all our speakers and attendees—we couldn’t have done it without you, either!

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Xconomy held its first half-day life sciences forum yesterday—How to Build A Life Sciences Company—and it was a rousing success. All told, nearly 200 people attended the event, which featured, among other things, case studies on five startups with different funding strategies that illustrate the innovative approaches needed to launch and sustain life sciences companies today. The event culminated in a fascinating chat (moderated by Xconomy chief correspondent Wade Roush) with legendary MIT inventor and entrepreneur Bob Langer and his longtime business partner, Polaris Venture Partners co-founder and managing general partner Terry McGuire.

We will be giving you a full report tomorrow. But today we’d really like to thank everyone who made it possible, starting with our gracious event host Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, which really showed what leadership in a field is all about by welcoming and fostering dialog with the entire life sciences community, including some of its own competitors.

We were also generously supported by PricewaterhouseCoopers, with whom we have partnered before on the recent Super Cluster II report on the Massachusetts life sciences industry; the CPA and consulting firm MFA—Moody, Famiglietti & Andronico, LLP; Halloran Consulting Group, which specializes in clinical development services for biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device companies; and our special international partner, Aderly, the Lyon Region Economic Development Agency.

We had a group of non-profit sponsors and partners as well. These include the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, the GSAS Harvard Biotechnology Club, and the MIT Sloan BioMedical Business Club.

Our warmest thanks to these great sponsors, as well as to the baker’s dozen guest speakers who generously gave of their time and shared information about their companies—and to all our attendees, who helped make the discussion a lively and productive one. We hope to see you again soon.

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You know how, in the excitement of a new relationship, you often find yourself celebrating dozens of little “anniversaries?” The day you met, first date, first… You get the idea. Building a company is like that, with so many milestones to be passed and, a year hence, commemorated. First business plan. First viable business plan. First successful pitch. Incorporation. First financing. Heck, around here we could probably work up some feelings about the delivery of our first Staples order.

But today is the big one—because, Xconomy readers, today marks one year since we met you. Last June 27 we introduced ourselves, offering what we hoped you’d appreciate as a fresh take on the Boston-area innovation economy. And, to our delight, you got it—and over the year you’ve helped us make it better.

For a bunch of journalists who had previously spent most of our time at magazines, where lead times, printing presses, and bulk mail can sometimes put an uncomfortable distance between writer and reader, it has been thrilling to get your immediate reactions, your questions and ideas, and occasionally even your assistance with stories. And what you’ve helped us learn in this first year has given us the confidence to venture beyond our Kendall Square neighborhood and begin introducing ourselves to other key innovation clusters (hey there, Seattle).

So thanks for a great year; we’d be honored if you’d hang around for another one. And for those of you building companies of your own, a little anniversary gift: just a few things we know now that we wish we knew last year.

• Write everything down, even if you’re the sort of person who remembers what page in your seventh-grade language arts book described the difference between onomatopoeia and alliteration.

• Put it somewhere you’ll be able to find it once working on a startup has transformed you into somebody who can’t remember seventh grade. Or yesterday.

• People don’t eat as much at catered events as the caterer would have you believe, so cut the suggested order in half. (This from our founder, editor-in-chief, and Chief Executive Tightwad Bob Buderi.)

• Be leery of mocking the habits of more seasoned businesspeople, so as to avoid embarrassment when you eventually adopt said habits. (This to our founder, editor-in-chief, and Chief Executive Thumb-Typer Bob Buderi.)

• Hire people you trust. (OK, this one we did know a year ago—and it’s probably the single biggest reason for our success to date—but it bears repeating at regular intervals. Hourly would be good.)

• Trust them.

• Fancy titles are one excellent—and free—form of compensation that a startup can readily offer. (Courtesy of Co-founder, Executive Editor, and Chief Operating Officer moi.)

• A fancy title can engender in others the idea that you actually know how to do the job it describes—go with that.

• A truly surprising array of people will help you and your company along the way. Thank them. At least twice.

So thank you. And Happy Readerversary!

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