Sitting here at the Teens In Tech Conference as the lunch break winds down, I see white power cords everywhere, as the vast majority of attendees brought their Macs and the signature white power cords are snaking down to the ground go grab much-needed electricity for the full day event, which wraps at 5 pm. There are a handful of Ubuntu laptops and the random Windows machine here and there, but it's mostly Macs.

That said, I didn't bring power cords. The reason is because I brought the Chromebook, and if you've gotten used to a world where you have to constantly feel the anxiety of watching your battery to see how many hours/minutes you have left and what percentage you are charged, the elimination of that anxiety is serious relief.

+Matt Cutts is taking a 30-day challenge to only use his Chromebook, to the exclusion of all other laptops. I've already talked a lot about how I made the Samsung Chromebook my primary computer, and it's true. I still get my MacBook Air out every once in a while for Photoshop work, but that's happening less and less these days, as more of our content moves to the Web.

All I really need from my computer now is amazing battery life and always-on connectivity, and ChromeOS does exactly that. We're very new in this process, of course, so while there may be some shortcomings, think about the trajectory of both Android and iOS, and how those platforms are a lot more feature-rich and full of apps versus just a few years ago.

You know that feeling you get when you switch to an unfamiliar platform, and aren't comfortable knowing where things are or how shortcuts work? Do you know how you feel more comfortable in your space on your main machine in your favorite OS? It's like speaking English (or your native tongue) after the stress of being in a foreign language. Ditching the power cords and being fully on the Web gives me that same relief and it's energizing to know I'm not tethered, but instead, fully mobile. So if you have access to Chrome, bring it to your next event and feel the difference.


/via My Google+ Profile.

Only a few weeks away from the August 5th Teens In Tech Conference at Xerox PARC, in partnership with Meshin, a half-dozen companies founded and run by teens are preparing their sites and products for unveiling in what should be a fun Demo Day. The companies themselves were revealed earlier this week, providing a sneak preview of what you can expect should you attend. While not on the scale of Y! Combinator or 500 Startups, what the teams lack in number, they make up for in spirit and a lack of inhibition. They do believe they can accomplish anything they set their minds to, and with some aid from the more seasoned of us who can help provide some mentorship, the teams are converting their projects from whiteboards and ideas to shipping and availability for the public.

While you will hear more about each of the companies face to face at the conference, and in follow-on press, a quick summary of the participating teams is below:

• Bubbls, founded by a team from Palo Alto, is a new social mobile application that taps into geolocation and lets your friends know when you are available to hang out.
  
• BuyNomial, based in Oakland, is a new site that helps youth set savings goals through creating a wish list of products and working to budget wisely.
  
  
• CM Studios, from Atherton, is creating a fun new game for iOS and soon Android, involving zombies.


• Codulous, founded by a group from Santa Cruz, is a smart Web-based code editor that lets engineers work in the cloud, and synchronizes to multiple devices, including desktops, for remote access.


• MySchoolHelp, the most remote applicant, based in White Plains, New York, but spending the summer in the Bay Area for the purpose of participating in the Teens in Tech incubator, is setting up a collaborative site for high schoolers to share class notes and get rewarded for high quality work.


• Workcrib, from Walnut Creek, is working to provide an easy way to showcase workspaces online.

There are some obvious themes in this year's participants, the inaugural class of companies - as some are leveraging the fast growth in mobile and social, while others are tapping into the cloud for improved sharing and collaboration. The activity I've seen face to face with many of the teams in recent weeks has been quite impressive, and they can lap me in the geek front, which is a good thing indeed.

All will be presenting at the August 5th conference at PARC. As noted Monday, I have a discount code I hope you can leverage. Sign up at http://2011teensintech.eventbrite.com/.


Disclosure: I am an unpaid advisor to Teens in Tech, and have a small equity stake in the company.

This summer, I've spent a good amount of time working with teen entrepreneurs working on their brand new projects and companies as part of Teens In Tech's new incubator initiative, aimed to help these young entrepreneurs focus and deliver on their ideas. The culminating point of the summer will be this August 5th, when all of the companies are unveiled at a special Demo Day as part of the 2011 conference, held at the historic Palo Alto Research Center, also featuring top tier speakers from the world of Web services, venture capital and tech.

When I joined the advisory board to Teens In Tech more than two years ago, I did so with the intent of helping young innovators get access to the resources they need to convert their concepts to reality. In addition to the Teens In Tech blog, which has seen increased activity of late, team-ups with TEDxYouth on the East Coast, and the annual conference, launching this summer's incubator has been very rewarding. I've sat in on strategy sessions as the teens work together to find the best way to outline their product, tweaked Google AdWords campaigns, redesigned email copy, and all the blocking and tackling necessary as companies mature. This year's conference is the biggest one yet, and unveiling the incubated companies is going to be a big win - not just for those going live, but those attending.

Daniel Brusilovsky, CEO and founder of Teens in Tech, has rounded up some A-list sponsors, including GM, Microsoft, Eventbrite, RadTech, Vapur, Meshin and others. Speakers include Andrew Hsu, founder of Airy Labs, Daniela Lapidous, founder of SmartPowerEd, Joey Primiani of Cortex, Michael Simmons, cofounder of Flexibits, and more solid presenters that share the same vision I do, of helping Teens take their tech plans to the next level.

Being an advisor to Teens in Tech has its privileges. I'll be at the conference, but I also snagged discount tickets at 25% off list. I hope you'll join us August 5th. Sign up at http://2011teensintech.eventbrite.com/.

Disclosure: I am an unpaid advisor to Teens in Tech, and have a small equity stake in the company.

As you know, one of the companies where I sit on the board of advisors is Teens In Tech, the youth geek oriented startup founded by Daniel Brusilovsky. The company has seen some changes in the two years since I partnered up with Daniel and the rest of the team, but the mission remains the same, to bring value to teens looking to get support through community, peer networking and industry advisory. Today, Teens In Tech is announcing their 2011 conference, scheduled for August 5th in Palo Alto. This comes on the heels of the launch of the company's Incubator program, which will help cultivate some exciting startups born from the minds of the next generation.

In the mold of Y! Combinator, TechStars and 500 Startups, the eight-week Incubator program kicks off on June 20th at Appcelerator in Mountain View. Five teams have been selected to participate, who you will no doubt hear about next month and beyond.

On August 5th, participants in the incubator will present as part of a Demo Day at the historically renowned Xerox PARC campus in Palo Alto, alongside this year's conference - which should be a highlight of the event. In addition, the event will feature speakers from Mozilla, Eventbrite, Audrey Capital, Flexibits, Cortex and others. Should be a great day to invigorate teens who are pushing to enter the fast-moving world of startups.

If you want to attend or know somebody who should, we'd love to have you there. Early bird tickets are available for $30 with tickets closer to the time of the event going at $40.

Parallel to my public activity on the blog and in various social networks, piled on top of my real-world work with Paladin Advisors Group and the home life of raising twins, I have added a number of advisory roles to startups in the last two years. The first to come my way was BuzzGain (since sold to the Meltwater Group), and current positions include, in order of chronology, SocialToo, TeensInTech, MyLikes and QwoteBook. I've been approached for other roles, but for various reasons opted out. My activity with these companies, their founders, engineers and others, as well as seeing other activities from fellow advisors, has put me in a position to recognize the good and the bad, so I thought I would share.

First things first, an advisor to a company, especially a startup that is pre-revenue or in the early stages of revenue recognition, is not lucrative in any way. Most companies tag four or so advisors, offering 1-2% of the company, and in some cases much less, for their work, and no money changes hands. It's not an official position in the company, like an employee, and there is no fiduciary responsibility, as would be the case with board of director seats in a public company.

The role of an active and engaged advisor is to provide guidance and assistance to the company, using all their resources available, and to find opportunities for the company to find new partnerships, users or visibility where appropriate. This can mean sitting in conference calls with engineers where the service's roadmap is discussed, and offering feedback on direction or lobbing suggestions yourself. This can mean acting as an early adopter and finding holes in the product, sending them by e-mail and offering an alternative. It can mean introducing people at the company to people within your own network, who may be interested in the product themselves, or can bring the product more awareness. It can even mean sitting down with PowerPoint and cranking out a VC deck if fundraising is in the cards.

But in almost all cases, advisors don't write a single line of code, and the capabilities and direction of the company still comes from the CEO/founder and the engineers themselves who are turning ideas into reality. No matter of advice and enthusiasm can help when milestones are missed or priorities of the individuals impacting the company go astray.

What an advisor is absolutely not is an unabashed fanboy and overly enthusiastic booster of the product. Any time it is clear that an advisor has slipped from a partner of a company to an aggressive spammer who can't fail to mention the company or its products all over the Web, a line has been crossed. But it can be helpful for the person to have the company in mind when opportunities arise throughout the extended network, and to occasionally message on their behalf - with tact.

I initially worked with BuzzGain because I believed PR companies were doing a very poor job of targeting the blogosphere. That turned out to be true and I think still is. I teamed up with ReadBurner because I believe strongly in the act of highlighting popular shared items on the Web and enabling discovery. Unfortunately, that project didn't meet all my hopes and was closed at the end of last year. I worked with SocialToo because Jesse Stay had introduced some top tools to manage Twitter streams and followers, and to block spam. Twitter continues to evolve as does his product, and it is essential for me. I added my name to TeensInTech because I want to help the next generation of geeks to have a central place to communicate and share ideas. This project is still ongoing. I joined up to MyLikes because I detest unfocused advertising and want to see people benefit from trusted recommendations. And most recently, I am working with Qwotebook to help bring a permanent repository for the amazing things so many people are saying which are often floating into the ether.

I have seen some of my peers sign on as advisors to companies even if they privately don't like the product, simply because they think they might make money in the end. This is not an advisor you want. I have attended advisory board meetings only to have the same people not show up who didn't show up last time. They are not advisors you want. And I know you don't want advisors who are unwilling to risk their own "personal brand" to do work on your behalf.

Two months ago, one company approached me with an option to be on their advisory board. I said no. Not because I didn't like them or because I was too busy or because I didn't think they had a future. It was because I just wasn't familiar enough with their product and didn't want to be disingenuous. Since that time, I have started using their product and think it's great. And in that time, an announcement already went out with their new advisory board, without my name on it. Do I consider that a missed opportunity? Not really. Even if I miss out on some great engagement and a few dollars some day, it was not the right time, and my intentions would have been wrong.

Entrepreneurs are already stretched with their resources and their time. It is critical that when the time comes to find partners who are going to have blood and sweat equity with you, who can help build your product and find you new outlets, that you pick the right people who are entrepreneurial themselves, who are willing to take calls at odd hours, and who truly care about helping you achieve your vision. If you choose wrong, all you have done is given up equity to people who are along for the ride, and you may have to work even harder to chase them down. So do choose well.

I told you before, I am not a fanboy, not even to the companies I am working with where I do get deep insight into their plans. But I do care, and I will keep fighting on behalf of users from the inside, and then fighting for them when the time is right.

Disclosure: I am an unpaid advisor to SocialToo, TeensInTech, MyLikes and Qwotebook.

In my family, college wasn't so much an option, but an expectation. That was no surprise, given my dad had an M.D. and my mother got her doctorate in educational technology, alongside more than a decade's teaching experience at primary and secondary levels. In fact, my own decision, thus far, to not attend graduate school or get an MBA has been a greater source of internal debate. So when I saw at the end of last week that Daniel Brusilovsky, a 16-year-old friend of mine who operates the Teens In Tech service, which I advise for, was thinking of not going to college altogether, I considered him out of his mind.

Of course, mine was not the only opinion. With the very public examples of tech leaders such as Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and others who have not completed their degrees, it can be tempting for an aggressive entrepreneur to point their way for leadership. And yes, some college courses, like high school, seem to have almost no value for whatever you may eventually choose as your career. I personally know I derived as much benefit from working at the college newspaper as I believe I ever did from my college courses at UC Berkeley. But if I had tried to jump straight from high school to Silicon Valley, I would have been dead on arrival.

Rob Diana touched on some of these points this morning in his article on the reputation economy, but even if you're not a huge fan of FriendFeed, you should see the debate that has been raging the last few days, embedded here. Enjoy, and participate here or there. Up to you.

Yesterday, I said I was going to try and say yes to everything, in an effort to get more involved with entrepreneurs, startups and other smart folks around the Web. One of the most direct ways I have been able to work with aggressive players is in an advisory role, helping to push the founders of BuzzGain, ReadBurner and SocialToo to roll out new features, raise awareness and deliver high quality products.

Today, I am happy to announce that I will also be working with Daniel Brusilovsky and the Teens In Tech team, joining their highly qualified advisory board, which also includes Daniel Ha of Disqus, Sam Lessin of Drop.io and others.

Daniel announced my addition to the board of advisors in a blog post yesterday, and I am looking forward to seeing how a 30-something married guy with kids and a resume with more than 10 years experience can try and give guidance to a bunch of teenagers without my coming off sounding like a fuddy-duddy. In my e-mail, phone and in person conversations with Daniel over the last few months, I have been very impressed with his intensity for tech, business, and a wisdom that is without a doubt beyond his years and look forward to helping him develop a successful platform for the next generation of Web addicts.

Founded in 2008, Teens In Tech is a media platform and community for teens. The company acquired the Youth Bloggers Network in March, and in January held the first Teens In Tech Conference. Expect to hear more about Daniel's plans soon.