In April, I’ll be heading down the coast from San Francisco to Carlsbad to run in this event, with my sister, who also is a runner (it runs in the family).

I’ll be tracking my progress on Twitter, Facebook and this blog, so if you want follow my training, go ahead and subscribe.

On Saturday, February 6th, it was the second Teens in Tech Conference, or as we called it, Teens in Tech Conference 2.0. It was a really exciting day filled with amazing attendees, speakers, sponsors, giveaways and overall fun. I just wanted to take a little bit of time to go over some of things that happened at the conference.

The conference would not have been made possible with out the amazing content of our speakers. Danny Trinh from Digg kicked off the conference, and gave an amazing talk, just like last year. Joey Primiani started his talk off with a bang, entering the room in a space suit, and with a “fan club” — it definitely woke everyone up in the morning. Our first interview in the morning was with John Ramey and Zak Hassanein, the Co-Founders of isocket, a new startup that handles advertising solutions for companies, which recently raised $2 million in funding from top VC’s and Angels’ in Silicon Valley. Tim Showalter-Loch from Best Buy talked to the crowd about what Best Buy, a large electronics seller is doing to attract teens, and to make their business more eco-friendly, as well as their new project, @15.

Our amazing sponsors had a few moments to demo their products, and give a little talk about them. Following that, we had lunch along side some networking between attendees.

Alex Nichols kicked off the afternoon sessions talking about marketing and entrepreneurship in the 21st century — Adam Debreczeni, who designed and built our conference web site, talked about designing for youth, and gave some really interesting examples on good and bad designs. We ended up the afternoon with a eco-friendly talk from SmartPowerEd, an interview with Josh Shipp, and a really great talk from Dropbox Co-Founder and CEO, Drew Houston.

Whenever someone registers for the conference through Eventbrite, I get an email notifying me. At 6:00 PM, I got a very interesting email from Eventbrite, saying that Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, just registered for the conference. My jaw immediately dropped. At first, I couldn’t believe that it was actually him, but when he showed up on time at 9:00 AM on Saturday, I was blown away even more. Steve was an amazing attendee, offered feedback, signed a few attendees personal MacBook Pros, and even helped us giveaway some raffle tickets!

The Teens in Tech Conference would not have been made possible with out the support of our amazing sponsors and partners. Most importantly, I’d like to thank Google for letting us use their San Francisco office, as well as provide snacks, drinks, audio equipment, chairs and tables for us to use. Not mentioned, Google gave away two Nexus One’s at the conference, plus t-shirts, puzzles, stickers, Wave and Voice invites, and much more. Some of our other sponsors, like Pana.ma gave away an iPod Touch, and Altec Lansing gave away amazing speakers, and list goes on. If you’d like to see all of our sponsors, check them out here. Lastly, special thanks to Rickshaw Bagworks for creating custom Small Zero Messenger bags for the conference.

If you weren’t able to make the conference, we streamed the entire conference via Ustream, where you can watch all the sessions.

Obviously, there is a lot that we can improve on for the conference, and we are always open to suggestions, but in my opinion, this years conference was much better then last year, in all ways. Thank you for making that happen! Until next year, we’ll see you online!

In some way or another, a line was crossed that should have never been. At this time, I do not want to go into details, but I will publicly say that I am truly sorry to my family, friends, TechCrunch, and especially the tech community. Since 2006 when I first got into the internet, I have felt comfortable, and working at TechCrunch has made this experience even better. TechCrunch is not to blame for any of this — TechCrunch has given me the opportunity of a life time. I can never say thank you enough for TechCrunch for the amazing last nine months I’ve had.

This is the first day of the next learning stage for me. Yes, I am young, but from here, I can only learn more. To my family, friends, colleagues and especially, TechCrunch, I am sorry. I am taking this entire experience, learning and moving on.

For those who have messaged me with your thoughts — thank you. At this point, I’d like to take some time to myself after the Teens in Tech Conference, to focus on school, and enjoy being a teenager. I’ve invited Michael and my friends from TechCrunch to come the conference as well.

Thank you for the support thus far, and I hope you respect my decision to have some privacy.

In January 2009, we had our first Teens in Tech Conference, where over 125 attendees came to the conference, and learned from our amazing speakers. We became the number one trending topic on Twitter, one day before the Super Bowl, which was a huge accomplishment.

This year, we’re coming back, bigger and better. Teens in Tech Conference 2.0 is at Google’s San Francisco office on February 6, and we’re thrilled to have Google as a sponsor. They’ll be supplying snacks and drinks, as well as the venue, throughout the day.

I’m even more excited about our amazing speakers including Joe Hewitt of Facebook, Danny Trinh of Digg, Vitor Lourenço of Twitter, Josh Shipp, Drew Houston of Dropbox, and many more! You can find the full list here.

And of course, we have our amazing sponsors behind us again this year, including Rickshaw Bags, who once again is making custom bags for the conference, Intel, Blue Microphones, JBL, Speck Products, Best Buy @15, RadTech, and more. You can also find the full list here.

And with that, I encourage everyone to register for the conference if you’re in town. And, for reading my blog, you get a special discount code! Just use the code ‘danielbru‘ when you register, and you’ll save 15% of your ticket price.

Hope to see everyone in San Francisco at Google’s office on February 6th!

My session is called Emerging Tech: Hot or Not? I’ll be speaking on Saturday, January 09, 2010 from 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM. All my session information is below — hope you can make it!

IPTV, WiMAX, LTE, Android, OLED, OpenSocial, Windows 7, cloud computing, 4.0 mobile broadband: Which emerging technologies, product categories and standards show the most promise for widespread success, and which are overhyped? Prepare for a lively debate between proponents and skeptics with a focus on what will be big at the 2013 CES.

Facility: LVCC, North Hall
Room Number: N258

Moderator:
Dylan Tweney, Senior Editor, Wired.com

Panelists:
Dr. Kevin Kahn, Senior Fellow, Intel Labs, Director, Communications Technology Lab, Intel Corporation
Gary Koerper, Vice President of Engine Systems, Mobile Devices, Motorola
Warren Packard, Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurveston
Kuk Yi, Corporate VP and Managing Partner, Best Buy Capital, Best Buy

Also, don’t forgot that I’ll be speaking at Macworld coming up in February 2010. Happy New Year everyone, and happy holidays!

Telecom Italia has invited me to participate at their upcoming event, Under 21 – Digital Natives on November 18 in Rome at Capitoline Museum.

“Digital Natives” is a project on the future of innovation and digital culture designed and produced by Telecom Italia, Wired, Foundation Romaeuropa, and CATTID University La Sapienza.

I’ll be speaking with a great group of young (well, under 21!) individuals, including; Salvatore Aranzulla, Jessica Brando, Marco De Rossi, Nicholas Greek, Andrea Lo Pumo, and Valerio Masotti. They will be live streaming this event, which you can find here.

I’ll be staying in Italy from November 14, through the 21, mostly in Rome. If you are an Italian entrepreneur, lets get in touch — I would love to learn what your working on! Thanks to Telecom Italia for inviting me — I look forward to this great opportunity. Till then — ciao!

I love WordPress. If you know me, then you know that WordPress is my CMS (Content Management System) of choice. I use it for all my blogs, clients, and more. Even sites like TechCrunch, use WordPress to post content online. WordPress is just plain awesome. One of the great things about WordPress is the community around it. The community of developers that contribute their time and energy into making plugins and themes that thousands, or even millions of users will use.

One of the many core values of WordPress is GPL. Because of GPL and the way WordPress treats it, I’ve always followed by that code, so when I see sites like WPMU Premium, WPMU.org, etc., it angers me, because these are great quality plugins and themes that I feel like the entire public should be able to access, not just the paying public. If WordPress is free, why aren’t the add-ons? Mozilla Firefox is free, and so are the thousands of add-ons.

One of the more premium WordPress design companies is WooThemes, co-founded by Adii “Rockstar” Pienaar. At first, I didn’t support WooThemes, because you had to pay for their premium themes. But, after recently speaking with Adii, and really understand WooThemes, their business model, and their goal. I really understand, and respect what WooThemes has built. They have over 40 premium themes, and release some of their themes for free. Of course, the free themes are the ones with the most the downloads.

WooThemes has worked with some of the best designers; Tim Van Damme, Bryan Veloso, Dan Rubin, Elliot Jay Stocks, Liam McKay, Matt Brett, Tony Geer, and Veerle Pieters.

Go ahead and look at some of the WooThemes, because they are beautiful, and can be worth the price for you.

How to Sell to Niche Markets Online – Baby Boomer and GenY/Teen Communities

As each generation ages, what they buy and how much they spend will change. Each product and service has a “best customer” that sustains its business. As these customers mature, the smart marketers will stay one step ahead of them and their money. The Baby Boomer and Generation Y communities are redefining how we market and it would be wise to learn how to anticipate their needs more effectively.

During this session, you will learn:

-How to clearly understand their ideal customer’s purchasing behaviors
-How to successfully build rapport & trust with these markets
-How Baby Boomer and Gen Y consumers evaluate brands and what they pay attention to when making purchase decisions
-How to narrate your business story in a way that resonates with Baby Boomer and Gen Y community members
-The Dos and Don’ts of marketing to the Baby Boomer and Gen Y communities

I’m excited to share my insight on youth marketing, especially since I’m taking a different approach with this presentation. I’ll upload my presentation to Slideshare on Friday as well. Thanks to Edith Yeung to inviting me to speak, as well!

Update: My presentation is embedded below. Please contact me with any comments/suggestions. There is also video of the session coming as well.

Entrepreneurship and youth are two big topics right now, so a few of my friends decided to start a podcast about those two topics. Christian Owens of Branchr Advertising, Mark Bao of Avecora, Alex Nichols of Take a Tee/Teens in Tech Networks and I are starting a podcast called Early Espresso (hat tip to Christian and Mark for the name). It’s a weekly podcast where we talk about youth, entrepreneurship, technology and more.

We’ve recorded our first episode, and released it a few minutes ago. In this episode we talk about some tech news, (Tweetie 2, Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, etc.), and talk about the big decision: to go, or not to go to college. A topic that has been recently discussed here on my personal blog. Alex couldn’t join us this week, but he’ll be back next week.

So go ahead, and subscribe in iTunes, and follow Early Espresso on Twitter.

We’ll have a business plan competition, where startups and entrepreneurs can go on stage, and pitch some investors of their idea. The panel of judges will then go over the business plan, and pick a winner. So far, we have Kevin Hartz, co-founder/CEO of Eventbrite, Ann Miura-Ko, Partner at Maples Investments, David Lee, a partner at Ron Conway’s investment firm, SV Angel, LLC, and Skye Lee and Brian Phillips (early PayPal employees and co-founders of Thread).

We’re still getting a lot of the details figured out, but if you’re interested in sponsoring, or speaking, please contact Cory or myself through the contact page. You can go ahead and register for a ticket today.

Also, don’t forget that the second annual, Teens in Tech Conference, or as we are calling it, Teens in Tech Conference 2.0, is coming in February 2010 at Google’s San Francisco office. You can pre-register for tickets today.