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.

With more and more of the next generation bringing devices like the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, and other devices to school, what do teens really do with these devices? What’s hot and what’s not with the Mac and the iPhone/iPod? Hear from a high school senior employed in the tech industry how this is already changing schools and classrooms across the globe.With more and more of the next generation bringing devices like the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, and other devices to school, what do teens really do with these devices? What’s hot and what’s not with the Mac and the iPhone/iPod? Hear from a high school senior employed in the tech industry how this is already changing schools and classrooms across the globe.

I’ll be speaking on February 12, 2010 from 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM, so if your around at Macworld, come on by to my session! I can assure that it won’t be something you’ll want to miss. See you at Macworld 2010!

Here’s my position. College is either the best four years of your live, or the four years of your life where you’ve wasted those four years, and wasted a lot of money. I don’t want to look back when I’m 30 and say that I wasted four years of my life in college, when I could have been working on my next startup, or working with an awesome startup. I simply don’t want to regret making such a decision like that.

On the other side, we have people telling me the some of their best friends, and partners for life where found at college. Also, that college is a great way to make connections. Seeing that I’m in Silicon Valley, and an active member of the tech scene, I don’t feel like making connections is something that college is going to teach me. Another reason. Entrepreneurship. My philosophy is that entrepreneurship can not be taught. It is something that you learn along the way of your business as you grow.

Please leave all your comments below — I really appreciate any comments and/or opinions.

Update: Thanks for all the comments and opinions. Looks like I’ll be going to college. More details to come. Follow me on Twitter to stay up to date.