Seattle 2.0 reaches out to Pre-entrepreneurs with StartupDay

Today Seattle 2.0 announced that they are adding another startup event to their line-up which includes the successful inugural Seattle 2.0 Awards in May.

This time around rather than celebrating the successful startups in Seattle, they’re running a conference to help increase the number of startups in Seattle: StartupDay 2009.

StartupDay 2009 is a first of kind conference because it focuses on pre-entrepreneurs, those who have yet to join or found a startup. It will be a full day of talks from the most successful and respected entrepreneurs in Seattle.

If you are a technology person (developer, tester, program manager, general manager) and you want to learn more about startups and how to make them successful this is the conference for you. It doesn’t matter if you are ready to found or join a startup now, or if you just want to learn more to be better prepared once you decide to leave your corporate job.

Registration for the conference opens today and there is an early-bird price of just $95 until August 21st.

Marcelo Calbucci’s Seattle 2.0 blog got a makeover yesterday and it’s a huge improvement. The launch of the new logo and look coincides with their September Seattle Startup Index (SSI) which was published yesterday. Hat tip to Calbucci as Techvibes modelled our multi-city and Canada-wide Startup Indexes off of his original Seattle index concept. Calbucci hints at more changes to his Startup Index in the near future – stay tuned.

Seattle 2.0 announced the finalists of their upcoming Seattle 2.0 Awards today and the list is literally the who’s who of the local startup community.

After the public nominations, we went through a painful process of reviewing all the 2,000 nominees and then presenting all the candidates to the panel of 30 people, including CEOs, Angel Investors, VCs, Service Providers and bloggers from Seattle. The panel did a phenomenal job in such short period of time and the finalists have emerged.

• Dreambox Learning
• Picnik
• Redfin
• Wetpaint

• Appature
• BigOven
• Picnik
• Urbanspoon

• Andy Liu – CEO and co-founder of BuddyTV
• Glenn Kelman – CEO of Redfin
• Jonathan Sposato – CEO of Picnik
• Matt Hulett – CEO of mPire/Widgetbucks

• Chris Hahn – CTO and co-founder of Appature
• Greg Harrison – CTO and co-founder of mPire/Widgetbucks
• Joe Heitzeberg – VP of Engineering of WhitePages
• Nat Brown – CTO of iLike

• Jenny Lam – Co-founder at Jackson Fish Market
• Keith Harper – Art Director at Inkd
• Peter Roman – Lead Designer at Picnik

• Bill Bryant – Draper Fisher Jurvetson
• Bill McAleer – Voyager Capital
• Matt McIlwain – Madrona Venture Group
• Nick Hanauer – Second Avenue Partners

• Andy Sack
• Bill Bryant
• Geoff Entress
• Mike Koss

• Adam Philipp – Patent Attorney at AXIOS Law Group
• Craig Sherman – Corporate Attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
• Shannon Swift – President & CEO of Swift HR Solutions

• Startup Whisperer by Matt Hulett
• TechFlash by John Cook
• Xconomy Seattle by Greg Huang

• Ignite Seattle by Brady Forrest
• Lunch 2.0 by Josh Maher
• nPost Networking by Nathan Kaiser
• Open Coffee by Andy Sack