Jeff Veen, a fellow who is famous in the web design world–he's part of Adaptive Path–announced a conference for people who want to start a company. The conference is called Start and costs a mere $200. It will be in August in San Francisco.

Among the women speakers at the conference are Mena Trott from Six Apart and Lori McLeese from Room to Read. Room to Read has to be one of the most inspiring web businesses I've seen in a while. It seems worth the conference registration fee just to learn more about this project and meet someone involved with it.

Of course, there are also male speakers, and more speakers remain to be announced.

Here's the conference description:

Start is a one-day conference in San Francisco designed for smart, talented Web people to take hold of their ideas, follow their dreams, and start their own companies.

You’ll hear from founders of successful startups, and learn from investors, lawyers, and others who can outline potential pitfalls. They'll give you practical advice, tell their horror stories, and maybe lend you a little inspiration. If you've ever dreamt of taking the plunge, don't miss this chance to hear from the experts!

Remember that mantra from the 60s—don't trust anyone over 30? Well, the people who used to say that are now required to say don't trust anyone over 70, but that news hasn't reached twenty-something Bitty, who blogs at The Big Red Couch. Bitty used to work in a nursing home and recently posted Saints Be Praised sharing some of the lessons she learned from elders in the nursing home.

I'll just summarize the lessons, read the complete and touching explanations on her site.

Here are a few things I learned from my time among the owls:
1) Grief is universal. . . .
2) Beauty is clearer in the midst of brokenness. . . .
3) Being "old" is relative. . . .
4) You can have friends sixty years older than you are. . . .

Alana Marie is another twenty-something. She blogs at The Pursuit of Techyness about all sorts of techy things. Lately she's had some advice for the Tweeters who might be charging about in life with a device that doesn't yet receive Tweets. Certainly a horrifying prospect that she will help you correct.

In The Art of Twittering–Part II Alana lists the tools you need for every circumstance:

If you want to twitter right, you need to be connected wherever you are (who wants to visit the site to update!?). Mobile connectivity is a must.

* Outlook: OutTwit
* Blackberry: TwitterBerry
* iPhone/iPod Touch: Hahlo 3
* Windows Mobile: HelloTwitFace
* Windows: TeleTwitter (google)
* CLI: Twitter CLI (if you don’t know what this means, don’t do it)

I didn't know what the last on was, and I was afraid to look!

She mentions several more helpful Twitter sites and such in this article. Plus, don't overlook her first article on this topic: The Art of Twittering–Part I.

I'm looking forward to BlogHer 08 and meeting lots of you in San Francisco. Let's talk soon.