One of the best tech events of this past spring was hosted by Nathan Kaiser, CEO of nPost.com. Nathan has put together a follow-up event (more to come later this summer and fall), with a new batch of local startups that will be on hand to demo their products. The list includes Catch the Best, Eyejot, Timelope, HomeSavvi and ClayValet, plus one or two others. It looks like there’s still room on the registration page to sign up – the event is free, and if the last one was any indication, it should be a blast!

As we’ve mentioned before, the Seattle startup industry is still booming with at least one new event every week. This Friday afternoon, up-and-coming entrepreneurs will get the opportunity to hone their idea-pitching skills. FundingUniverse.com will be giving about 15 local early stage founders 2 minutes to pitch their idea before a panel of experts (representatives from Atlas Recruiting, nPost.com, ActiveWords and others). They’ll be judged by the panel and also getting feedback from the larger audience. Check out the FundingUniverse.com event page for more details.

Submissions for the competetion itself are already closed, but you can still sign up to attend. If you plan on going, make sure you either RSVP over at the upcoming.org registration page, or send an email directly to Carolynn Duncan: cduncan@fundinguniverse.com. They only have room for 130 people and are already over half full, so make sure you register soon.

As we mentioned last week, this is the weekend for tech events, and tonight the events kick off with a whole bunch of drinking. At 4:30, Josh Maher is organizing a Lunch 2.0 Happy Hour event at the offices of Blue Gecko downtown. From there, at 6pm, Nathan Kaiser and the other nPost.com pub crawlers will be heading out to a couple of bars before Thingamajiggr kicks off at 8pm. You can either show up at the Blue Gecko event, or follow along with the nPost twitter feed to see where folks are. The nPost wiki also has the evening’s rough schedule sketched out, so you can check for updates there as well.

If you hang out at any of the local geek events: Mind Camp, Saturday House, Ignite, Startup Weekend, etc., you can’t help but notice that Seattle is brimming with geeks that have the Next Big WebApp. And with the prevalence of frameworks like Rails and Django, it’s getting easier and eaiser to get those ideas implemented and out into the world. But what about the next step? What happens if you want to turn your idea into a legitimate business – what paperwork do you need to fill out, how do you pitch to investors, etc. These are common and yet complex questions.

Rob Eickmann is putting together the Six Hour Startup Conference that promises to deal with all these issues and more. Speakers include Andy Sack, of Judy’s Book and Founder’s Co-op, Tony Wright from Rescue Time and Carolynn Duncan from FundingUniverse.com. You can also sign up at the event itself for an opportunity to pitch your idea, and get real feedback from the whole community.

The total cost for the event is $99, and if you register before Wednesday (the 21st), you’ll get a free copy of Randy Komisar’s classic business book The Monk and the Riddle.

The startup job listing site nPost.com is having another one of its tech community networking events. If you’re an entrepreneur, VC, angel investor, or just general techie… the nPost.com events serve up some of the best networking opportunities around Seattle. This time around, however, the hosts are adding something a little bit different: a DEMO-style set of presentations where 5 local companies get time in front of the whole crowd to pitch their business / service / idea / whatever. If you want a chance to present your product, the submission deadline is April 16th. Otherwise, simply put your name on the attendee list to reserve a spot at the event. The list is almost full, so sign up soon.

The 6 Hour Startup project is settling into a monthly routine now – a new session on the second Saturday of each month. That means this coming weekend, they’ll be running a new project: a Co-Browsing Firefox plug-in built with Javascript, and a Smalltalk variant known as Squeak. The session organizers will be mixing it up this time around, splitting the whole thing out into two days. On Saturday there will be two groups working simultaneously: a technical group running a tutorial on Squeak and Smalltalk, and then a business group doing prep-work for the actual session. Then Sunday afternoon will be the actual implementation session, with a full working product by the end of the day if everything goes well. For more details on the actual project, check out the 6 Hour Startup blog.

As a disclaimer, I’m on the Operational Board for 6 Hour Startup. We’re currently looking for more people to get involved and help us guide the endeavor over the next year. So, if you want to learn more, either show up this weekend, or hop on the mailing list.

The Six Hour Startup concept has been kicking around Seattle for the last few months, with two solid projects under it’s belt: tagmindr.com and gamewrangle.com. Over the course of a Saturday afternoon a group of about 15 people or so all gather to put togther a rapid-prototype startup. You can read a bit more on the first iteration from John Cook’s article back in October.

The next Six Hour Startup session is coming up this weekend, and it’s going to be a little different: we’re going meta. I’m actually running this group and we’re focusing on the SHS web presence, or lack thereof. We want to start telling more of the SHS story, setting up a blog and maybe some other content, focusing on the goals and vision of the overall project. But by the end of the day, we intend to make a serious push of information about this new Startup project – call it Guerrilla Marketing.

This particular session is going to focus a lot less on tech and hackery and more on marketing, BizDev, general blogging and spreading ideas. So if you’re curious about Six Hour Startup, but have been nervous about your tech skills, feel free to stop by and observe for a little while. And of course if you have any useful skills along these lines, please show up as well. This is a joint venture with SoDo Saturday House, so there will be lots of people working on a whole bunch of different projects. You can get more information by signing up on the Six Hour Startup mailing list.

The Seattle tech scene is abuzz right now with the news that Startup Weekend is coming to Emerald City. This will be the 14th such event, and if previous instances are any indication (San Francisco, London, Atlanta, etc.), then it should be a blast.

Participants gather on a Friday night, without any knowledge of what they’re going to create, or how it’s all going to come together. About 54 hours later (sometime late Sunday / early Monday), the product is launched and everyone celebrates. It’s not really clear if the sites they build are overwhelming successes, but the point of it all is really “building community and a company in a weekend”. Tickets are $20, which covers basic operating costs for the event. But register soon, it looks like it’s going to fill up fast.

If you’re interested in some similar events that occur more regularly around Seattle, you should check out the Tech Startups group or the Six Hour Startup list (which I help run).