Silicon Valley is generally considered to be the center of the startup universe.  However, with its blue chip educational institutions, top notch venture capital scene, and rich computing technology heritage, Massachusetts has quietly played home to some of the most innovative and successful companies the average consumer has never heard of.

Fortunately, there are some great efforts afoot to raise awareness of all of the amazing innovation going on in the Boston area.  Scott Kirsner’s Innovation Economy blog (recently relocated to Boston.com) has become required reading for Boston area startups, and the folks over at Xconomy and Mass High Tech also do a fantastic job highlighting the innovative companies on the rise in Massachusetts.  Additionally, while we often catch flack for letting Facebook fly the coop from Harvard to Palo Alto, we have actually figured out how to use social media here on the east coast. 

Case in point is Mass Innovation Nights (MIN), an organization that has emerged as the confluence of Massachusetts high tech innovators, the social networking world, the mainstream media, and the marketplace.  The organization holds monthly events at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham (You can’t find a more appropriate location than that!) where the hottest young companies is Massachusetts show off their latest innovations.

This month, MIN will be conducting its first “virtual” innovation night on Wednesday, August 12.  The event will kick-off at 6:30 p.m. on Twitter using the hashtag #MIN5.  (If you are new to Twitter, the MIN site has some good tips and tools for following hashtags.)  From there, the event will evolve into a phone-based “speed dating” style format with the help of some neat technology from past MIN participant BlitzTime.

One of the three rules for the virtual event is to play nice, but we are far too competitive for that at Virtual Computer.  So, we are putting out the challenge to the Boston startup community.  Do you think you have a more innovative product than us?  If so, the stage is set.  Let’s see what you’ve got!  We’ll be in on the virtual event, as well as jockeying for a spot in a future live Mass Innovation Night.  So, you better bring your biggest innovation, because we’ll be bringing NxTop.

Greetings from Chicago, where I am attending Brian Madden’s seventh annual BriForum event.  The event got off to a great start yesterday.  It is a smaller event as conferences go, but you won’t find a larger concentration of the brightest minds in desktop virtualization anywhere.  BriForum provides a great opportunity to see and touch some of the best virtualization technology available today, but I have been particularly drawn to some of the sessions focused on where this is all headed.  Chetan Venkatesh from Atlantis Computing did a really interesting session yesterday morning called “Envisioning the Desktop of 2015: A Tale of Three Clouds and Liquid Desktop Computing,” and Brian Madden and Martin Ingram of AppSense revisited their past predictions for the evolution of desktop computing in “Looking Towards the New Desktop.”  In both cases, the brand of client-side desktop virtualization we practice at Virtual Computer factored heavily into the presenters’ view of the future.

Walking around BriForum, one really gets the sense that there is a perfect storm of industry events brewing that is really going to cause desktop virtualization to take off in the next 12 months.  For example, all signs are that Microsoft “got it right” with Windows 7, and that its release will be a catalyst for many organizations to look for new and innovative ways to deploy and manage their desktops.  We think we have one for them.  If you happen to be a BriForum and would like to connect to see a live demo of NxTop, feel free to grab me by the shirt, ping me on Twitter (@dlane), or use the form we have available on our web site.

Fortunately for me, my time spent contemplating the future of desktop virtualization with really sharp people will not end with my departure from BriForum on Thursday.  I am excited to be teaming up with Rachel Chalmers of The 451 Group next week on the webinar, “Five Ways Virtualization Is Changing Your PC.”  It will be held next Wednesday (July 29) at  11:30 a.m. ET.  We will explore a number of the ways in which client-side desktop virtualization will transform the PC for both IT admins and end-users, including:

• The ability to run multiple operating systems on a single device and easily move from a personal to a corporate environment
• Easy migration from Windows XP to Windows Vista or soon Windows 7
• Enhanced data protection, backup and security
• Improved PC management for mobile and remote workers
• Remote desktop access to your documents, settings and self-installed applications

Visit our registration page to learn more or to register.

As I have described in the past, NxTop makes use of the Xen open source hypervisor to bring bare metal desktop virtualization to traditional PC hardware. Even though we have put a significant amount of our own work into implementing Xen as a bare metal client hypervisor, this effort would have been impossible were it not for the hard work and innovation of the global community of Xen open source contributors.

A couple of times a year, the leaders of the Xen project conduct an in-person event called Xen Summit. Xen Summit is an opportunity for Xen developers and researchers to share new concepts with the broader Xen community. The next event, Xen Summit North America 2009, is coming up in a couple of weeks. It will be hosted by Oracle at their Redwood City, CA headquarters on February 24 and 25.

While some of us will be at VMworld Europe that week taking our medicine from the VMware marketing and public relations machine, our co-founder and CTO, Alex Vasilevsky, will be keepin’ it real out at Xen Summit. Alex has been a long-time thought leader in the Xen community dating back well before his time at Virtual Computer, and he has been helping out with the upcoming Xen Summit as part of the committee that reviewed and approved proposed papers for the event. He’ll be introducing the authors of the various paper submissions and no doubt stirring up interesting conversation and debate throughout the event, so if you are going to be at Xen Summit please do introduce yourself to him. If you tell him you are a loyal reader of the Virtual Computer Blog, he will give you $100 from his own wallet. (Just kidding.)

Visit the Xen community site to learn more or register for the event.

When the topic of virtualization comes up, there are really only four companies that come to mind: Citrix, Microsoft, VMware, and Virtual Computer.  Right? 

The folks at SAP recently finalized the agenda for their upcoming SAP Virtualization Week 2009, scheduled for April 20 – 23 in Palo Alto, CA.  One of the highlights of the event will be a panel discussion that will feature our own Alex Vasilevsky along with Simon Crosby of Citrix, Mike Neil of Microsoft, and Steve Herrod of VMware.  I am guessing that it will be a lively and entertaining discussion.

The event agenda and registration details can be found on the SAP web site.  The SAP event timing and location lines up very well with the IDC Virtualization Forum West if you happen to be attending that event.  Travel budget in shreds on the floor?  SAP is also offering an option to view a webcast of the event via Citrix GoToWebinar.

This week, Burton Group is holding its Catalyst Europe conference in Prague. If you are planning to attend, be sure to check out Chris Wolf’s “Debating the Hypervisor’s Future” panel Tuesday afternoon. Our fearless leader Dan McCall will be joining other virtualization industry thought leaders, such as VMware CTO Steve Herrod and Citrix’s Ian Pratt, to debate the future of hypervisor technology.

It should be a spirited discussion that will likely cover a range of topics such as proprietary versus open source hypervisor approaches and the emergence of the client hypervisor. We are pleased to be have been invited to join the panel and proud of the fact that in less than two months we have gone from stealth company to a unique new voice on the global virtualization industry stage.

If you’re attending VMworld next week, stop by booth 562 and say hello. We’re going to have some fun contests, giveaways and much, much more.

As you have probably seen on our home page, we’re going to have a Then vs. Now Bowling Challenge. What exactly is that? You’ll have to stop by to find out…though the graphic in our flash animation should be a dead giveaway (and I promise that those up to the challenge won’t go home empty handed).

And what else will we have at VMworld? You’ll have to wait and see!