I'm here at the Nantucket Confernece, a gathering of New England's best veteran entrepreneurs and investors. This year, they've also invited some young entrepreneurs to the event thanks to sponsored tickets, which we wrote about last week. 

While the conversations over drinks, coffee and meals are off the record, the panels are not, so follow the tweets at #ack2011 and here I'll share a few of my notes from some of the panels and fireside chats today.

 Yesterday's Momentum Summit was one of the best events I've been to in quite some time. The interview format of the main part of the event seemed to work quite well as great lessons and takeaways emerged from the entrepreneur asks entrepreneur format.  (We liveblogged notes you can find here).  However, as great as that was, the most important part in my opinion were the lunches.

During the lunch portion, groups of 8-12 startupers huddled around tables to talk to successful founders about topics of the founder's choosing. Some of those topics included David Cancel of Performable discussing the importance of A/B testing, Antonio Rodriguez of Matrix Partners discussing VC funding and at the table I sat at, Matt Douglas of myPunchbowl discussing "Startup-Deals That Build Momentum". (for a complete list of lunch topics see here).  

Last night, I attended "Founder's Dating for TechStars" at Microsoft NERD.  Close to 50 people came to look for team members or join a team.  It was a great event overall and especially for a first attempt by Boston to have such a targeted event. I'd like to share a few notes, thoughts and comments from last night:

A few facts about TechStars:

Last night, I made the trek out to Waltham to check out the Entretech Forum for the first time.  It was a great night to be there as an impressive panel was assembled to discuss the next wave of innovation on the internet, aka- Web 3.0.

This past weekend was Startup Weekend Boston. It was a huge success and a great weekend. Everyone was already anxious to hear when the next one will be and word is, there will be a meetup in January and another full event in June. For those of you that were not able to attend, I want to share with you some of the many reasons you should make sure you're at the next one.

This weekend, Startup Weekend came to Boston. Over 75 entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts invaded Microsoft NERD's facilities to try to create companies in just 54 hours.  What started with 31 pitches was narrowed to 9 companies that worked furiously over the past few days.  I had a blast.

Last night, the Vilna Shul hosted an amazing "fireside chat" on being a founder and entrepreneur. HBS Associate Professor Noam Wasserman led a panel discussion with a trio of renowned local entrepreneurs: Brian Halligan, (Founder and CEO of Hubspot), Pito Salas, (Co-Founder and CTO of eRoom, Founder of BlogBridge and inventor of the pivot table), and Leah Busque, (Founder and CEO of RunMyErrand). There were so many amazing insights that I think the only way to cover all of it is to just list the questions and best responses: