My friend Marcelo Calbucci is a serial entrepeneur in the truest sense of the word. Not only does he create startups, blog about startups, and go to events for startups, but he loves the startup process so much that he has founded Seattle’s very first annual ‘StartupDay’ (yep, a whole DAY celebrating startup awesomeness). To me, Marcelo himself embodies the ’startup spirit’; always affable, he deals with adversity with resiliency and grace, while handling success with humility. He is quite possibly the hardest working man in show business. I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Thoreau;

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”

Thus, StartupDay 2009 was created to help current PRE-entrepreneurs to get introduced to the notion of startup creation. It will be a full day of talks from some known entrepreneurs in Seattle. Marcelo has graciously asked me to present at StartupDay on Sept 26th. From Marcelo:

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.

Sign me up for sure! If you will be in Seattle and want to hear some great thoughts on the startup scene; you can register for Startup Day here: http://www.startupday.com/

On Mondays, we roll into our swanky downtown office after adventurous weekends of backpacking at Greenwater Lakes, cruising the slopes of Crystal Mountain, and riding the fake plastic horses of Pier 57. Tuesdays you’ll catch us wisecracking between meetings, before meetings and after meetings. Wednesdays are jam packed with coffee fueled last minute bug smashing, hot fixes, code correcting, executive team meetings, conference calls galore, oh, and did I mention coffee?

Thursday mornings are the apex of importance for this Seattle startup! In the world of web applications it’s known as a launch day. This is the moment we release any awesome new effects, fonts, frames and stickers along with design changes, new upgrade paths, and all the other back-end maintenance projects we’ve been working on.

By the time Thursday afternoon rolls around, understandably, we are quite tuckered out.  But it’s only day four in the week and we’ve still got one more day to conquer.  How do we do it? What’s our silver bullet? What gets the team through the final hour (4pm to 5pm)? Three words:

Easy. Listening. Thursday.

It’s time for Team Picnik to work in complete and utter smoothness. We dim the lights, we crack open an ice cold Crystal Geyser Juice Squeeze and we get down to business. The business of tranquility, that is.  Saxophones, long wavy hair, circular breathing, and lingering beats.  We pick a starting point (Al Green, Kenny G,  Bolton, or is it more of an Enya day?) and let Pandora do the rest.  This is what soothes us, eases our worries, and keeps us cool in the chaos of web 2.0.  It’s that simple, and for this Easy Listening Thursday and the many more to come, we invite you to do the same.

Everyone here at Picnik is very exciting about our newest feature: Picnik Show!  We’ve been hard at work creating the easiest, most fun way to share your photos with your family, friends, and the rest of the world.  You can grab pictures from your computer or your favorite online service, mix them together just the way you like, and pick a cool style to show them off.

Here’s a Picnik Show I just made about today’s field trip to Picnik’s new data center:

Picnik Show is currently available as a special sneak preview for Picnik Premium users.  In a few weeks we’ll release a more limited version that anyone can use.  And in the meantime, we’ll be working on adding even more awesome features to Picnik Show — stay tuned for new styles, new sharing options, comments, captions, and more!

Picnik Premium members can visit Picnik.com right now to create their very own shows. Not Premium yet? A sneak peak at our newest features is just one of the many benefits of upgrading!

Sound the trumpets! We, the official Picnik BlogHer team, have triumphantly returned to Picnik World Headquarters in Seattle.

Lisa, Sarah, Bridget, and I are weary boned, hoarse throated, and sleep deprived, yet ecstatic to share our story. After our first few days of taking in the eclectic skyline and cruising down the Chicago river, we made our way over to the Sheraton to set up our booth for BlogHer ’09.

Friday morning to Saturday evening, we showed hundreds of bloggers how to rock their images with Picnik. We uploaded, corrected, spruced up, and saved photos in a matter of minutes to prove just how easy Picnik really is. We showed off our brand new Touch Up Suite to oohs and ahhs and revealed our BlogHer logo Stickers to a standing ovation.

But you don’t have to take our word for it… @TheAppleOfMyEye tweeted, “Found out some cool new things that @Picnik has to offer from a demo @BlogHer.  Companies NEED to be at these conferences The smart 1’s are.”  @MommyTechCES agreed, “SO impressed by Picnik at #BlogHer!” And, of course, our dear @AngryJulie, who lamented, “I miss my #Picnik girls already from #BlogHer.” We miss you, too, AngryJulie. We miss you, too.

Throughout our expo hall travels and booth stationed conversations, we met mommy bloggers, travel bloggers, fashion bloggers, scrappers, photographers, foodies, cowgirls, and cutie booty shakers. View our city romps and convention highlights on our Flickr Stream here: http://www.Flickr.com/PicnikBlogher. Be prepared for a heartwarming, silly, and sometimes scandalous journey through our trip to BlogHer.

We’ve set our away messages, synchronized our watches to Central Daylight Time, and hit the dusty trail (A.K.A. I-5) to Sea-Tac airport. Today, we three ladies of Picnik are boarding our flight for the Windy City!

What’s with the globetrotting, you ask? Lisa, Sarah, and I are off to reveal the superhuman photo editing powers of Picnik to the ladies of BlogHer at their 5th annual conference! We’ll be demoing the best of Picnik out of Booth #112 alongside our trusty press rep, Bridget, while giving away some choice Picnik swag. Come find us!

Don’t worry, we’re leaving a few days early to scarf some deep-dish, cruise the Magnificent Mile, catch a few bars of the blues, and rofl to some world-class improv.

Along the way, we’ll be posting photos to a Flickr stream here. Follow along on our whimsical forays and misadventures in America’s 3rd largest city, Chicago!

Can I just say, we’re delighted? Not only are we delighted, but we’re enraptured and, I won’t lie, we have a little extra swagger in our step.

Last week we launched our amazing new Touch Up suite! Now with 15 cool effects like Sunless Tan, Airbrush, and Lip Color to guarantee that every picture shows your best side. Goodbye shine, goodbye wrinkles; hello Mascara, Blush, and Highlights! We’ve even added a few Advanced Tools (Dodging and Burning) to keep shadows off faces and make spotty lighting consistent. No more do-overs, no more detagging, now all you need is one shot to capture the perfect you!

Find these new tools under the Create tab. Look for the Touch Up section with the cosmetic jar.

Picnik passed another big milestone this week, with every more millions of happy Picnikers using the site to add a little fun and awesomeness to their photos. We’d like to say we’ve been doing our part here at Team Picnik to boost our numbers, because we’ve got a little happy news.

Team Picnik is thrilled to announce that Charlie, our QA Manager and Community Relations Guy is back at work. Why was he gone? Because he had a baby!

That’s right, baby season continues at Picnik World Headquarters with baby Wyatt, the third baby this year. First Brian, our Quixotic Softographer, then CEO Jonathan, and now Charlie. Congratulations, Charlie and Kristi!

Justin (our Penguin Handler) and Mike (COO) are in San Jose this week for the annual Velocity Conference on web performance and operations. Keynote speakers this year include Jonathan Heiliger of Facebook, Marissa Mayer of Google, John Adams of Twitter, and Justin Huff of Picnik! That’s right, Justin gave a keynote today on “2 Years Later: Loving and Hating the Cloud,” and Mike went along to cheer for him.

Most of our users might hear about “the Cloud” and wonder, “Why would Justin hate the Picnik clouds?” but actually the Cloud is where most of Picnik is stored! It refers to all our offsite data storage, processing, flexibility, and not making Justin install all that hardware himself. That way, it’s where we don’t have to look at it, as if it were hidden behind big white fluffy clouds. So Justin was down there to talk about love, hate, and laziness.

They’ll be there for the rest of the conference, so if you run into them, say hi!

Update: The video is now online!

All across the Northern hemisphere people are celebrating the return of summer and here at Picnik we’re digging out the wicker basket and unrolling the checkered blanket by putting forth a challenge for Picnikers to show us how they’re kicking off the season by posting their best summer pictures with their favorite Picnik effects to Twitter, with a prize to the winners! Check out all 200+ images by clicking here or searching for the contest hashtag #SummerPicnik.

A big congratulations to our three winners @smith521, @wildcat24, and @bellavaz. All three winners received a one year subscription for Picnik Premium!

We also had two more favorites: @welstechtrainer received three months of Premium for posting an amazing collage that won her the award for the most amazing time capsule image, and @sandra6dee won three months of Picnik Premium for the most joyful jumping picture.

Want to share you favorite pictures on Twitter? We’ve made it really easy! When you get to the Save & Share tab select Twitter and connect to your account. Congrats to all the winners and have a great summer to all!

Next week Team Picnik is giving away a couple one-year Picnik Premium Memberships in a new Twitter contest: Use Picnik to Tweet your favorite summer photograph, using the hashtag #SummerPicnik so we can see you, and Team Picnik members will choose the best ones, with winners announced on Friday, June 19!

Directions: Make a Twitter account, if you don’t have one! Announce yourself by following @picnik on Twitter! Take your picture, then upload it and edit it! Then find the Twitter page under the Save & Share tab to Tweet your summery masterpiece!

The contest runs from Monday at 12.01 am through Thursday at 2 pm PDT. So why are we telling you this early? Because it’s a beautiful weekend in June! So get outside and get those photos!

Note to our Southern Hemisphere Picnikers: You are entirely welcome to include your photos of the grumpy weather you’re having right now.

Update: The contest is now open! Feel free to start Tweeting your submissions!

Update #2: The contest is now closed! Thank you to everyone who participated! We will announce the winners tomorrow, June 19 at 2pm PDT. In the meantime, check out the submissions on Twitter by searching for “#SummerPicnik”.