The Michigan Growth Capital Symposium turned 30 this week, and its proud papa said Thursday that it's getting more mature.

"The buzz here has never been better," University of Michigan professor David Brophy said. "Everybody is just energized."

Brophy said about 400 people attended the symposium, up "a little bit" from last year.

"One of the interesting things is that the ratio of out-of-town people has gone up significantly, and the number of venture capitalists has gone up substantially," Brophy said. "The aim of the conference is to help companies from around here get connected with national, top-tier VCs, and we're succeeding at that."

Brophy said the hottest sectors of interest among VCs are health care and the broad category of alternative energy and environmental cleanup industries known as "cleantech."

Thursday morning's keynote speaker, Kenneth Pelowski of Pinnacle Ventures, said that in all his years of coming to Michigan, he's never seen a tighter integration in this state of university research with sectors where VCs are hungry for deals.

"I think that's going to pay off and turn into some successful deals" in the years ahead, Brophy said. "There's evidence of progress in more sophisticated proposals, and people of a wide variety of ages here, including students from Michigan, Michigan State, Bowling Green and Michigan Tech."

More at www.michigangcs.com.