Boulder Startup Weekend 2

Please check out the main Startup Weekend blog for the Boulder Startup Weekend 2 Wrap-up Post

Thats right. I hate MediaCasters.tv.

When the second Boulder Startup Weekend rolled around, I was super excited to take on the live blogging role, especially after doing it in DC, and enjoying it so much.

Then a day or two before the event, I get a call from Laura Fitton (@pistachio on twitter for those not following along). She asked my thoughts on the idea of using all the various social media tools, such as Twitter, Qik, UStream, Blogtv, Utterz, Seesmic, Wordpress and other various communication tools to “mediacast” Startup Weekend.

I told her I thought it was an awesome idea, and Laura, as Laura does, ran with it. Getting PulverTV as a sponsor and recruiting Tara from Lijit, Laura arrived in Boulder with Nokia N95 and MacBook in hand.

She had lined up a series of guests such as Guy Kawasaki, Stowe Boyd, Loic Lemeur and Jeff Pulver.

Yesterday, as MediaCasters.tv kicked into high gear, I found myself not having anything to blog about. It was all there. Want to see a live stream? go to MediaCasters.tv. Want to hear the groups pitch? Go to MediaCasters.tv.

Want to know what the outside world thinks of StartupWeekend? Go to MediaCasters.tv.

Laura has made the live blog moot.  I really hate MediaCasters.tv.

I have been a bad live blogger. In fact, I would not hesitate to remove the title of “live blogger.” Instead, I am going to be a “reflection blogger.” And just reflect…

Why has it been so hard to live blog Startup Weekend Boulder 2? Mostly, because it completely lacks structure.

For the past year, all the Startup Weekends have had the same cadence:

Friday:

• Andrew would talk about Startup Weekend;
• Ideas would be discussed; and people would start breaking into groups;
• Discussions (some times heated) and decisions.
• a little work and planning go on, and about 11pm - midnight-ish, everyone goes home.

Saturday:

• Its always interesting to see who returns for day 2. Usually it seems that about 1/3 of the people leave, but more return than expected. Always;
• Groups get started, work ensues;
• Discussions (some more heated than others) galore;
• More work and hourly updates;
• Some group present different things, more work;
• Dinner;
• More work;
• The promise of a launch begins to loom. Everyone (except the developers) believe it will happen.
• The day winds down, and everyone is excited about what the next day will bring.

Sunday:

• Its always interesting to see who comes back for day 3. By the middle of the afternoon on Saturday, most of the people that are going to stay are there. Those that were going to leave, leave.
• About 1/4 of the people from Saturday dont return. Its not because of anything specific, usually its because its Sunday, and most people have work the next day.
• Work occurs, but the excitement of the previous day begins to wear off. People are exhausted.
• About 4pm or so, the hint of launch re-energizes everyone.
• Dinner
• At about 8pm, nervousness begins to spread as everyone is unsure if a launch will occur, and all eyes turn to the developers as most of the other groups have begun to wrap up their efforts.
• About 11pm, the real question of launch is raised, and usually around midnight, some sort of launch is attempted (or not), a core team is selected, and most people go to bed excited about what could be.

Dont get me wrong, there is a lot of fun happening as well, as relationships are budding creating long term relationships.

But, based on that structure, it was easy to get constant updates on what was going on, what people were working on, what problems needed solving. With the new format, and the loss of structure, its difficult to keep track of eight separate projects.

So, what I will try and do is provide a quick overview:

It seems that 2-3 of the projects have not only promise, but interest. The iphone app, the green facebook app, Hitsurance, and the “podcast IMDB” seem to have the best legs. Interestingly, the podcast IMDB has the smallest team (1 person - Andy Stanberry, my co-worker at Lijit), and the iphone app has the largest (with at least 10 people).

The coolest part of today was the work done by Laura Fitton, of Pistachio Consulting and MediaCasters.TV, was the three live shows that occurred. The first was with Jeff Pulver.

Later in the day, Laura welcomed Loic of Seesmic for a great discussion around the importance of community in starting a company. Followed by Guy Kawasaki, who listened to pitches from some of the teams. During the live show, Allen Stern of CenterNetworks participated in the chat, and seemed to really understand what Startup Weekend was all about.

But, except for those moments, the weekend was a lot of small groups interacting around concepts. Andrew did a decent job of explaining this on the StartupWeekend blog, where he talked about his view of the new model.

For me, as the live blogger, it was pretty difficult to keep a decent diary of the day. Tomorrow, I will try and get updates from the teams that seem to have begun their sprints to launch.

Suggested twitter comebacks:

@micah way to make excuses for being lame;

@micah no way! you lack focus? C’mon thats impossible!

@micah you are great, and I wish I was just like you.

Andy Stanberry is creating a company solo. His concept is to build an IMDB for podcasting. It will be a directory based on people versus content.

5 people in the group

According Pete Laurina, the group’s spokesman, they are working on a event planning and meetup application. The twist is the it will be last minute activities and the activity itself would be relatively vague to the participants. This will allow people to try things that they might not have ever thought about trying before, and with people they may not know or ever met, but should based on their profiles.

And as they like to say, “If you dont like it, you can always leave.”

They have 10 in their group, with all aspects of a business represented.

Chris Browne, acting as their spokesperson, articulated their plan to build a mobile application “to bring social networking back into the real world, by enabling face to face connections based on proximity and time around common interests.”

Starting with a web application, the idea is to move into a native application for the iPhone and any other mobile platform

Two man team, a developer/design and a one “retrd” named Joe.

Check out their pre-splash splash page at http://www.web2splash.com.

Creating an easy way for web startups and common folk (web 2.0 common folk only, please) to create their initial BOOM! online. The application will also capture any balls, eye or otherwise, the stumble on their poorly written and designed URL.

5 people in the group

A consultancy that works with muncipalities to become self sufficiant in generating electricity to reduce their dependence on public utlitites. This will happen by using under-utilized space, such as roofs of warehouses, parking lots, etc.

The hope is to generate enough surplus electricity to help power residental areas as well.

Currently they trying to find an application or script to crawl all databases to determine what energy production sources exist by municipality.

There are 6 people in this group, and they do have a splash page up at http://www.hitsurance.com.

According to Elijah Chancey, the group’s spokesperson, they are  “developing a service that allows a webmaster to withstand a surge of traffic that will normally bring down their website. We have developed propriatary monitoring service that detects a surge in traffic and automatically redirects the website to a caching service.”

There are about 7 people in this group, with all the components of the business represented.

The problem they are trying to solve is to improve the tracking of molds used in manufacturing. They will solve this problem by creating a web application to be used by a network of companies in the management of their mold use.