Boulder Startup Weekend 2

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.