[CentralOH] Startup Weekend: Persuasion

[Venkatesh Ganapathy]

Hey guys,

I have heard a lot of great things about the startup weekend and am
definitely planning to attend this one (This being my first time!).
However, if any of you haven't registered yet and would like to join, I
know one of the organizers who has some promo codes for designers and
developers. Please let me know if you are interested and I will be more
than happy to get those codes for you. There are still some developer and
designer tickets available.

Hope to meet some of you there!

Regards,
Venkatesh




On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 6:44 PM, Jay Clouse <clousejay10 at gmail.com> wrote:

> In response to Thomas and Kurtis' emails, I wanted to go into a little
> more detail about the structure, what you can expect, and what my personal
> experience has been.
>
> Friday night you pitch ideas (everyone has 60 seconds until no one wants
> to pitch anymore). Then, the crowd votes on around a dozen ideas they think
> are best, and teams form organically. The rest of the evening is typically
> spent mapping out tasks that need to be completed over the course of
> Saturday and Sunday.
>
> Saturday is a dev and design heavy day, with the business-minded folks
> doing some market research and validation. Throughout the day, mentors and
> speakers give feedback and advice on your product.
>
> Sunday morning and afternoon is spent finishing a prototype (ideally) and
> crafting a final pitch. That evening, teams pitch their ideas and judges
> choose their top three.
>
> I participated in my first Startup Weekend over a year ago with not only
> very limited business skills, but no technical design or development
> skills. After pitching (Friday night) a few ideas and not having any of
> them voted upon for work over the weekend (I didn't get a single vote!) I
> latched on with a team including a front-end developer, back-end, designer,
> and a marketer. I basically audited the weekend while doing some market
> research and helping put together a slide deck. *And it was incredible. *
>
> So to answer David's question from earlier, the weekend is open to *
> everyone* and extremely valuable to anyone. For developers and designers,
> you can pick up a lot of best business practices from us non-technical
> folk. The relationships you build are awesome, and at the end of the
> weekend you typically have a working demo or prototype to show off and
> maybe work on afterwards.
>
> Candidly, I would say probably more than 50% of the projects are not
> continued after the weekend is over. But many are! It depends on your team
> and your passion for the problem you are solving.
>
> Saturday is usually a long, development-heavy day that you have to fight
> through. By all means, if you want to attend and there are talks that day
> at PyOhio, sneak out and catch them! It may help fire you up and recharge
> the batteries.
>
> The people I have met and the business skills I have learned (not to
> mention the inspiration to learn some design) have changed my life. If you
> choose your team carefully and pick an idea you would enjoy working on, I
> see no downside.
>
> Jay
>
> On Jul 17, 2013, at 4:46 PM, Thomas Winningham wrote:
>
> No yes, that is an extremely good thing to post I remember that movie....
> I was trying to be fair, but maybe I didn't express my own misunderstanding
> going into it. I think the NSF thing sounds almost exactly was Startup
> Weekend perhaps is, or at the very least should be viewed as being... er...
> without the NSF non-profit slant maybe.
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 4:17 PM, <jep200404 at columbus.rr.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 17 Jul 2013 14:14:13 -0400, Thomas Winningham <
>> winningham at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > I did however think that in some ways trying to get team members, some
>> kind
>> > of things that happened where you had to "prove" your idea was
>> worthwhile,
>> > was something of a hindrance, ...
>>
>> Hindrance?  Uh oh.
>>
>> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/but-you-did-not-persuade-me.html
>>
>> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/the-one-thing-every-software-engineer-should-know.html
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
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