Bloomington Startup Weekend

I have to say that I am the luckiest Startup Weekend Product Manager here.

I’ve been hanging out with the Development group. While a lot of the things being talked about are above my head I’ve done enough with web development to know a lot of the stuff they are saying.

As far as delegating work, making sure everyone is on task, and getting regular updates from everyone this is the group to work with.

I enjoy coming in and saying here is the task I need completed from the crawl list and having several people telling me it is done already.  The crawl list is almost irrelevant in this room as they are always working on it and beyond the times for milestones that I have set down on paper.

As you come in to city hall today you can almost physically feel the sense of urgency in the air.

At the same time you almost get another feeling that seems contradictory in that people also feel a lot slower, a bit more tired and almost a bit run down.

Everyone knows the job that needs done today,  and after the brief 10am meeting it seems we are ready for another day!

Bus. Dev - requesting names for who to move on, due by noon

Marketing - need help with writing copy, working on, need bus. dev presentation from yesterday

Design - need copy for pages, working on buttons for UX, will work on wireframes for all internal pages, too late to make changes/input from others

Legal - terms of service, privacy policy (has been posted and needs review by legal), income structure, still not aware of company structure (titles may not be accurate)

Dev - coding, could use two more developers

HR - working on remaining budget, virtual swag bag will be available later today, will be scheduling a meeting to figure out how/when to do this again

Food - we can get orders and coordinate delivery (btownmenus.com)

UX - trying to get more users in to interview, we need the ideas/wireframes from other groups

As we are meeting with groups for the final time of the night, here is the schedule for tomorrow:

9a - open and breakfast (yay, Cereal Barn!)
9:30a - regroup and get working
10a - 7-minute meeting
1p - 7-minute meeting … VOTING ON OUR FUTURE
4p - 7-minute meeting
5:45p - leave for Opie Taylors
6p - DINNER
7p - 7-minute meeting (over dessert, probably)
9p - LAUNCH
10p - final meeting (maybe)
10:45p - pack up
11p - So long, and thanks for all the fish

Going over the schedule for tomorrow. 9a start, to eat cereal from Cereal Barn and GO.

UX - three user testing, lot of new ideas, need ideas on what to test (lagging in the iterations), requesting ideas for testing for user experience

Bus Dev - who can sue us, who we can sue, organizational structure, recommendations for who goes forward, throwing around May 1 as a reflection date, growth plans, need evangelizing business (want stuff in the system)

Dev - coding, need not to be bugged (come to John, no one else), no changes, anticipating being able to do it by launch

HR - Will be watching IU on

Legal - suggestions on terms of service, login, snag on structure of business (still working through), need to identify the people who are going to go forward (to have most of the day on Sunday to work on the issues)

Marketing - home page is done, need to update buttons, widget is designed, need copy (WE NEED WRITERS), we need to finish the navigation, will design presentation to show investors

Tomorrow - breakfast , 5:45p, moving voting up

When Katie and I returned the dishes from Village Deli’s fantastic meal, we saw a flier for an interesting looking lecture (I go to lectures and I am lame).  As we walked out of the Village Deli, we shouted these things to the street:

“Man, that event sounded cool.  I better put it in my CALENDAR.”

“Wouldn’t it be great if we had a way to SEE ALL OF THE EVENTS GOING ON IN THE AREA?”

“Yeah, I’d love to have ONE CALENDAR we could see in DIFFERENT PLACES.”

“Oh wait, have you heard of …” etc.

We just decided to drop CakePHP.

23 Hours left.

We got another mid-event donor. MOSH mobile, through a rep here at Bloomington Startup Weekend, set up a month of access for 100 people on Campfire.

MOSH mobile offers customers free mobile service on the basis that they agree to receive mobile phone content advertising and interact with the company through advertising campaigns. MOSH mobile offers users a plethora of options related to data and features that matter to the 13-24 age group including exclusive Facebook applications, the MySpace Mobile application, a new Twitter application and much more.

For details on service please visit http://www.MOSHmobile.com/

We’ve just had another good productive meeting and the site is defined a bit more.

Everyone has a role and a task and have set off to completing the tasks.

We’ve been working on a large range of items that need completed by the end of the night and everyone is sprinting to get them done.

From a management standpoint things have been running a great deal smoother from 4pm Eastern.

Bloomington Startup is pleased to announce the addition of another sponsor. During our Saturday session, we recruited local ISP Suso Technology Services to provide a hosting environment for our new business.

Suso Technology Services is
Bloomington’s premiere web hosting company. Online since 1997 with hundreds of customers from Bloomington and around the world. They are known for personal service, solid and secure technology and being on the cutting edge. They also specialize in creating interactive websites such as online stores, administration panels, blogs, news sites and more. Suso prides itself in creating new innovative technologies for use with the Internet.

A company of the community, Suso has created and hosted popular websites such as Bloomingpedia and Indiana Wiki. They also have sponsored many community focused websites over the years. The partnering with Bloomington Startup Weekend seemed natural.