Bloomington Startup Weekend

We have four hours left in the day.  FOUR HOURS.

When Kevin asked if we’d be able to blog at least once every three hours, I laughed.  I normally blog like I talk (as in: a lot).   It’s amazing how quickly all of this time gets filled.

BizDev just (THANK YOU!) finalized the outlook.  We have an OFFICIAL plan of attack, which should simplify these last 24 hours.

With mulitple small changes in direction, the development of the home page has been pretty slow.  But we have clear direction, and I hope we will be able to pick up speed now!

On the up side, a musical interlude before dinner gave us a much needed break in the action.

UX - met with a potential user, more solid wireframes, we need users (go to Vince), need to know what’s next

Design - want to keep momentum going, got homepage, need help with a widget (info coming the next hour, see Dan to provide input on the widget), need copy

Business Dev - flushed out details of what the business is, put together a 10-minute presentation (what we are, what we aren’t), stay to chat about biz, working on corporate structure, need marketing to go over pricing

Dev - fleshing out the back end of the code, working on the front end design, some widget, need more specs/wireframes, in a good position

HR - need to know if there is anything, working on getting TVs for the hoops

Legal - terms of use, code of conduct

Prep for tomorrow

In what has become a tradition for the Startup Weekends, SMTV has brought some music into the house. Tonight, it was Gentleman Caller—a local Bloomington band—that came into City Hall to do a set.

They had a couple acoustics and an amplified guitar, singing 3 songs (”Tiger,” “Executionize,” and “When I am Traveling”) from a new CD, Gentleman Caller vs. the Elephant. My favorite lyric was the main one from the third song—”I am traveling. You are the only place I go.”

Here’s a sample from YouTube:

A lot of progress has been made since the 4pm meeting.

You can tell that everyone is hard at work on something as you walk around city hall.

People are glued to the computer screens, the guys working on the code are all drinking energy drinks and mashing away at the keyboards almost non-stop.

You can feel a shift in the mood here since 4pm… and it is a GREAT thing.

Dev is pretty much crankin’ on the various parts of the site. We’ve split up into a few sub groups working on the database, some simple forms to view and edit items in the database, and the programming of some of the lower level functions of the site. The sys admins have been pretty much working nonstop perfecting and fixing issues with the dev environment.

Everyone is working on something.

Whoa.  Three hours.  UX has kicked it up a gear, dividing and conquering the problems we have.  It’s a very different situation from our other work, which was UX-contained.  Now we’re working very closely with design (and marketing) as well as dev.

The increased communication is great overall, but has definitely led to a lot of miscommunication.  That’s okay though, it’s through the miscommunication that we are really able to realize what everything means in the end.

Dev - have database done, need communication and wireframes, alt detail functionality lists (anything on paper) to know what to do

UX - created wireframes, sitemap on campfire, strategy to build the next things, usability tests (meeting with a potential user), need people to do usability testing (call for people w/in the hour)

Marketing/Design - layering mockups

Bus Dev - clarifying the model, reviewing possible revenue sources, working on the business plan, need pricing data (some target markets)

HR - looking for people who may not fit in with group

emphasis on communication

6:15 - Gentleman Caller (as a required business vacation) coming from SMTV.com w00t!

Without going in to specific details things from the end of product management are starting to look up. The individual teams are communicating with each other a bit better now, the programmers have an idea of where they are going and have really taken the lead on what they will do, the marketing guys have selected a logo, started defining the look and feel, and the other departments all have a pretty clear idea of where they are going at this point.

The level of teamwork has been increasing almost tenfold in the past hour and I’m confident that things are going great.

Legal - don’t blog the IP/patentable stuff

Development - database structure is getting setup, group crash course on framework, breaking up jobs

Marketing - logo options (voting on two … trying to, anyway)

Bus. Dev. - telling us how we are going to make our money (talking premiums, affiliates, value of data, subscriptions)

HR - new sponsor (Suso is providing hosting), talk channel login isn’t working (come see Kevin)

Much too long for a seven-minute meeting. Need to get these reports down to 1 minute per group.