Bloomington Startup Weekend

Of all of the past Startup Weekend events, the most compelling to follow was the one in Atlanta last November. First, they had Paul Stamatiou on board. Paul is a productive blogger and computational media student at Georgia Tech. Second, Atlanta was happening just after Paul Graham posted an essay on why startups should move to traditional tech hubs. One of the ASW founders, Lance Weatherby, posted a nice rebuttal that could easily work for Bloomington, Indiana. Third, Atlanta arguably produced the best product: Skribit.

Skribit is a blog widget where readers can suggest posts to blog authors. I have been waiting for a Beta account and just got mine activated this morning. Suggestions come from individual blog readers, but there is also a larger community that can reveal a pulse for what interests the members’ extended networks. The widget helps move a blog from a broadcast to a collaborative paradigm. Skribit was chosen after considering other ideas, such as Buying Mood, an astronomy social network, and robotic parking.

In wading through their event blog, I mined these three mantras:

1. Keep the concepts simple.
2. Move quickly. (read: dev presentations ran longer than attention spans)
3. The quicker each team and individual has a specific and well-defined role, the better.

Each weekend will have its own sense of identity and mantras, but the ones above from Atlanta will probably prove to be universal. There is a lot to do in a weekend, and the group can further their progress by being efficient and staying on task.