Startup Weekend Atlanta

A meeting is called:  we have an issue that needs resolution.

Who represents what group? blah blah process discussion

Who will ultimately make the decision? We need a smaller group to make the decision. Group designated, sort of.

What are the issues?    functionality vs. business model

Lots of raised voices, talking over each other. The words “time out” are uttered a couple of times. Hands are raised insistently.

What about a compromise: a mishmash

Lance is stepping in being leaderish. Someone’s gotta do it.

Stammy — 1 minute to a solution. Creative use of the iPhone as timer.

Lots of voices trying to get air time before time’s up.

The minute’s up: we have an answer: or do we?

Back to the mishmash.

TESTOSTERONE ALERT (I can say that as the only chick in the room): Markers are thrown (to be fair, probably accidentally though); trying to win the battle of the whiteboard; more raised voices, talking over each other, and waving hands

Solution reached: one part now, one part is feature creep — introduce later, after lots of users, or next week, doesn’t matter.

Are we done? some leave, thinking it’s done…

but devs need to inject some reality into the room — this solution is hard.

Lance: come see the important legal forms you have to sign.

Jason: mini-rant (but he’s probably right): Ideally, we need one person from each of the other groups — everything keeps changing, we’re going nowhere (product dev guy says “it’s happening.”) There is still a lot of stuff that has to get done. Until we can get more stuff organized, no way we will finish by tomorrow afternoon. Got to get it under control. Marketing doing UI and UI doing marketing — it’s gotta stop.

Dev: Issue of how to authenticate people. We’ve hit a wall. But here’s some other stuff: 1) front page, needs style; 2) links between suggestions and users; 3) Code to paste into blog. Everybody claps.

Creative: splash page; logo ideas 1, 2, and 3. Lots of people yelling one, a couple of twos, and then the inevitable “vote.” Number 1 wins handily. Check BaseCamp for the color chart.

www.skribit.com/blog/: works? doesn’t work?

Smartass comment when the Apache error page came up. (Cut ‘em a break: how many of those do you see at Startup Weekend presentations?)

BizDev: competitive analysis looking good

Marketing: wrapping up marketing plan, working on press release, and drinking beer.

Lance: Everyone is on their own for dinner. (It was “communicated,” he says, but don’t sidetrack Lance w/ PBwiki usability issues.) Someone is needed to leave the building and scope out food for lunch tomorrow.

Usability: mockups/wireframes done, talked to marketing and bizdev about an “issue,”

–do we show the blogger the name of who is making the suggestion?

Let’s get everyone in a room to work it out. How do we make the decision? What would a blogger do?

It’s hard in this setting to figure out what is part of the usual chaos, vs. what constitutes…a Problem. Everyone has a different threshold for determining that, it seems. We just keep trying to work through it until the answer is apparent.

when is dinner?

what is dinner?

where’s Lance when you need him?

Groups aren’t always talking to each other. They’re making the same decisions simultaneously, independently, and (gasp!) they’re reaching completely different conclusions. Synchronicity is lacking (and we’re still on Coldplay, so I don’t know if the Police is on the playlist.)  An intervention is called.  Andrew and Lance are summoned.

A product developer type (i.e., that appears to be his day job) steps in. “This is how it’s done where I work.” That can be offputting or threatening, but the motley groups assembled agree that is what is needed. So he will figure out who’s not talking to each other and make sure it happens, according to the nice flow chart he was presenting. There’s a little disagreement whether what was represented on the chart was actually happening for real or not, but there’s always room for improvement.

Whether it’s “grease,” (bless you Rich) or the more formal “product development” role, it’s good to make sure everyone’s on the same page, at least as much as is possible in this wacky environment. Time’s a-wasting.

about watching developers code. They’re just typing away, surrounded by highly-caffeinated beverages. (What, one of them has mere H₂0? Don’t mess with my stereotype, which as we all know, exist because they usually happen to be true.)

As someone who is looking up most of the HTML code I need to do this (the WordPress WYSIWYG editor isn’t as robust, shall we say, as the one I’m used to on my Joomla site — is Joomla cool in this crowd, or should I be embarrassed?), I’m always amazed at what talented coders can accomplish. Actually, anyone who’s fluent in any language but English enough to be considered multilingual impresses me.

“It’s one of those things that was really hairy, but then it starts to gel.”

As Laura points out, “an interesting comment.”

Not sure what the topic is…but does it matter?

The music is now going, courtesy of an iPod-friendly speaker thingie. I lost my opportunity to control the playlist because my battery is “dangerously low” or something like that. And the speaker thingie (that’s a technical term, mind you) doesn’t recharge. But the other person’s iPod has Coldplay on it (as does mine) so I guess it’s okay.

At DCSW, we didn’t have any music. We had Wii bowling, and Stephen broke into spontaneous thrashing at one point courtesy of his own music (or was it the little voices). But no music.

Will Chris Martin and Co. inspire brilliance? Or merely an Apple (about which the verdict is decidedly mixed.)

At the DC Startup Weekend, I discovered Twitter, thanks to @andrewhyde and @gruen and @e1presidente and @micah and @corbett3000 and @jfcIII and all the other people who can’t shut up, I’ve learned. Okay, it may be a little pretentious and presumptuous (do you really want to know every last detail about my life? Really?) but it’s also really addictive. And since I seem to have bypassed the text messaging thing altogether (perhaps it’s a generational thing?) my lifetime supply of micromessages hasn’t been depleted much yet.

Since DCSW ended, a bunch of us have all been twittering or tweeting or whatever you call it. (Just don’t try to do the past tense, because it sounds a little obscene.) And it’s pretty damn addictive. Maybe I do want to know more details than I thought, and I’m certainly guilty of sharing quite a few of them. I now have my first stranger following me (at least I think it’s a stranger, I don’t recognize the name). Does that mean that something I posted was so interesting that someone was compelled to follow me? Or just that they’re collecting Twitter friends just like people have thousands of Facebook friends? (I heard the limit was 5000, but I’m not sure on that.) I am a little frustrated because I keep uploading the Twitter Facebook app, so I don’t have to update my status in two places, but it doesn’t work very well. (But why do I care so much about my status that I have to update it in two places — my life isn’t really that interesting.)

It will be interesting to see whether the Atlanta folks will continue the community post-weekend through Twitter. It seems to be where the HolaNeighbor crew is staying in touch, but maybe that’s just the group of people I was hanging with. There are fewer out-of-towners here, so maybe an existing community network will do the trick. I hope everyone stays in touch — it’s like camp, where you want to keep talking to those who have shared the unique experience.

six pieces in five minutes.

There’s a huge DubbleBubble pail, so I’m sure he’s not the only one who’s afflicted/addicted.

Perhaps we need a dentist on call for future Startup Weekends — they may come in more handy than the lawyers.