The first official Startup Weekend took place over a period of 54 hours on Sept. 16-18, 2011. Danielle Scherman, one of the organizers, invited me to attend and being curious about how events like this actually take place, I could not turn down the offer. The process of bringing 70-100 people together to pitch ideas, form teams and prototype a business in a short weekend intrigued me. Looking back at it now, I realize it was much more than that.

When I first decided to go, I was on the fence whether to observe or participate. What triggered it for me was a warmup exercise Maris McEdward used to stimulate idea flow called Half Baked. A bunch of seemingly random words were put on the white board. Then we were assigned to teams to pick two words and do a quick one minute pitch for this fictitious business idea. A good example of this was John Garcia’s impassioned  delivery of his team’s choice: Fresh Underwear. He then went beyond the requirement and overnight developed the website you now see, essentially creating a business overnight. It’s amazing what one creative individual can do. I love the web page. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was a judge, I would have snagged him to be on my team for his obvious skill set.

But now I am getting ahead of myself. My motto has always been, life is not a spectator sport, so when it came time to pitch a real idea, I took a number. Everyone who picked a number had 1 minute to do a pitch. I pulled #7 so had about 6 minutes to come up with an idea. Around the time #5 was completing his pitch, I came up with a name for my idea: Heart My City.

The next moment of truth was whether or not your idea progressed to the team development stage. There were 23 ideas in total which got paired down to 8. The selection process was very organic. Everyone got 3 postit notes and voted for the ideas they felt they liked. Since my idea was #7, I held a paper with a big #7 on it. Now imagine 70 people, all in a room, standing and moving like random particles, placing these postits on your number. It was wild. When the dust settled, Heart My City had about a dozen postits on it. Enough to get me to the team formation stage.

Get ready for another seemingly random event. 70 people now coalesce around the idea of their choice, coupled with your efforts to recruit a team amongst people you may or may not know. Some teams were as big as eight or as small as one. I was fortunate to snag two smart guys, Jason Axelson and Patrick Kelly, the Heart My City team.

The rest of the time was spent in heads down mode focussed on business development and prototyping. The key benefits of a Startup Weekend is the dedicated time and space to work on a project, facilitators that manage the time and keep things moving. mentors and coaches that are available for advise, a positive, supportive environment to try out new ideas and last by not least, feedback on the strengths and weaknesses in your proposal.

Looking back at Startup Weekend, I can say it was a challenging but very rewarding experience. But as challenging as a 54 hour weekend might be, it is nothing compared to what comes next, turning your Startup Weekend idea into a real business. We’ll talk to several of the winners on the October 26th edition of Bytemarks Cafe and ask them what their experience was like and what is next for their startup idea. Hope you can tune in for that.

Websites:

• If you want to find out about what is happening in the social media scene you must check out @Hawaii‘s new website Hawaii Social Media.com. You’ll find up to date highlights on events, workshops and the occasional provocative article about SM in the local media.
• And if it’s the bon dance schedule you are looking for go to @champuru’s BonDance.com.
• Carolyhi59 brought up DomoDoesTheWorld.com. A creative group collaboration that chronicles the adventures of Domo.
• Madmarv reminded me about Unconferenz 2011 and the fact that it is only 5 months away. Tentatively we are looking at the 3rd week in Feb 2011. I will be more specific as soon as I hear back from KCC.
• We also talked about the end of Metromix and the rise of Nonstop Honolulu. They are going to give TGIF in the Star-Advertiser a run for their money. Nonstop Honolulu has strong sociable personalities whereas TGIF is pretty nondescript. I’m not even sure who is behind their Twitter account.

Miscellaneous:

• Madmarv remembers we talked about DVR to DVD recording. Fringe. Social media in politics. Furloughs. A smidgen of gadget geeking. Civil beat.
• Carolyhi59 tweets us: My DVR is a Toshiba HDD/DVR model # RD-XS52SU. It’s at least 5 yrs old. I found it on Amazon.com.
• Hawaii said he advocated just getting a DVD recorder, available at Costco and Walmart. Otherwise, TiVo all the way!
• Pineapplejuice recalls us talking about: Mufi’s flyer, and how that self-described social media expert said that no (political) campaign was using social media effectively, general mobile device show-and-tell, and geolocation services - Foursquare, Gowalla, and now Facebook Places – and how FP doesn’t work on my phone for some reason.
• Exbor tweeted the fact that we got into deep conversations with the group. He also reminded me that we talked about Google’s new Phone Service and suggested this Lifehacker tip.

That’s it for now. If you are interested in finding out about the next Bytemarks Lunch, just sign up for the Bytemarks Yahoogroup and you will get the notifications. Some of you might think Yahoogroups is old school but back in 2003 when we started the group, Yahoogroups was it! Mahalo to @hawaii for these lunchtime photos.

Presenters

Also wanted to mention an upcoming workshop that fellow geek Ryan Ozawa and I are doing at Kapiolani Community College this coming next two Saturdays, Feb 21st and Feb 28th. It is a basic workshop to establish your online presence. Those of you reading this blog are already familiar with the social media tools like blogs, Google docs, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. This workshop is gear to those wanting to get on but due to time and inclination have not yet done so. We are going to help kickstart that process. If you know of anyone interested in participating in this workshop please send them our way. The price is reasonable due to the generosity of the High Tech Development Corp.

1. Conducting the first Unconferenz
2. Participating in a Zen workshop called Zazenkai
3. Being laid off from Hawaiian Telcom
4. Volunteering at the Academy of Arts, Bhutan Exhibit
5. Participating in the Developing the Warrior Within workshop
6. Experiencing the power and community of Twitter
7. Attending the first Geek Meet Picnic
8. Getting a job at HMSA
9. Starting Bytemarks Cafe at Hawaii Public Radio
10. Getting to go to Saltimbanco

• The Pan Pacific VEX Robotics Championship is from December 4 through 6, 2008, at the Hawaii Convention Center.
• It is Hawaii’s first international robotics competition.
• Currently, there are 67 teams from Hawaii, 11 teams from China, 1 from Japan, and 5 from the mainland U.S.

For more information the State of Hawaii’s Robotics Organizing Committee has a site summarizing the VEX event.