Seattle Startup Weekend

KING aired a pretty good VO-SOT (voice-over, sound on tape - which means an interview and therefore the next best thing to a full package complete with reporter standup) on the  Startup Weekend event and the creation of skillbit ™ and so the crew here is exceptionally happy.  There was much cheering and clapping, seeing and hearing the story. We can’t wait to see it again so we can pinch ourselves and check to see if it is really for real.

About the same time, John Cook posted an extended story on skillbit too. It’s very nice to have garnered so much media coverage so soon. We’re hoping that it helps us springboard our launch once the code is ready to show off to people. Getting this coverage was seriously a team effort; a number of people here worked very hard to make sure that the right people know about us and understand how cool we are.

We rock.

BizDev is putting the finishing touches on a business plan that includes focus on a generic, horizontal application of the skillbit ™ technology and selling into specific vertical markets.

The expectation is that everyone will love being able to leverage the skills already available on their teams, and we want to make that experience as personalized by industry as is humanly possible in an ad hoc group that initially comes together just for a weekend.

On that front, BizDev also sees amazing opportunity, and I agree. From Lindsay:

Because of the unique context where the idea was hatched and incubated, we enjoy some incredibly unique marketing benefits. As a community-centered entrepreneurial bootcamp, Seattle Startup Weekend is newsworthy in and of itself. As the context for creation and execution of a highly promising business, complete with patent-pending technology, Seattle Startup Weekend, skillbit and its founders are more than exceptional.

Yes, we are exceptional. Every single one of us.  And skillbit promises to be every bit as exceptional as the unique group creating it.

The non-Dev side of the room has been quietly consulting amongst ourselves about a skillbit(tm) blog. We’ll have one. We’re working now on pulling together all the pieces needed to make that happen - like where to get the blog, where to have it hosted (need some Dev input on that one) and making it look at least compatible with the rest of the site  so we’ll post more info on that as it’s ready.

Marketing folks tell me that they’re finished with the PR / Marketing plan and they’re coordinating with UserEx to finalize final email copy and get that part all set up.

Having KING 5 here is a major first for Startup Weekend. Seattle’s skillbit ™ is the very first SW event to have television onsite. Way Cool.

I keep thinking that I’ll write up something about skillbit - what our product is and what we do - and I haven’t yet. I’ve been trying to think of best how to describe this exciting new thing. I have finally decided that contrary to how a lot of executive summaries come across - more static than enthusiastically engaged - our crackerjack team has come up with a solid description that finds the right balance of excitement without the usual accompaniment of hyperbole. I hate hyperbole.

So here it is…

Small businesses, project teams, and DnD weenies are missing out. They have incredible skill and talent among their members, but the team leaders simply don’t know what resources they have access to within their own group. Money is wasted on consultants, bloated knowledge management software, and simple inefficiencies of communication. Of course, the team members are missing out, too. They have coaches, assistants, mentors, and friends sitting next to them and they don’t even know it.

What if a tool were created to help these teams of people build up a database of team skills? Searchable, lean, flexible, and powerful: You know your employees but with skillbit, you can also know what they know.

What makes this compelling is that skillbit lives in that smaller space where teams are big enough to not know everyone intimately and small enough to not want to have to spend big to be able to know and use the kind of information we make accessible.

The short version - teams no longer have to choose between working blind and spending big.

There is so much here that makes what we’re doing sound big, exciting, and powerful. And what’s particularly cool about it is that Dev is actually coding this. The breaking news is that we already have some patent pending technology in the works.

Wow.

This morning, I’m sitting a bit closer to Marketing - especially since PR guy Andrew is working the emails and phone to try to bring in some media attention and we’re conferring from time to time on that project.

We also now have begun tracking buzz - what people are saying about us. It’s still a pretty short list and we anticipate it will begin growing fast. Feel free to make comments here about any buzz you know about. We’ll add it to our collection.

I came in thinking about how I was going to immediately start posting. Instead, before I even had my jacket off and stuff set down, I was in two quick back-to-back meetings. The first was on support costs for the financial model and the second was looking at next steps in BizDev, which includes synching up the actions and public-facing language.

The public-facing language is important - once we got past the thrashing and wheel-spinning yesterday, we started moving pretty quickly, albeit very organically - and the result is a mish-mash of language that’s not yet cohesive. In fact, there were some branding errors that went out in last night’s press releases that have to be corrected now today. Oops. And you know what - these things happen in real life too, so it’s good to notice now, fix it, and move on.

Maybe that’s the motto for how we work - Notice, Fix, Move On

I managed to get some tea in there somewhere too, and some awesome Costco bagels, courtesy nPost, and while I was still not yet set up and connected on the laptop, I took the opportunity to wander through and see what everyone else is up to already this morning.

UserEx is continuing to hash out look and feel with Design and functional specs with Dev Liaison while the Dev folks are off in their corner doing what they do to “make it work”. Wish I could provide more detail on exactly how that’s happening except that in my effort to mostly leave them alone to do their work and as a result, it’s mostly black box to me at the moment. Heck, I only just learned that the D in Django is not silent. Silly me.

Given how long it’s taken us to find agreement and acceptability on some things, it should be nothing short of miraculous that we have a tagline we’re willing to use.

You’re Team’s Potential, Now.

And… it’s on the skillbit ™ website!

Gives you chills…

We think we might have a tagline we like. Legal is checking to see if it’s okay to sprinkle their special pixie dust all over it and bless it as holy.

If not, there are some other ideas we’ll hammer on until we can get both like it and legally okay in the same sentence fragment. .

- Kimm

While the larger Dev work is underway and the rest of everyone is making progress on other major initiatives, the quick hit focus is on making a splash page so that when the press releases go out, we have something besides a parked page to show off.

Current thinking is that the splash page doesn’t even really have to be ‘finished’ as watching it evolve will show movement. Movement is good.

So - after running around asking each group what they feel is necessary to put up a splash page, the answers are:

• Dev is ready. If design send them some html, they can push it out
• Design has a logo about finished and thinks it would be good to have a tagline to go with it
• Marketing has some tag lines under consideration and we’re waiting for the coffee break folks to come back to either let us know which one we should use or hold off on the tagline for a later iteration of the splash page
• Back to the folks sending out press releases (which are being queued up in draft mode so that they’re all set to go once we’re ready to pull the trigger), they want an email address.
• Dev will let me know as soon as they have the email hosting part worked out.

And so it goes - these are exactly the kinds of dependencies that crop up in any project. It’s exciting to be going through it all in fast forward.

- Kimm