Seattle Startup Weekend

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.

I realize not everyone thinks of legal as being that exciting but this update really is. Go ahead and blame it on being married to an attorney, if you insist. In addition to having completed the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy, these guys are knee deep now in the provisional patent application and anticipate having it completed and submitted by 9pm this evening. That’s exciting.

Chuck in Design showed me the pages that he’s working on - they’ve got the design worked out and are starting to push out content. Someone else in Design is working with Dev on the functional UI and they’re preparing to mash that all together so that it works and looks good.

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.

The word from the dev team to the rest of the company today, approx 3pm: “We are literally debugging.” This is accurate, from my perspective, although it does seem like quite a few links we are intending to flesh out won’t get their flesh today.

The folks in Bloomington, the next scheduled Startup Weekend event, are watching us closely, and for good reason. There is a lot to understand and learn from seeing what other cities are going through.

Pointing to the candor shared by Elizabeth,  one blogger there appropriately notes:

First, scuffles, huffs and hurt feelings are likely in any scenario where you put several dozen strangers in a room with a task and a deadline. Some weekends have fared better than others, but the universal generality at work is that Friday night is the mostly likely point during the 54-hour marathon for angst.

My personal assessment is that while this kind of thrashing is not a necessity, it is normal and not necessarily a bad thing. And if it’s expected, it means there doesn’t have to be a lot of angst over the messiness of the process.  From my comment to that post:

Anyone familiar with managing change knows there is a messy period and the best thing is to convey that this is normal and transient in nature. Things get better.

People who left here Friday night or early Saturday might have done so without realizing that their personal experience during that fraction of the weekend was not the overall experience that the rest of us have had.

In other words, Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing still fits.

There was a huddle in a different room for approx 45min. Word coming out of the huddle. They’ve figured out the relationship between users and profiles. The schema may update again, but it’ll only break certain pieces (not everyone). And we won’t have multiple groups. It’s unclear to me whether these are purely implementation decisions or if this means a reduction of requirements. Many people jumping the fence right now, the barrier between dev and marketing is fairly porous. Especially given the news cameras.

Right now I’m testing out search, as it was broken previously.

So if you want a better flavor of the event - complete with pictures - I highly recommend you check out Anthony’s blog. He’s got great insights.

Nevertheless, mad props to the three Django guys who spent the whole day acting as roving professors — I overheard some of their conversations and they are awesomely critical to the success of the weekend. Great job!

and

The UX team (Cassie, Bob, Adam, Jocelyn, a couple others whose names I didn’t know) did an AWESOME job of putting together a functional diagram for our website, with help from Matt on our team. Everyone loved the specs, especially the developers, who now know what they are supposed to break.

You can also check out Matthew’s blog, which is also has some cool observations.

One thing we’ve really wanted is some media coverage and so to have a television camera here is totally awesome. A photographer with KING 5 TV, the NBC affiliate here in town is now in the room.

The one thing we asked is that he not disrupt the developers. We’ve identified a couple who could talk to him if he wants but they’re so busy right now that when Andrew asked if the could do a quick 7-minute update, they said, “No way” in that tone of voice that tends to sound a bit gruff at times to non-Dev types.

Don’t know yet which broadcast it’ll hit - but hopefully it’ll get out there and be a nice story.