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27 May 2008 @ 1pm

 

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Startup Weekend: A Report From The Cleaner

The WolfI’m Winston Wolfe Jeremy Tanner, I solve problems.

A few weeks ago I got an email from my friend Andrew Hyde.  Startup Weekend’s new CEO had quit without notice and Andrew had a scheduling conflict preventing him from heading out to his home state weekend.  My mission should I chose to accept it: Free Solo a Startup Weekend.  The original venue canceled at the beginning of the week, leaving the weekend in danger of being pushed back or canceled.

 

No local organizer?  No furniture?  No whiteboards?  No powerstrips?  No food czar? No head bouncer?  No problem.

 

OK, a Startup Weekend on the rocks is no dead body in the back of a  Chevy Nova, that can be fixed with some bleach and a blanket. Startup Weekend required a few more phone calls

 

Same day a email inquiry was made, Scott Kveton of Vidoop offered up his week-old downtown space.  A call to the party place and a trip to office depot later, tables, chairs, power strips, sticky poster sheets and markers had been secured.  Beer / snack run with an early weekender as a preemptive strike (You can’t be grumpy while you’re drinking free beer!) 

 

Over the next days I was Club SW Doorman/Bouncer, Food Finder, Meeting Master, Motivator, Referee and Donut Taster. (I recommend the Bacon Maple Bar)  The weekenders brought their A-game forming Mugasha (Random access DJ Set sharing and listening), GetGathered (Meeting Scheduler), Treasurecycle (Barter your old stuff), Life Grant (Dream / Goal Funder) and Startup River (Idea -> Profit!).

 

I came away from the weekend impressed with Portland’s community and with even more respect for Andrew and the company he built, city-by-city last year.  Also a good starter list for the Startup Weekend best practices being assembled to ease things as Andrew passes the reins of SW to Clayton.  Finally, big thanks to weekend sponsors Vidoop, JumpBox and Colour Lovers!


*Apologies to both Pulp Fiction and “The Wolf”

 

 

5 Comments

Posted by

Firas Alnaji

28 May 2008 @ 1am

From all these ideas, i think Mugasha takes my vote. I really wish i attended the Event. Akshay will talk about the whole experience with him this week.

 

[…] turned out to be a great event with some pretty cool developments at the end of the weekend.  Jeremy Tanner and Erica O’Grady were the facilitators involved in organizing the whole thing and needless […]

 

Posted by

Krista Neher

29 May 2008 @ 10am

This is why you are the man.

 

Posted by

Kevin Fox

29 May 2008 @ 6pm

Hi Jeremy,

Was nice to meet you this weekend, it was also a pleasure to have everyone here in the Vidoop offices. Definitely a great group of people.

And +1 for you being the man, definitely pulled the weekend off without a hitch.

Hope you enjoyed Portland!

Cheers,
Kevin

 

[…] We sponsored the Portland event last weekend and it sounds like they had a blast and created some interesting stuff. We’ll be watching their blog and be interested to see what the Memphis folks come up […]

 

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