The Cutline theme for WordPress was acting up and Vimeo videos weren’t embedding properly. This is the cheap hack I used to make a fake embed for the Inside Startup Weekend series from Startup Weekend Boston. A confessional stye video of my friend Ben Brightwell who came out to help out with the weekend. The video in question. Ben’s twin brother Len.

Up next are…
Kath
Ben Carlson
Matt Gist
Tyler Willis
Heather B
Aimee Greeblemonkey

Annnnnnnd GO!

I was back 11 days later for PodcampAZ. Brent Spore, Evo Terra and a small army of other volunteers pulled off a solid event. Sessions were great, I caught video with Clintus, Jack Mangan‘s Pod Taint, Jeremy Vaught and Pam Slim on making real money, introduced Andrew Hyde and saw more Shaler than you can shake a stick at. Also made it to Austin Baker‘s ‘How Social Media changed my life’ and was there for the temporary death of TheMacMommy‘s car.  I nearly pulled a Raising Arizona and stole a baby, but carry on luggage has been limited to one piece.

I came away with an appreciation of Phoenix and a strong desire to return, especialy over the winter when it’ll be something like 80º there. Anchored by Gangplank and several local coffee meetups, the Phoenix tech community is building, slowed slightly by covering an enormous land area (5th or US City) There are upsides to this, since there’s space for it, everyone seems to have a huge house. “Why are you renting a 6,000 square foot place with a ballroom?” “Because it’s cheaper than the house with the indoor tennis courts.”

Keep rockin’ Phoenix, see you soon.

• Head Bouncer at Club Axon: Axon Labs is on the 4th floor of an old paper mill. It has multiple points where badge access is required. Being that there was one badge to share across all founders, first role for the weekend was to make sure that everyone was able to make it in and up. It was great to meet you all!
• Chief Transparency Officer: If you can’t make it to a startup weekend, it’s still a lot of fun to follow along at home. How much fun depends on how good the information coming out is. Jeff had the text end of the blog on lock (and his eyes on the Cohen Cup), so in addition to updating SW twitter, I shot Inside Startup Weekend, a series of short, confessional style, videos from the founders. I hope they are as fun to watch as they were to make.
• Ace Troubleshooter: When a rogue wp-cron knocked Startup Weekend sites down across the board Friday night, Jeff and I got right to fixing it. You just can’t blog onto an error page.
• Mediator: Sometimes people just need to hug it out. I make those hugs happen.

The weekend wasn’t without it’s hitches. There were some who went outside the spirit of the weekend in various ways. Some made themselves titles (Chief this, VP of that) and took them seriously. Some treated SW as the less important part of their Boston vacation. Some pushed roles onto others outside their ability or interest. The Red Sox played championship games a few miles away Saturday and Sunday. The HD camera bricked most of the way through the shoot. One of the offices had a leaky roof.The weekend was full of high points too. Teams getting serious work done as those who were interested stayed. There were silly mustaches and goofy singing. 7 minute meetings featuring Yoga. A dinnertime acoustic set from Samantha Murphy. Launching the site as the Sox clinched the series Sunday night. But mostly, real friendships that transcend the weekend and the 2,000 miles from Boston back to Boulder.The weekend ended on a bum note for me as my laptop was stolen shortly before my flight out, still, it was a great experience.Lessons Learned, In no particular order,

• Titles are ok, so long as they’re not serious.
• You don’t need 3 levels of executives to manage developers on a weekend project.
• Death Cab for Jeremy – Downtown Boston and the Mass Pike are not the best places for your driver to learn how to drive stick.
• Disaster Cab part II – Just because the man drives a cab, don’t assume he knows his way around, I had to google maps the directions and then turn by turn navigate for the cabbie twice.
• Be interesting, people watching want to see an interesting story, people there want to live one, it’s a weekend, time for silly mustaches and goofy singing. Leave your lists of rules and forms at home.

Check it out! DeskHappy