This past weekend marked the third successful close to an Indiana-based Startup Weekend. Startup Weekend Indianapolis was a long time in coming, but in the end managed to pull together over 40 local technology and startup enthusiasts and crank out 5 viable projects/companies in 54 hours.
Starting around 5:00 PM on Friday, everyone crowded into the first floor of the ET building at the Purdue School of Engineering & Technology (sponsor) at IUPUI for check-in, pizza, and shelter from the cold. After heading over to the auditorium, introductions, sponsor thank-yous, and the pitches began.
Five projects eventually emerged (originally 4– the children’s book team split Saturday morning after some spirited discussions). Having spent most of my time in Bloomington Startup Weekend in the developers group, I wanted to float around more at this weekend and take live video and photos. Below are the logos and links to the projects created at the weekend.
It is worth noting that ShoutNow had a rather unique and awesome final presentation that involved the presenter answering his phone, recording a brief message, pasting the phone numbers of about 20 members of the audience into their application, and seconds later phones everywhere started ringing throughout the auditorium. Several people flipped on their speakerphone and you could hear the message being played back to everyone. It was a very engaging and fun effect.
Here are the 5 projects:
ShoutNow
A rapid voice messaging service which allows users to instantly share voicemails with an unlimited network of contacts by placing just one phone call.
Pocket Story Book (I consulted on the logo design) 
A service to create custom children’s books which can be shared via download to the Web or iPhone, or by printing through a 3rd party book publisher.
Pocket Tales
Interactive children’s eBooks for the iPhone and the iPod touch. Sold through Apple’s AppStore, Pockettales’ applications convert ordinary mobile devices into fun, educational tools.
More Than A Meal
Bad things can happen to good people. When the unexpected happens, your friends need More Than A Meal.
ScatterGear
A market-specific online storefront that offers goods and services to and for military personnel and their families.
Local technology coach and consultant, Mr. Noobie, is giving away a free Nintendo Wii on his site, www.noobie.com. All you need to do is click over and sign-up.
After you sign-up to win, I’d highly recommend browsing the website for a little bit. No matter what your technical skill level is, noobie.com is one website you’ll want to bookmark and return to again and again. Patric has put together one of the few local sites that always makes me pause and think, “wow, he has put a lot of time and effort into building this website.”
From articles and blog posts to events and personal coaching services, Mr. Noobie is full of relevant and easy-to-understand guides to just about anything technology related. If you are the kind of person that likes to figure stuff out on your own, but sometimes needs a little help, I highly recommend noobie.com.
That, and a chance to win a Nintendo Wii… what more excuse do you need?
Just a fun little example of how even the big guys can still screw things up royally. This morning, CNN posted a little widget that displayed various grades for both Biden and Palin from the Vice Presidential Debate last night. At the bottom of the widget was an area for you to select your own grade for a particular candidate and a “Next” button to submit and view the results.
Seems simple enough. The problem was that if you (like myself) simply want to skip giving your own grade and just view the results, something unexpected happens. By clicking “Next” without selecting a grade, you automatically submit a grade of F!
Oops! At the time of taking this screenshot early this morning, over 16,000 visitors had voted. How many of them had accidentally graded someone with an F? Both candidates had an average grade of D, which leads me to believe that a significant number of people simply clicked next.
While I’m sure this gaffe is the result of rushing to put together a widget, it isn’t like the debates were a surprise. As an update, I’ve noticed that CNN has now corrected the problem by requiring the user to either select a grade before the “Next” button becomes active, or clicking a “View results” link which does not auto-select a grade in the process.
Most people that know me know that I’m a bit domain-crazy. Any half-good idea that I have usually results in a domain name purchase–mostly as a “just in case” I decide to actually develop it. Despite the fact that this is a self-enabling and productivity damaging practice, I still partake in it. However, I have significantly limited myself in terms of what I let myself purchase (the next step was locking my laptop in a trunk and burying it in the back yard).
With that being said, a business parter and I have had our eyes on a particular domain name that is perfect for a future expansion of our current project, IndyDads.com. The domain name we wanted was DadNation.com. I’ll let your capable mind explore exactly what our future idea is with this domain instead of writing about it here. As luck would have it, the domain was up for expiration last month and I was excited at the prospect of snagging it. This is where I ran into trouble.
I was all ready to go. I had my domain name backorder set through GoDaddy and was just waiting for the good news. Now, I understand a thing or two about how competitive the domain name aftermarket can be and that for most good domains, it’s difficult and expensive to snap up expiring names. However, I figured with the relatively low demand for this domain, I would have no problem getting it. I knew I was in trouble when I received my very first email from a domain taster.
Because I had already registered DadNation.org, the domain taster’s automated system had managed to snap up the dot com AND generate a marketing email to me explaining that I could acquire the dot com easily by purchasing it through their company. The asking price? $997!
Ouch! No way. Perhaps if I was some big company that just had to have the domain, $997 wouldn’t seem like so much. But, for a side-project that is mostly a labor of love, that is out of the question.
So, I figured I had lost the domain for good. But, the way the email was written, I figured it was a form letter and not an actual human sending me the message. Two days later, I received another email that was similar, but contained a slightly more urgent call to action. I did some research on domain tasters and confirmed that they indeed only had 5 days to return their domains for a refund. Also, based on what I had read, often times domain tasters base the value of a domain off of the traffic hitting the domain. So, I was careful to neither visit the domain DadNation.com or respond to any of the emails.
I held my breath for 2 more days (not literally).
Then, on August 3rd, I received an email from GoDaddy alerting me that the name servers had changed to GoDaddy name servers! Then, another email telling me my backorder had been successful! It worked! The domain taster returned the domain after getting nothing out of me and I was able to register it for the normal price.
Having lost good domains in the past to a variety of frustrating reasons, it was nice to actually win one (and without spending a small fortune). While I’m sure the situation would change depending on the exact domain name in question, but my parting advice is that your best weapon against a domain taster is patience and silence (and an active backorder on the domain).
I’m working on a new business idea with a friend and we continue to run into problem after problem. What we want to do is time consuming, hard to schedule, risky, and our equipment costs are turning out to be very expensive. Prohibitively expensive for what we are wanting to offer. Vendor after vendor gives us prices that are just too high. It’s getting frustrating and becoming clear why there are not many people doing what we’re trying to do. I should be depressed right now.
For some reason, I’m not! I’m actually excited! Focused. Determined. I feel like we’ve really run into a wall, but I think of all the other people who have given up and turned away because of it. This is where we prove how innovative and creative we are. We have to throw away our conventional thoughts on solving our problem and get a little crazy. If we can solve this problem, we’ll be in great shape and will greatly multiply our success.
I know this is all vague. I just needed to share a business epiphany I’ve had today where I feel I’ve turned a corner on how I handle problems. Instead of taking the easy road and giving up on an idea, I feel compelled to charge ahead.
I think this will be fun. More details eventually.
Like most fun and exciting events, Blog Indiana 2008 seemed to whiz by this past weekend. It’s funny how months and months of planning and build-up can result in such seemingly short weekend.
I am generally a modest person. However, I have to declare that Blog Indiana 2008 was a success. I still haven’t taken the time to dig through the boxes of stuff we crammed into my truck as we rushed to clean up and exit the building before it closed on Sunday. Though, I’m pretty sure we topped 160 attendees total by the time the weekend was over. We had an article in the Indianapolis Star on Saturday that drove a good number of people to register at the door on Saturday and Sunday (something we had originally planned not to do, but glad we did!).
The Good
By far, my absolute favorite aspect of the entire weekend was getting to meet and talk with so many of you. Even though I spent a fair amount of time running around the place making sure everything was running smoothly, the personal interactions and random conversations with local (and not so local) bloggers was so much fun. Meeting so many people I only know on Twitter and through blogs was interesting and strangely comforting.
Seeing the hard work that Shawn and I put in to creating a conference that, from face to face conversations and the majority of our received surveys, was well received and enjoyed by the attendees was a dream come true. We’ve never put on a conference before and we had to make some decisions without really knowing what was best. It looks like most of them worked out and most people seemed to get a lot out of the event.
It is also worth pointing out that I learned a great deal about how much of any of my success in life is because of the never ending support of my wife. She is the reason I am able to push myself to do the things I want to do in life. Her only complaint with this conference was that I didn’t let her take some of the stress off of my shoulders sooner. She was invaluable in the weeks leading up to the conference and was a life saver the days of. She is new to blogging, so feel free to stop by her site and leave a comment!
The Bad
The only truly “bad” part of the entire weekend was wireless internet issues. Sure, some sessions were better than others, we forgot to check for random marathons occuring in the city, and Shawn & I probably figit too much on stage. But, the wifi was really bad. So, I’ll take this moment to apologize. I’m usually the first person to roll my eyes and say “How hard is it to get WIFI right, people?!” at any conference that screws it up. And, while I won’t go into the reasons why we had so much trouble here, I will say that wifi WILL work at any future event we put together. Top of my list. I might still figit a little on stage, but, by God, we’ll have working wifi next time.
The Future
The survey results we’ve received so far have been outstanding. Not just in that people really enjoyed the conference, but we are getting great feedback on how to improve. Believe me when I say that we are reading every single survey and will be compiling a list of every idea and suggestion.
So what is next? Let’s just say there is a lot of wind in our sails right now and we’ll be getting to work on our plans for next year this month. I’d love to drop hints, but we still haven’t formally met to discuss the future. We do have some big ideas that I think you’ll be interested in.
With that said, if you have an interest in lending your talents to help us in planning, generating ideas, speaking, or sponsoring the next conference, don’t hesitate to drop me an email at noah (at) blogindiana (dot) com.
Photos (see many more at the Flickr Photo pool and Photrade Group)
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- Blog Indiana attendees gather for announcements.
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- Each session was located close by in large classrooms.
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- Attendees could select small buttons to tag themselves like they would tag a blog post.
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- Attendees could select small buttons to tag themselves like they would tag a blog post.
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- One of two panel discussions which included some great speakers.
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