StartupWeekend Vancouver
I have, for the last few years, had an idea about something I’ve wanted to do involving technology. I was talking to Boris about this a while ago, and I’m pretty certain this actually has a real name and has been done many times before in various cities. But for now, I’m just going to describe what would happen, and we’ll decide an official name later (until of course Boris wakes up in whatever country he is in and chimes in).
The idea is that over the course of one full weekend (that is, starting Friday at 7pm until Sunday at midnight) you get a team of people together to develop a product/service/technology completely from scratch. In my head I am thinking that it would be basically a weekend-long sleepover involving donated beer, good people, music, and tons of know how on various aspects of the web world and technology. It will undoubtedly be one massive geek-filled coding session.
I am going to do my best to find sponsors for beer, a location, food, etc, but we’re going to need people who can contribute something to an effort like this, and who can give up basically an entire weekend in the pursuit of something cool. Sleeping bags will be definitely be required, as will massive amounts of caffeine redbull mixed with booze.
To pull this off, we will need the following (so if you can contribute any of these, please chime in with a comment below).
- People who can contribute technical skills to this effort (web design, php, c++, ruby on rails, web platforms, drupal/wordpress, perl/python, you get the idea)
- People who can contribute other skills (food runs, massages, live internet research, photography, podcasting, videocasting, blogging)
- Sponsors for food, beer, and a venue (depending on the number of people I have a few locations in mind already)
If you’re interested, or can help locate any of those items, chime in on the comments below. We can brainstorm ideas the night of or shortly before the event, but I’m secretly hoping whatever it is we do has some kind of mobile component as well.
I’m tentatively thinking that this event would occur sometime in early April (let’s say April 4-6 right now). If you can throw some link-love this way, I’d appreciate that too (post this to your facebook accounts if you got ‘em!). Thanks. PS (The name is going to change as we hash things out, but keep checking back – we’ll finalize something shortly).
im up for the live blog… 72… hour… live… blog….
You can do it CBO!
I want a title too…
Chief Margarita Officer?
I thought this was BeerCamp….
Couldn’t CBO be Chief Beverage Officer as well?
I’m an all-encompassing CBO
I’ll bring a blender.
John wants CBB – Consumes Beer Best.
Which John or will there be a BeerOff?
StartupWeekend :P There have been some in a couple of cities. The Toronto organizer (Andrew? I’m blanking on the name…) just moved to Vancouver.
Oh, and I narrowly missed actually having beer for breakfast here in Germany.
March sounds like plenty of time to get this organized. I would recommend calling it StartupWeekendVancouver and putting up a page on the BarCamp wiki at http://barcamp.org/StartupWeekendVancouver. It’s good to re-use names so people know what you’re talking about :P
When I talk beer, people know I mean serious business. But point taken.
I posted this up on VancouverVibe.ca – hopefully will get some additional attention for what, I think, is a fantastic idea. Hope you find the support and sponsorship you need to make this happen! (In case my previous post did go through, sorry for the double post!).
Great idea, count me in.
alright but if Krang shows up i am going to be very upset.
i wonder how many brain cells will die. or if that can even be measured.
it would probly work on Krang tho.
Way too much fun… I’m in depending on the date. Photographer/inet research/general business and marketing whatever
hmmm…. sounds like fun :-)
Wow, sounds like fun and a good idea. I would love to join in if I was in the area.
I’m in. I can help on any environment, hosting, process and business stuff, but I’ll leave the hardcore development work to the pros. :)
-Trevor
i’ll live video cast it on qik or mogulus or whatever (i’ll coordinate all the video stuff with Rebecca)
I’m happy to provide distraction in the room the form of Wii gaming.
Cool idea. I’ll try to be there.
Digg link: http://digg.com/tech_news/StartupWeekend_Vancouver
Hey Duane,
I’m definitely in to help! I can help with PR, Marketing/Promotion, Design of any kind, and some PHP back end if you don’t find someone more qualified for that.
Looking forward to getting involved. I want a nifty title, too. ;)
So, let me get this straight…. you want to extend Monday through Friday into the weekend?
Plus beer, music , fun and technology. Sounds like a pretty good weekend to me!
Go for it. I have some ideas for Facebook applications ;-) Anyone?
I’ve created the wiki page Boris suggested @ http://barcamp.org/StartupWeekendVancouver It’s pretty empty. Feel free to edit. It’s a wiki after all.
Sounds like fun — Nitobi will send in some stealthy ninja to drink these beers you speak of and drop some coding related knowledge.