Startup Weekend Houston

Matthew updates us from our 5pm meeting on Saturday. It’s pre-pizza hour and you can tell…

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5pm Update! Deeper in the dish.

Our Dev team tells us that we’ve got a user profile configuration
enabled and login authentification all set. Sadly we can’t let you see
any of this because our Nameserver is still propagating. Nevertheless,
we’ve been working on more terrestrial items, such as User Interface,
content for our site and a marketing plan.

First of all, check out our streamlined three column in sharp cerulean
and compelling kelly green.

Here are cels from our UI:

The rain can’t keep the PR group down. They’ve been busy firming up
the marketing campaign, honing in on the benefits to Dishers and
Tippers alike and getting us some content for our soon to be released
site.

We are starting the full court press so jump in whenever you want
through smoke signal, tin can phones, pony express or more traditional
methods.
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I usually like to end my blog posts with discussions about the healing
power of unicorn oil, especially if the day has been especially
bloody, but hey, it’s your call.

(Thank you, guest poster Matthew! If you’re at Startup Weekend Houston and you want to guest blog, holler at Gwen! Thanks!)

We’ve settled on a name! tipdish!

Tippers & Dishers

Think, the tipping point and “dishing” the news. So, “bloggers, podcasters, newspapers, radio people…anybody who gets information out is a Disher. And the Tipper is anybody who has information they want to get out, like a press release, news item, whatever. They want to get information to the public in a crazy way,” says Chris Dolle, Floater (mid-management).

Dev Team Progress!

Update from the Dev team. They have progress:

They said, “we are making progress.” They have this awesome birds-eye view of the whole weekend. But I don’t think they’re ruling like Sauron…yet…

Startup Houston

Startup Houston is following this weekend’s progress (and beyond), so please check them out.

The elevator pitch sounds like this so far:  The only place where marketers and influencers connect for brand placement in social media.

Top 3 business name possibilities–

tipdish.com

mediaconnectr.com

mediamatchup.com

Things are progressing at a swift pace here at Startup Weekend Houston - UX is finalizing the wireframes and Creative has picked a color scheme (Blues, Greens, Grays - Fresh & Clean). On the PR end - we’re still working on getting UStream up and running with the big cam - but you can check us out on the Live Feed from Andrew’s Computer now

I hear a lot of great discussions coming out of the User Experience and Creative Groups - while the devs toil away in an upstairs office overlooking the rest of the teams. They’ve picked a language and framework - and we’re going with Ruby on Rails

CIMG0947

Originally uploaded by cdoelle
Josh Tabin of StartupHouston is helping to coordinate efforts between the teams, set milestones, and keep everyone on track. Andrew Hyde is floating from group to group offering inspiration - ideas - and encouragement.

Gwendolyn Bell and Matthew Wettergreen are journeying to the Apple store to help save her MacBook - had a little accident this morning when coffee was spilled - we all wish her the best!

User Ex leads the way by walking through the idea.

Giving Media/PR chance to blast bloggers with a press release.  That’s the idea we’re working on this weekend.

Media side:

-Register/Purchase membership

-Filter out bloggers by certain criteria (location, number of site visitors), gives you a live number of people you’re about to target

-PR companies can see at a glance how they did (500 people got it, 50 people blogged about it–we can figure out how by number of tags, keywords, etc)

Admin Services

-Monitor for spam

-Promote bloggers to different levels

Pay per or subscription?  Both.

You do reveal contact information?  No.  There’s no information given to the PR people about the individual bloggers.

We have a code name for the project.  You’ll find out soon enough…

Some members (Marco, Markus, Matt & Remesh) of the Creative Design Team stayed up until 5:30 this morning working on wireframes.  Then they showed up at 8 on the dot this morning!  Whoever said creatives are undependable was wrong.

This morning’s goals include: getting everyone gathered, working out the power strip situation, getting coffee served up, collating information on the pbwiki (there are links & passwords on everyone’s table at SW Houston if you’re looking for that info).  More information coming your way as soon as we have it!  Good morning, team (and supporters)!

At Ustream Except for when we’re sleeping…

We tried to vosnap to vote for the top choice to run with for the weekend. It broke because it was more than 140 characters. We’re voting on the back of coasters instead.

The results:

Clear winner! 16 votes to Social Media Directory for Bloggers! Hooray! Laura Mayes of sk-rt.com says they will be our first client! AND she created the idea! Wonderful!

Here are the top ideas so far:

Startup tracker, cell-phone greeter, social media directory, Startup Weekend band (?), comment auctions, music licensing, wedding registry, real estate startup office space.

Comments?  Questions?  Opinions?

Chris: A reminder system to enter your bill pay info and way to cancel subscription. The service would send reminder email. Making money by monthly subscription.

(Geri) Gary: Mobile Desktop. All of your stuff in one place (photos, resume, etc). Being able to access your stuff from anywhere, anytime. Idea 2: yet another social network: colleaugz.com…professional social network
Josh: Application that allows users to post stories about painful things. People come together around a shared experience.

Kurt: A way to synchronize/track everybody’s favorites (beyond ILike)

Chris: social network…creating diff. topics

QingQing: Wedding idea. Create main registry (bride/groom pay small fee) and bride/groom choose presents…whatever they don’t want becomes $$

Gwen: Startup Tracker that aggregates new startups, their progress & deaths (complete w/tombstone)

Robert: (has 4 ideas, this is 2 of 4) real estate app, simple drawing app (may already exist says the crowd)
Kevin: working on this regardless- direct licensing of music

Steve: greeting cards via mobile devices

Brian: teamworx: a “virtual” startup weekend…people post what they want to do & ask for help

Josh: like re-giftit.com (upload image of gift you don’t want

Laura (hooray!): Social Media Directory for Bloggers (pr) (not like pay-per-post) (oh, this idea will make $$$)

Marcus: political social timelining

Anthony: Comment auctioning—paying to get to the top of 100 comments? YES I WOULD

Robert (idea 3-4/4): stock tracking in a digg-like way, anonymous feed-reader