Bloomington Startup Feb. 8-10, 2008 [a startup weekend event]

Conversations and updates for share-eligible founders are available on our internal community forum. If you participated in the Feb. 8-10 weekend and want to keep abreast of ongoing developments in our project, please contact Kevin Makice with a request to join that site. Three or four dozen invitations have already been sent, so please check your email in-boxes and spam filters first.

We have tentative plans for a March 1 reunion work session.

Bloomington, Indiana was a proud host to Startup Weekend, which completed a 54-hour marathon weekend of design, planning and implementation of a new company. Although the organizational structure is still in progress, the consensus of the majority who stuck around for all three days of work is that this was a great experience. There is a strong desire to take our project to the next stage and release our work to the world.

Our thanks to Andrew Hyde for bringing his experience (and SMTV) to Bloomington to get us started on our startup. After weeks of organizing on the local front to help make this event happen, it was very clear to me how valuable that kickstart was.

We tried to be as transparent as we could (until the legal team advised us to be selective), and evidence of the process is available on the official blog and in our Prologue stream. You can also follow the post-event news on our Twitter account. When we can announce our work to the world, we’ll do it there first.

Bloomington Startup Weekend kicked off Friday with a packed house and a lot of energy. Our company is going to be trying to find ways to reconcile different local event calendars and give people ways to find and attend events they might like.

Bloggers have been recruited to cover the different groups, and we are well-entrenched in both Twitter and the new WordPress theme, Prologue.

The to-do list was pared down by necessity this week, as today is the last opportunity to get the ducks in a row. Gone from the wish list is incorporating local musical acts, but gratefully the national partners will come through to give us some dancing music. We didn’t have demand or room on-site for childcare, so gone is the idea of a family atmosphere with working parents able to bring their young children. Then there are the 100 little details that are on the table but now completely delegated, meaning whatever materializes will make me as surprised and grateful as all of the other participants.

Our Ning community has been very active this week, which is a great sign for the quality of participation on Friday. I’m going to do one more blast of posts, comments and outreach today before grad school and family dominate my time. Whatever isn’t done today, probably isn’t getting done (at least not by me).

As Andrew Hyde—who will now be our Startup Weekend facilitator at City Hall—reminded me, whatever we have ready by Friday is OK. The most important ingredient will be the people who show up. And after Andrew gives his 20-minute orientation around 6:30p Friday, the rest is up to our group of founders. Self-organization is a beautiful thing.

The interest in Bloomington Startup Weekend has been wonderful. When we reached 70, we met every recruiting goal and moved in the “plus” territory. There is a hard ceiling of 100, due to physical constraints of the facility and a natural upper ceiling on group dynamics.

We are still looking for one more major sponsor ($500) and as many minor sponsors ($100) as would like to contribute. Thanks to the response from participants, though, I get to comfortably move into making sure the material, musical and food needs are met.

Thank you, Indiana! (Especially John Hill, our Technology Director, who kept the widget useful and up-to-date throughout our two week drive past 70.)