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

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.

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

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.

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.)

W00t!

Herald-Times reporter Sarah Morin persisted through a busy couple weeks of local news to get our story in the traditional press. Although I won’t be holding the print version in my hands for several more hours, Morin’s article on Bloomington Startup Weekend—”Group to start new company in one weekend“—appears on the front page of the January 31, 2008 edition of the paper:

The chance to discover and market the next big business is about brainstorming, negotiating and developing a concept with the other participants.

That’s right. In the era of speed dating and power networking, there’s now the swift startup.

People can create and invest in a new enterprise in the space between happy hour Friday evening to when the alarm clock rings Monday morning and ushers in another day, another week of jobs and classes.

Source: Herald-Times

In addition to me praising the community-building and promotional aspect of the weekend, City councilman Brad Wisler is quoted from a council meeting, saying “We really want to show that Bloomington is the kind of place that supports innovation.”

There is a nice sidebar to the piece, as well, containing details on what Startup Weekend is all about.

Unfortunately, the local paper is only available online to subscribers.

Travis isn’t alone. Our organizing committee has grown to include about a dozen people:

• John Hill, Technology Directory
• Christian Briggs, Evangelist
• Katrina Panovich and Katie O’Donnell, Food Czars
• David Roedl, Sustainability Czar
• Jason de Runa, Hospitality Guy
• Nina Perry, Childcare Coordinator
• Lorraine Ball, PR
• Kevin Makice, Marketing and Materials Directory [added by John]

That doesn’t include the many more supporters in the region who have spread the word, paved the way, pulled the trigger, got the buy-in, and wrote the story about Bloomington Startup Weekend. We’re in for a great few days, thanks to all of the work everyone has put into this project.

More info about our sponsorship campaign is available at the main Startup Weekend site.

We have an online community, powered by Ning, which we are using to suggest and discuss product and company ideas over the next 10 days. Please post any crazy ideas for services, widgets, devices or other things our new company might do. The more discussed an idea is before we pitch, the more effective the pitch will be.

Startup Weekend founder Andrew Hyde published the 8th podcast wrap-up of a weekend, interviewing Kimm Viebrock as a summary of what happened in Seattle. It is worth a listen. I also recommend looking at the results of past weekends for an idea about what to expect on the 8th.

We thank the hundreds of past founders for sharing. Soon, it will be our turn to do the same.

I am challenging local bloggers to help our event out by posting something about our event this week, encouraging people to register or follow our activities at City Hall on February 8-10. We want to make sure Bloomington knows about this, even as we wait for the Herald-Times and IDS coverage.

Some local bloggers have already published entries about Bloomington Startup Weekend. We will keep a running list in our resources page, but here are the mentions we have already received:

• BlogSchmog, Kevin Makice
• Smaller Indiana, Pat Coyle
• The Glass People, John Hill
• First: Principles, Ben Fulton
• StrangeWork 2.0, Brad Williams
• phoenixblaze’s LiveJournal
• User Experience Network
• The Web Shop, Clay Mabbitt
• Pin-the-Tail

Thanks to all of these local bloggers.

Gender equity is a known problem. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 26.7% of employees in computer and mathematical fields in 2006 were female, earning 84.7% of what men do. Those numbers are in decline even as the jobs in the IT field are more plentiful. This is reflected in academia, where the number of female students is noticeably low. At Indiana University, approximately 11% of students in CS and Informatics are women. One of the groups locally working to reverse this trend is Women In Computing (WIC), who are currently finishing a two-day retreat at McCormicks Creek State Park in nearby Spencer, Indiana.

While we won’t fix the problem simply by getting a large number of local women to show up at City Hall in February, visible involvement by women can have impact. Seeing women collaborating in our photos and streaming video from our event might inspire others to follow their paths. Perhaps more importantly, the flavor and direction of the new company will be different with many women involved than without them.

At the moment, Bloomington Startup Weekend has 11 women on board with 28 spots remaining. Let’s see at least a dozen more women register before we run out of opportunities.

Resources on gender equity:

Association for Women in Computing (AWC)

The Anita Borg Institute

ACM’s Committee on Women and Computing

Carnegie Mellon Project on Gender and Computer Science

The Ada Project

Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research

Center for Women in Information Technology

Women-Related Science-Technology Email Lists

Read the official blog and follow Startup Weekend on Twitter.

Startup Weekend also announced two new weekends, in Portland (May 23-25) and Ann Arbor (June 20-22). Pending my summer plans (family and employment), I plan to attend the latter.

In the coming days, some local press should start to appear about Bloomington Startup Weekend. This should spur a registration drive to reach our participation and sponsorship goals. We still have some other needs, though, that will continue for the next two weeks. We are currently looking for people interested in helping:

• Music Director—talk to local musicians and get us a daily little dose of live break music.
• Childcare Director—coordinate the needs of participating parents with some local childcare providers to allow people with kids to contribute all weekend.
• Materials Director—make sure there are white boards, markers and other staples of a marathon development session.
• Meta Manager—we will be transparent with our process, which means making sure there are regular updates to local blogs, video and tweet streams, as well as generating the excitement for people to pay attention.
• Street Marketing Manager—chalk + sidewalks = free advertising. We also help locals be more aware of our event through bulletin board fliers.

My own computer issues are ending in the form of a replacement MacBook from Apple. Expect regular blog posts from here on out.

Skribit is a blog widget where readers can suggest posts to blog authors. I activated my blog this morning and added the widget here, as well. The widget helps move a blog from a broadcast to a collaborative paradigm, with suggestions for future posts coming from individual readers. Got a specific question you want answered? Post it in the sidebar on this blog, and we’ll likely be inspired.

Bloomington Startup is actively recruiting sponsorship to pay for a few sitters to watch kids in a room at City Hall. Wonderlab, our local science museum, has reportedly offered some group discounts for the event, giving the kids somewhere to climb, play and explore beyond whatever office space we can childproof.

If you are interested in attending but have hesitated because of this important obstacle, please comment here or email Kevin Makice (kevin -at- makice -dot- net).

We’ll have some Mexican, a little beer and talk tech - and there’s a lot of tech to talk this time around as the Bloomington Startup Weekend will be February 8th - 10th. People will get together and try to create an entire company from start to finish in a single weekend. Should be pretty amazing. What’s your idea for what the company should build? Kick around some ideas on the 30th!

Thanks to Ben Fulton, the man behind this recurring event.

More about this event can be found on the Startup Weekend and Geek Dinner web sites.

Please reserve your spot today. I look forward to meeting you all in person in a few weeks.

Andrew Hyde, founder of SW, had positive things to say about the small-town, Midwest experience:

I was impressed with the team. Very smart, very flexible, and just plain fun people. It was fun being on a college campus with so much going on. Someone would say “I have a BBQ to go to” and then 2 hours later be back at work, creating a company with the 30 or so people in the room. The energy was great all weekend, with the highs and lows you can expect.

That group didn’t do much advance brainstorming as a group, but they still came to the pitch session with 15 ideas. They eventually discarded them all and chose a completely new one, conceived after the weekend began—a contextual chat tool called ScrollTalk. The marketing people came up with a great tagline for the product: “Interest Messaging.”

The West Lafayette event suffered a bit from size, as only three dozen people participated. Our goal is 70, with room to gauge resources and fill needs in the final week to get us as high as 100. If early response is any indication, that shouldn’t be a problem. Registration officially starts later this week.

To prepare for February 8th, I recommend you peruse the blogs and companies created by past weekends. Start with West Lafayette.

1. To raise some money. If we meet our goals for sponsorships and in-kind donation of food, swag and other materials, the money will be “extra” that we can use to support weekend purchases or pass along to the new company.
2. To express commitment. People paying $20 are more likely to show up and stick through the weekend than those who are not asked to invest anything. This will filter the people who are just curious and supportive from those who want to work to build a new company.
3. To validate registrations. Since we will rely largely on email addresses to check for distinct entries, fewer mistakes or redundant entries will be made if there is a price to pay.
4. To allow people who can’t attend to help those who want to. Not everyone who wants to contribute over the weekend can afford even a modest fee. And not everyone who can afford to pay is able to attend. By incorporating scholarships, we can match up those groups and make the event more inclusive.

We will try to collect as much as we can through PayPal and face-to-face visits. Especially if we have a waitlist, it would be great to be able to get the money commitment in advance of that first day. However, we may wind up taking money at the gate.

Scholarships will be available to some participants. The number will be based on a combination of need and how much money we collect to offset entry fees.

1) Network with other motivated locals
2) Learn and practice new skills in the context of a real business
3) Put Bloomington on the international map as a center for technology and innovation

If you are interested in supporting or attending this event, please contact one of the organizers for more information.

Startup Weekend (http://www.startupweekend.com) recruits a highly motivated group of small business entrepreneurs to build a community and company in a weekend.

The founders decide what to make as a team, and earn an equal share of stock in the developed business. Attendees are responsible for bringing the desire and passion to the project and walk out of the room with a brand new business, in a short 54 hours.