(jeff)isageek.net Geek Entertainment Teknologist

Startup Weekend Kansas City

This weekend there was an awesome event that took place here in Kansas City called Startup Weekend. So what is Startup Weekend you ask?

It’s an experience unlike any conference you’ve attended before. Over the course of a single weekend, you get to take time out from your current venture/business and practice building a new one. Think of it like time off the field.

Most ventures fail on Monday morning, which isn’t the point. The point is, you learn new skills, processes, coding frameworks, legal jargon, business practices, spread sheet programs, etc that you can bring back to your current venture. Startup Weekend is a weekend warrior event where anything goes, and practice is implied. You’re not judged (unless you judge) and learning is paramount.

People who attend the weekend stay in touch, hire each other and form new ventures as a result of ‘colliding’ for 54 hours. Its an awesome three days of networking, team building, coding, business planning and pitching (with some added cocktails and food).

Even though I missed the major part of the weekend I did get to attend the presentation part on Sunday night and let me tell you there were so many kool and smart people there showing off their hard work getting the startup from and idea to a working model. The startups that presented were as follows:

Activism2Go
Annotify
Covalent Bonding
Eussi
MyConcerts.FM
Rare Brew
Stashmate
Top Chirp
TreadEX

[Check out the Startup Weekend KC site]
[Check out the Startup Weekend KC Vimeo videos]
[Check out the streaming broadcast of the presentations on ustream]

So as you can see the event was a great success and I look forward to following the startups that were born this weekend to see where they go and how they grow into who knows maybe the next twitter or friendfeed?  Great work to everyone involved!

[on a side note I will make sure and make it for the whole weekend next time]