My friends and I from Cleveland, Ohio are thinking of attending a Startup Weekend in late July. It is being hosted in Columbus, about two hours away (http://columbus.startupweekend.com/). Has anyone here attended a Startup Weekend before, and if so, how was the experience?
It was a blast. I attended the Bloomington, IN weekend. The actual product didn't go much of anywhere, but that wasn't the point. The event sold out-- capped at 100 attendees. I met some great people and it really clarified to me how much startup and tech is happening in Bloomington and surrounding Indiana University.
I have and have continued working on it with three others. Skribit - SW Atlanta November 2007. Things are going well and we served 3.9M pviews this past month (granted most are widget serves..)<p><a href="http://skribit.com" rel="nofollow">http://skribit.com</a>
Hi Jim - Cleveland Local here as well. There's a few of us headed to Columbus for the event. I've attended previous SW and enjoyed it very much - I also host the Startup Drinks in Cleveland - you should check us out.<p>Shoot me an email (ak @ MyYCUserName . com).
I attended Startup Weekend in West Lafayette (we were the first team to actually launch within the weekend) and San Francisco (we were the only team to do a non-profit app), and I can't recommend it enough.<p>The actual startups created were worthless, but fun. And above all, it was an amazing networking opportunity: I lined up work for over six months now on two different (good) startups based on the contacts I made at Startup Weekend.<p>One thing though -- the original organizer who set up the SWs I went to (Andrew Hyde) is no longer the organizer. He's started working for TechStars and has handed the reigns over to a guy named Raymond.
I'd like to, but Boston is ~#39 on the list, after having had one back in October. I'd say it's worth it for that nifty badge, if nothing else. :-P<p>Besides, networking with other startup founders is invaluable. Regardless of what you're working on, there are some business basics that you'll all be going through; getting advice for those things is great.<p>A bunch of us are available online in #startups on irc.freenode.net - <a href="http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.freenode.net&channel=%23startups" rel="nofollow">http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.freenode.net&channel=%...</a>
Do many "rockstar" developers show up for these events in Midwest ? people who can architect and kick off PHP, PERL, Ruby apps without looking up documentation all the time.
It was a great experience in DC. We met many nice people. I don't know that the startup will survive, and there were less than a handful of exceptions. But in the end it was good to feel the energy and connect with other like-minded people. I recommend it.