Bloomington Startup Weekend

Add a Comment

Comment by Brad Williams on January 14, 2008 at 11:25am

I attended Startup Weekend West Lafayette back in October and had a great time. To bad this is scheduled for the same weekend as BarCamp Indianapolis or else I would be there!

Comment by Lorraine Ball on January 13, 2008 at 8:29am

I am intrigued. Would love to participate. And unlike Pat, my kids are older, and they won't miss me for a weekend.

And Pat, you might have to post the paypal button on a traditonal site, and just link to it from Smaller Indiana. That i know how to do..

Comment by Pat Coyle on January 13, 2008 at 7:23am

Now if I could just figure out how to add a pay pal "donate" button to my flipping site!!

Comment by Kevin Makice on January 13, 2008 at 7:17am

You Rock! It will help!

I'm going to put our sponsorship director, Travis Brown, in contact with you (I'll eventually persuade him and others to join here). You'll get a blog write-up before the event, plugs during the weekend, and a logo attached to the event and the new company. We'll probably need to gather these materials in the next 10 days.

Thanks again. GL in the game today.

Comment by Pat Coyle on January 13, 2008 at 6:54am

Kevin,
I don't claim to understand how you'll create a startup in a weekend, or who will run it once it starts, but I want so support stuff like this. It sounds cool, and I'd love to be part of it. I can't afford a weekend away from my family at this point, and we don't exactly have any money in a budget right now, but I'm going out on a limb...because I have respect for you and your abilities...Smaller Indiana will commit to a $500 sponsorship. I'm going to ask the community to participate (through pay pal), but either way, we're in. So I'll be there in spirit, if not in person...and maybe this will encourage more "Smoosiers" to join you. Hope this helps.

Comment by Kevin Makice on January 13, 2008 at 5:29am

We're looking at raising $3-5K (min to max) to cover the expenses of security and bringing someone from Startup Weekend to Bloomington for the weekend. The excess would be nice to be able to give the group some kind of budget for the weekend and money for the new company to get it started. Our goal is going to be six sponsors at $500 each and whoever else we can get at $100 each.

As far as participation goes, the aim is to have everyone commit to the weekend, with a $20 buy-in fee (we're also recruiting scholarships to pay for people with a fee waiver). There is a formula for shares that is based on contribution, ranging from 2-7; basically, you earn shares as you contribute. Every weekend seems to have some degree of attrition and there have been cases where someone has skipped a day or had to leave early for travel. But we hope that the 70-100 people we get are going to be there from start to finish.

That said, we are also trying to make the facility fairly open, so drop-ins are welcome to interact.

I'm finishing some initial PR stuff we'll be broadcasting this week. This community will be a good place to advertise the event, recruiting both participants and sponsors.

Comment by Pat Coyle on January 12, 2008 at 9:34pm

What kinds of things will people do? Can they pop in just for a day? A few hours? How can Smaller Indiana help?? How much money do you need?