Wow, and double wow.

This past weekend, in case you didn’t know, I was part of an amazing event called Startup Weekend. I was simply amazed, with my mouth agape and all, at everything that unfolded over the course of 52+ hours. I hardly knew anyone there. Sure there were some familiar faces, but most everyone was nearly a complete stranger to me.

I’m very happy to say that this is no longer the case. It’s pretty damn amazing how much you can get to know someone by working with them in one area for about 52 hours. I knew that the weekend would be big in Bloomington when Kevin Makice first asked me if I wanted to be in the first meeting discussing bringing the event to Bloomington way the hell back in November of ‘07. I just didn’t know that it would be so huge.

If you didn’t already know, I was technical director for the event. I was charged with getting multiple websites up and running, creating multiple widgets, as well as recruiting as much as possible. When we opened registration, I signed up to be a front-end developer. I was very excited about the idea. I can code XHTML and JavaScript quickly, efficiently, and in a standards compliant fashion. However, upon arrival of the weekend things took a different turn for me. Somehow I ended up being the Technical Director for the weekend as well. I lead the development team forward and wrote code for maybe 5 minutes late Sunday. My real efforts where in making sure that the developers had what they needed to do what they do best, code. I helped  them to get organized, set persons on different tasks, and in general kept everyone working. I was also in charge of informing other groups as to the development teams workings. I also kept everyone, as much as I could, out of the developers way so that they could get into a groove and keep with it. Come Sunday night, I presented our workings to the group for our private launch. It turned out that we couldn’t launch publicly (yet) due to some legal concerns.

The event was certainly a smashing success. We meet during the weekend, and decided to do this again and again. Bloomington Startup will not stop at just one weekend, there is way too much talent here for that. No, we will strive to hold these weekend events as often as possible.

Thank you Bloomington and all of the wonderful people who attended the weekend. A special thanks as well to all of you fans of Bloomington Startup and to all who watched our progress unfold. It was my shear pleasure to help bring this about!