Have you ever wondered what a group of highly talented and motivated people could accomplish in a weekend? Could they start a company from concept to completion?
Startup Weekend answers that question and more. A unique three-day experience, Startup Weekend brings the best and brightest people together in a local office space to select the concept, break into teams, and develop the product, marketing and revenue model.
Bloomington Startup Weekend is coming February 8th - 10th!
…and I’ve got a golden ticket! Well, it isn’t golden, but it feels golden! I am incredibly psyched up about this unique experience. Probably because I only found out about it a few days ago and signed-up almost immediately, and realize that the last thing I can afford to give up is an entire weekend of not working my side business. But, for some reason, this is making me just crave the experience more.
In all honesty, some of the execution that has come out of past Startup Weekends have left me a bit underwhelmed. I’m sure I’ll change my tune a bit after having gone through the experience. I just had hoped to look back at previous events and seen bigger, more financially viable ideas. I understand it is only a weekend, but if 75+ great minds can develop an amazingly great idea, and crank out a rough, working prototype in 3 days, and emerge with a core group of determined individuals to push the company forward over the next 6 months, I think it has great promise. Alternatively, trying to crank out a finished, polished product in 3 days kinda forces you to set your sights a bit lower. So, I hope at the Bloomington event we can aim high and leave with (at least) half a product instead of a half-assed product.
If you are in driving distance and are so inclined, I highly recommend joining me in a couple weeks at what should be a very memorable event. Look for live updates and likely some streaming video on this blog during the marathon weekend.
I’m very pleased to say that Smaller Indiana is one of the local sponsors of the event!
Just a quick word to the wise: AVOID NETWORK SOLUTIONS LIKE THE PLAGUE.
Sorry if I’m being a bit dramatic, but I tend to get a bit sensitive over companies that behave badly the way Network Solutions is. The DomainTools blog is covering the shady tactics that NetSol is now employing. It appears now that when you search for an available domain name at netsol.com, if the domain is unregistered NetSol will register it within minutes!
They will place a 4-day hold on the domain and then release it back into the wild. The major problem with this tactic is that it:
- Forces you to buy the domain from Network Solutions (they are expensive compared to most)
- Makes the domain you wanted available to any number of domain tasters and generally anyone watching expiring domain name lists waiting for good ones to drop.
If you lose a good domain name this way, the odds are against you that you’ll manage to recover it without having to buy it from Network Solutions.
I tried this just 10 minutes ago with a not-so-nice domain name with a few numbers thrown in. I made sure it wasn’t registered. I checked it’s availability on NetSol.com, and within 5 minutes it had been registered by Network Solutions. Unbelievable.
I’ve lost domain names by not registering them fast enough in the past, but this is to the extreme.
This is only an educated guess based off some exploration of Mosh Mobile’s “temporarily offline” website and a small scoop (if I’m right), but it looks like Indiana-based Mosh Mobile might be offering Blackberry Pearl service as a part of their free cell service offering. They will make an official announcement later today at 1:00 PM.
Their service is still in closed beta, and their service area appears to only be northern Indiana and much of Michigan. However, their potential service model is quite interesting. Through agreements with their service providers, they can offer free mobile phone service in exchange for sending you up to 3 “dialogs” from one of their sponsors. The “dialog” could come in the form of a survey, a free game or a video. All you have to do is “answer” these dialogs to maintain your free service.
You can learn more at this page that, for some reason, is still online despite their site being down until their 1PM announcement today: http://www.moshmobile.com/learn.php.
