Posted by Startup Weekend

There were 60+ ideas pitched on Friday night at Atlanta Startup Weekend. 44 hours later it’s Sunday afternoon and there are about 14 projects being worked on right now. One of the projects that has been at the top of the list from the beginning is Touchdown Nation. (This is a likely result of it being football season and we’re in the Southeast.) We started out as Football Nation, but that was taken. Don’t worry! That did not deter us! A group of developers has been coding and creating statistical models late into the night and (relatively) early in the morning. Our awesome designer has been in the corner drawing some of the best graphics on the Facebook platform. We’re into testing now and marketing is working on copy throughout the game as well as Facebook advertising. (Join the fan club!)

What an experience! The brainpower and creativity in the room has been almost overwhelming. Debates were practical and volunteers plentiful. Good attitudes. No, take that back – great attitudes. And now the clock is running down. We’ll have a demo ready by 6:00 pm. It remains to be seen if the work will continue tomorrow. However, judging from the willingness of everyone to pitch in $10 to buy Facebook ads, continuing support and development for the project is highly likely. More than highly likely. Can’t wait to see what other projects are going to demo and even continue after tonight!

Touchdown Nation Game Play

BTW – Have you joined the fan club yet?

We’re changing the world: Facebook? Oh, that place where you play football.

Posted by lance

Jungle Disk is a leading provider of online storage software and services, leveraging the Amazon S3 platform and Rackspace infrastructure to provide easy to use and cost effective online storage and backup.  They are also a proud sponsor of Atlanta Startup Weekend.

Jungle Disk recently announced their 3.0 product and based on the comment stream customers are excited about the new feature set.   Go check out the Jungle Disk 3.0 release candidates.  Jungle Disk will be giving away lifetime licenses that waive the base $2 per month per user to five lucky Startup Weekend projects.

Dave Wright, also known as JungleDave, is the founder and CEO of Jungle Disk and a partner at Shotput Ventures.  We are fortunate that he is going to be participating in Startup Weekend.  Give him and Jungle Disk a follow and when you see him over the weekend ask about the exciting things going on at JungleDisk.

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Posted by lance

Atlanta Startup Weekend sold 129 tickets.  Fifteen of those were for only the Sunday night pitch night, so we have 114 that have signed up to participant this weekend.

Tickets for designers have been reopened.  We need a few more of those so that we have a designer on each team.  If you know any encourage them to sign up and join what promises to be a great weekend.

Sales for pitch night have been temporarily suspended.  They will be reopened on Friday night after kick off.

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

Twilio is teaming up with us for the weekend of November 13th through 22nd to encourage innovation with voice enabled applications, using our open API. If your team uses Twilio in any way over the course of the weekend, you’re eligible to win Netbooks for your team members.

How It Works

Startup Weekend teams range in size, so we will award the winning team with up to six Netbooks, along with other Twilio goodies. Startup Weekend teams in six cities will compete for the chance to win, and we’ll be blogging and tweeting about your projects throughout th weekend and beyond.

Get Motivated

Brainstorm Ideas for Your Project Pitch

Do you have a laundry list of projects you’ve been meaning to build, or are you drawing a blank? Either way, its time to begin generating ideas so you can decide what to pitch on Friday night.

Read About Past Twilio Projects at Startup Weekend

• ShoutNow
• Monkey Calling
• Escape My Date

Posted by lance

A Small Orange was the first company to step up and sponsor Atlanta Startup Weekend 3.  They are a provider of internet solutions and services specializing in design, web hosting, and  site management.  A Small Orange’s operating philosophy is pretty straightforward, provide the best quality service and support to customers at an affordable cost.  Seems to work, they host over 45,000 accounts.  In July of these year ATDC switched to A Small Orange to host its new WordPress site.  Juicy.

A Small Orange is going to be providing free hosting to the projects at Startup Weekend.  Tim Dorr is going to be on hand Friday night to get everyone up and running.

When you see Tim on Friday be sure to thank him for sponsoring and take a moment to become A Small Orange Facebook Fan and follow @asmallorange.

Posted by lance

Atlanta Startup Weekend 3 kicks off one week from today and it seems about time to prepare folks that are coming for the first time.  Here’s the run down.

Doors open at 6 at ATDC in the Hodges Room on the third floor.  Here are directions.  You may park in the corner lot at 5th & Spring, in the Georgia Tech Conference Center parking lot or on the street.  Food and beverages will be provided.

The program will start at 7. The program is people pitching their ideas.  We are going to limit initial pitches to a timed 60 seconds.  Pitches are unaided stand up and tell your concept to the group.  I expect we will have 20 – 30 initial pitches.  If you already have a concept you can share it and get feedback on the idea wiki.

Once all the initial pitches have been made we are going to do acceptance voting.  With acceptance voting each person can vote for any and all concepts which they have a preference to see continue.  The concepts with the most yeses proceed to the second round.  It will be apparent which concepts survive.

In the second round individuals pitch the surviving concepts.  Max of 90 seconds.  Up to 90 seconds for Q&A.  At the conclusion of the second round a one vote model is followed.  Each individual gets to cast one vote for their preferred concept.

The winners become apparent.  Team skill checks are conducted, and then off folks go to set up their plans for Saturday and Sunday.

That’s pretty much it.  And it is pretty much flexible based on the wishes of the participants.

There only one hard and fast rule for opening night pitches.  No slide decks.

Posted by lance

Atlanta Startup Weekend is starting to pick up a little steam.  Over 60 people have already signed up to attend.  I was asked the question on Twitter about the idea wiki for this year.  It is located under the “Launch” in the main nav bar.

Access to the idea wiki is a private UserVoice forum for those that have registered for Startup Weekend.  Access is granted to participants in short order.  Get in there and comment on ideas or throw out a few of your own.

Posted by lance

Startup Weekend is excited to announce its partnership with The Kauffman Foundation as a featured event for Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) this year.  Last year GEW orchestrated 25,022 events in 77 countries with 3 million attendees and hundreds of millions reached through PR initiatives.  Only 10 of those 25,022 events receive “featured” event status.  Those 10 are the ones GEW pushes through the mainstream media and their extensive social networks in 77 countries.  Startup Weekend is proud to have been chosen as one of those 10 events!  This is an amazing opportunity for the Startup Weekend community and its partners to gain even more visibility worldwide, and we invite you to join with us for this exciting event.

Global Entrepreneurship Week is an initiative to inspire people to embrace innovation, imagination and creativity. To think big. To turn their ideas into reality. This year Startup Weekend will organize 10 events in 10 cities, collectively representing one of GEW’s “Featured Events.”  Atlanta has been chosen to be part of this initiative and will receive global visibility.

Posted by lance