Jeremy Tanner – Life in Boulder: Every day an adventure.

Posted

27 May 2008 @ 1pm

Tagged

Startup Weekend: A Report From The Cleaner

I’m Winston Wolfe Jeremy Tanner, I solve problems.

A few weeks ago I got an email from my friend Andrew Hyde. Startup Weekend’s new CEO had quit without notice and Andrew had a scheduling conflict preventing him from heading out to his home state weekend. My mission should I chose to accept it: Free Solo a Startup Weekend. The original venue canceled at the beginning of the week, leaving the weekend in danger of being pushed back or canceled.

No local organizer? No furniture? No whiteboards? No powerstrips? No food czar? No head bouncer? No problem.

OK, a Startup Weekend on the rocks is no dead body in the back of a Chevy Nova, that can be fixed with some bleach and a blanket. Startup Weekend required a few more phone calls

Same day a email inquiry was made, Scott Kveton of Vidoop offered up his week-old downtown space. A call to the party place and a trip to office depot later, tables, chairs, power strips, sticky poster sheets and markers had been secured. Beer / snack run with an early weekender as a preemptive strike (You can’t be grumpy while you’re drinking free beer!)

Over the next days I was Club SW Doorman/Bouncer, Food Finder, Meeting Master, Motivator, Referee and Donut Taster. (I recommend the Bacon Maple Bar) The weekenders brought their A-game forming Mugasha (Random access DJ Set sharing and listening), GetGathered (Meeting Scheduler), Treasurecycle (Barter your old stuff), Life Grant (Dream / Goal Funder) and Startup River (Idea -> Profit!).

I came away from the weekend impressed with Portland’s community and with even more respect for Andrew and the company he built, city-by-city last year. Also a good starter list for the Startup Weekend best practices being assembled to ease things as Andrew passes the reins of SW to Clayton. Finally, big thanks to weekend sponsors Vidoop, JumpBox and Colour Lovers!

*Apologies to both Pulp Fiction and “The Wolf”

Posted

18 April 2008 @ 4pm

Tagged

SXSW

7 Comments

Making shirts? Do it right.

From recent travels and conferences, I now have a large pile of T-shirts, and a much smaller pile that made it into the daily rotation. The point is this, if you’re going to print promo T-shirts, do it right. First rule, unless your company logo is So Hot Right Now™, have the shirts designed. If the guy in marketing thinks it looks good, it doesn’t. A design specific to an event can also earn extra points. Second, if you want people to wear the shirts, print on American Apparel. Sure, it costs twice as much, but the shirts will be worn more than 10 times more often. People wear shirts that are comfortable, my favorite shirt was an American Apparel shirt before I knew what American Apparel was. Lastly, don’t go with a large solid print on the shirts, it makes them wear like plastic bags, they don’t breathe at all. And there it is, how to keep your promo T-shirts from ending up as rags.

Posted

7 March 2008 @ 3am

Tagged

SXSW

2 Comments

1000 Cubes for SXSW

That’s a box, 2 inches shy of a foot on every side 10″x10″x10″, all the more I’m going to fly to Austin with. If it doesn’t fit in the bag, it’s not coming. I’ll be around for 77 hours (we’re losing an hour to daylight saving time, remember to set those clocks back forward kids) In midnight Saturday morning, out early Tuesday. Sort of a snack-size SXSW. Leaving the laptop and SLR at home, packing one T-shirt (I hear they’re going to be growing on trees), one pair of shoes, underwear for each day and a jacket. I can avoid doing laundry before leaving if I buy new socks before heading out. Twitter updates @Penguin and I’ll edit this post when I figure out where the iPhone images are going to end up from the weekend.