startup weekend redmond live
i will begin streaming live from the microsoft campus building 33 today (8/30) at around 7pm pst to catch all the startups pitch and finally announce the winners at the bizspark startup weekend in redmond.
i will begin streaming live from the microsoft campus building 33 today (8/30) at around 7pm pst to catch all the startups pitch and finally announce the winners at the bizspark startup weekend in redmond.
i had the honor to participate as a technical advisor for the teams coming together at startup weekend redmond and hopefully contribute to a team leaving with $5000 to get their idea going. i met everything from developers and designers to marketing people and lawyers. the excitement really started when the teams had to pitch their startup idea in about 2 minutes and convince a room full of smart people that they wanted to be on their team. the ideas were all great and the final 15 ideas were voted on and team selection began. i was amazed when talking to the teams that most were all talking about the microsoft platform (i think windows azure was the hottest topic in my discussions) and the potential that it brought.
this went late into the night (at least for me since i flew in yesterday from chicago and my body was still on central time) and the teams continued to flesh out their ideas and prototype well into the wee hours of this morning.
today (day 2) is when these teams will come together and really start building out their ideas. make sure you are following the action on twitter at #swredmond.
if you are a startup going to sxsw, go vote for my session and find out about the wealth of resources available to entrepreneurs looking to create the next hot startup. the session will cover not only how microsoft has went all in on helping people realize their technology vision but will also go over some of the competing technologies startups wrestle with.
i love that the sxsw organizers make the session picks 30% community-driven allowing attendees to really have a say in the content they are paying to see. community-driven conferences are the best kinds of conferences.
i will be there for at least interactive and hope to see you there too. go register!
check out this interview i did with luara foy, coolest microsoft technical evangelist.