Recap of Start Up Weekend

If you recall, I didn’t get much work done this past weekend because I was participating in my first Start-Up Weekend Sioux Falls. Here’s how it works.

On Friday evening all of the attendees have the opportunity to pitch ideas in one minute of something they would like to build over the weekend. After all of the pitches are made, everyone in attendance gets the chance to vote on ideas they would like to work on. At this point some of the ideas are cut. After that, everyone has the opportunity to actually join a team and some of the ideas that passed the initial cut have to condense down to fill out teams. Before we ended the night on Friday, we set a direction of our project and what we aim to get done each day.

Saturday we put in a long day and started work on our project. I worked on design and animating and other members of the team worked on development and on the business side of things. At moments in the day, all of the teams met back together and would briefly go over the progress they made, problems and what we planned on getting accomplished after the break. At the end of Saturday we were sitting pretty well off with assets and direction.

Sunday I got an early start and worked on some more visuals. We practiced rehearsing our presentation and we put together final assets that we would need for our pitch. The afternoon was spent polishing the presentation and being there in case the presenters needed anything.

In the early evening, each team gave their presentations and the judges voted who the winner was. While the team I was on didn’t win, it was a very exciting experience. I felt we created a strong product in the time we had and hope we can maybe explore it a bit more.  Maybe at a later day I can share more about the project.

It was a great experience to challenge myself and to meet new people as well. Of course the challenge of creative thinking and building something in that short of a period of time is something that I will always enjoy. I would encourage all of you to try one at least once!

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