Startup Weekend was a mind blowing experience for me. Seeing what other people did in such a short amount of time was inspiring. The result for me was two fold: team and process.

The team that worked on the Woopra project has decided to stay together to work on more projects after they finish the Woopra app. I think this is an excellent idea and I will be copying it. Right now I’m working on putting together a small team in DFW. Mostly developer oriented people that are willing to invest one Saturday a month and a few hours each evening to whatever we are working on plus splitting the hosting cost for a server (cheap). Still need a graphic artist/UI person.

Dan Owen & Eric Engineer both spent some time talking to us about funding, entrepreneurship, and general startup stuff. First, Eric’s explanation of VC funding makes me less hostile towards VCs. I’m still not wild about giving up ownership of a piece of my work to some blowhard with money, but that isn’t what is going on. More important than VCs though was the insight in to how to build out from the point of Startup Weekend to actual company: go find users.

The process for a startup should be: go find a bunch of users, talk to them about what troubles them and deliver a solution to that problem. What developers (by developers I mean myself) generally do is write some piece of software and then go looking for users to use it. That is how 99% of technology startups get started. It does work, but it is painful, the industry is full of lore about how company X started out to build Y(a game) but then ended up doing Z (Flickr). Getting the users first helps short cut this process. The details are covered in “4 Steps to Epiphany”.

Another thing I learned is that I’ve absolutely go to get more comfortable in front of a camera and presenting in front of a crowd. I swear to god I look like I’m a convict in front of the firing squad. I talk so fast I sound like a chipmunk on crack. Not appealing.

I’m still processing what happened last weekend. Mark, Alex and the team (sorry I’m forgetting names and they aren’t on the site) did a great job. I can’t wait until we do it again.

Good luck to pickyplates, Openwishlists, 1FTP and Black Eyed Apps.

Getting ready to pack up the toys and head downtown for #swdallas.  I was not going to pitch anything, but I changed my mind.  It’s lame and boring, but it might actually be a viable business. We’ll see if I can convince anybody.

Love it! Favorite phone so far. My wife has an iPhone and she uses it constantly to play games (some word game). My oldest daughter inherited my Motorola Q which is also an excellent phone, but….

Between the iPhone and the Droid, I’ll take the Droid everytime. Why? I honestly find the interface easier to use. I also like the keyboard. The screen is killer: watching YouTube on your phone is nice. The Google maps feature rocks.

For why MinMo sucks in comparison to iPhone and Android: Market place. Microsoft has got to be populated by retarded monkeys to have not rushed a Market place out before now. Go ahead and look: Marketplace. As of today (11/13/09) you get this:

Seriously – it doesn’t even take a real programmer to throw something up. Go hire some teenage PHP script kiddy for a $20 and a 6 pack of Coronas. He’ll have it up over the weekend. What in the blazes are they thinking?

Here is what has me going off: I’ve added 3 applications to my Droid over the past week. First I put on a twitter client (TwitterRide) which is excellent. Posting pictures with it is a snap (helps if you have the phone right side up). Then I added a simple GTD app called Shuffle. I’m still learning my way around it. I wish it had just a general list feature so I could also make shopping lists….which brings me to OI Shopping List.

I sorta wish Microsoft would release OneNote for the Android. I’m sure they’ll get right on it.

What I don’t like about the Droid:

The keyboard – my big meaty finger, tiny little chicklet keys and the slider display make for slow typing. The Q’s keyboard is smaller but because the screen isn’t right over the top row of keys I could actually type faster. Not a show stopper, however the plastic protective case I added to the phone eats up a little more space.

Micro-USB – Great one more type of cable I’ve got to keep around. I really wish they’d cut this crap out. Every couple of years we get a new cable standard. Can this be the last please?

Sleep - the phone goes inactive after 2 minutes. The only way to wake it back up is to either hit the power button at the top, open the keyboard or press on the direction pad. Not a big deal, but it stinks if you’re trying to read something or get interrupted. Plus the settings only allow 1,2, or 10 minutes. Um, how about 5, or better yet: set my own?

An external SD slot would have been cool, but there is a microSD slot by the battery so no biggie. In fact the folks at Motorola were so nice they stuffed a 16Gb card in there! Plenty of room for a small music library.

I’ve not had time to really customize the phone a whole lot. The one trick I have learned is to put on custom ring tones. Just plug the phone in and mount the SD card (you have to tell the phone to do this). Once the phone is ready open the SD card in an explorer window. Create 3 directories: ringtones, alerts, notifications. Copy your MP3 and WAV files in to those folders. Then on your Android go customize the settings.

To give your contacts a custom ringtone go to the contact, hit the menu button and select options. On the screen you’ll now be able to set a Ringtone for this contact.

I’m going to see if I can get the Multimedia station.

Oh, forgot: It also talks to FaceBook. If you setup your FaceBook account it will update your contacts with their FaceBook picture. This might or might not be a good thing.

My next plan is to get Eclipse setup and see if I can do some custom development for Android. Should be fun.