Years ago I found a marriage proposal code in the 'After Dark' screen saver.
I've always wanted to know what the back story on that was.
211 karma · joined October 3, 2007
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/roberte3; my proof: https://keybase.io/roberte3/sigs/3W_tPVVNOvozOg_jDefi9Ew349CSKjDwP0JYP5GdaeQ ]
I've always wanted to know what the back story on that was.
As a result of two I have developed a LOT of rules and regulations depending on the event of what we have to sell. And honestly if I could get away without sponsorships I would.
There is the old Winston Churchill story. Winston to women at party ” Would you sleep with me for $1,000,000 ?” Women “Why Winston I would indeed.” Winston ” Would you sleep with me for $10?” Women ” What kind of women do you take me for?” Winston ” We have already ascertained what kind of women you are now we are mearly deciding on a price.”
As a result, I demand a high price for my virtue.
The thing about sponsorships of things like barcamps and heck any other event is the fact that you negotiate what you give up for the money.
Here they are asking for EVERYTHING, and not saying exactly what they are going to give up, for the 'privilege' of having them stop by... Do I give you the names of all of my attendees? How about their names and email addresses so you can spam the hell out the my 'entrepreneurial community'.
And don't even get me started on the mealy-mouthed help you solve your 'biggest pain point'. Which one exactly? Every event has its on hard pain point, but for the most part its finding a good venue. Sponsors are easy, usually I have to tell a bunch that I don't want them anywhere near my event.
(Organizer of three barcamps, twenty two startup hackathons, a startup conference, startup weekend, burning man 'decom' parties).
500 Feet long, held two passengers, guts were a rewired electric wheelchair.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/espressobuzz/5008514139/in/set-...
I used a cheap cooler, so I cranked up the temp by 10 degrees above what I wanted the steak to be at when it finished.
One thing that isn't brought up on the page, you probably want to use a rapid digital thermometer rather than your standard analog meat thermometer, I probably let out too much heat when I checked the temp halfway though.
Also Seattle Barcamp is next weekend (http://barcampseattle-09.pathable.com/ )
Eventbright handles a lot of the registration problems very well. Although it falls down in the following areas, Paypal sucks natch, and it doesn't handle individuals buying more than one ticket well at all. i.e. 1 person buys 5 tickets for people at their company. All of the tickets belong to that person even if you want all of the different peoples names. The google checkout is a bit better than the paypal nightmare.
Pathable is really great, because it can pull the xml feed of your attendees out of eventbright, and has a lot of community features for your attendees. It sets up groups, lets people self tag their interests, handles emails between the people attending and really helps you establish a community between the people coming to your event.
Pathable also lets you print out fancy looking name badges with peoples names on them, and the names of people that they should talk to at the event (as an option). Anyway Pathable is good stuff.
SaturdayHouse groups.google.com/saturdayhouse - is a weekly meetup at various peoples houses.
Hops and Chops www.hopsandchops.com/ - Dave Schappell (Teachstreet) weekly startup drinking club. Linda's on Capital Hill.
Startup Drinks seattle.startupdrinks.com - A monthly meetup devoted to people with a startup habit.
Six Hour Startup Group - www.sixhourstartup.com - A bimonthly hacking attempt to launch a project in six hours. (I organize this event).
STS - http://www.seattletechstartups.com/doku.php The meeting is at the UW this Wednesday.
And Lunch2.0 - www.seattlelunch20.com/ - Vists lots of local startups.
There are actually a bunch of triggers for getting the $100. Like getting outside investment, deciding that the business won't work and quiting, and a pile of others.
Its like getting a coffee cup at work with the company logo on it for being there a year. Its not the reason you do the job.
2. The equity question is something that I asked about... basically the thought was that its your work, you should get to profit from it. Just like when you buy a server from dell, dell doesn't get a slice of equity from your company.
3. This program as being run as a low cost high impact bootstrapped startup itself. That said the costs are a LOT lower than just about anything like it. Tech Stars for example is six percent of your company for office space, and coaching for 120 days. This is just $1500, for just the coaching. (And there are quite a few coffee shops in Portland that will let you work from them if you so choose.)
Long story made short, its a training program to get your business to the point where you can can take outside investment. This is a very solid program developed by an expert in the fund raising process, for getting the financial and business put together so your startup doesn't flame out.
The $1M figure is from the goal of the program which is to develop at least Ten companies in Portland (i.e. Portland Ten) with over a million dollars in REVENUE. So you don't necessarily have to get outside funding, but in either case your ready to grow.
No equity is being traded for this program. The costs are quite low compared to other programs of its kind.
Also office space is not provided, its an add-on at the new Portland co-working space, http://nedspace.com you don't need to use it but its recommended.
The program is solid. Check out http://bigpaperblog.com/ for the program developers website.
Portland is way to proud of a middling effort at best.
The city has no immigrants (I make a habit of counting the number of non white people when I am there... High score was 15.)
Also the tech scene is middling at best, for example if you go to the 'tech' coffee shop downtown, everyone there is updating their myspace pages and playing counterstrike.
The last big thing to come out of Portland was upcoming. (Although Aboutus just did a round of funding. (Wiki company)). HP (Corvalis) and Intel have huge offices nearby...
In short if you want to have a nice life and be a hipster for your twenties-thirties, move to portland. If you want to try and hit it out of the park, pick someplace else.
Also there is the Six Hour Startup Group that I run, http://sixhourstartup.com which hosts events on Sundays at one of the local bars.
We also have a Startup Drinks organization (Last Friday of every month, http://seattle.startupdrinks.com) and Hops and Chops www.hopsandchops.com (Every Thursday Night).
If you don't want Chicago (My first choice for midwestern livable/startupable city).
You might consider Indianapolis - its fairly diverse considering how close to KY it is. But there are a fairly large number of software firms for the size.
Probably your best bet is to do some searching for mailing lists for technology groups in your area. If your interested in iphone stuff, look for x-coder hacking group in the region. Get to know the people and you will find a partner to found something with or you will hear about the job openings that no one is announcing because they are to small.
Lots of startup jobs in various companies around the US. And they do really great networking events here in Seattle.
Also it is supported out of the box with the pretty Versions program on OSX.
The goal of this conference isn't for us to become rich and famous, its to get us the answers we need for bring our startups on line.
This is going to be a small event less of hopefully a 100 people. We are trying our best to put it on for as close to cost, without have a huge bankroll of money to do it with. Most of the 'startup' events in Seattle and Silicon Valley assume that you have many thousands of dollars to spend on their event we don't. This is a total bootstrap by people eating the dog food.
Any questions, complaints, whatever about this feel free to send them to me. Rob Eickmann roberte3@gmail.com
The conference is being run as close to at cost as possible. This isn't comdex, and we have a huge number of college student discount admissions.
The goal of the event isn't to have a bunch of famous people lecture at you, (although we have some really cool seattle based speakers attending) its to give you the hands on tools you need to build a great startup. At the end of the day you will have a hackers guide to getting your company up and running.
The law is setup to prevent people from buying/selling shares of hypothetical inc. without talking to the government first.
Also with the raw number of people who had shares(120+) that more quickly draws the governments ire than two people trying to found a company together and it fails. Advertising for a company co-founder doesn't fall into this problem space.
The only way to make a firm grow in the midwest is to self fund based on your revenue. With out that it is just not going to happen.
The one internet startup out of Michigan that anyone here has even heard of (slashdot) had to tie itself to a coastal firm to enable its growth.
Secondly this guy and Grandholm can pontificate all they want on making MI at hub for "cool cities" (thanks a lot R. Florida....) but without a major change in the culture. Its not going to happen.
I really wish that the situation for Mi wasn't so hopeless But it is what it is. I honestly think that the best hope for the state is to let attrition take its toll. Everyone who can get out, move out. Let the state continue its slow decent into the darkness for the next 20-30 years. When the situation finally gets bleak enough, the people there will realize their stuborn redneck ways are costing them, and bring about the change from within. But we are just going to have to sit on the coasts wait it out.
A 10 year Michigan resident and property owner.
We have a space in the Seattle area, and anyone reading this is more than welcome to come join us.
We have also done another six hour startup project called gamewrangle.com that was done two weeks ago.
Again anyone reading this is welcome to come join us.
They do exective summaries of the news, one page or less covering issues from all sides.
They just launched a new website www.theweekdaily.com no rss feeds that I can see. It is the one drop everything and read it magazine when the postman shows that I subscribe to. Well worth the $50 dollar subscription.