Buckeye Interactive sent two of its developers, Rian Rainey and Brad Griffith, to Columbus’ StartUp Weekend. StartUp Weekend is a 54-hour event that provides networking and resources for individuals and teams to go from idea to launch in one weekend. StartUp Weekends are hosted all over the world and Columbus hosted theirs on the campus of The Ohio State University.
The event commenced Friday night with over fifty 60-second pitches. Many ideas were generated and the ideas that created the most interest became the projects that stuck for the weekend. Rian participated as the mobile developer for Arras (www.arraslife.com). Arras’ objective was to easily capture and organize life’s moments using a mobile and web interface. The team consisted of a designer, two web developers, two mobile developers and a handful of marketers, accountants and business development experts.
Saturday consisted of 12 hours of coding, business development and coffee. Lunch was sponsored by Freshbox Catering (@FreshboxCaters) and Dan Rockwell (@floozyspeak) from Big Kitty Labs was the guest speaker. Dan provided insight on the struggles that we would discover during the weekend but to remember the benefits of the process. We were building relationships that would surpass the weekend. If you want to hear Dan’s full message, click here.
At the end of the weekend, there were many projects that succeeded with working products. Rian’s team was proud to have an online prototype that could display images in real-time from both iPhone and Android devices. Other teams that finished strong were HearSayApp, OnTapped, and SocialSignature.
If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, want to network with the start-up community, or need that extra excuse to try out that idea you’ve had, give StartUp Weekend a try when it comes to your community. Columbus plans on having another StartUp Weekend in the Fall of 2011.
