Posts Tagged ‘Startup Weekend’

Why Does iVolunteer Feel Like Startup Weekend?

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

I’ve been to three Startup Weekends and at each one I was newly impressed by the energy that comes from working hard with smart people on something cool. With those events setting the bar so high for me, I have been incredibly pleased by how many times in the past week people have told me how much the first iVolunteer Meetup felt like a Startup Weekend event. That’s high praise in my book.

Hearing that there seem to be some parallels between Startup Weekend and the iVolunteer project got me asking myself some questions:

Why does iVolunteer feel like Startup Weekend?

What can we swipe learn from the Startup Weekend process?

To get insight on the second question, I’m going to go the source and talk with Andrew Hyde, Startup Weekend’s founder and iVolunteer team member. (Check out his post on iVolunteer here: http://andrewhyde.net/ivolunteer-meets-with-a-bang/) I’ll write up my thoughts on that interview soon.

For now, here are my thoughts on the first question: Why does iVolunteer feel like Startup Weekend?

It’s about community.

To steal from David Cohen’s excellent Startup Weened Top 10 post, “Future co-founders will meet, experts will emerge, people will catch the startup bug. This is good for you, and it’s good for your town.” That’s what people have been saying they got from our first Meetup and I can only see that expanding as folks get down to the nitty gritty of getting iVolunteer off the ground.

It’s not about the Benjamins.

Although the air may feel entrepreneurially-enriched, participating in a Startup Weekend isn’t likely to make you wealthy. Neither will working on a guerrilla nonprofit startup. Realizing that nobody is going to make any money with this is actually pretty refreshing. Or, Nicole Glaros put it so aptly, “we don’t need no stinkin’ business model.”

“You decide your level of involvement.”

Structurally, the two endeavors have some common elements. I guess there’s a bit of Project Mayhem built into both. The projects are somewhat loosely defined at the start, then people self-organize into groups who then take on functional areas and tasks they find interesting. Nobody is in charge and people are free to take on as much or as little as they like.

This Tuesday (Feb 3rd), the iVolunteer crew will be giving an update at the Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup. Show your support for the project and see the awesome startup community first hand. Note that our next working session will be on Tuesday (Feb 10th) at Rally Software. More details to come.

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