February 12th, 2008 by Alexander
My organization Idea Contest 2.0 has teamed up with a couple of friends to bring you Weekend Apps!
Weekend Apps is a full weekend event (taking place from Feb. 22nd to Feb. 24th) to get developers and entrepreneurs together to build and release Facebook applications in one weekend. We want to help you build hugely successful Facebook applications that grow virally and reach millions of users. Our goal is to assist entrepreneurs to reach their potential, launch their startups, and achieve massive success. We will do that by:
- Bringing in entrepreneurs and developers who have built hugely successful applications to share their secrets.
- We will have a team of awesome designers, marketers, usability experts, and lawyers available to you to help you and answer your questions.
- We’re partnering with the great folks at The Enterprise Network to lend their guidance and support to you for free during the weekend.
- We’re planning an ad-exchange network to get applications to promote each other and overcome the initial challenge of reaching the first 10,000 users.
- We’ll have all teams share their experiences so we can learn from each others successes and mistakes.
Think of it as a weekend incubator on steroids. We’ll bring the energy and drive of talented people together to create an unstoppable force. But this is only the start. We except that the partnerships and friendships that form during this weekend will result in a lot of future ventures and successes that we’ll continue to hear about for a long time to come.
Check our web site for more details: http://weekendapps.com/ . And specifically, read these two posts:
Who should attend:
http://blog.weekendapps.com/2008/02/10/who-should-attend/
Ticket Price:
http://blog.weekendapps.com/2008/02/11/the-tickets-are-free-sort-of/
And buy tickets here:
http://weekendapps.eventbrite.com/
June 5th, 2007 by Alexander
Hey people,
Just wanted to announce the second Idea Contest 2.0 event (you can check videos of the previous one here), is coming up on Thursday, 7.00 p.m., October 18th at the Swedish American Hall, located at 2174 Market Street, in San Francisco.
In this event we will provide a platform for entrepreneurs to exchange ideas in a format designed to provide a win/win situation:
Any entrepreneur can ask a question, set a reward for the answer, and let the audience try to win the reward by answering the question. The rewards are up to the entrepreneur, but they don’t have to be material. They could be expertise or even networking resources. So someone could ask a question about getting VC funding and reward the person who answers it with his expertise on marketing or his connections with developers. It’s a simple and efficient way to barter skill sets, benefiting both parties in the equation.
The event will last a couple of hours (till about 10 p.m.) so given the finite time at our disposal if you want to make sure you’ll ask your question at the event you may send it beforehand at: ask@theideacontest.com and be put on the list. That does not guarantee you’ll get a spot at the live event, given the amount of questions submitted, but in case you don’t get a chance to voice your question at the live event, I will post your question at the event’s blog and meetup site, and that way you might get it answered by the community online. If you send a video, I will gladly embed it appropriately given the right code.
Who is this event is for:
For Businesses & Entrepreneurs:
Your tech business has a problem or needs an idea. You want an innovative solution, a fresh perspective from people outside your company. You are tired of consultantese. You want something new.
Enter Idea Contest 2.0. Pitch your problem at our new event to the brainstormers participating and enjoy access to the creative minds of the Bay Area even if they work in companies other than your own! Give an incentive for the potential winner (cash prize, a job or stock) sit back and get ready for some surprisingly interesting feedback or the solution you were looking for. Interested in participating? Sign up!
A good environment for all sorts of uses in addition to the one mentioned above: You’re looking for a creative employee? Pitch a problem that only an employee that deserves to work in your company would solve, and see who can step up to the challenge. You’re a recruiter? Select people by seeing them in action. Your startup is missing a developer? Ask a question only the developer you’d like on your team would be able to solve and see if he’s in the audience.
For Creative Thinkers:
Ideas are running amok in your head. You want an outlet, a problem, a challenge, and perhaps a job. Enter Idea Contest 2.0. In our next event you’ll hear companies pitching problems or needing ideas and this is your opportunity to seize the moment and show them what you got. Perhaps at the end of it you’ll find yourself with a new job, some stock or cash plus something to brag about to your enemies and rejoice with your friends. Are you up to the task? Sign up!
April 16th, 2007 by Alexander
“One can resist the invasion of an army, but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas whose time has come.” - Victor Hugo, Histoire d’un Crime.
Knowledge about how to start, run and succeed in business has never been more plentiful. In other words, the basics are now available to everybody, with little or no cost. People in business are quickly realizing that what will soon be pivotal is not just doing the basics well. That will be the norm for any business that wants to merely survive. It is, and shall be necessary - but it is increasingly becoming apparent that it will not be sufficient for significant business success. The differences in the means and quality of production in top businesses are becoming indistinguishable, or at least, not significant enough to give any business a competitive advantage. An example is washing detergents that by now have become so similar in technological efficacy that the marketing people are obliged to present us advertisements with scientists that take us down to the atomic level of clothing so we can notice what their detergents do “different” because it is hardly distinguishable with the naked eye. With the aims of most products having been technologically accomplished (e.g. detergents clean very well) something more will be required to give companies their competitive edge. What will that be? I believe the answer has been staring us in the face for some time: a constant source of Creative Ideas.
One or two ideas from inspired employees might do the trick for a while, but in today’s rapidly changing business environment, modern businesses cannot afford to wait for sudden epiphanies from employees whose jobs mainly consisted in being able to produce consistently uniform results. Innovation requires change, and unchanging people cannot bring change. A new kind of employee is needed: a transformer, innovator, revolutionary. An employee who makes it his business to not just come up with single creative ideas. For creative ideas that are isolated resemble notes without a melody. In themselves, they don’t mean much. What is needed is someone who is able to put together creative ideas into a melody of creativity. I believe he would deserve to be called a creative thinker.
In the past a businessman had to do everything himself: finance, management, marketing, accounting etc. Modern businesses grew by dividing their labor and assigning specifically trained people to each post, thereby tremendously increasing the overall efficiency of the business. Perhaps it is time to create a new position for the people who make it their job to be creative - the creative thinkers. They might not know how to staff a business, do the marketing, or balance the books. But they would know how to think creatively, and just as a screenwriter does not know the science behind the cameras, does not know all the administrative skills that are required to produce a movie, nor does he have to be a great actor himself to produce a brilliant screenplay, so the creative thinker should not have to burden himself with skills and responsibilities other than the ones conducive to great creative thinking.
Nor should he limit his horizons and think of innovation only within a very narrow domain. He should let his mind think about diverse subjects, and engage in games that supply it flexibility. A stagnant lake has never been creative. A creative thinker should brainstorm in the sea of ideas. Challenge himself with difficult problems. If smooth seas never made skillful sailors, how could easy problems ever make creative thinkers?
With these thoughts in mind I created and organize Idea Contest 2.0. To encourage brainstorming about difficult problems and help people discover and improve their capacity for creative thinking. But also to have fun in playing with our intelligence and creativity which often results in surprisingly innovative ideas. Click on the link to be taken to the event’s site. I hope I’ll see some of you there brainstorming away in one of the teams.
