Startup Weekend Des Moines: Teams and Photos
Shane Reiser, COO of Startup Weekend and local facilitator, confers with an attendee.
The third iteration of Startup Weekend Des Moines kicked off tonight with an evening of idea generation, voting, lobbying, pizza consumption, inspiration, pitches, and hard work. Not to mention a massive roshambo tournament.
The more than 100 participants, speakers, judges and mentors convened in a vacant office suite at the Greater Des Moines Partnership Building whittled more than fifty pitches down to the following ideas which are being worked on throughout the weekend:
- Unleash Heroes - Track and reward people for heroic behaviors
- Survey - Online survey's done right
- Employee Recognition - A combination of two pitches based around better employee reviews and employer recognition as a service.
- Local Jams - Integrate local bands into retail shop music
- Chama - Social savings and loan platform
- Modem Mapper - vizualization tool for cable companies to geolocation problem cable modems
- Capture the Flag App - An iPhone App to play capture the flag
- Group Purchasing - Platform for splitting group purchases
- Unified Women - Groupon-style platform for women-only
- Lady Capital - A point system for a women to track and reward their significant other
Christian Renaud of StartupCity Des Moines challenges the group to use the weekend as an excercise in "saying yes to risk".
Participants listen intentively to the experienced entrepreneurs who offered their insights to the group.
Startup Weekend attendees vote for the pitch ideas they want to work on.
Follow the weekend via Twitter at the hashtag #swdsm.
ARCHIVED COMMENTS
Lady Capital reminds me of a Henry Rollins track.
Either way I'm headed back Sunday to hear everything. Awesome opening night.
Nice work Shane and Levi!
How many participants are there this year? Any feel for the demo breakdown compared to years past?
80 participants, 29 of which are developers. I'm expecting to see some real functional prototypes on Sunday.
I feel like I need to do something amazing this weekend to make up for the fact that I blew my opportunity to go to this. Good gravy, I wish you all the best of luck and I'll be watching where these new companies go.
Sad that I couldn't make it. Best of luck to Robert Yates - he made the drive to Des Moines from KC!
@Brad - In addition to the much higher percentage of developers, there are also many more women and students that past years, at least in my opinion.
Awesome, looking forward to seeing what they come up with! I'm bummed I couldn't be there this year.