41–45 of 45 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting, .xxx could be a useful way to filter out corporate types, I'm wondering when that might be useful.
It seems like a pretty broad brush to equate "people with workplace filters" with "corporate types". For example, I'm a guy with a CS degree who is a high school teacher. Does that make me a "corporate type"?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't doubt your experience but you've attended one event and are telling people to avoid it despite the fact they organize hundred of events all over the world. Each one has it's own organizers and compositions. They even focus on different topics (edu/gov/general/maybe more?). I've attended Startup Weekends and been an organizer (so you know my bias). But I've met lots of good developers at these events. Startup…
Why the hell do they call it a hackathon if it is not a hacker-only event? The only thing that happens at a marathon is running. They should come up with their own description and stop trying to trick hackers into showing up.
Blocked @work. Please choose a better name for your site (at least the TLD).
Isn't it pointless for businesses to block .xxx? As porn sites know this will happen I doubt any of them rely on a .xxx
He lost me when he started talking about Startup Weekend. Some people may find that kind of thing fun, but sorry that's not a hackathon. I went to one a few weeks ago, and bailed when I realized business school students and hustlers out-numbered engineers 4 to 1. Entire teams of 7-8 people formed that didn't have a single technical person on them. I checked back with a friend afterwards, and apparently none of the to…
I've been to three startup weekends and they seem to vary greatly depending on who puts them on. First one I went to was in a college town in Michigan (East Lansing). The organizer was still a student and so were most of the attendees. It was very much a hackathon with a focus on building something in 2 and half days. My team had an iphone, mac, and web app working and we won "crowd favorite" and "coolest" The second…
It was the recent one at Stanford, you can read about it here: http://stanford.startupweekend.org/
The online application seemed to imply only technical people would be allowed in, which is what led me to think it was a hackathon. It was also restricted to Stanford students and alums. Only later did it become clear that the Stanford business school was one of the co-organizers, and they had secured a large number of the "slots" for their own students.
They did have a bunch of designers there also, which is nice. But the event still felt like it had a 4:1 ratio of "people who can think about a business plan" to "people who can build something".
More importantly, the judges didn't actually care about whether teams had built anything. Most of them didn't have tech backgrounds - they were there as reps from the sponsors. Startup Weekend is pretty open about the business-ey aspect of their events, so it's my fault for not realizing that in advance. On their website it reads "on average, half of Startup Weekend’s attendees have technical or design backgrounds, the other half have business backgrounds."
Still, I think they need to decide what they want to be. If they are going to use judges who could not care less if you actually built something, they need to be open about that up front. Technical people who want to spend a weekend building a product need to know they should stay away. Or, Startup Weekend could require judges to heavily take into account actual product development in their decisions, and try to attract more coders. But as of right now, they are doing the former but still trying to get coders to attend, and for me that was a bad experience.
He lost me when he started talking about Startup Weekend. Some people may find that kind of thing fun, but sorry that's not a hackathon. I went to one a few weeks ago, and bailed when I realized business school students and hustlers out-numbered engineers 4 to 1. Entire teams of 7-8 people formed that didn't have a single technical person on them. I checked back with a friend afterwards, and apparently none of the to…
I don't doubt your experience but you've attended one event and are telling people to avoid it despite the fact they organize hundred of events all over the world. Each one has it's own organizers and compositions. They even focus on different topics (edu/gov/general/maybe more?). I've attended Startup Weekends and been an organizer (so you know my bias). But I've met lots of good developers at these events. Startup…