Without giving away too much detail, here’s who’s looking at us:

Who is the ass in front?

The people who made it through to the bitter end (who is that in the back?):

I just got back to Denver to 40-45 basecamp messages about code fixes, PR and marketing activites. Seriously, what is wrong with all of you? Dont you have lives? Families?

Seriously. Rock on with your bad selves.

Love the champaign touch!

Whenever I am rushing to the airport after a long weekend, I always wish that there was a pill I could take that would remove all the tired, give me a shower and feed me. I guess this am, that pill will be this post.

After Andrew and a few very helpful StartupWeekenders cleaned up Viget Labs, he and I walked back to our hotel a few blocks away. Still giddy from the weekend (and faced by a need to install Intense Debate on the StartupWeekend NC blog) we stayed up for about an hour decompressing about the weekend. When the internet in the hotel finally died around 2:30 am or so, we crashed out, Andrew waking up for a 6am flight, and me a couple hours later.

During the 2am stroll back to the hotel we remarked about how, other than the occasional team specific explosions, the weekend was pretty stress free. There were a couple of reasons for this:

1) Will and Matthew provided strong leadership;

2) DC itself breeds people that love to argue to win, but once a decision is made will bust ass to get it done.

3) To Gwen’s point about out of towners, there were 4 people from Boulder, 5 from Boston, and 62 from the DC/VA/MD area. The four from Boulder (Andrew, myself, Charley Hine and Rich Grote) are by nature mellow and pretty calm, and each provided a good influence in their own way. Rich was the “Grease” making sure groups communicated effectively. Charley spent time with UX, and spearheaded the concept of getting UX and Development to work more closely together, Andrew ran it, and Micah blogged (and–mostly–kept his mouth shut). Michael, Dave, Chris and the two girls who attended Boston were able to provide support to the UX and BisDev groups in an effective manner.

4) Brian and Andy of Viget Labs. These guys are true leaders in the tech community, and the respect people had for them, their company and their office space was evident. No one wanted to be “that guy,” everyone wanted to be “the guy.”

I was sure the idea was too complicated…a condo social network. How would we secure it? How would we get people to sign up? It was brilliant to morph the idea into a self-defined geograhically based social network. By definition, there is a unique trust element to these communities, and I wished that Stan James  was around to lend his brain power to the conversation.

By the end of the weekend, there was a completely fleshed out business plan and financial projections. A product, that while rough, showed its promise both in development and user experience. A pr/marketing strategy that was clearly defined and articulated effectively. A really pleasing design/logo/visual identity that is as welcoming as the community.

Everything is there for this product to become a real business, perhaps more than any other StartupWeekend application (including VoSnap). I certainly hope the move forward team gets some sleep and really decides to push forward.

And, for my last post, my last piece of wisdom. My favorite saying is “Sometimes it takes getting punched in the face to learn to duck.” StartupWeekend is about speed, agility, and nimbleness. But it is also learning that sometimes, something that looks like a complete train wreck can turn out to be a great success. So, even with the immense pressure that StartupWeekend creates to work and think at a breakneck pace, the real success of StartupWeekend is kinetic patience that breeds confidence.

Although Andrew Hyde often gets all the press when it comes to StartupWeekend, people forget that there were local organizers.

This weekend, Andrew took a back seat to Will Kern and Matthew VB.

Will’s day job is at AOL, and his night job is taking care of 4 kids (a 2.5 month old and a set of three year old triplets) along with his understanding and lovely wife. Will took on the role of facilitator this weekend, running the seven minute meetings, interfacing with each team, and continually being a positive influence on each attendee at StartupWeekend.

Matthew VB lead the development team and exacted tolls on all who entered the Land of Code. Always quick with a quip, he kept the developers happy, and more importantly, every one at StartupWeekend DC trusted that he would deliver. And at 11:57pm, he did.

If you are an organizer of a StartupWeekend, or thinking about doing it, taking a page from Will and Matthew will serve you well. People were willing to be lead by them because they held the singular focus of launching on Sunday, facilitation and collaboration, and most importantly, understood where they limitations were, and worked to their strengths.

It was wonderful to see them work, and I look forward to continued communication, even though when saying goodbye to Matthew, he said “Im sure I will think of something I like about you on the way home.” Bastard.

“Follow the Bottle.”

“We got $0.40 in tolls!”

The response to HolaNeighbor! has crashed our production servers. We are working on getting a bit more stable. Please remember its our Lamda Lamda Lamda Launch.

Go Tri-Lams!

So its launched. What does that mean? We have the ability to login, setup communities and join communities. Over the next few weeks several features will be added. HolaNeighbor! becomes the third StartupWeekend project to have a site where functionality exists prior to midnight on Sunday. Great job to everyone at StartupWeekend DC!

It has been amazing to see how far StartupWeekend itself has come from its humble beginnings in July in a room above a bike shop in Boulder.

I am not often impressed, but Andrew and Will and Matthew have my respect.

We are so excited to see the launch! Matthew is about to push the button….

And we are live! Corks are Poppin!