The first night of Startup Weekend Houston went off without a hitch. Everyone finally settled in around 7:00pm and we started throwing around ideas. There were alot of interesting suggestions, any of which would have likely made great apps. The one that was finally decided upon was a social media directory for bloggers, suggested by Laura Mayes of sk-rt.com.
Essentially, bloggers can register for topics of interests or niche focuses of their particular blog. Then, PR and Marketing firms can view the list of bloggers and contact them directly about press releases, product launches, etc. The blogger benefits in that they get up to the minute and sometimes exclusive information, and the PR and marketing firms benefit from having qualified voices getting the word out about whatever they’re marketing.
A lot of aspects are still in planning phase, but production will begin tomorrow. We covered generally what the site will need to be and what information will be stored and propagated. Registration will be free for bloggers, but the PR and Marketing firms will eventually have to pay for access. Most likely, accounts will probably end up free across the board until the site is officially released, but again, this is still in planning.
The good news is that Rails won the day over a couple of competitors. I fought rather fervently for this, since I believe firmly that especially given the time constraints we are under, we need a fast and simple development environment, and Rails more or less provides both. Our development teams is pretty small at the moment though, but hopefully we’ll get more people out tomorrow. We also have a few people tapping people on the shoulders to get them involved. With any luck will end up with a powerhouse Rails development team and really make something extraordinary out of this app. Course, if you’re a Rails developer reading this sometime between now and Sunday, you more than welcome to join us. Tonight was fantastic, and I can only imagine that things will be just as great if not more tomorrow and Sunday.
I’ll continue to post on the progress of the app throughout the weekend. In the meantime, you can always stay up to the minute on events and happenings at the Startup Weekend Houston website. Also, don’t forget to check in on Channel 2 and Biz Radio, who’ll both be covering the event.
