Well, I’ll finally have time to write on my blog again. As of Friday, I’ve left development on TipDish.

There were many reasons for my decision to leave the group, which I won’t go into in depth here. Very simply, the project was going in a direction that I simply did not agree with, so I felt it better to be on my way than to start a firestorm of in-fighting.

Despite my eventual departure from the project, I still very much consider it a worthwhile experience. I learned alot from it and not just on the programming side of things.

I learned the crucial importance of starting a company with people you know and trust. I don’t mean to speak ill of Startup Weekend; I believe the ideal of the event is a noble one. Unfortunately, the practical reality is that, due to the nature of Startup Weekend, the group of people you end up working with is largely random. Many of the people are great; inevitably some will be untrustworthy, unreliable, or down-right trouble-makers. You also have no control of the composition of the group, so it’s possible to end up like we did, with only a handful of people with the technical expertise required to pull something like this off, and a large group of by-standers.

I learned the demands of a project this size, the technical requirements and some of the major speed-bumps and potholes along the way.

I learned the importance of a clearly defined objective and a good plan to see it into fruition. Even as I was making my exit from TipDish there were still major areas of concern that had not been planned or in some cases even thought about.

And of course, I learned Rails. You can read all the books, blogs, tutorials, and articles, listen to all the podcasts and screencasts, etc., but until you actually work on a bona fide application, it never truly clicks. I don’t pretend to have it all down even at this point, but I am leaps and bounds ahead of where I was previous to Startup Weekend.

So, all in all, it was a good experience. Part of me is sad to leave the project, but part of me is also relieved beyond measure. And with that, I close the chapter on TipDish.

It’s been a significant length of time since I last posted, and I’ve been feeling really bad about that. I’ve become so bogged down lately, I barely have time to breathe, but I figured what readers I have deserve at least a moment of my time.

TipDish has been consuming the majority of my free time. We’ve just deployed an alpha pre-alpha version. Things are starting to come together and that’s a refreshing turn of events. For those who’ve missed my previous posts, TipDish is the startup that was founded at this year’s Startup Weekend Houston. The purpose of TipDish is to connect bloggers and other social media authors with latest ‘dish’ from PR and marketing firms. The service is free for ‘dishers’ to join, but comes at a cost to ‘tippers’, the PR and marketing firms. While it’s chief purpose is to provide a service to these firms, we believe there’s great value in it for the bloggers and social media others who choose to list with us. They’ll have access to up-to-the-minute news in the industries they choose and have interest in. Additionally, all communication will take place through our site, which means there will be no spam and individuals can opt out at any time from receiving future ‘tips’. Alot of the founders of TipDish are bloggers, as well, and we want to ensure that their interests will be served at every turn.

Anyways, I’ve got some things I’ve been itching to write about. Developing TipDish has expanded my knowledge of Rails in leaps and bounds. So, the moment I get a chance, I’ll be posting some of those learning experiences here. For the moment, though, my time is up.

Just noticed the group shot of the Startup Weekend Houston team, so I decided to rip it off and post it on my blog (evil laugh). If anyone cares, I’m the one in the back left, stealing the limelight as usual.

Tomorrow the team’s meeting over at the Stag’s Head Pub again. We’ll be discussing a timeline for TipDish and next steps to get it out the door. It’ll be good to see everyone again. It’s amazing how close you grow to people in such a short amount of time with things like this.

Nothing else new to report, I’m afraid, but I’m sure I’ll have alot more to say tomorrow.

I was really sick by Sunday, so when Startup Weekend Houston wrapped up. I just went home and went to bed. Hence, why I haven’t posted about it, yet. But I figured it was about time for me to go ahead and write a post about how the weekend ended.

Sunday brought with it a world of problems. Even Sunday, we were still getting new wireframes and concepts, some of which required changes to the existing code. The template for our site was still going through design changes even up to 8pm Sunday.

Around noon, the Devs got some help, though, in form of two remote Rails developers, Jake and Brian. Brian set to work on the dashboard pages, but unfortunately didn’t get very far. Jake set up our server and helped us deploy TipDish to a subdomain so we could all view it live. Thanks Jake! Don’t know what we would have done without you.

I on the other hand got distracted by other issues. A few people couldn’t checkout from our subversion respository, which oddly enough eventually corrected itself, but not until I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure it out. Then, my working copy of TipDish got corrupted somehow, to the point where I couldn’t even boot webrick. Eventually, I gave up on trying to troubleshoot it and just removed the directory and checked it out again, which worked, but I lost some of what I had worked on.

Late into the evening, it became apparent that our template was simply unmanageable. I had noticed problems in it, but figured it could always be fixed after the weekend when we would have more time. Not so. Erica and Kelsey spent quite a while fixing the version of the template on our live domain. But, even now, no work has been done on the app’s version.

Needless to say, TipDish did not launch Sunday night, which was a little disappointing. Yet, an entire web app is a tall order for one weekend, and TipDish is a rather complex web app, making it an even taller order.

There is good news, though, many in the group committed to stay on the project, including myself. We plan to powwow sometime this week to get our bearings and see where we’re at. I also just found out that we’ll most likely be presenting at the 5th Annual Information Technology and Web 2.0 Venture Forum on Thursday, November 8, 2007 at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Which of course means that TipDish will have to launch before November 8th. I’d like to see it happen sooner than that, though, and I think it’s entirely possible that it could launch within 2 weeks.

In the meantime, anyone can signup for info at TipDish.com. I’ll be posting updates here, of course, and there’s always the Startup Weekend Houston blog. Actually, if I’m not mistaken, TipDish should be getting its own blog too, but I’ll have to get back to everyone on that.

Today was wild to say the least. We’ve got alot of very talented people, but unfortunately not alot whose expertise lies in development. My push for Rails as our app’s platform has positioned me as the sole programmer on the job.

Thankfully, though, I have some good people with me who have covered side-issues and freed me up to just code. Even still, it was quite a stressful day for me. With my mere two months of Rails experience, and no full apps under my belt as yet, I’ve had to accumulate a good deal of working knowledge today.

To aggravate matters, this morning, scope-creep began to rear its ugly head and continued to do so most of the day. By mid-afternoon, my list of tasks had become enough to occupy a good week or two of development, which obviously began to create and increasing sense of doom in me.

I was determined to finish for the sake of the group, but I admit that the thought crossed my mind more than once to simply say screw it and walk out. Eventually, I was able to speak with user experience team and encourage them to refocus the app: deciding what were the most absolute crucial parts and what could be added after our launch tomorrow. Not surprisingly, there was very little that was absolutely crucial for launch, most of which I already have complete.

Tomorrow, I should be able to finish up the rest of the crucial aspects by mid-morning, and begin to work on implementing some secondary matters, just to make the app a little more complete. I’m much less stressed at this point, and I’m actually starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I guess I should mention some of the major developments today. We decided on a name: TipDish. ‘Tip’, is a reference to The Tipping Point, and ‘Dish’ as in ‘the latest dish’. We have very chic user groups. The ‘Dishers’ are the bloggers, social media users, and such who will be putting out the word. The ‘Tippers’ are the PR and Marketing firms who will be submitting press releases. The naming scheme has grown on me a bit throughout the day, and is starting to become a more natural way of referring to our future user base. I do, however, wish the group had come to this naming scheme before I had already created most of the models and controllers. It was not much fun going back through all my code and renaming everything.

Probably the greatest incentive I’ve received from this weekend so far is the sheer support and confidence from the rest of the team. There were points where I was seriously believing that our launch would not go off and it would all be my fault, but the group seems to have had much more confidence in me than I’ve had in myself. I don’t think I would have been able to make it this far without that.

Now, while I’ve been doing all the programming, I don’t intend to convey that I’ve done all the work. I’m amazed at how much the team as a whole has accomplished this weekend. In fact, they accomplished so much that I always had a sense of disorientation when I was finally drawn out from my little cell upstairs to rejoin the group at large for a meeting or meal. I feel extremely honored to have had the opportunity to work with all the people at Startup Weekend Houston, and that feeling will likely continue to grow as we go into our launch tomorrow.

And, FYI, the launch is planned for 2pm tomorrow, which will be impressive, indeed.

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.

It’s 4:43pm right now and the festivities begin at 6:00pm for the first annual Startup Weekend Houston.

Startup Weekend in general was first started in Boulder, Colorado earlier this year. For those that don’t know what it is, Startup Weekend is weekend long event, running from 6:00pm Friday to midnight Sunday, where a bunch of talented people come together, come up with an idea for a web application, build it, and launch it.

Surprisingly, for being as new as it is, Startup Weekend is getting a lot of press. Word is that Channel 2 will film the event Saturday, we’ll be the featured channel on UStream.tv all weekend, and Biz Radio will be broadcasting live from the event.

As for me, I feel like death (getting sick), and I’m already sleep-deprived, as it is. But, I’m still going, even if it kills me ;). The only thing I’m not looking forward to is work Monday morning after all this.