"Memphis Startup Weekend" by LunaWeb on Flickr

By the end of the event Sunday, Gamewav Media, MisterMenus, CheezyWeezy, Rezzie, and Roll Play all had their business plans in place, some with websites already up – one even had a great promo video.

Each startup is quite different from the next, which meant that each attendee was able to work on the project which most excited them.

A little bit more on each startup:

• Gamewav Media is a portal for online games, centered around a zombie theme.
• MisterMenus allows users to post reviews of local restaurants – at the individual dish level.
• CheezyWeezy allows parents to post cute photos of their kids, while they and other parents rate the photos based on how much it makes them smile.
• Rezzie is a real estate engine which aims to simplify the processes of home buying, home selling – even just finding a realtor to help you find a home.
• Roll Play is a resource for online role playing and collaborative story telling.

Some of the teams may be closer to a full realization of their ideas, but it’s important to remember that Startup Weekend is not a competition. No one team struggled to beat another in any way, unless it was in a race for the beer, pizza, barbecue, Red Bull, or Kooky Canuck burgers.

The real point of Startup Weekend is seeing what happens when a group of creative people get excited about completing a project, and are given free rein (with a little bit of time) to make it come to fruition.

It was fantastic to see so many people feeding off of each other’s ideas and the immensely positive atmosphere at Emerge Memphis. Though the teams spread out through the building, it was clear that the members still came together and interacted, over food, beer, coffee or energy drinks.

That collaborative energy bubbled into the very startups being worked on. It’s clear that the projects would be difficult to complete without a dedicated team of people figuring out how best to get it off the ground – and how to have it start making some money.

It’ll be great to see these startups develop over the next few months – somewhere about three or four months down the line, there will be a reunion, gathering these teams back together to see what it is they’ve done, and how their new businesses have developed.

It’s not just the energy of Startup Weekend that’s positive – there’s the impact that these new businesses will have on the Memphis – and worldwide – communities we belong to. The sheer positivity that drives these projects has to be a sign of some unbelievably good things to come.

"LaunchMemphis Startup Weekend" by LunaWeb on Flickr.

One of our favorite things about last year’s Startup Weekend was that many of the ideas pitched include major online social components – ways to let the audience participate. This, of course, suits our disposition towards social media (we founded Social Media Expedition out of love for the technology) – but it speaks more broadly to the importance of participation in today’s tech and economic environments.

It’s becoming obvious that no single one of us can achieve greatness on his or her own. We live in a world that requires us to work together – and in a world that makes that easier than ever.

It’s no surprise that such a large proportion of ideas presented at last year’s Startup Weekend shared that social element, but it is very reassuring to know that people understand the importance of each other. We hope that the trend continues this year.

Startup Weekend’s challenge – and fun – centers around the deadline. The participants will have 72 hours to volunteer their energies to ideas chosen by other participants to work on. By Sunday night, at least one new business will be up and running.

For more information about (and to register for) Startup Weekend, visit LaunchMemphis and the Startup Weekend blog. We’ll be there to cover the event. To see some nice shots from this year’s pre-event mixer, check out our Flickr set from that evening.

The best news, however, comes from a recently published LaunchMemphis financial report for 2008.  The program, since its inception, has taken $16k in investment capital and produced nearly $500k in economic impact, all right here in Memphis.

This success is attributed to a host of factors.  Among them is a very dedicated group of founders dedicated to the growth of Memphis’ entrepreneurial community. Eric Mathews, Dave Barger, Harry Brown, Sridhar Sunkara, Chris Allen, Anna Ivey, Gwin Scott, Douglas Scarboro, Marc Diaz, and Lori Turner have all dedicated immense time and effort into seeing this program accomplish all that it has.

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LaunchMemphis also owes a great deal of success to its sponsorship base which has consistently provided funding and resources that have helped maximize the programs potential.  FedEx Institute of Technology, Bosco’s Brewing Company, Memphis Regional Chamber, Center City Commission, Sun Microsystems, JumpBox, Cadre5, Flying Circle, Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell, & Berkowitz, Naked Lion Brewing Company, Starbucks Coffee, Domino’s Pizza, Neely’s Bar-B-Que, Innova, Mercury Technology Labs, Impact Memphis, Red Bull, Open Road Technologies, Small Business Chamber, Red Bull, LunaWeb, and Rendezvous BBQ, all played a crucial role in events over the past year.

Visit the 2009 schedule for upcoming LaunchMemphis events and links to more information.

blogpost by lunaweb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

At Memphis’ StartUp Weekend the idea of mainstreaming pickup sports is not the hope, desire or even mentioned in the business plan. Every group, from Market Research to Development, understands that ultimate frisbee players, along with other underground gamers, don’t desire to be popular or mainstream. They aren’t searching for superstardom or the fame found in the NBA or NFL.

Ultimate frisbee players love the game–the ease of quickly gathering equipment (a frisbee) and grabbing a group together to play. Symple. Easy as pie.

StartUp Weekend participants know the market and are continually sharing ideas from group to group creating the most effective and desirable user interface for the audience.

There comes a time when every start-up business venture must decide how they will choose to generate their buzz. Word of mouth? Direct marketing? Traditional advertising? It’s a vital choice every organization must make, and a dilemma that has not escaped the marketing team at StartUp Weekend.

It appears that for this particular venture-creating a social community for ultimate frisbee pickup game players to rate the skills of other players-grassroots is the way to go. The target market is eclectic, bot young and old, resistant to organization–traditional advertising most likely will not be the most effective. The word of a friend or teammate will go farther than the message of a billboard or commercial.

The group of developers feel the ease of the Facebook template will be the most useful when creating a rating system for players to use. Players will connect through the social community and give ratings not only to other players, but also to venues, fields and locations. The ultimate goal is to create better games for ultimate frisbee players because they are connecting with players who have similar skill levels.

Along with the developers, the user experience group is working to design the ultimate user interface for the ultimate frisbee players. Focusing on their needs–which is being taken care of by the market research group–and keeping them in mind while designing will make the end result the most useful and effective it can be.

Walk by a table and see brains churning as they practically bubble over with ideas to lend to the brainstorming session. Sit at that table and listen to the group, whether it is PR/Marketing or User Experience, and see lightbulbs actually going off over thier heads. Ok, maybe they are no lightbulbs shining over heads, but there might as well be.

The 100 or so great minds gathered together at LaunchMemphis‘ StartUp Weekend are excited (and busy!) developing a business plan for a grassroots campaign to generate interest in a new social network presence. This network is unique and “organized” around the idea of unorganization. Interested yet?

While names, logos, business models and developments are still being worked out, the overall concept is set: A community, based on the Facebook template, uniting pickup-game players and encouraging them to join this network to rate other players and venues.

Focusing on underground sports lacking standard rules, leagues or organizations (mainly ultimate frisbee), this social community will provide a platform for players to connect with others who are on the same level as them, as well as find ways to improve their own games. StartUp Weekend is in full swing in Memphis, and there’s still a full day left! Keep checking back to see how the concept progresses–just watch out for random lightbulbs overhead.

LunaWeb is excited to be a founding partner of LaunchMemphis, and is highly involved with StartUp Weekend by overseeing the new media aspect of the weekend. By blogging, Tweeting, taking photos and shooting video, as well as joining in on the brainstorming, LunaWeb is utilizing social media to ensure that anyone who wants to participate can follow the process online.