This past weekend, I went to Seattle Startup Weekend 2 and talked about it at jongela.  In this post, I’ll talk about the more technical parts of the experience.  When we first got there, several people (over 50 of them!) gave quick idea pitches.  They ranged from cooking websites to crowdsourcing to iPhone apps.  A comprehensive list can be found here and here.  After eliminating the less popular ideas, we got to choose between the finalist ideas.

Here are some of the ideas that I thought were cool.  The purpose of Onevite (later called 1nvite) is to send one invite that will add a person’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social network accounts all at once.  Wishing Well (later named FavorWish) was a website where people can list their wishes and have their wishes fulfilled (described as a “pay it forward for the web”).

I chose to join the eco-friendly commuting competition project.  We named it TripChamp.  This project utilizes a competition setup to encourage people to reduce their carbon footprint.  We’ll be marketing to businesses that want to help their employees be more eco-friendly.  Watch the TripChamp Screencast.

The people on our team were Dave Albano, Kevin Leneway, Nina Strasser, Elizabeth Grigg, Angela Chin, and me.  Our team worked out really well.  Dave was our leader and provided the vision.  Nina, Elizabeth, and Angela worked on designing the UI and the page content.  I worked with Kevin on doing the actual programming.  I did most of the database interface and functionality while Kevin did the styling and screencast.  It all worked out well.

We developed the website using CodeIgniter.  This helped A LOT in getting the website live as quick as possible.  Using DX Auth and CodeIgniter sessions cut a lot of the programming work involved.

I learned a lot from this weekend.  I networked with lots of really bright people and I’m already looking forward to the next one!

Some database planning

Watching the progress reports