I was there. From 6pm on Friday, January 13, 2017 to 8pm
on Sunday, January 15, 2017 at the Kapor Center for Social Impact in Oakland,
CA I saw students stretch and accomplish things I did not think possible.
I was leading a group
of 19 students from Elon University as part of our Winter Term
Course called Innovation in America.
The previous two years, I led similar groups and our main activities were
engaging companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook and attending startup
events.
But this year was
different. Startup Weekend is a 50 hour event where a diverse
group of ~100 programmers, designers, marketers, and other business
professionals gather to tackle problems. On Friday night, all participants
are invited to take one minute to pitch an idea they would like to work on
throughout the weekend. Then participants vote on the best ideas and ~12
teams are formed to tackle the problem for the rest of the weekend.
Here's why
- Physically Challenging - It’s really difficult to
teach drive, passion, and grit. But
the high expectations of Startup Weekend helped students understand that
it takes extreme amounts of energy and focus to tackle big problems. Between Friday night and Sunday night some
students slept only 10 hours and worked as a team for 30+ hours. While I don’t recommend this sleep
pattern, for this specific occasion it was inspiring to see teams laser
focused on a goal. I doubt any of
the students had worked this many hours in a so short a time.
- Surrounded by Experts – All day on Saturday, top
experts around Silicon Valley walked around the venue talking to teams
about their projects. Picture a
Data Scientist from LinkedIn who had launched her own startup around
calendaring helping a team on their project that ironically enough
happened to be focused on calendar integration functionality with
Artificial Intelligence.
- Difficult Teammates – You’ve seen reality TV shows
where participants are so stressed out and upset that they quit and walk
away, never to return. This
happened at Startup Weekend and it’s a great experience for students to be
in stressful situations. Then there
are those difficult teammates who don’t walk away but are disparaging to
their teammates. Another great opportunity
for students to stand up for their ideas and be forced to articulate why
they believe a certain action is needed.
- Focus
on Emerging Technologies
– Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence were the
focus and each team created a prototype using one of those
technologies.
- Expectation to Create - Teams were working against the clock. They were expected to make a pitch to a panel of investors on Sunday at 5pm. This meant some students quickly refined their prototyping skills in able to build a prototype to demo.
- Educational Content - I've been to other Startup Weekends and this particular
one was better because the organizers brought in top experts in the fields
of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence.
Imagine taking a one hour class from a top Artificial Intelligence
expert who did PostDoc work at Google. All day on Saturday,
participants could take a number of classes that would help them in their
project.
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