timbuckthree.com

Wow! That was a long, fun, exhausting, and energetic weekend.

The event was at CreateHere in Chattanooga which has a very hip and modern facility. The staff was always helpful and friendly even at 2am on a Saturday night. I’ve said it many times, but I’ll say it again if it wasn’t for the great work of Sheldon Grizzle, Ben Johnson, and Alex Lavidge this weekend wouldn’t have been as successful or fun as it was. Also there were so many people who floated in and out of our team offering help, ideas, and moral support through out the weekend I wouldn’t know where to begin. To all of you who helped, thank you so much!

For a good break down of the projects that came out of 48 Hour Launch go to CreateHere’s post about the weekend. There are a few mistakes and misspellings, but it will give you an idea of what came out of this weekend. The projects range from the power houses that were FloBuckle, HyvMynd, and the extremely intriguing non-profit chattanooga3d.com to smaller scope projects of mStrandz, AllMyStitches, FarmWars!, and our little project, Lokewl.

The whole experience was very positive and extremely collaborative. I had a chance to meet a lot of really fantastically, enthusiastic people from all walks of life. We came in with one idea, left with something related but definitely different.  I think it is a much more solid project and will allow us to expand in several different directions.

It was a fantastic event and even if you don’t have an idea or business you want to try out, you should check out the infectious buzz that happens when there are that many creative people working together in one place. It’s worth a look. Where else can you go to lend your imitation of a farm animal getting zapped by lightening for an iPhone game? Nowhere else, really. If there is a 48 Hour Launch in your area, I whole heartedly suggest you go.

If you are coming with an idea to launch, I offer one caveat. Have your idea down. No, no, no, I mean it really. Know why the people you’re going to try to sell it to would want to use it. Have the market research done. Do as much up front work as you can. Otherwise you’ll spend almost half your time scrambling and readjusting. Trust me.

We came in with a good idea, an iPhone app where people can make to go orders to local restaurants, anything from Mom and Pop to mid sized local restaurants. It’s in the same vein as the Pizza Hut or Dominos apps, but on a local level.  It’s simple, very straightforward, but there was really no initial impetus for a merchant to buy into it other than the cool factor. They would either have to enter in their menus themselves or pay for us to enter it for them. Of course the iPhone would be free for users. We would charge the restaurants a subscription service to be on our system. That would be a tough sell when they can simply take orders through phone or fax today.

Our problem was that we didn’t ask the right questions when we latched onto the orders to go idea. Other than the coolness/high tech factor, why would our target customers want to buy into our product? Even better, why would they not want to buy our product? What problem or pain point was our production going to solve? We didn’t answer those questions. It’s a cool idea and it’s on this really hot, stylish gadget, so why wouldn’t anyone want to try it.  Well, not everyone is as enamored with  technology as people who do nothing but eat, sleep, and breath it everyday. Duh!

That realization came crashing down on our heads around  9pm Friday night. Luckily we had a table full of really smart, passionate people who know to ask those questions. We started looking at it from a different angle and figured out what would be useful and valuable to our customers. Hopefully valuable enough to pay for it.

We took that idea and for the next two days ran with it. We flushed out our use cases. We did market research. We mocked up some screens for both the web site and the iPhone app. We even began putting down the core tables of our data base, but we didn’t have any code to put with our UIs.

We ended up collaborating with HyvMynd that had a database framework that was looking for an front end site. We were a front end site looking for a database. I was a bit hesitant at first to do this, part of this was simply my ego, part wanting to finish this ourselves, and another part not wanting let go of the control of the project (which probably goes back to ego). I’m glad we did work together and I think the end products for both of our teams were very well done.

So what’s next? Well, first rest and sleep then back to the daily life of family, work, and friends. There are a few loose ends to tie up with the name of our project and the business but hopefully those will be tied up within the next week or so.  Let everything settle in. Then get together to see where we stand as a team.

I’ve been spending my day between doing my regular work and prepping for 48 Hour Launch which starts tonight.  Next up is polishing my team’s pitch for tonight.  I’m trying to keep it as simple and straight forward as possible. I’m also working on infusing some energy into the pitch without over selling.  It’s a tough line to walk when you’re not used to selling.

What is 48 Hour Lauch? It’s a chance where developers, graphics artists, entrepreneurs, and other hangers on come together to make a large push to get an idea/project/business off the ground within a 48 Hour time frame.  It’s quite open ended and everyone is welcome to try to get their idea going.  I’ve assembled my team from friends old and new,  previous co-workers, and hopefully some new folks tonight after my pitch.

Our idea is quite simple and straight forward.  Allow customers to make to-go orders with their iPhone or through our website, OrdersOnTheGo.com. Viola! That’s it.  We wanted to keep it relatively simple for this launch. I plan to post updates here and via twitter.

That is all. Now off to go finish some more last minute work before this weekend begins.

A little while ago I started a little experiment. For a quick review I decided that I would severely limit the big time sucks of my day, namely Facebook, Chess.com, and of course email.  So after a little over a month of trying this out how is this working for me?

Honestly, some days are better than others.  Really some weeks are better than others, but over all I’d like to think that I’ve done well with my self imposed limitations.  I check Facebook a couple times a day and Chess.com only once a day maybe a second time at night before I go to sleep.

My email is a little bit more tricky.  Sometimes my job requires me to check my email quite a bit to stay up to date on things that are going on at the site.  For the most part though I feel really good about what I’ve been able to do.

Now for the flip side. I’ve found other ways to waste my time. I now search out more articles to read. A lot of them are about software development, entrepreneurship, and business development so I give myself a walk on those, but I still look up a lot of crap.  A lot of crap that is not Facebook, chess, or email (gold star for me!).

I figure I am like a lot of people and I tend to procrastinate.  If there’s something I dread or that I’m really not looking forward to I tend to find something to divert my time.  Like looking up old John Prine performances on YouTube, planning (read: daydreaming) for our trip to Chile, hunting down music videos of my new internet crush, or writing a blog post instead of working on my teams pitch/presentation for 48 Hour Launch this weekend. *cough**cough*

To recap, I’ve done well within the parameters of what I defined as success.  Yay me!

The bad part is that I’m still a lazy procrastinating slacker. Dangit!

Who knew?