Atlanta Hoops Hackathon

Yesterday afternoon Indiana University rallied from five points down in the final minute to win the Big Ten title, most likely securing a number one seed in the NCAA tournament. As a duel alumni household the Weatherby's are pretty fired up about basketball. Fourth ranked Louisville being favored to win the Big East tournament makes it doubly exciting for me. I am dreaming of these two making their way to Atlanta for the Final Four.

Before that happens the group over at the Hype has teamed up with the Atlanta Local Organizing Committee of the Final Four to create the Atlanta Hoops Hackathon. The aim is to create a real-time mobile-centric volunteer coordination system and drive attendance to the Division II & III Championship games which are also being held in Atlanta.

Atlanta Hoops Hack has over $1,500 in prizes to give away including VIP access to the Final Four weekend events. The fun takes place on Friday and Saturday. Register here to participate.

Atlanta Startup Weekend Is Back

So about five years ago I heard about Startup Weekend and reached out to Andrew Hyde to bring the show to Atlanta. Andrew was willing and able and with the help of a lot of folks Atlanta Startup Weekend was born in the fall of 2007. I ran it for three years before passing the baton to Jason Ardell and company who morphed it into StartAtlanta in the Winter of 2011. 

My startup sista Jen Bonnett made things happen in the Spring of 2012 cranking back up Atlanta Startup Weekend. This weekend the event is back where it belongs. In the Fall on the weekend of a Georgia Tech away football game.

Statup Weekend, it is an intense 54-hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile application that could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend. The weekend brings together people with different skillsets – primarily software developers, graphics designers and business people – to build applications and develop a commercial case around them.

If you have any semi technical chops and want to get involved in the early stage Atlanta startup scene this is the place to be. I count the folks I met at the various Atlanta Startup Weekends as some of my most valued advisors/contacts/friends. Living through a weekend intensely focused on launching forms strong bonds.

There is still time to register for Atlanta Startup Weekend. This Fall I am skipping out on most of the fun as I am fully engaged in a growth stage company but intend to make it on Sunday night to judge the outcome.

I hope to see you there.

Jake's

When my kids were a bit younger and they brought home those straight A report cards we would always make a beeline for Jake's Ice Cream Midtown for a tasty treat. I would even indulge, which is quite the rarity. 

Jake's closed their Midtown and some other locations during the recession. Jake, he is a real guy, is back with a new model. Home delivery. They are extending their delivery area today from their Old Fourth Ward neighborhood to all of Atlanta. And they have chosen Half Off Depot as their launch partner.

I got to test the offer. Did not get bite of what they delivered. Kids devoured the stuff. Great flavors like Chocolate Slap Yo Mama, Brown Shugah Vanilla, Sin-oh-Man, Red Velvet Cakescream, and Coffee & Donuts.

Six pints of yummy Jake's Ice Cream for $15. Half Price. Delivered for free. And for every order Jake's is going to donate a scoop of ice cream to a child at Scottish Rite Hospital. 

Great product, great cause, great entrepreneur. I already bought mine. If you love ice cream, kids and entrepreneurs you should take advantage of this deal.

Go To The Show

So I became a Startup Riot ambassador. Mainly because I believe that it is one of the most important events on the South technology scene. Startup Riot is growing and branching out. They have started MAKE which is essentially a startup weekend like experience and it is good to see someone picking up the ball there. But the big gathering is Startup Riot SHOW.

SHOW is an all-day pitch event that highlights 25 startups giving three minute pitches. If you want to see the latest early stage stuff this is the place to be. The prices are low, ranging from $30 to $70 for the day and it is free to present. 

This year SHOW takes place on February 22. Registration closes on February 8. The registration to pitch has passed but if you have it going on you still might be able to make the stage. Drop me a line.

Think Different

Correcting the Cat

Over on the Groupon blog Groupon the Cat is creating quite the ruckus. It seems like Mr. Cat wrote a little blog post about "The Groupon Guide to the "Quiet Period." In it Mr. Cats states:

The “Quiet Period” is the time right before a company “goes public,” during which it is legally prohibited from saying anything to the press that may make the company look “good,” “successful,” or “not currently on fire.”

Not that I get great joy pointing this out but Mr. Cat is wrong. During the quiet period a company is indeed not allowed to publicly say anything that might be considered as pumping the offering. However quiet periods are not restricted to the time before a company "goes public". They generally apply anytime a company issues a new public offering regardless of if that offering is the initial public offering or a subsequent offering.

In 2005 the Security and Exchange Commission modifed the quite period rules so that they did not fully apply to "well-known seasoned issuers". Well-known seasoned issuers must either have a publicly traded market capitalization of at least $700 million or have issued at least $1 billion in securites other than common equity over the past three years. These well-known issuers represent approximately 30% of listed issuers and accounted for about 95% of U.S. equity market capitalization. 

So regardless if it is your first public offering or your tenth, if you are in your registration period you are required to be quiet. Even if you pretending to be a cat.

Opening Up Social Networks

I have a social network management system that is somewhat well thought out and which I exercise diligently. You could call it discerning. On the big four it goes something like this:

• Join the professional networks of people I have conducted business with on LinkedIn
• Follow people on Twitter that I find interesting
• Friend people on Facebook in which I have had a meaningful social encounter
• Friend people on Foursquare where I would value a serendipitous encounter

This has led to what I consider to be a somewhat manageable social network structure for me. And for Lent I am going to throw it all out the window. During Lent I am going to take all comers and clean out the backlog on my social network invites.  They currently look like this:

• LinkedIn 892 contacts, 363 requests
• Twitter 2,774 followers, 331 following
• Facebook 386 friends, 83 requests
• Foursquare 88 followers, 120 requests

During Lent I am giving up my social network follower discretion. Accepting outstanding requests and taking all comers. Not sure it it going to stick come Easter but it will be an interesting experiment.

Tech Marketing Award Winners

Random Hacks of Kindness

Random Hacks of Kindness is a community of developers, geeks and tech-savvy do-gooders from around the world working to develop software for the challenges facing humanity today. RHoK brings geeks together with disaster relief gurus to identify critical global challenges and develop software to respond to them. They do this via RHoK Hackathon events that bring together the best and the brightest hackers from around the world, who volunteer their time to solve real-world problems. The founding partners include Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, three companies that don't always get along but have come together for the cause.

On December 4th and 5th  RHoK is hosting its third hackathon in many locations around the world. The Georgia Tech Research Institute is a RHoK partner and will be hosting RHoK in Atlanta.  

There are winners and prizes up for grabs. Each RHoK hackathon is structured as a code challenge where software developers have a set amount of time to solve the challenges they are given. At the end of the two-day marathon of hacking, a panel will review each hack, and the winners will walk away with prizes, as well as the right to call themselves “RHoKstars” ever after.

You can learn more about joining other hackers in hacking for humanity at RHoK  and register to participate.

Cross posted to atdc.org.

Facebook Social Graph

With a big pointer from Daniel Sims, I went to the SWAT Labs Facebook social app and created the graph below.

Not quite as interesting as the LinkedIn graph of yesterday. My Facebook network is purposely more limted than that of LinkedIn.  On the lower left are my high school friends and my family is right above them. The little cluster at the top is the Kelly School. The big cluster in the middle is MindSpring with the rest of my Atlanta connections clumped off to the right. Notable are the relative lack of connections between clusters and the number of folks within the network that are only connected to me.