Tearing Down To Build Up

How do you get 100 driven, motivated, energized leaders, all with their own ideas, moving in the same direction? You send ‘em to boot camp and hand ‘em over to the drill sergeant.

That’s exactly what happened to us at InOneWeekend. Pretty much everyone has experienced creative brainstorming sessions that generate ideas where “no idea is a wrong idea.” Well, I’ll tell you that you can have wrong ideas and wrong approaches. And our drill sergeant made that clear within the first five minutes. No, scratch that. Within the first 60 seconds.

All we had to do was distribute some index cards among us. In 60 seconds. That’s it. And we got 10 points for doing so. There were four stacks of cards sitting on the table at the front of the room. Just get up out of our seats, pick up the cards, and start spreading them around. Make sure everyone got one. 60 seconds. 10 points. The clock started. We all – every last one of us – just sat there. For the first 10 seconds you could hear a pin drop outside of our facilitator yelling, “you can start now,” a couple of times. Our minds were not free. And all the “leaders” in the room were followers.

Here we were at an entrepreneurship event and we were waiting for someone to tell us what to do. Sheesh. The odds of a successful weekend plummeted. At least as we sat there individually in our seats.

Jeff Stamp facilitated the creative session and idea generation event. Jeff, an inventor and entrepreneur himself, taught entrepreneurship at the college level, a concept I always thought strange. I mean, how do you teach something that seems to need to be a part of a person’s character? This guy changed my mind by minute two.

Why did we just sit there? Well, Jeff had flashed a slide that said the person sitting in the third seat from the left in the third row needed to accomplish the task. Then another slide flashed that said to distribute the green cards, of which there were not enough to go around. We all waited for the third person from the left in the third row to figure out who he was. Fair enough – if you’re waiting for somebody else to change the world. The only task was to distribute the cards. The finish line to win the points was 60 seconds.

Distribute cards. 60 seconds. 10 points. Everything else should have been irrelevant. The third person from the left in the third row could have been any one of us depending on our frame of reference. And who cares what color the cards were.

Not only did Jeff break us down and create a bunch of followers out of a bunch of leaders, essentially putting us in our places, he then put the pieces back together and had us functioning in teams where the parts added up to much more than the whole. We were excited, bonded, with no more pride I might add, and generating an amazing number of great ideas.

Oh, there were those who tried to hold on to their egos, and, oh, were they shut down.

“But here is the problem with this approach…”

“NO PROBLEMS, JUST SOLUTIONS.”

“But I think…”

“NO TIME. MOVE ON.”

“But…but…”

We all moved on.

There would be no subversion of the team to anyone’s ego or agenda. A couple of hours later we had our concept in an online scrapbooking web site. We continued to break into different groups to brainstorm, rank, and share features, as our distributed groups collaborated using a Google Docs spreadsheet. We functioned as a team. And the team became “our” team as it strengthened through the weekend.

Amazing.

- Andy

InOneWeekend 2008 Keynote Part I

Click to Play

Roy Gilbert, Director of Global Operations for Google, kicked off the 2008 InOneWeekend event in Cincinnati! 100 people, 3 days, 1 startup

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov), Flash Video (.flv)

Tags: startup, innovation, venture capital, seed stage, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, creativity, cincinnati

InOneWeekend 2008 Keynote Part II

Click to Play

Roy Gilbert, Director of Global Operations for Google, kicked off the 2008 InOneWeekend event in Cincinnati! 100 people, 3 days, 1 startup

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov), Flash Video (.flv)

Tags: startup, innovation, venture capital, seed stage, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, creativity, cincinnati

InOneWeekend 2008 Keynote Part 3

Click to Play

Roy Gilbert, Director of Global Operations for Google, kicked off the 2008 InOneWeekend event in Cincinnati! 100 people, 3 days, 1 startup

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov), Flash Video (.flv)

Tags: startup, innovation, venture capital, seed stage, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, creativity, cincinnati

Congratulations to all

First I'd like to say congratulations to the participants of InOneWeekend. WOW! You all did a super job of pulling together and creating a fabulous new business with a wonderfully creative concept. No egos, no arguments, just a lot of teamwork and dedication.

Second I'd like to thank Elizabeth, Steven, Jeffrey, Bill, and everyone else on the IOW Board for all their hard work. The weekend was so well orchestrated and executed -- you made it look easy! However, the amount of work that went on behind the scenes was no less than superhuman. Applause to everyone!!!

This weekend was a first for the Greater Cincinnati region, but I sincerely hope it will not be the last. We need this type of support for nascent entrepreneurs and InOneWeekend is a much-needed tool for the economic development of this area.

I'm looking forward to the next chapter in the story of Lifespoke.com -- the first few steps in the journey of a successful tech start-up.

Below is a link to the story that appeared in Friday's edition of the Cincinnati Business Courier. It is a great story and one that deserves to be told and retold for years.

http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2008/07/21/story6.html?b=1216612800^1670376

How did I miss the press release???

I'm curious to read the Lifespoke press release. Can someone post the URL?

Thanks

There is No Finish Line, the Journey is the Reward

We are now a T+7 days after the phenomenal InOneWeekend event -- and without a doubt, the event exceeded everyone's expectations. The title for this post is from a poster I received when I was at Apple Computer in the late 80's -- and it clearly rings true for InOneWeekend. It did not end on Sunday and for 100 people, their journey continues, hopefully much richer and more interesting than before.

LifeSpoke.com will continue to form and evolve with the help of all IOW's. More importantly, there are 100 people who are more aware, more confident and more energized about how start-ups work. It is not rocket science -- it is elbow grease - physical and intellectual -- that creates companies. Now there are 100 people who are ready to try it out.

There are 100 people that have learned to fail fast (we did it many times over the weekend.) Here are three quotes that illustrate the core of InOneWeekend:

"I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."
Thomas Edison

"Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome."
Samuel Johnson

"The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity"
Helen Rowland (1876 - 1950), A Guide to Men, 1922

One final note. This was an incredible team effort. It may seem that some contributed more than others and vice versa. But there was no scorecard about the number of ideas, who coded the most lines of code and who put in the most hours. Your presence at the event was valued! The measure of success lies in the future. Did LifeSpoke.com succeed? How many derivative ideas, companies, start-ups, efforts came out of this weekend. Is Cincinnati better than it was before July 11, 2008?

These questions do not necessarily need to be answered -- but for all of them, I believe the answer is very positive.

Good luck on your journey!

My best birthday gift ever

Firstly, I must really thank the organizers and the event facilitators for such a wonderful event. I am a graduate student in University of Cincinnati. Entrepreneurship had been a distant dream to me for quite sometime now. Things suddenly changed on July 11th when my friend and fellow participant told me that there was a vacancy to join the group for InOneWeekend. The best part was that this happened on my 25th birthday. I got the best gift ever.... the opportunity to be a part of something big!! :)

To begin with I was quite doubtful whether 100 people can really come together and zero in on a single idea. The brain storming sessions were awesome. It was amazing to see people come up with creative ideas. This thrilled me and motivated me. When "LivingHistory.com" (the idea which recieved max votes and an idea which set the core purpose of LifeSpoke) was born on Friday 11:50pm, I was quite frankly excited and also unsure whether we can proceed to the next phase. Then the Saturday morning brainstorming sessions set a path for what we needed to do. It felt great to see things shaping up. By Sunday evening, it was all set and the presentations by various teams were so professional and it was hard to believe at the end of the day that I really had been a part of something big and something different.

I had come to this event with a motto to learn how a company can be set up. I might not have given real contributions to the company so far, but I have learnt a lot of things. As a student, I can take back lot of these experiences like interacting with enterpreneurs, being in team meetings, brain storming, voting, team work and so on..... invaluable lessons learnt in just 3 days. By far the best birthday gift I ever got..... thanks a lot for the opportunity :)

Hoping to contribute more in the immediate future. :)

Kapil

AND THANK YOU!!!!

And I got so carried away posting my experience that my exuberance made me forget the most important part:

THANK YOUs!!!! ... to Elizabeth for creating the opportunity, to Steve and the Board for supporting her vision, for "GOOGLE Roy" for a great kick-off speech, for Jeff Stamp's excellent facilitation, for all the student assistants, and for U.C. for putting up the facility.

Sincerely,
Pamla Winther

Pamla's Experience w/ InOneWeekend

As I clean house and get personal things in order this weekend that were down-prioritized last to make room for InOneWeekend, a video of last weekend is replaying in my head. I have - while vacuuming and scrubbing - found myself smiling and laughing right out loud as I reminisce the amazing exercise IOW provided. Here are key points I find noteworthy:

- We were 100 driven, opinionated people, and yet quickly after ONE idea (of a few dozen) was selected as "it", we acquiesced and threw ourselves into business groups that embraced the new business and got our arms all around it. We were more interested in a positive outcome than our own egos.

- We worked HARD. And food, and sleep, and personal things really did fade into the background as we prioritized getting the goal we had set for ourselves, accomplished.

- Individually, our diverse contributions came out initially in the context of who we 'usually' are or what we 'normally' contribute. In record time, because of the dynamic of the group setting and the insane timeline, I found myself digging deeper and trying to act and react differently than I typically do under pressure. I came away with a commitment to relax and enjoy the journey from here on out, more than the destination. (Thanks "team Mgmnt/Ops"!)

- I people-watched and anlayzed myself ....and we would have a ball during some parts, then turn right around and struggle with elements of the process because the timeline was simply too short for the kind of 'correctness' we are used to providing when we are assigned a block of work....like making the numbers work in Finance, or calculating accurate Sales projections, or Mgmnt/OPS' dilemna of envisioning the business development over three phases and the personnel needed for that (Launch! w/ a Committee; Phase 1 w/ 3 people; Phase 2 w/10+ people) - only to find that Sales had a different picture in mind of staffing?! And what about that market research? We had to S - T - R - E - T - C - H and remember it was, after all, a 3 day exercise.

- We discovered the 'product', we named the baby, and the super tech team (few, yet effective) gave us a gorgeous "UI". We did that in record time. I was/am tickled to be a part of that whole team. I'm grateful for the ones I worked closely with and sorry I did not get to know others of you, better. As a direct result of IOW, I have begun to develop some new, value adding friendships...some of which will inevitably lead to business opportunities.

I highly suggest every city try an "InOneWeekend" to create their list of 80+ great new entrepreneurial ideas to go after!

The 30 second ad that Evan's friend, Dan, helped me produce in "Garage Band" needs cleaned up before it can be an icon or stream from the website. (Everyone I know in studios was on vacation this week!) Once it is cleaned up, I'll shoot it back to Steering Committee so they can determine whether it qualifies to be put up at the website or not. Hey....free advertising!

So we did this without a paycheck. WE PAID TO BE THERE. That defines the entrepreneur, though the very financial freedom that enables us to keep innovating must be the successes we achieve. Let's (all) make LifeSpoke a success over the next year, so we stay plugged into what we began as a group.

Important 'Aha' for me: I kept wanting more "givens" from the onset of our project, but I also realized that without those we had the opportunity to see who the natural leaders were - not that everything said and done is etched in steel and 100% correct and the way forward. Nonetheless, because no standards or frameworks were prescribed, folks took turns stepping up and making assumptions and drawing conclusions and setting a precedent - none of which would
have had wings if a framework and 'givens' were handed to us from the onset. I realized (sometime Sunday) that it was the PROCESS we were enjoying (or not) and learning from and that all the particulars that must be addressed to make LifeSpoke a viable, profitable business will come in due time, sooner than later, but not in those first three days. We did plenty. Breathe.

I would do it again. I would do it again with all of you. It would be very interesting to see what we as a group would improve, were we to do this a second time (Elizabeth? Steve?......)

Warm regards,
Pamla Winther, HOPS Technology Inc.
513.207.1441

Volunteers & School Supplies Needed

Hi Everybody!! Wanna help children and youth in Over the Rhine and the West End go back to school with everything they need? Please help by coming to Washington Park for the Over the Rhine Festival on 8/2/08 and to our back 2 cool school supply give away on 8/23/08.We need supplies bookbags and most of all VOLUNTEERS. Please let me know how you can help. Peace and Blessings, Vanessa Sparks 513-365-4764

Tom's post

Tom Terrific said...
Observations...there are many. Here are my top three:

1) Equal parts imagination, energy and passion get you a simmering, quivering ball of potential. Toss in direction, support and a sense of urgency and you get incredible results.

2) To be truly effective, you have to have people and process that address the friction points between departments. Otherwise, the machine slows and progress is overestimated.

3) Regardless of circumstance, leaders emerge.
July 19, 2008 5:36 AM

Bryan C's post

freeagent said...
Absolutely fasinatingly Amazing...So many came together as the "Force of One". "True Grit of Humanity's Core Ability.Bryan CHey all, glad to feel like my days are back on track, only to meet the heat... Been having monsterous energy drink and social interaction withdrawals. For sure, one awesome event I am proud to have been a part of. I suppose I served the event in a free agent capacity, asking where help was needed and filling the gaps from a-z not to mention, adding in a little inspiration into each group. Have to say, saturday morning was questionable to me to continue, I looked at the picture of the puzzle pieces and asked myself what could I do to inspire and be an intrical part with everyone in making this into something really worthy. After a few self doubts and minutes and a hard look inward, I pressed onward, sipped another mocha monster and was instantly locked once I felt the potential and character of everyone present and entering the same spoke of the wheels of life. It should never be the issue of not getting ones ideas illuminated but to illuminate an idea into a single combined force and focus on the build at hand. Reminds me of barn raising as a child, yes, I am that young and found I can still run circles around you all 20 somethings....still and mostly, I super enjoyed the meta and mental battery recharge from all the energy (moster drinks too)and most of all, to see who it was that would take my generations place in the reality net of the world. After all, mark my words, it is soon to be a very different place...what is today, will be different tomorrow. and mostly, "For Every Door There Is A Key... I applaud each of you and thank you for your tolerating my presence and hope I gave a little touch to each somehow... I am ready to do this again but have to have just another week of recoup....lol...Prof. Jeff Stamp was excellent, Jeff, Hats off buddy, you welcome in my world anytime. It was a humanistic common sensory and feel he emits to allow people to open their own selves up to that which they each posses and know, far deep internally. He has such a manner so as to show a horse where the water is rather than leash lead, bait or push and is an ability I hold close myself and can identify with but most of all, very very excellent educationist, narrationist and guider by knowledge and inspiration, they simply have not created the words to explain his style and I'm glad, helps in providing the scene of instant apprehensions yet, was there every step of the way silently guiding from 0-omega. I can fully identy with his style and need to give people an ability to focus, if only for a second at a time or through an entire complex series of event, Jeff, I hope they did'nt break the mold after you...Steve B and Elizebeth E, I commend you for needing to show the world (and a group fo brightness) that this would somehow be different than anything else out there. Your energy's were that of staying with the crowd no matter what, hell or high waters, we were all going to create something, small or big, simply mattered most was to get the group(s)to feel the power as one...and so we did... I know there is no way you ever thought something like LifeSpoke would emerge and I have to say, I am glad to see it was not spin and truely is and will be a unique thing ever evolving. You guys did your part and I hope to keep one of the life long connected relations with you all, each and everyone... you have all soemhow breach my social closed life, you are my friends... Futurist and Visionary~IdeationistCheers,BC
July 18, 2008 12:45 PM

Reflections on the IOW Experience

As a participant in this inaugural InOneWeekend event, I thought I'd write up some thoughts on the experience and what it meant to me.

Getting ~100 Type-A personalities in one room to assume some semblance of structure was no mean feat, but Jeff Stamp directed the first evening to an impressively effective conclusion. Ideas may be cheap, but good ideas are invaluable. Surprisingly, we had quite a few really good ideas, which makes me think that Cincinnati might just be on the cusp of a new era of entrepreneurship.

Once the idea was selected, I fully expected a significant degree of defection from IOW by those who weren't convinced that it was a viable concept or felt disenfranchised by having their own pet idea discarded. I was amazed that nearly everyone returned Saturday morning to start in on the hard parts: business case development, technical production, market research, financial projections, and so forth...all the stuff that makes a business more than just a concept on a whiteboard.

When we divided ourselves into technical and business groups, it became pretty obvious that we were understaffed on the technology side. So, for our little rag-tag group of tech folks to have accomplished what they did in the time they were given was an impressive combination of coordination, prioritization, and pure brute-force coding.

Saturday seemed to move pretty fluidly, but I think those of us outside the web dev room didn't really appreciate the pace at which we were supposed to be working, as Sunday seemed very rushed to finalize a lot of bits right before the final presentation and wrap-up (I know I could have used another hour...or two...to tidy up the Powerpoint deck). However, at the end, I think most people in the room felt pretty great about what they had accomplished in about 34 hours of actual work time. I know I was astounded that so much order and creation could emerge from what looked like so much chaos.

Given that LifeSpoke, the result of our labors, is now a living, breathing "ongoing concern," it's hard for me to think about IOW as a complete experience...because it's not complete. We're continuing to build and plan and create with the hopes of establishing a brand new, successful venture organically grown from a "why not?" approach to entrepreneurship. But, if I try to evaluate the weekend on its own merits, my personal experience seems best described by a few words:

Connections: Meeting and working with people from all over the region with a dizzying array of backgrounds has introduced me to an entirely new network of relationships, gravid with promise and opportunity.

Adaptation: Working on a project that nobody could have prepared for in advance is exhiliarating, since it evens out skill and experience differences to some degree and greatly democratizes participation. Flexibility was rewarded and those who insisted on a preconceived notion of process or product were forced to evolve their thinking and compromise (at least with themselves) as the overall group moved forward.

Ownership: Ownership can be helpful if it engenders commitment to the end objective, and that's the sense I got from the IOW weekend. Ownership of ideas, however, can be an obstacle to compromise, and, thankfully, I didn't observe much of that at all. And that's an amazing thing given the nature of the motivated, successful, driven people that populated the event.

Diversity: As a business professor (operations management), I tend to focus on a subset of the concerns of the organizations that I work with and teach about. So, it's always amazing to be reminded of the full scope and range of skills and knowledge-sets needed to craft a business in all its glorious detail. From operational technologies to financial strategies to PR tactics and beyond, there is so much to be known and to do, and this group embodied that professional diversity. Also, there was tremendous social diversity in the room, which helped ensure that LifeSpoke wasn't merely something that would appeal to a small niche of like-minded, homogeneous professionals. Research on new service development has shown that team diversity is an important determinant of the success of the product being developed, and that bodes extremely well for LifeSpoke's potential.

The last question I heard people asking at the end of the event is this: "Would you do this again?" Most people were enthusiastic. While I personally think IOW represents an essential ingredient in the success of our region -- i.e., the nurturing of an innovative, entrepreneurial business community -- my response is tethered by more mundane responsibilities and is, therefore, fairly simple: ask my wife.

Looking back on InOneWeekend 2008

All I can say is wow. And thank you. And congratulations.

This was probably the most significant experience I’ve ever had – and believe me, I’ve had some. There is so much to say about the amazing people I met, what I experienced, and what it meant to me. I have more business theories and start-up ideas running around in my head right now that I just want to take a digital recorder and capture everything so that I don’t forget it. I’d write it, but I have also never been so tired before in my life. It’s a good tired. A happy tired.

We did it. LifeSpoke is launched and people are registering for Beta right now. I can’t wait to get a Beta invite (and I’d better, LifeSpoke guys - because I’m pretty sure my name is one of the first that registered) because I’ve seen the UI and how awesome it is and … just like my thoughts about InOneWeekend, I can’t wait to get all my stuff in one place.

Andy Erickson, one of the participants who worked mostly on the business model and industry part of the business plan, and a really insightful blogger who writes two major blogs as a profession, came over to my office the other day to do a podcast to capture the reason why we, the Board of InOneWeekend, decided to go with a non-profit model. He said it would take about 25 minutes. He lead with, “Why are you doing this?” We started at 5pm and wrapped up at 8pm. So many life experiences and professional experiences – the reasons why I believe InOneWeekend is the right model for inspiring new venture creation and regional economic growth - were bottled up inside and once I got them out, I just felt spent. And suddenly, de-stressed. I had been holding all of this in for so long and it just felt great to get all of those thoughts captured so that I could rest knowing that I wouldn’t forget something important. Really, the answer to that question is three things: I love innovation. I love entrepreneurs. And I love Cincinnati.

Through my experiences as an entrepreneurially-minded person, a strategy & innovation consultant, and a venture capitalist, I have come to certain conclusions about what works and what doesn’t. What is the most important thing for making a start-up work besides a great idea? Great people with shared values. And that’s what the Board of InOneWeekend is made up of. Great, brilliant people with shared values. Once I got them on board, everything else fell into place. We started in April and we put the event on in July. And it was incredible.
We invited everyone – students and professionals from all backgrounds – and 100 people built a company in 3 days. And that company, LifeSpoke, is absolutely amazing. www.lifespoke.com

We came together as strangers. We built a company in 3 days. How? I don’t even know where to start.

All I know is: I will never forget InOneWeekend 2008. I’ve learned more about people, about business, and about myself from this group than I have in the three years that I’ve been a venture capital investor. So, I’d like to say thank you. Thank you and I can’t wait to see you in August!

Cheers to you – you are the best – go InOneWeekend 2008 and go LifeSpoke!


Elizabeth