

Ask HN: Tips for Startup Weekend - tylermauthe

I am attending Startup Weekend in Calgary (way up in Canada!) as a developer. Anybody from HN going??<p>Just wondering if anyone has any tips/tricks/suggestions people have for Startup Weekends in general!<p>Note: I am currently a student / novice hacker. I've gathered some of my peers / novice hackers together from school, we are thinking of attending together as a group. Do you recommend us to stick together as a group or fan out? Should we practice anything together / standardize on some kind of platform so we can act efficiently as a team?<p>Other things I've though of:
-prep dev machine/environment (prep RoR / NodeJS / Python)
-dev warm-up / standardize on platform<p>Any other suggestions would be welcome! Thanks.
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ohashi
I've been a participant and an organizer for SW and it's great to hear you're
excited enough to prepare for it.

Let me try to answer your direct questions first:

Sticking together should be optional unless you've planned to work on
something as a group beforehand and are simply using this event as a time to
actually build it. I would highly encourage you to keep an open mind, listen
to all the projects/people out there, and pitch your own project (each one of
you has at least 1 idea I am sure).

As far as practice/standardize, it hinges on the first question. Are you
trying to build something specific you have pre-planned? Then, yes. If not,
don't.

Random tips:

Have fun. This shouldn't be a (bad) stressful event. You're getting a chance
to create something you want to work on.

Be inviting towards others and ready to learn. It can be really awkward,
especially for the people who go alone, when many people are in groups.
Everyone has their ideas, at least hear people out. Everyone can teach you
something if you let them. As a programmer, I love working with other talented
programmers, I've learned a lot from these kind of events and being stuck in a
room with smarter people than myself for 48 hours. It's a great opportunity to
learn new languages, tools, processes, and more.

Odds are your project is dead on sunday night. Talk with your group beforehand
about expectations, code, and what happens afterwards. Sometimes, people want
to continue, sometimes people don't. Agree beforehand, it reduces
disagreements later.

~~~
tylermauthe
All awesome tips! Thanks.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2444855> \- I've seen these tips and what
you're saying seems to be aligned with the stuff said in there.

I am stoked! Thanks again for your tips.

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jlengrand
Hey,

My last bog post was just about that. Feel free to have a look, you might be
able to grasp some ideas :)

[http://www.lengrand.fr/2012/12/how-we-won-our-first-
startup-...](http://www.lengrand.fr/2012/12/how-we-won-our-first-startup-
weekend/)

And enjoy the week-end, it's awesome !

~~~
tylermauthe
Awesome, thanks! I'll take a look

