This Saturday we went to BarCamp Houston 3 at the Houston Technology Center and it was overall a pretty cool experience.  There weren’t as many presentations as I thought there would be and there wasn’t the variety of topics I was hoping for but for a FREE, self-run “unconference”, it was definitely worth my while to go.  I’ll keep my eye out for future BarCamps, especially because some of the BarCamp videos of other cities I watched on YouTube showed fairly sophisticated operations.

Unfortunately, some of the sessions that I wanted to go to overlapped with each other so I wasn’t able to see everything I wanted to.  But I wanted to share some highlights from some of the sessions we attended:

Mobile (WAP) Best Practices - David Herrold

• According to a poll on Pinstack, 59% of users surveyed check email while driving, 43% used AIM or BB messenging while driving, and 40% browse the web while driving
• According to Nielsen Mobile Report, 57% of US mobile subscribers were data users (SMS, mobile internet, email, etc.)
• 2.4 billion people use text messaging
• Shortcodes are extremely expensive.  Custom shortcode is $1,000/mo and random shortcode is $500/mo.
• Firefox is coming out with a mobile browser
• Skyfire is coming out with a mobile browser that will support Flash

Next Generation Biofuels: Global Markets & Trends - Will Thurmond

• Non-food source feedstock: Jatropha, algae, recycled waste, and sewage
• Jatropha: “The hardy Jatropha is resistant to drought and pests, and produces seeds containing up to 40% oil. When the seeds are crushed and processed, the resulting oil can be used in a standard diesel engine, while the residue can also be processed into biomass to power electricity plants.” - Wikipedia
• Per Thurmond’s book, Biodiesel 2020: A Global Market Survey, “China recently set aside an area the size of England to produce jatropha and other non-food plants for biodiesel. India has up to 60 million hectares of non-arable land available to produce jatropha, and intends to replace 20% of diesel fuels with jatropha-based biodiesel. In Brazil and Africa, there are significant programs underway dedicated to producing non-food crops jatropha and castor for biodiesel.”
• Algae can be used as feedstock as well and it serves dual purpose because you can use algae to capture carbon emissions.  The idea is to colocate algae plants next to coal plants.

Financing Your Startup 101 - Josh Tabin

• You can invest your 401K or IRA money into your own startup company (Guidant Financial Group specializes in this).  I don’t mean withdraw money (and incur huge penalities and taxes) but direct the investments to your own startup.
• Need to read Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
• Only approach Angel Investors when you have a product or something concrete (more than just an idea)
• Prepare your 5-minute pitch
• Small Business Loans are the most difficult way to secure funding
• Assess how proprietary your idea is, most ideas aren’t.  Most Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists do not like NDAs and will not agree to sign them
• The market is the most important.  You can have a great product/technology/idea but if the market is not ready for it or not receptive, you’ve got nothing
• Your team is second most important.  [Aside: Reminds me of YouNoodle, they take team relationships into account when predicting future value of startup companies]
• Comment from the attendees: “Providing data on market research and market demand is one of the most persuasive things you can include in your pitch.”

It wasn’t so much the things I learned directly from BarCamp that I enjoyed the most.  It was being in an environment where I was surrounded by dreamers, entrepreneurs– people who were doers and not just talkers.  It was really encouraging when during one of the sessions someone polled the group to see how many people had started a new company in the last 3-5 years and how many of them were already generating profits.  I knew I was in good company.  There was also plenty of downtime to talk and think things over.  It jump started some new conversations between the husband and I and shaped some of my ideas for the future.

Last Modified : August 11th, 2008 Filed under : Money, TechSciWorld, ThinkTank Navigate : Previous post / Next post