It all started one day when we, like all other internet entrepreneurs, were talking about Facebook applications. We were lamenting the lack of options available for developers to get some good education and help with the stuff they might not have as much exposure to. We thought the Facebook class at Stanford had a really good model to educate developers about best practices and business realities, but unfortunately not all of us are students — much less enrolled in Stanford!
Just before having this talk, I had organized a Startup Weekend event in San Francisco, where over 130 people came together under the goal of building a working company in one weekend. It was all a giant excuse for building community and having fun, but the application that came out of it is also pretty cool! It helps connect volunteers with the projects that need their skills. Also this is where I met the co-organizers of this event: Waleed, Elsie and Alexandros, whom you’ll meet shortly. Startup Weekend was an awesome event, and I’ll probably organizer another one sometime, but we wanted to see what else you can do in a weekend.
We decided we needed an event focused on: identifying best practices, mentoring participants in unfamiliar but necessary fields, and helping build and test many applications at once. It’s a crash course in the business of creating apps for Facebook.
On a Friday Night, small teams of developers will gather in a large room, each with an idea of the applications they want to build. On Sunday night, the successful teams will each leave with an application, a set of recommendations to improve the application, a growth strategy, friends to call if they don’t understand something, and new knowledge on the non-development aspects of building an application (graphics, legal, marketing, etc.).
That’s the event in a nutshell, I’ll tell you more as we go along, so make sure to check back often (or join our Facebook Group).
As for us, the organizers, I’m Tyler Willis, I run my own company - which is me consulting for other companies on a wide range of topics (Sales, BizDev, Social Media, Internet Video, and Facebook Strategy). As you can see, I’m not big on specializing, although if you want to label me, I come from a sales background and studied film in school. I’ve spent the last 6 months consulting in the Facebook space, and I’ve been involved with the production of six apps to date. I enjoy helping new apps grow and sharing my knowledge. I like blogging, and don’t blog personally anymore, so you’ll probably see my name here quite a bit. I’ll let my co-organizers introduce themselves when they post - but rest assured that Waleed, Elsie, and Alexandros are all people you want to meet, they are all talented and fun. They are the rockstars building this thing, Plus, their writing style is probably a lot more readable than mine 
-Tyler “don’t worry, no one else in the group writes this schizophrenically, it’s only me” Willis
Posted in: announcements | Comments(0)
