Now our progress since the last post:

October 19th – LiVE @ DemoCamp
Chris and the team presented an awesome show at DemoCampOttawa12. I really wish I could have been there but had a conflicting commitment and couldn’t attend in person. However, I did manage to tweet into the demo live and Chris (@chrisjschmitt) was kind enough to cut and paste my tweet into his blog post review. DemoCamp was great on a number of fronts; it generated some buzz around Twegather, helped to recruit some beta users, showcased the great stuff we are doing at TeamCamp and probably most important @map_maker agreed to join the team as community manager. All in all a very successful outing.

Apollo 11 lifts off

This is just too cool. Twegather is now a live app with real users, real events and real problems. I LOVE problems because “in every problem are the seeds of opportunity”. I think Chris has assembled a great team and their accomplishments are quite significant when you consider this is a part time, volunteer based project with $0 budget but plenty of passion.

Where from here?
Improve the app and make it bullet proof in terms of quality, simple/intuitive in terms of user interface and functionality. Be responsive to user feedback, adapt, evolve and improve. Engage and manage the user base with our most awesome community manager. Develop a “Kick Ass Product”. Keep thinking about monetization strategies and how to implement them. Always be looking and listening for opportunities.

Chris has chatted with a number of smart folks and we have decided to delay overhead until absolutely necessary to keep costs down and options open. In terms of the business plan, when you are riding a rocket and moving fast it is difficult to keep one up to date and relevant. I prefer to think of the web app business development process as; “Agile Business” that needs to be quick, nimble and adaptable based on realizing opportunities as they become available.

Keep that seat belt buckled … this promises to be an exciting ride!

- Teamcamper Ian

PS – The Twegather team is looking for early beta users – I you’re interested in helping to define the service sign up here.

Summer 2009 – Project nights
Summer is always a more challenging time to get stuff done, at least in the sleepy little town of Ottawa. In spite of that we had a number project night to keep the momentum at roughly two week intervals. A core project team emerged and we would meet to discuss the various; technical, business and monetization aspects of Twegather. We have made some significant progress and now an alpha version is looming large.

First Major Milestone – Alpha Demo
Our next full meeting of Team Camp is scheduled for the first Thursday of the month September 3rd. The intent is to provide a working demo of our alpha version for Twegather. There will be an open discussion among team campers at our next meeting as we seek input on the path forward.

Where from here?
The expectation is that our next major milestones will be limited user trials, the beta version of Twegather and incorporation.  As we move forward the challenges of company formation loom larger. We have made our first crack at a term sheet, discussed briefly corporate structure, compensation, started to work on a minimum viable business plan, discussed roles/responsibilities and started to think about the inevitable need to incorporate.

A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. The Twegather project has made significant progress and that we are well beyond that first step and in fact have reached our first milestone. As we approach the dog days of summer and Team Camp starts to meet regularly it will be great to see our first organic project come to fruition. As Twegather blazes the trail on our first project journey it will provide a path for subsequent Team Camp projects to follow.
Looking forward to the next chapter in the Team Camp Journey; from Alpha to Beta.

Cheers,
Team Camper Ian

PS – Thinking about attending the next TeamCamp meeting on Sept. 3rd?  Select one of the following (using Twegather of course!): Reply Yes › Reply Maybe › Reply No › (and don’t forget the cookie jar!)

Introductions

Ryan Lowe and his demo of Ligtherest (www.lighterest.com )

Brainstorming session. We have had plenty of great ideas and one team formed. The trick is to get more teams formed. How do we make that happen? We are looking for some toughts and action on team formation.

Some time for Brownian Motion.

I wanted to start by taking the time to thank everyone that came out and especially Chris for organizing the session. As usually I spent the first bit on admin duty at the front desk but had the opportunity to join in shortly after 6:30. Some great discussions and quite a bit of energy and enthusiasm, everyone, at least from my perspective seemed to enjoy themselves. Chris showed us some neat web stuff and we had any number of fun sidebar conversations. Just the right amount of structure and spontaneity.

The inspiration from this post came about from our discussion regarding the TeamCamp Agreement to participate. The essence of the agreement is that this is a collaborative venture and everyone agrees to freely share their ideas. We had quite a bit of discussion around this at our first few meetings and are grateful for the legal opinions we received from Eric and Andrea at FMC and Michael from Lebarge Weinstein. The intent of this agreement is purely defensive. The concern raised by many participants early on was what would happen if someone came to one meeting, shared an idea, never showed up again, the team went on to implement the idea or parts of it and then when the product is successful this person (shared idea but never showed up again) shows up and stakes a claim to the successful start-up. The intent was to avoid this situation and that is the purpose of the agreement.

I am of the opinion that coming up with an idea is just the “tip of the iceberg”.

Coming up with ideas is easy. Implementing them and then making them work is the real challenge. This leads to my start-up journey analogy.

Being in a start-up is a whole lot like taking a journey. A journey starts with the first step. You could consider an idea the first step in the journey. Let’s say that the destination is when your start-up is successful in this analogy. If your destination is a thousand miles away then the first step is really not all that significant. If your destination is only a few steps away then the journey isn’t really all that worthwhile. Therefore one could say that a worthwhile destination (successful start-up) involves a fairly lengthy journey and that first step (idea) is a very insignificant portion of the journey.

The real value in the start-up journey is the vision, drive, determination and persistence to tough out the journey from beginning to end. Anyone can take that first step, however, entrepreneurs take the whole journey. At TeamCamp we are committed to a collaborative environment where entrepreneurs wanting to participate in start-ups can freely share their ideas.

Signing the TeamCamp agreement form is intended to show us that you understand what you are signing up for and committed to the journey.

Team Camper Ian