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Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Startup Weekend Chandler: Day Two




It's Day 2 and we're back at Gangplank. Steve suggested an impromptu writing workshop. We're posting our butts off on Facebook and Twitter. We're asking people at Gangplank if they could post for us. Steven brought his camera to record the event for posterity.

And now we wait.

One o'clock rolls around and it's apparent that Plan A wasn't going to work. Plan B was to run across the street to the publc library and recruit teens from there. To be honest, I wasn't too keen on doing that. I know I wouldn't like the idea of a stranger approaching me and trying to get me to come to another building. That would've been weird.

And then...divine intervention

A man and his son, roped into moving stuff, entered Steve's line of vision and the next thing we know, we're  doing an impromptu workshop. To say that we weren't prepared was a major. Freakin'. Understatement. LOL. But that's okay, because I guess that's what this weekend was all about.

James and his 11 yr old son, Jimmy agreed to be our guinea pigs. It was a lot tougher than I thought. Thank God Marvin, Steve and Daanon were in the room with me to pick up the slack.

We decided to do something simple, an acrostic poem: a form of writing in which the letters in the word begin each line. All lines in the poem should relate to or describe the poem. For example:

Shines brightly
Under a deep blue sky
Never to be seen again until the next day

Or something like that. Using the dry erase board in the conference room, we did a few together, then one by himself. And then he really had to one by himself. And we kinda gave him a hard one to do: community. It took him a few minutes (I'm sure our eyes on him added to the pressure. LOL) but he came up with some good stuff.














We asked him for his feedback and based on his response, we gave him an easier one, because he already had the words picked out in his mind: sub (the underwater object, not the food)

















And then his father suggested he try one more: Jimmy














Getting Jimmy's feedback as well as his father's was enlightening. Jimmy told us that he doesn't consider himself to be creative. And he doesn't like to write because he hardly ever does it. But according to his father, he's a fabulous storyteller. He does a lot of stop animation movies and is always telling verbal stories.

Needless to say, the impromptu workshop was a great learning experience and I'm glad we were able to do it. Tomorrow is the pitch, finished product and whether or not we're going to go through Roadmap to Launch.

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