Windows System/36

Microsoft San Francisco hosted Startup Weekend San Francisco. Tickets for the Sunday Night Demos were $5.99, less than a matinee movie, with a Tandoori dinner included. Turns out, I was in for helluva treat. About 140 people, developers, designers, had ozmosed into 20 teams following un-conference format.

Unconference implies no rules, wrong!

Teams group together based on similarity of interest, merit skills, capability to-do the job and good spirit. The Startup Weekend goal is to develop a working demo (not power-point), and a presentation pitch to catch the interest of venture capital.

The 20 teams leaned young and no team had developed Windows apps, all demos were Web and mobile apps. I feel we are at the inflection point where the new generation app patterns offer a 10x increase in productivity over the prior.

Analogy, IBM System/36 apps were replaced by Microsoft Windows apps. Azure looks likes Microsoft’s next generation, and I expect Startup Weekend like events to evangelize and win mindshare.

Enough yap, the Sunday Night Demos!

Startup Weekend Sunday Night Demos 1-2

Startup Weekend Sunday Night Demos 2-2