midVenturesLAUNCH: Day One
by n3rdg1rl
Sep 28, 2010 12:40 AM –
Two days of new innovation, finding great new startups, and networking starts today in Chicago with midVenturesLAUNCH at the Sync Tech Center. Technically, it actually started two days ago with the Hackathon which was run by Hackathonia.
Ten teams started the Hackathon and five completed it with the winners announced yesterday. It wasn’t all serious work however. It was interrupted briefly by a small visitor. A bird, now known as Scrappy the Brave, got into the loft space and in his moments of freaking out slammed into one of the interior windows and was stunned. A few of the guys picked him up and put him on a windowsill to recover which within an hour or two he flew from happily. As great as this space is, I don’t think that Scrappy will be back to visit any time soon. The rest of the event continued rather smoothly, except for the expected projector problems.
We came back to the same space today for the workshops and the official start of midVenturesLAUNCH. With 12 workshops spread over three sessions it was impossible to get to all of them. However, I did get to sit in on a workshop on Social Media with Ted Widen of Chicago-Scene.com and Michael Dalesandro of Where I’ve Been as well as one about Mobile with Sarah Reedy of Light Reading, Brian Gorbett of Microsoft, and Uki Dominique Lucas of Forte Consulting Group. So much information and some extremely good ideas were brought to the table.
After the workshops it was off to the Cocktail Reception hosted at the Illinois Technology Association. It was a great atmosphere for networking and wonderful views of downtown Chicago is a beautiful space. I had the chance to speak to a few of the Launch companies and Compete companies that are going to be presented tomorrow. I’m excited to get hands on and up close with these ideas and discuss them further tomorrow.
After the mingling at the Cocktail Reception we went to The Wit Hotel and went to ROOF, which was an AMAZING place. It was a perfect night for meeting and talking under the stars.
I’m so excited to get to the main forum tomorrow and get hands on with these great competitors and ideas launching tomorrow. Stay tuned for Day Two!