Startup Weekend Grand Rapids
Chaos In T-Now
Startup Weekend is a 54-hour weekend event, during which groups of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more pitch ideas for new startup companies, form teams around those ideas, and work to develop a working prototype, demo, or presentation by Sunday evening -- via Tech Stars
A program of Tech Stars, Startup Weekend has a global foot print, with events being popping up in over 700 cities. Grand Rapids' Startup Weekend is definitely a known event within the econ dev community.
In 2015 I took on the project of being the lead organizer for Grand Rapids Startup Weekend 2016. In January we hosted the event. With over 150 attendees, the event was a smashing success all hosted at Kendall College of Art and Design.
Event logistics could have been improved with such a diverse and large of population of attendees including serial entrepreneurs, students, industrial designers, developers, engineers, designers, etc...
A big success of planning 2016 was the fundraising efforts. We over fundraised to offer a large number of tickets for free to reduce the barrier of entry to the event. A large portion of our budget was able to be transferred to Ludington's first Startup Weekend in Summer 2016. Startup Weekend Ludington was a stripped down, out door/rugged experience.
The Ludington event got rated one of Startup Weekend's most successful event by Google for Entrepreneurs. Nice work Tim!
I'd gladly share event specifics for the 2016 event in GR upon request!