Casey Capshaw

I am participating in Startup Weekend, a gathering of 70+ developers, coders, designers lawyers and web entrepreneurs with the unlikely goal of launching a fully functional, innovative web application…in just 3 days.

Half way though the weekend, what are we building? VoSnap!

VoSnap is the easiest, fastest tool to coordinate a group and come to a decision. VoSnap uses your mobile, the web, and email to get the decision to any question from any group you chose in minutes.

Want to meet for drinks after work? VoSnap your buddies and ask where to meet, the group consensus is auto sent back to everyone that voted.

With this much talent in one room, the rate of development is unbelievable. We’re covering all the bases and I think this thing really has potential.

vosnap.com

UPDATE: VoSnap missed the launch deadline due to unexpected technical difficulties.

VoSnap Misses Launch Deadline: More News at 11
48-hour Instant Startup Company achieves every goal but one…

Boulder, Colorado — At tonight’s New Tech Meetup in Boulder,
Colorado, Andrew Hyde, founder of Startup Weekend, is set to explain
how and why VoSnap.com was unable to meet its 48-hour product launch
objective.

“Although I’m sure everyone feels naturally
disappointed that we missed the launch, the overwhelming message that
I’m hearing from the 70 founders who participated this weekend is
that they feel like they achieved something historic,” explained Hyde.

The original stated goal of Startup Weekend was to bring people
together and try to launch a company in 48 hours. Except for the
final public release, the Company achieved almost every other
objective it begin with, including legal formation and structure,
comprehensive business planning, product identity design and
development, and marketing and promotion.

According to detailed postings on the StartupWeekend.com website, the
software development team worked until 3am on Sunday night and
ultimately passed internal testing, but by that time it was too late
to marshall the resources of the rest of the team that had already
needed to clear out of the temporary offices by midnight.

Tuesday morning, a prototype version of the service was posted to the
company internal mailing list, but it has not yet been qualified for
release.

The founders have self-selected a core group from each department to
continue development and launch the product. Their initial follow-up
meeting is scheduled for tonight (Tuesday July 10th) at the New Tech
Meetup in Boulder. No current date has been set for launch of the
service.

VoSnap, Inc. is a mobile social voting tool. Users can create a poll,
send it to their friends to vote on, and receive the results via any
mobile device or e-mail. VoSnap reduces time wasted on decision-
making, makes sure everyone in the group has a voice, and gives
instant feedback on fun or serious decisions.

For more information about the details surrounding the company’s
unique inception, visit: http://startupweekend.com

To sign-up to use the service as soon as it it launched, go to:

http://vosnap.com

Competing for Money

Steve Frazee of The Chief Good (Conscious Business consulting) shares profound insights on the nature of money, and proposes that it is the very nature of money itself that is causing so many problems in society. A quote from within his post of Bernard Lietaer:

“The monetary system is programmed — albeit not deliberately — to cause certain behavior. It promotes competition and short-term thinking; it forces economic growth; and it undervalues care, education and tasks crucial to maintaining a society. Economics theory teaches us that people compete for markets and raw materials; I think, in reality, people compete for money.”

The scarcity built in to the monetary mechanism is the source of capitalistic competition and likely much of the reason for problems surrounding money, work, and unhappiness.

Is there a choice?

I can’t wait to see what comes of this line of thought. It points to a problem at such a fundamental, primary level, perhaps deep enough for a solution to emerge.

It’s no secret that the Information Age is fully upon us. Never before have human beings had access to more information, from more sources.

Initially, the advent of the internet rewarded information providers, giving them access to massive audiences at the click of a mouse. As the Information Age matures and grows ever more efficient, these audiences are becoming overwhelmed with the deluge of information coming at us from all angles.
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My house caught fire a few weeks ago,,don’t worry, no one was hurt. I was happy to be alive and managed to keep most all of my stuff undamaged so I concerned myself with the process of moving on and finding a new place.

Meanwhile, the impromptu journalism of my dear roommate Gwen has been spreading like wildfire(pun intended) online. Our Story just got picked up by Wired Online.
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I just signed up for the beta trial of Google’s latest innovation, Pay-Per-Action Advertising.

PPC or Pay-Per-Click has been the reigning king of the online ad world in recent years since usurping the throne from the more invasive banner ad format.

Pay Per Action (or PPA if yer into the whole brevity thing) is about to change all that. (more…)

It’s over.

Its not you, its me.

I just can’t be chained to you anymore email.

We’re breaking up.

Reading The Four Hour Work Week has inspired me to do something I should’ve done a long time ago (and would’ve had i know it was possible.) That is, break my all-day, energy-consuming, time-draining addiction to email and free up my energy to be truly productive in all my endeavors.

I was exactly like most Information Workers, spend all day online, and process a constant torrent of emails. This practice effectively prevented me from deep engagement in any one project in favor of a general, “multi-tasking” mediocrity.

One simply can’t maintain depth and focus with constant distraction.
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*Getting Things Done-David Allen’s productivity system.

My biggest challenge in perfecting my GTD personal productivity system has been tracking information through transitions in context. Things that are perfectly organized on my Mac can be forgotten when I am offline. Items captured in analog format in my Moleskine notebook sometimes don’t make it back to my office system. By far the biggest hurdle has been smooth integration of a Quicken based bookkeeping system,, so many receipts!
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