Being on Board at Launch48

The other day I was invited to an event called Launch48. It’s an online market event, aiming at pushing young entrepreneurs to launch a complete web application in 48 hours. I was invited to be part of the board. Little I knew about anything “launch48 related” until I made it there, I admit. Had no idea what a “board” means in this context, nor what exactly did I had to do.

I’m not going to give you any details about the technical part, but I do think there’s a lot to talk about the implications of the event at the personal development level.

The Set Up

So, just to be clear: the goal of the event was to launch a complete, functional web app in less than 48 hours. Young entrepreneurs had a 1 minute time frame in which they pitched their ideas. After an evaluation period (a few hours), a jury picked 3 ideas. Once that step completed, the initiators also picked their own teams to implement their idea. From this moment on, everything was under the time pressure.

Every few hours the project managers had board meetings, along with people from their team that they considered relevant for the actual stage of the project. In between, they met mentors who volonteered to help. Each mentor had some unique expertise: programming, marketing, business strategy.

At the end of the first day, the teams had to present an application in a so-called “alpha” stage. A workable proof of concept. At the end of the second day, they must came with a functional “beta”, which means: everything described must work, but bugs are acceptable. During these two days they also had to came up with a lot of related documents: business plans, marketing plans, competition analysis and so on.

The Board

The board members (yours truly included) had to “whip” the project managers, follow the progress, ensure the team is on the right track and even provide answers to critical questions. To be honest, I didn’t feel very comfortable playing this role, I never was the “whip” guy, but I did my best to fit in. As a member of the board I was also designated to host the final presentation. In the third day, all three teams presented their apps to a very picky audience (the event was integrated in NetCamp, one of the largest Internet related events in Romania, and not only). My role was to ensure their presentations will run smoothly and in the alloted time frame.

The Happy End

At the end of this marathon, everybody was happy (again, yours truly included). The apps were functioning, the business model was understandable and some teams even had the time to make a little buzz on Twitter or Facebook. It was a complete success.

Ok, now, what I learned from this event?

1. Working under Pressure Is Not Necessarily a Bad Thing

Looking at how those ad-hoc teams managed to communicate, to share tasks, roles and deal with impending difficulties was enlightening. Many of the team members didn’t know each other before. And yet, they managed to create a functioning unit and deliver a final product. In some way, looking at those teams was like looking at a whole year of an entire company’s life, only fast forward: new people, new ideas, coding, marketing plans, communication, failure, starting over. I will repeat myself, but this whole process was really enlightening.

2. When You Really Believe In Your Dream, Nothing Is Impossible

The project managers were also the “idea” guys. Out of several other ideas presented they have been lucky enough to be picked and to be provided with the resources they need. They were able to make their dream come true. In a kind of “sand-box” way, but still. Well, this is what we usually call “luck”. At some points in our life, we do receive all the resources we need for our goals, out of the blue. The lesson: when this is happening, push all the buttons, do whatever you can to make it happening. Don’t quit and be on top of it. In the end, it will really happen.

3. Focus On What Is Really Important

I will need a book to write down all those magnificent ideas ventured by the people involved, from the board members, to mentors, project managers, idea guys or just simple team members. But the time was too short to implement all of them. If they will implement every single strategy, monetization or technical idea, they wouldn’t have finish it in several months. The team leaders heavily exercised their choice muscles. And, again, this is what we do in real life too: we may have a gazillion ideas but if we don’t focus on something achievable and start doing it, we’ll end up with nothing but a bunch of useless, shiny ideas.

4. Discipline Pays Off

They couldn’t achieve something functional without discipline. No team was functioning at 100% and I really don’t think they could, under the circumstances. But all the people made a lot of effort to integrate and leave away distractions and interferences. Some of the team members didn’t even sleep the night before the presentation. Huge effort pays off. Always. Maybe you’re not always in such a fortunate condition to work uninterrupted for 48 hours and, admittedly, the whole event was more of an exercise, a show off, but still, the result is unchallengeable: discipline really pays off.

I want to congratulate all the people I have interacted with and express my honest admiration. It’s not by chance that I offered to each team leader a wild card to my mentorship program. Technical expertise apart, they were all winners and they proved they can stretch way beyond their limits. Also, I would very much want to thank for the invitation to Cristi Manafu, the organizer of this edition of Launch48 in Romania.

Blogging 101

This post is to announce my second live workshop, after the mentorship I started a few months ago. This workshop is called, as you may already have guessed, “Blogging 101”. Blogging is something very close to me (after all, I’m doing this for more than 5 years, in different languages and niches). But I’m not doing this workshop only because I love blogging as a lifestyle: over the years I accumulated a lot of know-how and hands-on experience. So, it was about time to start sharing this in a live workshop.

This one will be a lot bigger than my mentorship course, both in terms of attendance and duration. It will spread over 3 days and accommodate 20 to 40 people. I’m doing this together with my good friend Mihai Popa-Radu, a certified coach and founder of Seeds For Success, one of the most reputable executive coaching and change management companies in Romania. Mihai works with individuals and companies from Romania and abroad, who, as he does, believe in the motto: “Impossible is a matter of opinion!” Elected coach of 2008, Mihai is founder of Romanian Coaching Association and member of International Coach Federation si European Coaching Institute. Mihai exert his professional interest in the following areas: executive coaching, leadership psychology, change management and personal branding.

To be honest, I’m really, really excited about this workshop. I even re-read this blog post a few times and re-written the first paragraph, in order to make it sound more grounded. The first version was exhilarating.

And this is exactly how I feel. I’m thrilled with enthusiasm and I can’t wait to start this! Ok, chill down, Dragos, just make sure your message goes through .

The workshop will be split in 3 sections: beginners, intermediate and advanced. Each section will be covered in one day, including lunch break. It will start at 9:30 each day and end at 17:30. There will be a one hour lunch break, as I already said.

As always, I did a little bit of dry testing around my friends and the response was overwhelming, I think I already have 25% of the seats taken even before the course was announced. But relax, will do our best to accommodate everyone, if you take action fast enough for us to make the necessary adjustments. The location is gorgeous – all of my mentees already know it, we’re doing our mentorship there – and there’s plenty of space.

Workshop Target and Structure

Who’s going to benefit from this workshop? The short answer: there’s something in it for everybody. The long answer: if you want to embrace blogging as an alternative income generator, then this workshop is for you. I tried to line up a pretty safe topic list and stretched the insertion points from the early beginner up to the advanced blogger.

Here’s a short outline of each day:

Beginner Day

• what is a blog?
• why having a blog?
• the building blocks of a blog
• how to measure a blog
• practical exercises

Intermediate Day

• blog content creation
• blog measuring and profiling
• creative writing techniques
• personal branding segment (held by my partner Mihai Popa-Radu)
• publishing filters
• practical exercises

Advanced Day

• blog promotion and social networking
• search engine optimization
• making money with a blog
• practical exercises

As the workshop advances there will be less and less theoretical speaking and more time alloted to the practical exercises and direct interaction, including live blogging and evaluation. One of the most interesting areas will be the “making money with a blog” part in the Advanced Day, where I will share some of my personal stories, as well as some of the most interesting case studies I met, including icon bloggers like Darren Rowse, Brain Clark or Steve Pavlina.

Another interesting point will be my friend’s Mihai intervention about personal branding, during the day 2, so be sure to book that day if you’re interested on how to mix personal branding with blogging.

Workshop Dates And Price Structure

The entire course will be split into 3 parts, as I already wrote, but what I didn’t wrote is that those days will be at one week distance from each other. This will allow not only a better digestion of all those theoretical concepts but it will also make practical exercises and evaluations much easier.

Here are the scheduled dates:

• Beginners: 13th November (Friday)
• Intermediate: 20th November (Friday)
• Advanced: 27th November (Friday)

Price structure:

• Beginners day: 200 EUR
• Intermediate day: 250 EUR
• Advanced day: 250 EUR

There is a 50 EUR discount applied for anyone who applies until November 10th (in special honor of my birthday ),  for any of the days. Also, if you book together there is an additional volume discount, bringing the total price of the entire workshop to 450 EUR. Of course, you can book only one, or two days if you want.

Please keep in mind we do have a limited number of seats and although we will do our best to ensure we will accommodate everyone, we cannot guarantee that beforehand. As I already told you, the initial response was already overwhelming.

How To Attend

The best way to get your seat is to contact me via email (you can find my email in the contact page) and I will give you the necessary details. Be prepared to spend the entire day so I would highly appreciate if your phones will be switched off for the workshop and all your other problems will be left outside. I’m really into this event and since I want to give the best I can, I want to make sure you’re prepared to receive it.

That being said, I really, really look forward to start this.

The Road To Office 2.0 Conference

…Might start right here, right now, at eDragonu’s blog. Let’s be brief about this one, because I’m so excited: in a short note received from Ismael Ghalimi, the founder and producer of the Office 2.0 conference, which will start September 3rd in San Francisco, I am invited to support the conference. I would be so happy to attend in person, but as you already know, my plans are a little bit fixed now, because I recently decided to switch countries, from Romania to New Zealand, and in the next 2-3 months I will be focusing mainly on this. But the very good news is that you, the reader of eDragonu, can attend the Office 2.0 conference, and with a special discount. Yes, you can shave a good 100 bucks from the ticket value by clicking on this link.

And that means you could meet The David in person, because David Allen, the GTD father, will give the opening keynote at the event. How exciting is this for a convinced GTD’er? Well, I wish I could be there, but chances that I will be on the plane for my first trip to Auckland will be more than 100%. I will be following the updates via twitter though, because they already established a twitter feed for this one.

And meeting David Allen will not be the only thing, so to speak, you will find there a good pack of good speakers, like David Colleman, founder of Collaborative Strategies, and Oliver Marks, independent consultant for Enterprise 2.0 strategies. 

Not to mention the fact that all attendees will receive the sexiest collaborative device yet: the HP2133 Mini-Note PC, which can be enough reason to be there, if you ask me. Two years ago, the attendees received an Apple iPod nano, and last year an iPhone. I think the choice for this year is so inspired, knowing that every one of us, the iPhone sick people, already hired all the available mobsters to get the 3g iPhone even before Apple will take it on the market.

So, let’s keep it brief, because you people have to make airplane reservations, pack things up and complete the forms in order to get your discounts. Remember, just click here, and you’ll receive a 100 dollars discount for the Office 2.0 conference.

Have fun and write me a note about the event …