The Java Redemption: December 2009

Sunday, December 6, 2009

What I learned from Startup Weekend Athens

This year I took part in Startup Weekend that was organised for the second time in Athens by Andrew Hyde and the kind hospitality of Microsoft. Panagiotis has told the whole story, so I will just fill the gaps and post some photos.

First of all, I have to say that I started to like the iphone. I still believe that it is more an internet device and less a mobile phone but working with it (or should I say "for it") made me feel an attachment. If you are a developer, you know the feeling when you develop for a specific hardware. You either hate its guts or love it. So, as I already said on twitter, if anybody cares to sponsor my iphone purchase .... :-)

Google app engine is fantastic and what Panagiotis forgot to mention is the Eclipse plugin which makes your life much easier. The application was created, built and deployed in seconds.

Last and more important: I realised that in the process of creating a new business, developers are kind of commodity (I borrow this saying from a friend of mine :-)). Well, I don't want to be misunderstood here. Panagiotis already said that the business aspect is very important but after SWA2 I am starting to think that the technology/developer thing is not considered as important as I would like it to be. My feeling is that according to most people 's belief all you need is a good business plan. Later, you can always find someone to throw some code in. I doesn't matter if they are good or bad. Nobody knows or cares about you superior technology and if problems emerge in the future due to bad technology, it is equally easy to find someone else and fix them for you. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean that we are useless. I just realized that we are not appreciated as I thought we should be.

So next year, I hope we will be there again better organized this time with our own business people (I already have some candidates) to prove that if you master the technology you can always find someone to write you a good business plan :-)

Now the photos