Entrepreneurs and VCs descend on Silicon Valley for Startup Camp
For the last two days, I've been playing head counselor at Startup Camp in the heart of Silicon Valley at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Although we don't have an exact headcount just yet, the event has drawn approximately 325-350 attendees, most of whom are entrepreneurs that are either thinking of starting up a company, are already up and running but haven't launched yet, are launching now or just launched, or are in post launch mode.
There were some walk-ins but the majority of the attendees and their current startup mode can be found at the online version of the Startup Camp attendee list. In addition to starter uppers, the building is also filled with venture capitalists as well as the founders of companies that have been in existence for a while, all of whom have been happy to impart their startup wisdom upon the entrepreneurs in attendance who are eager to learn from their experience and insights. Startup Camp is being run in unconference fashion.
Outside of the nearly 40 discussions that were proposed ahead of time through the camp's wiki, the agenda for the two day unconference was completely empty and it was during the first day's general assembly that the attendees stepped up to the microphone, pitched the discussions they wanted to moderate (unconferences are about collaborative conversations and discussions, not presentations and death by powerpoint), and added them to the agenda. After the agenda is filled in, the attendees stormed the grid to figure out what discussions they were going to attend. While discussion were being pitched, I encoded them in real-time into the online version of the schedule which is on the camp wiki. For many of the sessions listed in the schedule, campers took notes and added them to the wiki (to see them, you just need to click through the links in the schedule).
ZDNet "TV reporter" James Hilliard popped down from San Francisco for the day to grab some interviews. Here's the one he did with Omidyar venture capitalist Christine Herron: