NO SLEEP ‘TIL VIENNA: A VIEW FROM BUS 2

Helen Sheehan (@HelenSheehan) is a Software Developer for Bloomberg R&D and one of two Bloomberg mentors advising the StartupBusUK teams on their journey to Vienna. Here is her personal journal entry on the happenings so far:

Friday – October 24

2pm:  The buses leave and we jump straight into introductions. This bus-based hackathon has attracted an eclectic mix of engineers, designers, developers and movers and shakers, all obviously specially selected for their talents. All have come to prove one thing, why they should be crowned the European StartupBus champions. We move swiftly onto an ice breaking game, pitching some unrealistic companies. The ice breaker task revealed the strength of the candidates. We had only just travelled from London to Manchester and we were already excited.

10pm: We arrive in Manchester late in the evening and head straight to SpacePortX. Amongst the 3D printers and inspirational office ‘graffiti,’ developers and business makers work late into the night tapping on their laptops, working on their various businesses and ventures. (The group is also being inspired by quotes from everyone from Steve Jobs to Winston Churchill.) Refuelled and refreshed with some pizza and drinks, a passionate Doug Ward from https://techbritain.com/about welcomes us to SpacePortX. Jordan Valdmar, a developer from Transferwise, finishes off the talks with advice on how to create an effective MVP (Minimum Viable Product), he discusses working in a team and using time and technology effectively when building a prototype, valuable advice for the upcoming adventure.

Saturday – October 25

12am:  The pitches begin. “Page rank for people”, “live coding championships” or to “github issues for politics” are among the varied and imaginative ideas. Eleven of the most popular pitches are chosen and then finally we go to bed.

6am:  We eat breakfast in SpacePortX and teams are matched to a chosen few of the finalist pitches. 9 projects of teams ranging from 2-6 people are created.

8am:  A long journey begins from Manchester to Brussels but there is plenty to do. The teams are sat together and begin planning their projects. Power sockets and wifi are a sparse resource — so much work is done on pen on paper or pen on window.  That was not expected… Teams iterate through project ideas and viable products start to develop slowly.

8pm:  We arrive in a colorful neighborhood in Brussels. Some go for dinner, some explore the city and the more sensible ones takes advantage of the opportunity for an early night rest because something tells me we will not get any real sleep until Vienna.

More to come…  Follow the tour until the end on @TechAtBloomberg or www.bloomberg.com/rd/startupbus.