Microsoft BizSpark was launched in 2008 to help startups and entrepreneurs all around the world speed up their success. Not only will these sponsored companies and individuals have access to the latest software development tools and platforms, they will also have the chance to connect with over 2,000 BizSpark’s global partners, from investors, university incubators, consultants, government agencies, and other financial institutions. Startup Weekend Dublin is definitely fortunate to have Microsoft BizSpark on its side.

Other wonderful sponsors also include the Dublin City Enterprise, and the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC).

On to other good things, the official Startup Weekend Dublin is already tweaked, thanks to Anca, the designer genius behind it. The Dublin crew all contributed to what should or should not be included in the design, but it was Anca who put them all together.

Although the event is still a month away, you might want to have your hands on those tickets because they are limited in number. If you’re hesitant to join the event because you’re not much of a programmer or tech person, then don’t be. Startup Weekend Dublin, as all other Startup Weekend events, is open not just for software developers and programmers. As NDRC said, startup teams will also need people who are, for instance, business-savvy and experts in graphics. Everyone is welcome to join!

So grab your tickets before you run out of them, and see you soon next month in Dublin!

Startup Weekend in Olympia, hosted at Olympia’s own St. Martin’s University, is seeking participants who have interesting and innovative entrepreneurial ideas … especially if they involve “Green” environmental technologies! This all-weekend 2010 event, held October 15 – 17, promises to be an ALL ACTION opportunity for participants to learn how to take their brilliant ideas to full product launch. Absolutely priceless information will be yours in an atmosphere of lively interaction with others.

The Olympia area has a long history and reputation for environmental awareness and its community is stacked with citizens who honor and value the amazing planet we live on. Individuals who have ideas on how to minimize our impact and footprint, maximize our technological proficiencies, or improve our immediate and long-term prospects are strongly encouraged to bring their thoughts and innovations forward! Your idea may have been thought of before, but has it been fielded and tested for viability? Your idea may be so unique that you’re the originator of a brand-new process, product or invention so share it! The world may be looking for it now!

Even if you believe that your ideas are mundane and routine, but you’re strongly interested in learning how to take a concept to market, Startup Weekend in Olympia is for you! For less than $80 and one exciting learning-filled weekend, you can gain information on how to develop your thoughts and concepts, build upon them with effective strategizing and planning, and learn to pitch your beliefs to those who count … your potential customers, vendors, and investors.

Olympia Startup Weekend is an opportunity that cannot be missed for those who have a drive to build an exciting and vision-filled future! Visit olympia.startupweekend.org to learn more, register, and talk with other participants in our Google group! October 15 – 17, 2010 is right around the corner!

Thanks to the Jerry, Cynthia and the folks over at SW Olympia for putting this together!

Who would have thought that the Startup Weekend Education in Bay Area last week would have inspired a few funny fellows to create their own website?

If you must know, Startup Weekend Education really got a big finish with 27 pitches, and 8 wonderful teams who pitched their ideas last Sunday, on the 29th of August. Although all presentations were different in their own way, there was one common theme that united their ideas: to make education as interactive and as fun as possible.

Eric Kerr and Ben Gilbert, who both watched the demo presentations that Sunday, also observed another thing: all startups were catering to single niches. One startup niched towards kids under 13, while another startup was geared as an online game for math learners. One startup even focused into language learning.

While watching, Kerr and Gilbert had this funny idea of mixing and matching the startups and their niches, and out of this idea came the website itsthisforthat.com. All a visitor has to do is click on the Refresh button and you’ll get tons of crazy mixed and matched answers for the question, “Wait, so what does your startup do?” You’ll get answers like “neutral network for ugly people”, or “new social platform for Chinese take-out!” People will certainly get a kick out of this website. Who knows, you might just get some inspiration for your own startup just by clicking often enough.

via TechCrunch

Infochimps is a data-as-a-service platform with a data marketplace at its core.  We have over 10,500 datasets available for download and are committed to providing resources for developers of data-driven software.  Our lightweight API offers high value datasets from Twitter as well as web analytics, such as Trstrank, a measure of a Twitter user’s influence, and an IP-Census data that maps IP addresses to census demographics. We are adding new calls as often as possible to give developers access to more datasets.

A few of our engineers, including @mrflip and @jessecrouch, will attend the event and contribute code. Any participants that are interested in implementing data from our API will have free usage of it for the weekend. We will also be providing discount codes for use after the event.

StartupWeekend Austin is only a few weeks away, we hope to see you there!

Infochimps features:

• Lightweight, REST API
• Advanced analytics for Twitter you can’t find anywhere else (example: Sway, the ratio of a person’s tweets that are RT’d)
• Valuable web analytics, including IP address to census demographics
• 10,500 datasets available in our marketplace

Meet Ryan Roberts. Ryan is a fellow entrepreneur himself who started out his career from the ground up. He represents tech companies from its beginning stages all the way to the end. From incorporation, seed and venture financing, and exit transactions, Ryan has been supporting startup companies and seeing them through until the end.

In 2009, Ryan has represented about a hundred clients and 85 percent of those clients are tech startups that develop software, hardware, mobile, and digital media, to name a few. Some clients are also developers of apps for famous sites and mobile or online platforms like Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, and Android.

Ryan is also a family man who likes watching USC football, and wouldn’t survive a day off without Starbuck’s’ green tea. His resolution this year is to get a good tan by playing more golf.

Given his rocket career and his quirky personal background, Ryan Roberts will fit right in as the Friday speaker on SW Austin. Remember, the event will be at CoSpace at 911 West Anderson Lane, and don’t be late, or you’ll miss the idea pitching. Tickets are still available, but you need to grab one for yourself or you’ll miss out on a lot of fun. See y’all at Austin very soon!

It’s a good thing it’s not the first time Startup Weekend made a pit stop over at Dublin, otherwise, the planning would have been harder than expected. But, everything is falling into place gradually.

We’re pleased to let you know that we have contributing sponsors like the Dublin City Enterprise Board, and NDRC (National Digital Research Centre). Both are very active in being innovators in the field of business and technology.

The Dublin City Enterprise Board is funded by the state and gives support to microbusinesses through enterprise information, advice, training courses, mentoring, and networking. More than a few times, they have also given financial support to many business owners.

On the other hand, the NDRC has backed up the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources that collaborates technology and business in their strategy to give greater success towards any project. They are also encouraging people to take “bolder attitudes towards invention and investment,” being well-aware of the fact that taking high but well-calculated risks can always help businesses.

Between these two companies, Startup Weekend Dublin is more than covered. But final discussions with a very big sponsor are still in the works, and if everything goes well, it’ll be a pleasure to let you in on the big reveal.

Some things that still need to be ticked off the list are the updating of the official website, promotions, and the logistics area. So, if you’re willing to help out, drop by for a visit and you’ll gladly be given something to do. Startup Weekend Dublin needs every bit of help they can get before October 1, so we’re daring you to help out our fellow startup folks at Dublin!

If you’re haven’t marked your calendars yet, then you’d better put a big fat red X on September 10, 11, and 12 for Startup Weekend New York.

As we’ve already promised before, the winning team who has the best startup business or idea come Sunday Pitch Night will get a chance to flaunt their idea during the Startup Summit at the McGraw-Hill Conference Center on September 20. But we’ve got more one more surprise that will make you want to be that winning team so bad: the leaders of the two winning startup teams on SW New York will also get free passes to the Web 2.0 Expo on September 27 to 30!

The crew behind Web 2.0 Expo has been generous enough to partner with SW New York, and they just keep on giving. All participants at the SW New York event will all get 25% discount on their Web 2.0 Expo tickets. How’s that for generosity?

Web 2.0 Expo is a tradeshow and conference for all people who have passion towards creating more business opportunities using the technology of Web 2.0. You’ll have the chance to attend sessions led by Brady Forrest of O’Reilly, and Sarah Milstein of UBM TechWeb to improve your tech skills, see showcases of the companies and their latest web projects, and listen to keynote presentations from web pioneers and innovators.

Remember those dates: Startup Weekend New York on September 10 to 12, Startup Summit on September 20, and of course, the Web 2.0 Expo on September 27 to 30. Clear your calendars and get set for more startup fun this September.

Living proof that Startup Weekend really does fuel winning ideas. Foodspotting, which is based on the simple idea of sharing pictures of what you eat, just got a huge $750,000 seed round of funding. This round was led by Felicis Ventures and joining them are 500 Startups, High Line Venture Partners, Zelkova Ventures and 2020 Ventures. Also part of the investment team are angels Dave Morin, Steve Lee, Derek Dukes and Dan Martell.

Foodspotting, which we covered before in an interview, started as an idea from Alexa Andrzejewski during the Web 2.0 Expo in New York and was pitched during the Women 2.0 Startup Weekend in San Francisco. It was impressive even at that time since the team was able to walk away with $5,000 with just their idea.

Fast forward a few months and here they are, with over 90,000 dishes spotted by over 120,000 users worldwide. The site has a partnership with Zagat and the Travel Channel, and has been featured in Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations.

The recent launch of the 2.0 version of their iPhone app brings with it one feature they’ve always wanted baked in: food discovery. Not only will you be able to share food you enjoy, you can also “spot” great dishes nearby you can try. Unlike other food discovery sites, Foodspotting drills down the discovery to the specific menu item of a restaurant, showcasing the best dishes that dining location has to offer.

The team plans to expand beyond food, and Alexa hinted that they will be entering the realm of travel. Will landmarks, transportation or accomodations be on their radar? Who knows for sure. What we do know is that they are hard at work on their Android app and are expanding and opening up shop at the SoMa district in SF.

Congratulations again to Alexa, Ted and Soraya!

via TC

We’re sure that November is going to be a good month for all startuppers out there, because Startup Open is coming.

Needless to say, Startup Open is a wonderful opportunity for all startup businesses. The event will give tons of extra publicity, not just with the crowd, but also the press and media who will be covering the event. Of course, there’s always the huge possibility of exponential growth in your clients and customers.

Startup Open is a competition event during the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW). What will happen is that companies who are seen to have entrepreneurship potential, or what they’d like to call a “startup moment,” can be nominated as one of the “50 most promising companies” in GEW. And out of those 50 companies, 5 will be selected as startup winners. And what is a Startup Open competition without the grand prize? The 5 startup winners will get awarded with prizes that will help them the business grow, including the experience of being in a high-growth boot camp at Kauffman Labs in Kansas City.

And for all the startup business hard work, Startup Open is throwing another prize to those five startup winners: a one-day vacation trip to the Necker Island! The Necker Island is a privately-owned island in the Virgin Islands owned by the infamous Sir Richard Branson, the owner of the Virgin-branded conglomerate. So expect to be treated like royalty, with exclusive and luxurious access to the island, and of course, total privacy. No wonder the late Princess Diana vacationed here, too.

Your one-day vacation also doubles as a chance to connect with other top entrepreneurs who won the Startup Open contest. Register here if you have what it takes.

As Startup Weekend travels all around the world, it has made its stopover at the lovely country of Italy, and Startup Weekend Milan is now in the works.

Startup Weekend Milan is officially opening on October 15 until the 17th, and the event has recently partnered with StartupBusiness to make things more fun. StartupBusiness was founded in 2008 to help the growth of businesses. The Chamber of Commerce in Milan supported the company and gave them financial assistance until 2009.

Today, StartupBusiness has more than 1700 members to help organize events, and Startup Weekend Milan is lucky enough to be one of them. With the help of StartupBusiness, Startup Weekend Milan is hoping to create the right atmosphere to form good business relationships, and to spur everyone to actively participate in the innovation ecosystem.

Other companies are joining Startup Weekend Milan as sponsors. Leading the pack as the platinum sponsor is HubMilano, and other contributing sponsors are BAIA (Business Association Italy America, Startup Digest, and GeekAgenda. The event is still in the planning stages, but the tickets are already available, and the venue is already set at Via Paolo Sarpi.

If you’re looking for an event to push through your startup business plans and connect with more people, then Startup Weekend Milan will be perfect for you. Tickets are already selling so grab yours ASAP. We also have tickets for the Sunday Demo Night, in case you can’t make it through the entire weekend.