StartupCamp, for those who don’t know, is all about gaining tips on how to make your startup better, whether it is already existing or is still in the planning stages. It is a new concept, but just branched off of the existing Barcamp premise which is already extremely successful and popular.

StartupCampAustin was held August 2nd at the University of Texas – Austin Campus, an absolutely beautiful campus for a first-timer (me). It started around 1:00PM and featured seven sessions spread between two rooms. You were free to come and go in between sessions as you’d like. You were also encouraged to participate as there was no defined speech to give by one certain person; it was all about audience participation.

The last session of the day was the “Pitches” session, where you would go up and give your pitch about your company (again, existing or not) and let the audience have a chance to ask questions if they had any. The catch? You only had three minutes to present.

Well, to say the least, we had a very good response to TMP. We had many people come up, chat with us, and say how great the idea was.

After all the pitches were given, you were to vote on which one you liked the best. In a very close race, TMP was chosen as the best pitch of the entire session.

The prize for the best pitch was a 15-day pass to Conjunctured, a coworking space in Austin where members can just hang out and collaborate with others on projects. In addition to the 15-day pass, Matt and I won attendance prizes. Matt received a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate and I received a copy of Office:Mac 2008. Once again, we gained more connections by meeting Philip Wheat of Microsoft (pictured below) who was the one that donated the Microsoft prizes, and we cannot thank him enough.

Two hours and two miles of Austin streets roamed (in addition to dinner), we arrived at Conjunctured for the after-party. Lots of networking happened and we met even more people who weren’t at StartupCampAustin, but were at Conjunctured for the remote-section of iPhoneDevCamp. Talk of the day’s events and also future events went on and even continuing on how to further ourselves in the area.

All in all, the trip was one well worth it. It was a shame that the next day I had to fly back to Illinois as I would have loved to stay in Austin more.

Before we wrap the post up, we’d like to thank a few folks. First off would be Brandon Wiley for organizing StartupCampAustin and making it run smoothly. Next, John Erik Metcalf of Conjunctured for the prize of the 15-day passes.

Personally, I would like to thank Jennifer Navarrete for just chatting and giving knowledge and, once again, Philip Wheat of Microsoft for the prize donations. We met many others, but the list would be absolutely huge if we listed, so a big thanks to all who made us feel welcome and contributed to our blast of a trip.

We hope to see you all again soon! (SXSW perhaps?)

–Zach Flauaus