I would like to thank the presenters and the midventures team for what I would call our most successful midventures event to date. Presenters included RemixGalaxy.com, CommonGrants.com, GiveForward.org, ThePoint.com, CouponTweet.com, T1Track.com, and Zolio.com, and attendees included representatives from the chicago angel and VC investment community.




Here are the photos from the event:




February 20th Event Photos




Highlights from the evening? Kyle Reed with RemixGalaxy.com remixed a George Clinton song using an online remixing song while the audience watched. Andrew from ThePoint.com inspired us to contribute the construction of a glass dome over chicago, midcro-funded by the crowds. And everyone agreed to attend the next event in Chandigarh, India. We will be renting a 17th century palace. BYOB.

Hey midVentures. We are going to host terrace event in our loft building February 20th. The new venture presenters will include RemixGalaxy.com, CommonGrants.com, GiveForward.org, ThePoint.com, T1Track.com, and Zolio.com. Email me at geoff (at) midventures (dot) com if you want to attend.

Its no secret that midventures is constantly looking for all-star php, actionscript, and web 2.0 xhtml people. And in this economy finding people that can build a robust web app is still difficult. In this economy – being able to code in php or asp.net, with or without a computer science degree – at the level of competency of a $20k ecommerce or community site project or greater – gets you work fast. In fact, most of the programmers I’ve talked to get to call the shots about where they work.


3 years of experience in object-oriented php, asp.net, actionscript, java, ajax, or RoR can get you a $60k+ job. No degree required. You just need to be motivated to solve problems.


Admittedly I prefer to run around meeting people to sitting still and programming. But if you are in college or looking to change careers, take a few classes on coding and spend your free time working on your own projects; and suddenly you can call the shots about jobs you want.


Also a token of wisdom – if the economy gets worse, the developers are the last to be let go. Non-functional software is more devastating than a non-functional sales agent or marketing intern.


Send me an email geoff (at) midventures (dot) com if you want to pick up a language or a job.

My Enproperty partner Justin and I bought the new Boost Mobile $30 GPS-enabled cell phones for ourselves. We did not plan on using them as a phone, just to use them as GPS beacons that would auto-update a google map with where we were and where we had been.

The purpose of this experiment was to judge the accuracy and effectiveness of these low-cost phones in the area of contract maintenance management; integrating the GPS real-time position of your facility vendors and staff. But also it was fun. We set aside the obvious big brother concerns and gave map access to midventures friends.

Someone would ask “is Justin still at starbucks” or “why are there all these erratic zig-zaggy lines, were you looking for a parking space?” But aside from the novelty of seeing everywhere your friends have been, we brainstormed a bunch of cool ideas with who a GPS map could impact our lives.

1. Let advertisers see your daily routes and then single you out for online or mobile ads relating to places you pass by

2. GPS-driven dating sites or apps where both parties could get a text saying “turn around and meet this new person”

3. Distribute car traffic and recommend real-time alternate routes based on critical mass crowd data

4. Freelance delivery company with ad hoc pickup / drop – off points

5. The game of tag – but I heard some company was already working on mobile tag

6. Geotag photos of wherever you are, and it auto-populates the photo wall of the place you’re in

7. Geo-tag places you like, people subscribe to your geo-tag feed, and it creates a combo geotwitter and geoyelp

8. Mobile swarm projects for quickly amassing a large group of people in a location – perhaps for an ad hoc concert or rally

9. Geo-report crimes or public annoyances – the police reaction is equivalent to the number of geo-complaints

10. Leave a number of beacons in bikes or cars, unlocked, on the street; and research the distribution systems and routes taken by the criminal resale world

Just a few ideas.