Reports are rolling in from StartupWeekend Toronto, both from various blogs and some more candid reports via the backchannel.
Attendees were as many as 60 on Saturday, with an estimated 40 working away today (Sunday).
The good news? The application is actually getting built. It’s called Lobbythem and it is a very basic platform that lets you create a sort of petition with a few actionable items that come off of it (from what I understand, things like getting key influencers in the lobbying group to push the petition forward, tools to get more individuals involved, etc).
There is a screenshot here of the app so far.
Is a business getting built here? It’s hard to say. The biggest hurdle for a lobbying platform is that the ‘enabling’ or community-based lobbying has not been spectacularly profitable yet. Sites like Petitionspot and loads of others are essentially user-generated SEO content, but they are making some money doing it.
We will get a final wrapup from some participants in a month or so to see how things shake out. In the meantime, keep an eye on the site and let’s see how it all comes together.
Note: Interested in what is happening at StartupWeekend? Want to check it out? Don’t show up at the site — people are being turned away from visiting on the basis of not having signed an NDA.
I am going to send the organizers an email to find out what on earth would fall under an NDA that is going on at StartupWeekend. I can’t imagine much.
Update #2: Just had a call from one of the StartupWeekend organizers. People are not being turned away for not having signed NDAs, but they are trying to keep visitors from dropping by and interrupting the flow. I can understand that completely.
He tells me the app will launch tonight and I can tell from his voice, there is a lot of excitement in the air. We will check in with them tonight to see if it all comes together.
Update #3: Some of the guys from StartupWeekend presented at DemoCamp4 here in Toronto and announced that the site will be live later this week.
Also, there is a bit of backlash starting to surface about how the Toronto organizers handled things.