Monthly Newsletter – Dec 2018
Startup Maine is all volunteer.
Startup Maine is more than a conference.
Startup Maine is a community.
The board got together after the 2018 annual conference to discuss what we wanted to do over the next year. We held a fun happy hour/volunteer engagement event in a snowstorm (shout out to Maine Craft Distilling for hosting us!), and met a ton of new people (Hello new people!). If you were unable to make it but are still interested in getting involved, please contact us here. Our committee teams are gearing up, so stay tuned for emails about conference planning meetings, hackathon organizing, and more. We need your support and input, and there are numerous ways to be a part of the group, and get to know us.
We asked programming co-chair, Jamieson Webking, a few questions about startups, Startup Maine, and life.
3 things I loved from SUM2018
- The Legal Triage for Early-Stage Startups workshop lead by Adam Nyhan. It was fast paced, informative, and taught you the fundamentals you needed to be look at when forming a company. Many of which I don’t think people are aware of. Plus, Adam is such a great teacher, and never short on hip hop analogies.
- The Case Study on Why Industry Clusters Matter. I learned more about the dynamics of Maine’s craft beverage industry in that 60 minutes than I could’ve reading 10 books.
- The Nate Fick (Endgame CEO) and Josh Broder (Tilson CEO) keynote bromance.
3 things I’m reading
- This Tiny Country Feeds the World. This is my favorite article in the past three years. Let’s do this in Maine.
- I’ve recently re-discovered The Far Side comics
- Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the world wide web) on his new project; Solid.
“…an open-source project to restore the power and agency of individuals on the web. Solid changes the current model where users have to hand over personal data to digital giants in exchange for perceived value. As we’ve all discovered, this hasn’t been in our best interests. Solid is how we evolve the web in order to restore balance — by giving every one of us complete control over data, personal or not, in a revolutionary way. Solid is a platform, built using the existing web. It gives every user a choice about where data is stored, which specific people and groups can access select elements, and which apps you use. It allows you, your family and colleagues, to link and share data with anyone. It allows people to look at the same data with different apps at the same time.”
3 podcasts I’m loving in the world
- A three hour conversation with Nick Kokonas — who is the co-owner and co-founder of The Alinea Group of restaurants, which includes Alinea, Next, The Aviary, Roister, and The Aviary NYC. Alinea has been named the Best Restaurant in America and Best Restaurant in The World by organizations and lists as diverse as The James Beard Foundation, World’s 50 Best, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Gourmet Magazine, and Elite Traveler. He is also the founder and CEO of Tock, Inc, a reservations and CRM system for restaurants with more than 2.5M diners and clients in more than 20 countries.
- A discussion with Kevin Kelly — probably the most intriguing future projections/possibilities discussion I’ve heard around Artificial Intelligence.
- Deconstructing Americas High Priced Health Care – a lecture given by Elisabeth Rosenthal on how the health-care industry became big business, and the balance between a caring endeavor and a financially driven system.
How Jamieson is planning to spend December:
Introspective Systems has been putting on some great lunchtime workshops and Hack Night at Big Room Studios is always cool – so I definitely want to highlight and keep attending those. Outside of that, I just got my first pair of snowshoes if anyone wants to join me for a walk on the Portland Trails and a beer after.
I’m on the Board of Directors, and have been Co-Chair of the Program Committee for the past three years. Outside of Startup Maine – I learn about and work on everything and anything internet related.
