Weekly Accomplishments (Apr 5-11)

The good:

• A panel discussion between GWU alumni “Confessions of an Entrepreneur: Passions to Profit” where I got some puzzled looks for applauding a presenter who said that he doesn’t use business plans. Luckily, Ed Barrientos (CEO of Brazen Careerist & a GWU alumnus) supported my views during the Q&A/comments session, which ended up rather interestingly since to most students this concept is still foreign. I guess it’ll be a while before lean startup
• Bootstrap Maryland 2^nd annual conference where I volunteered to save on the ticket and get some extra time with organizers & presenters. Well, I didn’t really get the extra time with presenters because they were so popular. Now, I’ve got to get their attention on Twitter or at other events. Nonetheless, I did meet a whole bunch of interesting people and got great advice & feedback on my current ideas.
• Discussed the reasons for my application having been rejected from DreaIt Ventures. As I expected, it was a combination of the weak team (myself at the moment) & tough potential competition in the market (solvable by good market positioning & luck). It’s good to know that my self-assessment is on the right track. Now, I need to persuade others that the idea is achievable.

The bad:

• I had to call in for service on my Nokia N85 for sporadic and abundant notifications of various SIM card issues, which had been occurring for a couple of weeks. Since all DIY fixing failed and the warranty is about to expire, I had no other choice. I shipped it off today and hoping for the best. A $400 phone should not die after 11 months of use. Kudos to Nokia for making it somewhat easy to send the device for service despite the whole experience being far from pleasant.
• Got into a huge argument with a group of friends over a link to non-flattering article about one of them that I sent without a comment. They didn’t believe that I had not intended to be offensive, and I received a rather smelly poop-sling into my face (figuratively speaking, of course). Lesson learned: do not send anything controversial with no comments – too much explaining to do later.