VoteMob / Voting web app

VoteMob is a fast, simple way to poll a live audience. More than 10,000 votes have been cast across 11 countries. It's the go-to app of Startup Weekend, having streamlined voting at their NYC events by ~80%, reducing it from what was a 1.5-hour ordeal to a mere 15 minutes. And with ~150 people in attendance, that's nearly ~7,500 minutes spared per event!

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Key Features:
• Vote from Anywhere
Vote from any smartphone or computer with Internet access.

• Hassle-free
No registration necessary. Participants simply log in through Facebook.

• Gamers Beware
Its sophisticated Don't Mess With This™ technology preempts any attempt to "game" the vote.

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Key stats:
• Organically adopted by Startup Weekend event organizers around the world
• Backend admin system
• Used at events in Spain, Portugal, France, India and many more

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Check it out at VoteMob.com

VOLKSWAGEN / Immersive Touch-screen Applications

Built three immersive touch-screen applications for Autostadt, a visitor attraction adjacent to the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, Germany.

Each image projected on the wall corresponds with a separate touch-screen monitor containing a unique Volkswagen experience. All touch-screen interactions are re-drawn in realtime on the wall, less the in-app user feedback (e.g. "Please pick the Volkswagen GTI").

(1) Snapshots allows visitors to browse through user-generated Flickr photos through touch gestures, just like a stack of magazines.

(2) Quizzes is a multi-level game quizzing players on cars belonging to various Volkswagen brands that were uploaded to Flickr by users. E.g. Which of these four cars is the Volkswagen GTI? All pictures are Creative Commons photography dynamically pulled from Flickr.

(3) Motion Sensor is a slideshow of photos and tweets corresponding to a range of VW-associated activities. For example, a picture in a plane would be used as the backdrop for a Twitter message saying, "I love flying."

These applications run 24/7 and routinely synchronize with the media server to ensure it's showcasing the latest photos and tweets.

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Web demos:
Click here to see the made-for-web demos of "Snapshots," "Quizzes" and "Motion Sensor."

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Key stats:
• 3 multi-touch applications built in 4 weeks
• Built in Adobe Air, integrated w/ GestureWorks for multi-touch support
• Leverages user-generated content through Flickr and Twitter's public APIs
• Each touch-screen is hooked up to a projector that re-draws all of the user interactions in realtime without the user feedback (e.g. "Please pick the Volkswagen GTI," etc is stripped out).

LEAN STARTUP MACHINE / Weekend bootcamp for Entrepreneurs, Co-Founder

I co-founded Lean Startup Machine, a weekend bootcamp where participants learn Lean Startup principles, a valuable framework of tools, techniques and resources designed to help early-stage companies identify key customers and iterate their products quickly. It's a single weekend that will change the way you view entrepreneurship forever.

LSM now operates in four major U.S. cities and three countries abroad, with nearly 1,000 alumni.

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http://www.theleanstartupmachine.com

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Key stats:
• Idea to first event in 3 weeks
• Expanded to 4 cities within first six months (NYC -> Chicago -> SF -> Boston)
• Events capped at 50 people; average waiting list is 20.
• Sponsors include Dave McClure + 500 Startups, Microsoft Biz Spark, Unbounce, Profounder

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Featured in:
• NY Times: "Why Facebook Moved Out West"
• Forbes.com: "Tech Startup Communities, NYC On The Rise"
• Startup Lessons Learned: "A month is fifteen weekends"

ADOPT A HACKER / AirBnB for startup talent interested in NYC, Co-Founder

Effort to draw more entrepreneurial out-of-town technical talent to New York City by offering a firsthand glimpse of the city's tech scene. We pair hackers with friendly ambassadors from the NYC Tech Scene who serve as "instant best friends" and offer them a couch for the weekend, bring them to tech events and/or grab coffee to chat.

We built a system that intelligently pairs potential hackers and hosts by degree-of-separation through analysis of their social graph (Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, hometown, alma mater, etc).

Watch out Silicon Valley!

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http://www.adoptahacker.com/

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Key stats:
• Idea to execution in a single weekend
• 154 hackers and 110 NYC ambassadors signed up within 1st month
• Hackers have visited NYC through the program from New Zealand, Portugal, Canada, Sweden, India, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Virginia, Oregon, San Francisco, and others.

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Featured in:
• Mashable: "Forget a puppy, Adopt a Hacker?"
• Harvard Nieman Lab: "Adopt a Hacker wants to find couches for coders"
• ReadWriteWeb: "Hackers Invited to Crash on the Couches of the NY Tech Scene"
• Business Insider: "Adopt A Hacker Gives Out-of-Town Techies A Place to Stay in NYC"
• and others

URBAN PRE-GAME / Pre-buy bar drinks in bulk with friends, Co-Founder

Urban Pre-game was the first online service to let you pre-buy drinks in bulk from the bar with your friends. The more your group pre-buys, the deeper your discount—in realtime.

What began as an experiment in a karaoke bar in NYC's Upper Eastside expanded to 7 bars within six months.

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http://www.urbanpregame.com

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Key stats:
• Idea to live e-commerce site & first bar event: 1 month
• Expanded to 7 NYC bars within six months
• Average event: ~40 pre-gamers
• Built first mobile app enabling someone to start & manage their bar tab
• Bootstrapped the business

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Featured on:
• Mashable: "Tech Entrepreneurs Discuss 'The Social Network'"
• Nerd Stalker: "Expensive Bar Drinks No More"

SXSW Scout / For fun

SXSW draws some of the industry's most influential movers and shakers to do business and have fun. You need someone on the ground rubbing elbows, sharing pints, and meeting with these interesting folks one-on-one. The dead-ends of SXSW are numerous but easy enough to circumvent with a strong technical and creative background and a calibrated bullshit meter. I just WD-40'd mine; I'll loan it to you.

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http://www.sxswscout.com

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Featured in:
-NY Observer: Meet Ben Fisher, The Hard Drinking, No Bullshit, Tech Fixer for SXSW

DIE TRYING AWARDS / Graveyard for good ideas

I built an interactive microsite created to eulogize good ideas killed by cautious clients. The ideas were conceived by various members of my former team at Ogilvy; a group of problem-solving, coffee-chuggin' renegades who went to great lengths building-out cool ideas, even after they were killed (the ideas... not the team).

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Additional credits:
-Ernie Parada (Art Direction + Design)

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www.dietryingawards.com/

COFFEE SPY / Mobile app

I'm a caffiene addict and sometimes locating a full coffee pot @ Ogilvy on any of its 12 floors was tough.

I created the Ogilvy Coffee Spy™ so office addicts could pool their collective knowledge of the building's coffee-pot statuses in realtime. Accessed from a mobile phone, it automatically loads a light, iPhone-friendly version. It was used more than 1000 times on its first day. That's a lot of coffee.

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See it in action

Rapperina / Mixtape

Backstory
In the summer of 2009, I went on a blind date with a ballerina who hated Hip Hop music. I felt that for us to have any hope of a future together that "that" would need to be fixed.

Enter: Rapperina, a mixtape I created to transition (read: re-program) a classically trained ballerina to love hip hop music. I mixed the 40-minute track in a single evening, sampling from a range of songs along the classical-to-hip-hop continuum.

Two years later, Rapperina has far outdone its initial purpose of landing a second date and has de-fanged some of the world's most hostile Hip Hop haters, ranging from mechanical engineers to 60-year-old teachers.

And the girl? Sadly, she was too far gone to be saved.

Click here or on the image above to listen to the track