This morning, I finalized my plans to take the StartupBus from Boston to SXSW in Austin. It’s a 3-day intense hackathon with

stops along the way, including an overnight stay in San Antonio / stop at the Rackspace HQ. Participants must build a prototype to pitch at SXSW.  Each team generally has a designer, engineer, and  a sales/marketing/bizdev person. I will mostly be partaking in the latter role, pitching and marketing the team idea.

The bus “conductor,” Igor Lebovic, has started organizing the logistics and connecting all of the “buspreneurs.” It will be interesting to see how everyone’s skill sets are matched up and what ideas transpire.  There is no question that the ideation stage of the process will be one of the most crucial and time-sensitive aspects of building the prototype. There is only so much building and iterating that can be done over a 3-day period.

The whole journey will be filmed and in some cases, journalists hop on at different points to cover the action. There will even be a StartupBus stock exchange, where anyone can buy shares in the teams, which fluctuate based on growth rate. It’s all for fun but it’s a great way to keep track of the teams’ progress.

Needless to say, I’m pretty stoked to be part of the Boston bus and even more stoked to start hacking something up. I will be sure to post some updates on here on the journey.