I guess the full weekend nature of Startup Weekend is both good and bad. Good for the points you laid out (getting a more complete image of the people you are interacting with) and bad because it does take a whole weekend (as opposed to the other events, which are at most a few hours).

You brush on a good larger point, however. All of these events (with the possible exception of Startup Weekend) are simple introductions. You certainly don’t know whether you want to work with someone just because you spent 5 minutes chatting with them at BDNT. But it’s the opening of a door (get digits/email, send useful articles, schedule follow ups, etc).

Perhaps Startup Weekend deserves to be in a class all it’s own–it’s much more like a conference (like Glue [ http://www.gluecon.com/2010/ ], Defrag [ http://www.defragcon.com/2009/index.html ] and the NoFluffJustStuff series [ http://www.nofluffjuststuff.com/conference/denver/2010/11/coming_soon ] ).

I guess my title is a bit grandiose, and should really have been ‘List of Front Range Software Networking Events’ because I didn’t really do justice to the ‘Conferences’ in this area.

I don’t know if giving up the weekend to attend Startup Weekend is a “bad”. It’s just what it is.

You can’t really build a meaningful working relationship in minutes or a few hours. Working side by side for a weekend sounds just about right. You also get to see people working under pressure, which is always revealing…

Grant