Why I hate twitter contests: An alternative way to win FREE tickets to Launch Party Vancouver 10!

EDIT: Congratulations to @andreliem & @ashkan2 for winning the contest! Thanks to everyone for participating in our little experiment. 😉

I don’t care why you hate twitter contest. Just show me how to win free tickets to Launch Party Vancouver 10!!

I’ll be honest: In general, I hate twitter contests.

They’re too ‘spammy’, in-your-face, & don’t give enough value to the people entering (other than the incentive of winning). They’re kind of like those multi-level-marketing “we can help you make $8,030,100 a day without trying” meetings.

Now, I’m sure they work (for the same reasons spamming thousands of people & getting those people to spam others works), but I wanted to brainstorm a way to offer the benefits of contests without the spamminess.

An alternative…

So I came up with this: People “enter” the contest by tweeting something of value to others. Simple. That way, even without the contest ‘incentive’, you get pure value just by reading the entries.

Motivated in part by my earlier post where I mentioned that we need to talk about each other’s success more, this week, I asked the 1000+ Vancouver Startup Digest readers which local startups they’re excited about & why.  Every tweet to @SDVancouver with info on the best Vancouver startups will be an entry into a contest to win free tickest to Launch Party Vancouver 10!

You can win tickets to Launch Party Vancouver 10 too!

So, if you’re interested you can enter the contest yourself by tweeting out your list of top Vancouver startups to @SDVancouver, or commenting on this post!

Some other links on Launch Party:

Video of past memorable moments

Official Site

A great summary on Vancouver’s “Technology coming out Party” & another contest by Vancouverite Emme Rogers

Good luck!

Startup Digest is a weekly curated list of the best startup events in a city. We’re in over 55 cities with almost 50,000 subscribers worldwide. I curate the Vancouver SD, which you can sign up for here.

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Candid Interview with Boris Mann of Bootup Labs. #1 advice to students: “Get off your a$$ and just do it!

I had the privilege of interviewing Boris Mann of Bootup Labs on why students don’t know about Bootup, why some might be scared of him, and his number one advice for student entrepreneurs.

To his credit, this was spur of the moment and he didn’t have time to prepare. For zero preparation time, his answers were pretty darn good. Here’s his top, number 1 advice to student entrepreneurs:

My lovely wife, Vicki, typed up a transcript of the entire interview which you can check at the end of this post for those of us who don’t have time to watch the four minute interview. So kudos to her! Here’s the full interview:

For those who are like me and don’t even want to read a transcript to find the main points, here they are:

How to create a hype with next to nothing: How we turned an empty table and 500 folders into 200 inspired students @ InnoVasion

What a long yet inspiring day!

A QUICK VIDEO SUMMARY
If you don’t want to read the story, check out a quick summary video below or here. Apologies for the shaky camera.

And here’s what some students thought of us:

Protected: 50% discount off Bootup Labs Mentor Mixer with Paul Kedrosky Thursday Nov 19 for student entrepreneurship club members

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Ian Bell on the necessity of Buisness Cards: My experience at VEF Momentum

Ian Bell, a local entrepreneur and founder of RosterBot.com, recently wrote a humorous yet informative piece on the necessity of Business Cards at Networking Events. It was entitled, appropriately enough, “On Business Cards.”

If you haven’t read it, you should read it.

My favourite part is at the end, when he writes:

Turning off your cell phone before a meeting speaks volumes about your character

I had arranged a meeting with two students on campus this week to talk about entrepreneurialism @ UBC. It was rather informal and we just chose to sit down at a noisy cafe.

As we were sitting down, one of the students, Blake, took out his cell phone and proceeded to turn it off. He didn’t just switch it to vibrate or silent, but he turned it off completely.

My Current Passion: Revolutionizing Vancouver’s Startup Scene

MY STORY: IT ALL STARTED WHEN…

When I realized I wanted to be an entrepreneur at the end of University, it was pretty late in the game and I found it difficult to connect with other like-minded co-founders. I had just turned down a job offer as a PM at Microsoft, and, gauging the economic recession, was beginning to think I just shot myself in the foot.

The design of everyday things: a flawed door

I watched as five ppl tried to pull on the handle, only to realize the door was a push to enter door at a nearby value village. Some, like me, were confused and disoriented for a second.

It amazes me how stores still let this happen.

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