So after our meeting on Friday, we had a lot to get done. Fortunately, our motivation has, and will continue to be extremely high. Each of our skills sets compliment each other quite nicely so we each had our own areas of focus. Before we even realized it, Eric had our new splash page, this blog, a post for our Hackathon (sign up!), and a link to Startup Weekend | New Orleans all set up! And, on top of that, he had our first blog post done. We decided to take down our working prototype because we did not want anyone to find it and think it was our final product, hence the new splash page. Eric splurged a few bucks for a nice design for the site and I must say it’s quite clean, fresh, and modern.
After seeing this, Jessica and I quickly got to work. She jumped onto the business plan, letting me know my aspects to complete. Most of my parts had to do with explaining our goals, strategies, how much investment we were requesting, and how we planned to accomplish everything. I created a draft of our Hackathon flyer and shot it over to her to put her touches on it. I haven’t seen the final copy yet, but I’m sure it looks a lot better than how it started, I’m not the most artistic! Having knocked out my aspect of the flyer, I jumped onto our introductory video. I decided that the “Band of Brothers” theme from the HBO miniseries was the perfect music accompaniment to the “Uniform of My Country” quote and the war visuals we planned to use. After searching on youtube for hours, I stumbled across the perfect piano rendition by Huw Rees (check him out here!) I messaged him requesting to use the song, explaining why and how it would be used and asking how much it would cost to purchase the rights. Surprisingly, Huw (he’s British, it’s pronounced ‘Hue’) replied rather promptly and said I could use it for free! What an awesome ol’ Chap! Thanks Huw! I told him I was very appreciative and would send him the final cut when we released the video. I spent the next few hours downloading official military footage from various wars and chopped it into pieces to fit between the quote slides of the movie. After showing the first cut to Eric and Jessica, they provided some good feedback, I modified the video as such, and when it was all said and done, the final cut was awesome. Unfortunately, I cannot post it here yet, we will be releasing it on September 11th, so stay tuned! The entire purpose of the video piece is to show how and why the military uniform is so important to the military and why we take our uniform inspections and regulations in general very seriously. It’s a reminder of who has worn the very same uniform before us, and the conditions in which they have worn it. Some of whom have worn it to their grave.
Next I hopped onto my portion of the business plan. We have all had the various aspects of it in our heads for awhile now, so I sat down, hashed it out and shot it over to Jessica. I’ll have to let Jessica speak for herself as to the details she’s been up to. She mentioned she was in the process of securing a venue for our Hackathon at USM, finishing up the flyer, and handling the rest of the business plan. She also started work on our flow chart of important dates for the next couple of months which was Eric’s idea to help keep us on track as we progress through the various aspects of this project. Anyway, she’s been a busy bee and I’m sure has plenty to update the blog with. I’m off for now.
It’s been a busy weekend, lots of work done (quite productive!), more to do, and excited for the next few weeks!
