amassed lust Blog of Raymond Angel; Startup Enthusiast, CEO

The trackball on my Blackberry has been cutting out a lot lately. Apparently this is a normal issue and cleaning it seems to be the solution. What happens though when even taking it apart and cleaning it doesn’t fix it?

Anyone who knows me knows that I live and die by my phone. I use it constantly, nonstop, and it never leaves my side. I go through a lot of phones for the simple fact that I use them so much.

I’ve had my Pearl for about four months and love it. It does everything I want and I knew eventually the trackball would stop working.

The fact that it gave out now could not have come at a worse time. I’m in the middle of texting, calling and messaging people for Startup Weekend and a deal for MOSH mobile.

So what does the CEO of a cellphone company do? Grab a new phone out of our stash and trash the old one?

That would be simple… but just plain stupid.

Knowing that some of our customers may run in to the same issue I’m going to expect my people to be able to find a solution that works best for our customers.

Replacing the trackball for them for free is obviously the best solution.

That is exactly what we will be doing.

So I figured I should learn how to do it myself before I start having other people here at MOSH mobile doing the same thing.

The trackball parts from RIM are very costly so we also had to consider how we would best acquire these parts and then cover the labor to actually replace them.

Thankfully the labor involved is very minor and can be done the same day… if you have the parts.

A few phone calls later and we’ve worked out getting the actual parts for under 13 dollars a piece in bulk and as far as putting them together we’ve armed ourselves with a good technical manual.

So this week when our first shipment of replacement parts arrive I’ll be the first one to replace my trackball and then others will be trained so that we can best serve our customers.

So this bad situation has spun in to a more positive one.

Now if the part would get here faster I’d be set.

In the meantime if you need to get in touch with me I suggest email as answering my phone is a bit more difficult, answering texts is nearly impossible, and Twitter… well forget about it.

I’ve been pretty busy with the awesomeness that is Startup Weekend so I haven’t had a lot of time between that and MOSH mobile to get a post up here recently.

Things are going great in life. I’ve been having a lot of fun talking and meeting people for Startup Weekend and getting some new weekends lined up for everyone.

Things on the front at MOSH mobile have also been exceptionally busy as we have some things coming down the pipe in the next two weeks that required my attention.

I’ve cut down my days at MOSH mobile that I’ll actually be spending in the office so I can focus on Startup Weekend and properly balancing my life/work balance. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays I can work on both projects from my balcony outside if I so wish as the weather warms up and I must say I love working outside. This is a nice change of pace for a few weeks so I can get outside, enjoy the warm weather and focus on everything going on.

I recently posted on my bad experiences at Walmart and Dawn posted about a sour experience at a loan location.

What makes companies feel that bad customer service is the right customer service?

In what I’d like to think of Blogworthy news I’ve decided to take on a new hat for my ever growing hat rack.

This time I’m putting on a new primary hat that allows me to be the new CEO of Startup Weekend.

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.

Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde, the weekend is a concept of a conference focusing on learning by creating. It is known for its quick decisions, ‘out of the box’ thinking, unique facilitation technique and letting the founders show what they can do. The program has already met with success in Boulder, Toronto, New York, Hamburg, Houston, West Lafayette, Boston, DC and more.

At the most recent Boulder II Startup Weekend Andrew tried successfully to launch a new format that involves even more launches per weekend, more dedicated teams, recruiting by already established companies, and even no requirement to incorporate a company at the end of the weekend.

The new format has been a stunning success and Andrew has once again proven his forward thinking will keep Startup Weekend ahead of the curve.

I promise that I’ll bring that same forward thinking, drive for success and determination to each and every Startup Weekend that we organize and evolve as the new CEO of Startup Weekend.

The format Startup Weekend is using works… and I’m not going to change that. The low price point works… and I’m not going to change that any time soon.

I’m merely going to build on the MASSIVE level of success that Andrew has had with Startup Weekend and be working WITH Andrew to continue the trend of Startup Weekend success.

Andrew isn’t going anywhere. He is merely rolling back his role as he pursues some new projects and ideas that I’m sure because of his revolutionary nature will be hearing about soon and I’m hoping (and even trying to force him for his health) to take some much needed rest.

Startup Weekend is a unique and ever evolving idea and I hope that you will join me for the ride with even more upcoming weekends scheduled in great cities such as San Antonio, Portland, Memphis, Ann Arbor and more.

I also hope that you’ll join me in celebrating the great job Andrew is doing and offer him a much deserved congratulations on being a revolutionary startup enthusiast who has proved time and time again his ability to create, launch, manage and grow successful new ideas.

So what happens when you take Startup Weekend, take out the creating a company part, and make the event two hours long, and add a dash of your favorite libation?

You get a little something called Startup Drinks.

A drinking club with a startup problem, Startup Drinks aims to get extremely busy startup folks together to have a pint and talk about what they have done, what they need help with and what they help each other out with.

Born out of Andrew Hyde’s Startup Weekend this new adhoc event takes place in cities around the world and is organized by people with startup dreams just like YOU.

Check out the official website to see some upcoming cities or even learn how to schedule a Startup Drinks in your own area today.

I’m trying to get a Startup Weekend going in Fort Wayne and your vote to help see it happen would be appreciated.

Just head over to this page and click for Fort Wayne and help us get this excellent unconference in our city.

Over the past few weeks Patrick and I have been talking about a plethora of business things.

He will be doing a presentation at SXSW this year to promote his book and he asked me if I knew of any good places to go for business cards.

I can now safely tell him two places to not go.

The first one is Overnight Prints. I just had a long-time friend use them and the cards were horrible. The print on them was misaligned and they needed these cards for a meeting with a VC. So yeah… not cool.

The second place is my own experience. Before heading off to Startup Weekend I realized that I was nearly out of business cards. In a bind I visited the online arm of Staples and saw they do business cards that you can send the design for online and then pickup in store.

So of course knowing I was in a tight spot with under a week I ordered 200 cards online. The quality can’t be that bad… could it?

I WAS DEAD WRONG.

I know that it is my fault for the most part seeing as how I could have ordered cards in advance and got them done somewhere local (more on that to come) but I’ve been really busy as of late working on closing something major for the company and haven’t had time to watch my “business card stock levels” very closely.

Onward with the point of this post though… which is to show you the “quality” you can expect at Staples.

I didn’t get the more expensive card stock because the site actually recommended the regular stock. I assumed the stock wouldn’t be all that bad… it isn’t… but it isn’t that great either.

The cards are TERRIBLE. Staples is TERRIBLE. The cards had the most piss poor cut I’ve ever seen.

See that white line at the top of the card? Yeah that is the way they cut it, boxed it, then sold it to me. Not all cards are like this but out of 200 cards a great deal of them had quite simply piss poor cuts.

I suspected the cutting would be terrible so I specifically asked for black card stock. That way if the cut was a terrible shitty cut it wouldn’t stick out as much.

If they were going to make the cards on white stock then why even bother offering the black stock?

The printing and cutting was horribly aligned on almost all of the cards, the color was inconsistent from one card to the next,  and when I ordered online I paid for 200 and it said they were giving me another 100 free because of a promotion. Did I get the extra 100 free? Nope… and when I asked later for them they told me that promo only applied if I asked for it when picking up.

Think about this for a second… if I asked at pickup they would have had to make the extra 100 cards. Does that make any sense? Why not just make the extra 100 instead of making just the 200 and then if I want to actually get what the site promised me not make me wait another few hours just to get another hundred cards.

Shit.

I’m going to tell EVERYONE I know that Staples for business cards is the BIGGEST mistake you can make. Even in emergency situations where you just need something to get you through they make the shittiest of the shity cards.

First I’d like to apologize for my lack of updates this weekend on my blog.

I realize that I had promised to do some blogging here but the weekend is just so intense and I was already blogging on several Startup Weekend related blogs that I just didn’t find the time to bring myself to post here.

After going to the conference, then the bars afterwards I always found myself tired and unable to blog on my phone or the laptop when I got back to the hotel either.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way I can tell you that Startup Weekend Bloomington was a great and amazing experience that I would recommend anyone who can make it to one… DO SO!

Seeing such a large group come together and work together was an amazing thing. Especially considering how many brilliant minds could be found in the group.

I can still barely bring to words how I would describe a Startup Weekend.

It truly is something you simply need to experience to fully understand.

I’ve met a great deal of friends and hope to keep those new relationships going.

Made it to the hotel after a stop at Walmart here in town to burn some time before we could check in.

Getting ready to head to the Startup Weekend event right now so I can get all setup before the real fun begins.

The hard part of the trip through Indy is finally over and we are under thirty minutes to the hotel. We are way to early to check in though of course.

Finally the belly is full and we are on our way again.