We had a terrific OpenCoffee this morning at Vic's. Andrew Hyde gave us a report from Startup Weekend Toronto that happened this past weekend. Amidst numerous challenges (including torrential rain, ferry boat schedules, and international travel), it looks like the Toronto team was able to pull of a successful product and startup experience, and Andrew is taking the lessons to heart to make future Startup Weekends as strong and beneficial as possible.

As background, you can learn more about the concept behind Startup Weekend at Andrew's Startup Weekend website:

Have you ever wondered what a group of highly talented and motivated people could accomplish in a weekend? Could they start a company from concept to completion?

Startup Weekend answers that question and more. A unique three-day experience, Startup Weekend brings the best and brightest people together in a local office space to select the concept, break into teams, and develop the product, marketing and revenue model.

As he puts it, Startup Weekend is about taking the 20% of the people (that do 80% of the work) and putting them all together in one room for a weekend. As a result, "The people who come to Startup Weekend are a dangerous group." When planned and managed effectively, the results can be astounding.

Which is a perfect lead-in to Joe Scharf, who gave us an update on VoSnap, which was the product of the Boulder Startup Weekend that was held the weekend of July 6-8th, 2007. VoSnap is alive and well, and a core team is continuing to move it forward, and it is now open as a public beta. In fact, in a beautiful twist of serendipity, or perhaps pure genius, VoSnap was used at the Startup Weekend Toronto to vote and decide on issues, and will likely be used in future Startup Weekends as well.

Props to Andrew and Joe and all the Startup Weekend-ians (Weekend-erians?) for all their hard work, and for turning out at the OpenCoffee to fill the rest of us in.

UPDATE 19-SEP-2007: A couple of other folks have weighed in on the Startup Weekend Toronto event. Brill Pappin was one of the Toronto organizers and blogged about it here. Steve Poland was one of the visitors from out of town and wrote about it on his blog here.