As noted earlier, a local reporter from KTVA in Anchorage stopped by the 3DS Alaska event this past weekend, captured some video and chatted with Jeremiah and Matthew. Complete video of the story was posted online earlier today (and is embedded above).

Thanks again to reporter Alexis Fernandez (@alexisfdzKTVA) and her camera person for dropping in!

Congratulations to the entire 3 Day Startup Alaska team!

In a little over 48 hours (straight through) this group of previously-unaffiliated business and technology college students developed a business idea, researched it and actually built a working prototype. But they took it further. In true 3 Day Startup fashion, they prepared a final presentation and delivered it to a collection of local business leaders and entrepreneurs, soliciting feedback and even asking for seed money to take the startup business forward.

Below is video of the formal pitch event, including opening comments from Jeremiah Dunham (primary organizer for 3DS Alaska) and Thomas Finsterbusch (co-creator of the 3 Day Startup event and nonprofit). Participant Matthew Sargent gave the presentation.

The investor pitch event started at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 27, 2011.

3DS Alaska: The Investor Pitch from John Proffitt on Vimeo.

Following the presentation was a lively discussion involving the expert panelists and even the assembled audience. Some of this discussion was also captured on video and will be released separately.

(Photo by Loren Holmes)

She spoke with 3DS Alaska organizer Jeremiah Dunham and then later chatted with Matthew Sargent, one of the participants (and the investor pitch man later in the day).

For the moment, only the written story is on the KTVA web site. Fernandez says the video will also be posted online. When it is, we’ll post the link. In the mean time, read the story here.

We’re streaming LIVE on USTREAM.tv most of Sunday, March 27, 2011 from the 3 Day Startup war room here in Anchorage. You can “tune in” either here on this post or via a short link.

You may also be able to watch live from a mobile device, but our tests seem to suggest this may not work. The most reliable method will be to use a full-blown computer and watch here or on the link.

• LIVE VIDEO LINK

When is the LIVE investor pitch for GearSpoke.com in your time zone?

• 5:00 p.m. Hawaii
• 7:00 p.m. Alaska
• 8:00 p.m. Pacific & Arizona
• 9:00 p.m. Mountain
• 10:00 p.m. Central
• 11:00 p.m. Eastern
• 4:00 a.m. London, UK (Monday, 3/28)
• 5:00 a.m. Barcelona (Monday, 3/28) — Hi Barcelona!

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) rentals are catching on across the country, so why not here in Alaska, where the toys-per-capita rate is so high? Rent out that snow machine! Rent out your kayak! Get money from your RV, your ATV, your dirt bike!

But we need more information — from you — to figure out what would make sense in a P2P rental service. What would you charge to rent out your RV for a day or a week? If a trustworthy person wanted to rent your scooter, what would you charge?

Please Help!

By taking this fast online survey, you can tell us what you’d rent and what you’d charge. Take it as many times as you like, focusing each time on a different piece of gear, from a backpack to a luxury home-on-wheels.

We won’t actually ask you to rent anything out. The information we collect is purely for research to help guide our team as they design Alaska’s newest tech startup. We won’t use your info for anything beyond the 3DS Alaska event.

Thanks, and let’s get that RV to pay for itself!

• OFFICIAL BLOG: http://3dsalaska.org/category/blog/
• TWITTER FEED: @3DSAlaska
• FLICKR PHOTO SET: http://www.flickr.com/photos/magneticnorth/sets/72157626352363488/
• FACEBOOK PAGE: http://www.facebook.com/pages/3DS-Alaska/161931113836643
• VIMEO CHANNEL: http://vimeo.com/channels/183094
• USTREAM LIVE STREAM (when available): http://www.ustream.tv/channel/starting-up-in-alaska
• GENERAL EMAIL ADDRESS: info [at] 3dsalaska [dot] org
• LOREN HOLMES, our official photographer
  • Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/holmesphoto
  • Web Site: http://lorenholmes.com/

3DS Alaska: Draft Pitch for GearSpoke.com from John Proffitt on Vimeo.

Matthew Sargent (aka “Sarge”) took the stage on Saturday night (3/26) at 9:00pm to deliver the DRAFT presentation for the 3DS Alaska tech startup GearSpoke.com. This video covers the entire pitch, at just under 10 minutes.

For another hour after the pitch, the assembled 3DS Alaska team discussed the content, identifying areas where they needed to fill in the blanks, what messages to emphasize, and preparing the team for some of the questions likely to be asked by investors and mentors on Sunday evening.

With only 21 hours to go before the FINAL presentation, the team will now rush prototype elements, market cases, and a revised pitch. Go team!

After a sometimes-funny, sometimes-contentious discussion over names — and a ton of searching for available Internet domain names — the 3DS Alaska team chose a name for the startup with only about 24 hours to go. It is:

GearSpoke.com

Why? “Gear” is what will be rented in the proposed P2P service — mostly outdoors-oriented equipment and vehicles. “Spoke” is the service itself — it will tie together renters and rentees, making idle gear more valuable and allowing gear users to avoid the cost and the responsibility of owning and storing all that stuff.

From here the technical work continues and the marketing analysis will start to come together. A draft presentation will be delivered this evening to the group, and the final presentation — to potential investors and open to the public — will be in just 22 hours.

We plan to stream the presentation live starting at 7:00pm Alaska time tomorrow (Sun, 3/27).

Meanwhile, we’ve been looking at other examples in the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) rental space, and we’ve found a lot of activity. P2P renting was hot enough to warrant a panel at South by Southwest Interactive (SxSW) just last week.

Check out these links and resources to learn what’s going on in the P2P rental space:

• SXSW Interactive Panel: The New Sharing Economy
  Check out this link to find the panelists, but also an audio recording of the panel. You know when something is covered at SxSW it’s hot and still fairly new. That bodes well for developing a P2P renting service that’s focused on the Alaskan market.
• Zilok
  This is a sizable “rent anything” service that even boasts listings in Alaska. It incorporates P2P and corporate-organized renting. They’re a leader in the space, even gathering mainstream (local) press coverage.
• Zilok: The eBay for Renters
  A slick CBS News report on how regular people are participating in P2P rentals via Zilok.
• Rentalic
  Another P2P renting service in operation, based out of San Mateo, California but with national aspirations.
• May I Rent Your Lawn Mower? Sharing Meets Web 2.0
  Published the first day of 3DS Alaska (what luck!), this is a blog post from the personal finance management service Mint.
• LinkedIn Poll: What would you most likely to rent from someone local on a P2P rental website like Rentalic.com?
  It’s a bit of a shameless plug for Rentalic, and the poll response rate is low, but still… there’s a chart.
• Wikipedia: Peer-to-peer renting
  If you’re not sure what Peer-to-Peer renting is, or could be, Wikipedia has this primer.

Is it bad to riff on a pre-existing idea?

So far, we think not. As has been pointed out multiple times, there aren’t any truly new ideas (at least not often) and the existence of other (nascent) businesses in this space suggests others have done some business research and figured out, “this is just crazy enough to work!”

Additionally, the Alaska market has enough quirks to make a locally-tuned P2P rental play. For example: our higher-than-average presence of outdoor sporting gear and outdoor enthusiasts and our highly transient population, for which renting can be highly preferably to buying.

In any case, the team’s research and business modeling continues.

3DS Alaska: Saturday Morning Meeting from John Proffitt on Vimeo.

This is the “staff meeting” from Saturday morning with everyone in attendance and 3DS co-creator Thomas Finsterbusch leading the discussion.

Video is about 22 minutes, so it’s really long. However, if you’re curious to see what happens in a small meeting about 31 hours away from the project deadline — a presentation to potential investors — this is it.

3DS Alaska: The Story as of 10:30am Saturday from John Proffitt on Vimeo.

The business pros on our 3 Day Startup team need some market data to help shape the specifics of our tech startup. It’s a short survey and it even works well on mobile phones.

Take the survey here. And please retweet, repost, and share all over the place — the more data we have, the smarter our tech startup will be when the Sunday evening investor pitch comes around.

SURVEY DEADLINE: Saturday, March 26 at 3:30 p.m. Alaska time (7:30 p.m. Eastern)

3DS Alaska: The Selection is Made from John Proffitt on Vimeo.

In the above video, the team makes a final vote, choosing between two different business ideas. The first is a restaurant menu indexing and rating system. The second is a P2P equipment (ATV, RV, boat, cabin, etc.) system that matches renters with owners.

3DS Alaska: The Work Begins from John Proffitt on Vimeo.

With the selection of business idea made, the team enters the remaining 46 hours and looks to the work ahead.

Thanks to 3 Day Startup founder Thomas Finsterbusch for leading these sessions and bringing the 3DS magic to Alaska (at Jeremiah’s request, of course!).

3DS Alaska: Considering Alaskan Business from John Proffitt on Vimeo.

Excellent comment from Matti, during our Friday evening business idea discussion, on whether we should focus on business ideas that play to our unique strengths in knowing Alaskan business factors.

We’ll have a finalized business idea soon. Stay tuned…

What an amazing collection of photos, posted to Facebook, by our resident pro photographer Loren Holmes.

These are all from the first few hours of 3 Day Startup (3DS) Alaska. Check them out.

Meanwhile, we’re still discussing ideas for our tech startup. We expect to be narrowing the field and starting work after 8:00 p.m. tonight (Fri, Mar 25).

3DS Alaska Starts Up from John Proffitt on Vimeo.

The inaugural 3DS Alaska event is underway! Keep up to date with our, um… updates.

• Follow us on Twitter: @3DSAlaska
• Check out our periodically-updating photos via this Flickr Set
• Like us on Facebook

We may also do a Ustream event soon. Watch Twitter for the fastest updates.

Here’s what you need to know to participate and/or spectate…

The Timeline

• We start at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, March 25, 2011 (today)
• Participants should arrive a little before 2:00 p.m. if possible
• We expect to have the initial tech startup ideas nailed down by Friday evening around 8:00 p.m.
• Work will continue through Saturday and Sunday, nailing down business model details, business plans, tech designs, presentation materials for potential investors, customer profiling, prototyping and more.
• The weekend culminates with the 3DS Final Pitches, set for Sunday evening at 7:00 p.m.
• Actions following the 3DS weekend event will be determined collaboratively by the assembled team on Sunday.

Who Attends? Can I come see it?

• The 3DS Alaska event is primarily for those that are participating — the folks that will work hard all weekend to build a business plan and take a tech startup idea to market.
• We will also have Mentors and Supporters showing up to offer advice or lend a helping hand at times.
• The final pitches event — Sunday evening around 7:00 p.m. — is open to the public.
• If you’d like to drop in during the weekend, please get in touch with us via @3DSAlaska or info [at] 3dsalaska [dot] org and we can figure something out together.

Where is 3DS Alaska 2011?

• The entire event is being held in Room 106 of the Gorsuch Commons on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus in Anchorage
• Here’s a map, in case you’re not familiar with the UAA campus
• Parking is free / not enforced Friday-Sunday on campus

Stay in Touch / Updates Online

• During the weekend we’ll make update posts to the blog right here: http://3dsalaska.org/category/blog/
• More frequent mini-posts will go to Twitter at @3DSAlaska
• We’ll also post photos to the Facebook page
• To contact folks managing the event on-site, tweet questions or comments to @3DSAlaska or stop by and ask for John, Ross or Jeremiah

Participants, Mentors, Panelists, Volunteers and Friends:

Please join us for the 3DS Alaska Boot Camp and Happy Hour starting at 5:00pm at Design-PT in downtown Anchorage. Here are the details:

• 3DS Alaska Boot Camp & Happy Hour
• Wed, March 23
• 5:00pm – 7:00pm
• Design-PT offices – 430 W 7th Ave, Suite 202 – Anchorage, AK 99501

We will talk about plans for the 3DS Alaska weekend coming up Friday, give folks a chance to meet-and-greet, and yes, you can start to talk about your ideas for a new tech business. We’ll have refreshments and we may just distribute some shiny new t-shirts.

So please join us and let’s kick off the inaugural 3DS Alaska in style!

Questions? Tweet to @3DSAlaska or call Design-PT during the day at 222-6133.

Well, not 3DS Alaska. T-shirts are on order and will be here in time for the main event. Here’s the proof we got back from the printer:

Finsterbusch will moderate the entire event, and we couldn’t be happier! His experience with 3DS events nationwide, not to mention creating the event itself, will make for a fantastic experience for everyone that signs up to participate.

Learn more about 3DS next week at one of our Info Sessions:

• Wed, Mar 2 at 5:30pm
  Rasmuson Hall, Room 112 (University of Alaska Anchorage)
• Thu, Mar 3 at 7:30pm
  Social Science Building, Room 119 (University of Alaska Anchorage)

Here are some pictures from the event:

Note the 3DS Alaska website, 3DSAlaska.org, on the big screen to the left.

Here is Jeremiah addressing the crowd.

If you haven’t attended any of the prior Ignite events, now’s your chance to discover this fast-paced, fun event, packed with 5-minute presentations on almost any topic under the (midnight) sun.

But these aren’t your everyday presentations. Presenters must strictly adhere to a 20-slide / 5-minute format, where slides auto-advance every 15 seconds, whether the presenter is ready or not.

Hear the 5-minute pitch on 3DS Alaska and talk to Jeremiah at the event if you’re interested in learning more or participating.

And thanks to 3DS Alaska supporter Dean Franklin — also the organizer behind Ignite Anchorage — for including us in the presentation lineup!

• Thursday, October 21
• Alaska Experience Theater / 333 W 4th Ave
• Doors open at 6:00 p.m. / Event starts at 7:00 p.m.
• Admission: $10
• All proceeds donated to the Anchorage Schools Foundation
• REGISTER NOW
• Follow @IgniteAnchorage on Twitter while you’re at it