Martin Wells

Well it’s been a crazy few weeks; the general chaos of running a startup, travel and organising STIRR Sydney. But one thing I haven’t been able to talk about was the biggest of all, Endgame 2006.

Endgame is an end of year party thrown for all the staff (both Dot and Tangler) – it’s called Endgame because I thought it deserved a better name than “The Christmas Party”.

Last year’s event was a monstrous affair: a treasure hunt style Survivor meets Amazing Race up through the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. Choppers, 300m high flying fox, boats, hidden gnomes, rock walls, puzzles and tricks galore. If was a great day (and overnight stay), but left us with a tall task to beat this year.

Endgame 2006 started with yet another trick – last year we pretended to send them into the bush to play “Blue Mountains Survivor” for two days – this year I had moved on to be CEO of Tangler, and Rory had stepped in as CEO of Dot, there was some speculation from staff as to whether I would be organising the event at all. Playing on this we announced 6 months or so ago that Rory would take over organisation. Since I wasn’t involved it was to be a boring conference-style event. We knew this had gone a little far when people started talking about not attending because it sounded so boring. We had to back off a bit and hype it a little.

So everything starts pretty normal; all the staff (excluding me, because I’ve been ‘mysteriously delayed’) were coached up to Rafferty’s Resort in Lake Macquarie about 1.5 hours north of Sydney. After eating a lovely Thai lunch they were bustled into a conference room to hear Rory give a special “announcement”. Tangler and Dot were merging, Dot was buying another company and the whole new group was being listed on the stock exchange. Oh, and the combined companies would now be known as “Big Tree”.

A shocked audience didn’t get much of a chance to take it all in. As Rory was taking questions the lights in the room suddenly went out (we’d rigged the room to be almost pitch dark) and three guys wearing balaclavas and headlights burst from the store room (we’d been hiding for an hour). Running through screams and confusion, the masked men then bagged the Rory and bustled him from the room.

As the kidnappers left, a video started playing showing a Saw-like character known as The Cloak. To get Rory back the staff needed to “play a game”. They were given 3 minutes to solve a puzzle (it’s a coded message on their conference maps) and a 3 minute timer. Ultimately though the solution leads nowhere. 30 seconds before the time is up the whole thing grinds to a halt and the FBI and I bust in to rescue everybody and explain what we really need to do to rescue Rory, and beat Cloak at his own game. And things sort of go on from there… for the whole day and into the night.

In the end we had a huge day adventuring in and around Lake Macquarie and the Wallarah National Park. Belaying people up trees, searching the coastline for clues, mountain bikes, building boats, you name it. Only dampener was (yet, again) it rained, sometimes pretty hard, but the enthusiasm as usual was amazing.

After we successfully rescued Rory we had a giant pool party (I was the first thrown in) and dinner. Cloak made a return and set everyone a final challenge and Peter Gibson ultimately won the day, for a second year running.

A pool, great food, a foosball table and copious amounts of alcohol made for a fantastic night for everybody. Towards the end I also played a Christmas video (see below) I had compiled the day before (and edited at 3am the previous night). I think I could have played just about anything and gotten a laugh, but this seemed to go down very well.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ_zdNReW8Y]

This was a tough one to organise, especially since no one could know I was involved. Couldn’t have done it without the help of my co-conspirators Ed, Rhandy, Conrad (the FBI agent) and Rory. Thanks guys. Amazing effort.

I was asked again during the night why we put so much effort into these events. The answer is always the same: cause we think people work incredibly hard, so they deserve an incredible party. And having a boring “Christmas lunch” is out of the question for such remarkable people. Now all we have to do is top it next year.

Plenty of photos up on Flickr.

[UPDATE: Chris Saad liked it enough to digg it. Feel free to add your vote. Thanks Chris]

Someone great is leaving Dot, and that makes it a sad day.

Simon was one of the first coders on Viper (Dot’s software platform) and has been there along the way to see it grow from a team of 4 to 40 and now growing like crazy.

Simon is moving to Singapore to be close to his wife and sick dad — a pretty good reason, but still a sad day. I know Simon laments on his position, but knows he’s always welcome should the situation change.

We’ll miss you mate. Thanks for the incredible effort, unshakeable belief and awesome talent. Good luck.

Some photos from the goodbye.

I’ve been watching Mick (sitting next to me) on his shiney new mac using a cool little tool called quicksilver. Basically it lets you launch/find anything using the keyboard only. Well I tracked down a PC equivelant. if (you==keyboardfreak) then goto AppRocket else next…

And speaking of cool. How did this guy make this photo on the right?

Wow! What a blast. STIRR Sydney went off with a bang Wednesday night with over a hundred and twenty people coming in from local internet startups, media, VCs and service providers.What was truly an experiment turned out great, and in no small party due to the enthusiasm, spirit and general roudieness of the people who attended. Thanks!

Of course none of this happens without some behind-the-scenes stars. The sponsors: Technology Venture Partners, Atlassian, Neo Technology Ventures and Tangler (pat pat). To my fellow organisers: Mick, Rhandy, Craig, Karen, Rai, Phong, Erik, Minh and Sasha. Also thanks to Symbiation for making up the Boom or Bust board, among other things.

Hippos turned out to be a great venue, though we promise to up the air conditioning earlier next time and maybe the demo tables will move inside — certainly got crowded out there.

Half-baked with 70+ people was a wild chaotic thing compared to previous ones, but ultimately what the startups concocted was just as funny and having startup legends like Emily and Omar, Oliver Wiedlich, Alisdair Faulkner, Rhandy Lado, Alan Jones and (”Entrepreneur of the Year”) Mike Cannon-Brooks. No surprise that Mike Cannon-Brooks’ team and their idea “ShoeWave.com” — uniting people around the world in finding lost socks — won the day. Close runners-up: MidgetWidget.com, a mobile phone app that can grow with you and ParachuteVideo.com, a whole new way to drop movie content on you, literally.

On entry to the event people were given $2 million venture capital dollars which they had to distribute as they saw fit to four startups: Remember the Milk, bluepulse, StudentFace and Quotify. In a very close contest the ultimate winner was Remember the Milk who just nudged Quotify. They took home an MSDN subscription worth $5000 courtesy of Microsoft (thanks Frank).

Other games included the very popular “Boom or Bust”. Startups write their name on a pin and then blindly try to pin the best exit, which ranged from $2b buyouts, down to “Your Server Farm Really A Farm” and “Russian Clone Site Wipes You Out” — everybody loved this one.

Thanks also to Neo who sponsored the Kool-Aid shots throughout the night.

Further coverage:

• Sydney Skaken and Stirred
• GDay World
• STIRR Sydney a stirring success
• Stirr it up
• Getting STIRRed up in Sydney
• STIRR Sydney
• STIRR Sydney Wrap-up
• Heading to STIRR Sydney
• STIRR Sydney
• Rebelutionary

Photos:

• Mick (thanks to Karen)
• Marty (thanks to anybody who would hold my camera on the night)
• Yours? (let me know)

UPDATE: Cameron Reilly has released a video of the night.

Wow, STIRR Sydney is 3 days away and we’ve managed to attract an amazing 90 people to the RSVP list. Maybe we’ll even crack the 100 by the time we get started this Wednesday. And to think I was silly enough to ask Mick (a marketing guy) if we could get enough people to fill the room.

Thanks to everyone for the great suggestions and awesome support. We’re working hard to make it a great night.

Things to do: get bubble machine, find a ninja constume, get a container big enough for the kool-aid, find someone named “Mike A.” and ask him to put his name on the RSVP list.

We trialed half-baked on friday with a bunch of Tangler and Dot people. Went great, learnt a lot, but it’s scary to try and do this with 90+ people. We’ll figure that out this week.

Oh, and the sponsors… mmm… sponsors… how can we say thanks enough - TVP, Neo Technology Ventures, Atlassian and Tangler.

The number of women in IT is falling. Are we ultimately destined for a monastic existence? Please don’t let this be true. Quick, someone do something. I will as soon as I level my Druid to 60.