On the ground

I went up to San Francisco today for another race at the America’s Cup. It started out very wet.

Today was a quiet day, with no mentors visiting to talk with us. It gave the teams a break to work on their projects and to make phone calls to connections we have made.

As I walked down the street to get lunch, I was waiting at the corner for the pedestrian signal. Across the intersection I saw a frantic crowd gathering and running after a mascot. It was Sharkie, the mascot of the San Jose Sharks. Sharkie was on a Segway and stopped for a photo and a snack.

Jason Loia came in to talk about gamification and how to make our products engaging and fun. His presentation was full of tips and tricks that left everyone with a goldmine of ideas to pursue. He also mentioned that these tricks can produce dopamine, a chemical in the brain that will cause an addiction to keep playing.

Laura Gomez, an expert focused on product marketing, user experience, technical account management and international operations met with the teams today to refine which markets we should focus on.

David Martinez came in today to talk about Google Glass.

Today was the start of the second week at the Manos Accelerator. Time is flying by and we are meeting awesome mentors. We had two mentors today.

Andrew Velis is a Software Engineer at mFoundry (a FIS company). He has been in the tech industry since 2009. Andrew gave us a different perspective on the process of building our future and how we could get there.

I spent another day watching the America’s Cup races between the New Zealand and United States teams. The crowds at Pier 27 were too thick to find a decent vantage point so I hurried up the hundreds (I counted somewhere between 290 and 394 before I lost count) and made it in time to watch the first race.

What an amazing day at the America’s Cup Park. After getting off the train I made my way up to the America’s Cup Park and caught the US team leaving for the first race.

Today Miles and Tamiko Rast stopped by the Manos Accelerator to meet with the teams. They are from Rasteroids, a website and graphic design company. Being a web developer, our meeting was like talking to family. They had some great suggestions and feedback that will improve user flow.