Today the teams from the Manos Accelerator went to the LISTA conference held at nestGSV in Redwood City.

Bagels, croissants, and fruit started this morning off at Manos.

As I walked from Caltrain to the Innovation Center, I looked up at the sky and the clouds reflecting the morning sunlight in front of a blue sky.

After an eventful weekend, it was back down to San Jose to continue making connections and refining our goals. Lunch was brought in.

It was a beautiful morning at the America’s Cup Park in San Francisco compared to yesterday. As I held my spot at the fence next to the bay, I took the time to hack on one of my projects.

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.