Dan Moon and I (Ian Broom) have had a fantastic time at Launch48 Romania. Why has it been so good, you might ask. Well there are a couple of reasons:

1. Fantastic venue and event management – the team at Eventsys know their stuff! Cristi, Oana, and Georgiana have made our stay in Romania a great experience and we thank them very much for their effort and interest in Launch48. Without their effort and knowledge, this event would not have been anywhere near as successful.
2. The Launch48 attendees – right from the beginning of the event we were made to feel welcome. We didn’t speak the language, we knew little about Romania, but everyone has gone out of their way to make us feel comfortable and speak English when near us which is truly appreciated.
3. The entrepreneurial spirit – Romania has, in the last couple of years, drastically improved its IT entrepreneur skills. This is primarily down to the huge efforts of the Romanian people to create events that foster and drive entrepreneurialism within Romania. From what I have seen on this trip, this has worked well and the IT and web scene is booming. I can’t wait to see what Romanian companies achieve, and for this reason I look forward to future Launch48 events in Romania.

Good luck Launch48 teams! I wish you the best of luck with the remainder of your Launch48 event on Tuesday, and your presentations on Wednesday at Netcamp. Hopefully they will be recorded and posted online, because I think some of the ideas are truly inspiring and can grow to become strong businesses, and it would be great to show the rest of the world what Romania has been able to create at is first Launch48 event.

From now on we have asked Octav and the Eventsys team to take over the role of blogging and publicising the event online. Octav has been tirelessly helping Dan and I translate posts into Romanian, so I have no doubt he will do an excellent job.

Launch48 Romania is underway at the Marriott Hotel in Bucharest, Romania.

Pitching is finshed and the atmosphere is electric.  More people than expected are participating and mentors are already advising teams on how to structure their teams and ideas.

A total of 20 ideas were pitched, 8 went to the second round, and 3 are being worked on.  The final 3 ideas are:

1. OpenCV – A CV distribution system
2. Sevinde – Connecting offline flyers with an online service
3. Social decision making system- Help friends to decide what to do when going out

Keep an eye on http://romania.launch48.com for regular updates from the first Romanian Launch48 event.

Launch48 Romania, in conjunction with Netcamp, is being held on the 7th to the 9th of December in Bucharest.

We are very excited to be working with an amazing group of Romanian entrepreneurs to put on Launch48’s first event outside of the UK.

Launch48 Romania will be associated with Netcamp, a web-orientated conference designed to inspire and educate attendees.

If you want to attend more information and to register please visit Launch48 Romania web site or Netcamp site for more information.

The Launch48 Follow-up event, announced at the Launch48 Conference and Launch48 Weekend held in October at PayPal, is now open for registrations.

The Launch48 Follow Up event is being held on December the 8th from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm at Google’s office in London.

Each group that attended Launch48 is invited to present for 15 minutes.  Groups are asked to present the following:

1. What have you acheived since Launch48 Weekend
2. What do you need to grow and be successful
3. What is your vision and plan for the next 12 months

Numbers are limited so please register early to avoid dissapointment.  We will try and live stream the event for those who cannot make it and we look forward to seeing everyone there soon.

Only people who have registered will be allowed in, please ensure you bring proof of registration when attending the event.

Register now and we look forward to seeing you at the follow-up event.

The Launch48 video is up!  If you are having problems trying to explain exactly what is Launch48 to your friends this may help!

The video was sponsored by Viadeo and created by Newspepper, and Launch48 really appreciates their support.

So without further ado I give you the Launch48 October 2009 promotional video!

In the past week a couple of blog posts have been written, I thought I would write up about them here in case anyone else wanted to read them:

• Mission Impossible: Launching a Startup in 48 Hours – an interview with Andrew Dancy, founder of protected.cc and an interesting analysis of how the event was run. Edit – the URL of this site has changed as they now have an English version available
• Andrew Lawson has written some great blog posts about Launch48 and his experience.  There is a tetralogy – part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.
• A blow-by-blow description of the conference is available at Steve Parks blog
• A response to TechCrunch’s article about Launch48 by LimeLight PR

Please let me know if there are any other articles written about Launch48 that I should be including in this list.

Last night Mike Butcher from TechCrunch attended the final presentations by the groups at Launch48.

Not only were the presentations great, all startups have received their first dose of PR and interesting comments from third parties who feel passionate about their ideas.

You can read the write up and comment yourself via TechCrunch