Justin Burdett

Back from NYC, Back to School

Justin Burdett — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:24:30 +0000

I was going to write in depth about my New York experience, but I never really got around to capturing the sentiment I wanted to with it. New York was mostly awesome. Professionally, I think I could have done a little better job than I did. In that sense, I was a little disappointed in myself. I am sincerely glad I had the opportunity to work with Fog Creek; the people there are top notch and I miss them greatly. Needless to say, I came home with a lot of great memories, experiences and friends I won’t soon forget.

School has started up again. In a giant whiplash of irony, most of my classes are entrepreneurship-related, even the ones I didn’t think would be. Which, I guess, is good. Except I’m going to have to come up with about 3-4 business ideas this semester. Not necessarily bad, but taking away from the “real” business I want to actually operate.

I signed up for Startup Weekend, State College. I’m also going to be volunteering prior to the event, maintaining a wiki and blog during the days leading up to the actual weekend.

Newsweek: PSU hottest school for entrepreneurship

Justin Burdett — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:52:57 +0000

Well, this has got to make everyone who has put in a lot of hard work at Penn State entrepreneurship smile a little bit.

Thanks in no small part to success stories like Weebly and Xobni, plus the hard work of many different professors and the engineering entrepreneurship program, Penn State entrepreneurship is starting to make some noise. Hopefully my company can continue the trend.

[via Danno - thanks!]

Probably my favorite thing ever

Justin Burdett — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:42:45 +0000

(source)

We call it… Fourth River

Justin Burdett — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 04:58:33 +0000

Bradley Shively, a friend from Penn State, and I are joining forces to start a company this upcoming semester.

We call our new venture Fourth River. It will probably have a third word in the title shortly, as we will need to fill out paperwork to make it kosher with the good old Pennsylvania State government, but you get the idea. Thanks goes to Jason for the name idea.

I am extremely excited to get to work on our first product. More to come.

Announcing Naive Commentary

Justin Burdett — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 01:31:57 +0000

I’ve decided to spin off one of my (oft neglected) post categories here into a separate blog with a separate domain name, Naive Commentary. You can expect to hear my very inexperienced viewpoint of technology, business, entrepreneurship and growing up on the site. And maybe some other stuff.

This blog will remain, of course, and continue to chronicle some of the bigger developments going on in my personal and professional life. Thanks for reading! Maybe see you over on the new site as well.

Fog Creek Software Open House

Justin Burdett — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:58:10 +0000

Today was Fog Creek Software’s annual open house. I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this going in. Leading up to the open house, I was told that our offices get packed and most people stay longer than the stated 5-7pm time frame. I figured, as the marketing intern, people probably wouldn’t really be that into hearing what I have to say. Plus, everybody would probably be there for Joel anyway.

And to a certain extent, that was true. And there were a lot of people there. A Fog Creek employee was our impromptu DJ for the evening, so with some medium-loud dance music and probably about 50-70 people in our offices talking at once, it got pretty loud. But it was really cool to see software people from around the New York area converge into one spot for an evening.

Among the many neat people I had the good fortune to meet, I met Gil, the one of the first employees and head technical guy at Squidoo, which was of course founded by my marketing hero, Seth Godin. I also got to meet the three guys behind Tumblr, which is a really cool service that I’m a big fan of (and should probably use more often).

If any of you guys happen to stumble onto this site, it was once again great talking with you and picking your brain. Please feel free to stay in touch (justin dot burdett AT gmail dot com).

I am slowly conquering the media-sphere

Justin Burdett — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:46:26 +0000

Readers of this oft neglected blog and my equally neglected Twitter updates will soon be able to catch me on a weekly segment of late night student television as well as articles online and in print on the semi-regularly produced Magazine of IST, MIST, if you will, this upcoming semester at Penn State. If all goes according to plan.

Coinciding with this news, I am going to start posting to this blog and another blog more regularly. This blog will take on a more personal noteworthy announcements and updates feel. The second blog’s announcement is forthcoming, but I promise that you’ll like the domain name. Maybe.

In related news, I am going to be entering Slideshare’s Best Presentation Contest. Prizes include a MacBook Air, which of course I would love, but I’m more excited to try to produce a solid entry. Topic of my entry is to be determined, but entries are due by the end of the month, so I’d better get cracking.

Your typical New York subway ride

Justin Burdett — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:24:12 +0000

Just another day in New York from Justin Burdett on Vimeo.

Where’d the Time go?

Justin Burdett — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:17:54 +0000

Wow, so I’ve been in New York for 2 weeks now.

What can I say? I’m having a blast. And I fear that this summer is going to go by in a blink.

A few words of wisdom about Coney Island:

Beware of shards of glass and used band-aids on the beach.
Do not eat more than 1 Nathan’s hot dog, unless you would like a date with the nearest toilet a few hours later.
The Cyclone roller coaster is quite a ride and probably worth your $8.
The Freak Show will make you dumber.

After Two Days

Justin Burdett — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:07:50 +0000

If it seems like I was a little unenthusiastic last video, its only because I got very few hours of sleep and then had a fairly stressful trip after my flight landed. Apparently they forgot to put one of my suitcases on the belt, which came to a complete stop and then inexplicably started again with my second bag. In between, for about 20 minutes. I was stressing out about not having exactly half of my belongings in a new city on a student’s budget. But it worked out.

I’m two days of work into it and I definitely enjoy working at Fog Creek. Somewhere between the 30 inch monitor, the natural light, a private workspace, the great folks who work there and the neat things I’ll get to do, I realized how cool this really is. They’ve got a lot of really neat activities lined up for us interns and, in return, they’re expecting some strong contributions from each of us. I think we’re up to the challenge.

I wanted to take some video of my neighborhood, but I didn’t get a chance to. I will soon. It’s awesome.

Its only been three days, two days of work, but it seems like I’ve been here a lot longer. I’m starting to get the hang of moving about, using the subway and everything else.

So far, so good.