Fast Business!
A Berlin conference sponsored an intriguing twist on the old cool site in a day marathon -- build, promote, and sell a new Web service dotcom in 24 hours. dozomo.com netted over $2000 in their ebay auction. Looks like fun, and the returns aren't beneath notice -- it looks like the participants walked away with a couple of hundred bucks. Thanks, Anja.
This sort of exercise can be a silly stunt. Or, it can be a useful change of pace, like McCloud's 24-hour comic -- a way for creative people to break out of a rut, to break down inhibitions and habits, to cut to the essence without bothering with surface polish.
I wonder, though, whether in the wired world this isn't also a sensible way to build stuff. Envisioning and sketching a new service and a new organization is a skill, like others. Running the damn thing is, often, entirely different. Why not split it out? This seems like a stunt, but it might be a sensible way to make a living.
At a glance, I think the eBay price is not silly. It's depressed a little by the deadline, but a high-turnover, low-margin microbusiness boutique might be a viable little business.