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"The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.\nName: Hurricane Party\nQuick Pitch: Hurricane Party is a free mobile app that helps friends find, share and create spontaneous parties.\nGenius Idea: A backchannel for nearby, right-now parties.\nA South by Southwest veteran knows that the best get-togethers are those that spontaneously come about without rhyme or reason. A couple friends decide to escape from the bustle of the show and hide away in a nearby dive bar. Those friends message their friends and a mini, more intimate party is born.\nHurricane Party bakes these natural social behaviors into its newly launched iPhone application for two powerful purposes: finding and starting impromptu parties. \nA great party is one where the right elements come together in much the same fashion that hot air and cold air meet to produce a hurricane, explains CEO and co-founder Ren\u00E9 Pinnell of the Austin-based startup. \nThe true test of Hurricane Party's application-meets-nautural-phenomena theory will come in just a few days at SXSW, a hurricane of its own where thousands of film, interactive and music nerds descend upon Austin for one giant week-long f\u00EAte. \n\n\n\n\nHurricane Party may be ready for its coming out party, but the startup has been gestating since 2008. Pinnell, then an aspiring filmmaker, returned to school to study design. On his first day, Pinnell and his partner were instructed to hybridize biomimicry and emerging systems for a class project. This dissection of natural systems inspired Pinnell to start thinking about the relationship between hurricanes and spontaneous gatherings.\nThe idea only matured into a business in 2010 after being incubated at Capital Factory, an Austin accelerator program. Today, Hurricane Party has seen months of alpha testing in Austin and represents the passion of its four-man team \u2014 Pinnell is joined by co-founder Eric Katerman and engineers A.T. Fouty and Richard McClellan. \n\n\n\n\nThe app is self-explanatory in purpose and practice, though there are several features worth noting. Hurricane Party pulls in events from Facebook to seed the experience, but only shows (or allows) events happening within 24 hours from the present time. \nLocation also factors into the experience, so the app only displays parties taking place near the user's geographical whereabouts. These calculated party filters ensure that the app gets users \"off the couch, out the door and spending time with friends,\" says Pinnell.\nIn creating parties, users have the simplest and most obvious options: who, what, where and when. The would-be party-starter has three privacy choices and can choose to keep the event invite-only, open it up to Hurricane Party friends or make the party public. \n\n\n\n\nHurricane parties also have associated media streams, which currently just consisting of chats and photos. The in-chat photo experience already offers party goers a visual way to discuss party happenings, but the experience is one that Pinnell hopes to make as rich as possible over time.\nEventually, Hurricane Party will monetize through in-app specials. Think of specials as daily deal alternatives attached to events or venues. The startup is experimenting with specials as we speak and recently offered half-price tickets to a Big Boi concert in Austin, for instance. But the feature is still a manual, nascent commercial offering. Later in the year, local businesses can expect to see a DIY site where they can sign up to run and manage their own deals.\nHurricane Party's immediate future is wrapped up in the SXSW festival; it hopes to hawk the app as the perfect way to gather friends together for more intimate affairs. \"We're going to really bring it at SXSW,\" says Pinnell. \"We want to reclaim the festival.\"\nHurricane Party will rely on its users to do the reclaiming themselves, but not without a little nudge in the right direction. The startup is sponsoring the Ice Cream Man at the show, which means users can use the iPhone app to track down impromptu ice cream parties in downtown Austin and be rewarded with free frosty treats.\nSeries Supported by Microsoft BizSpark\n\n\n\n\nThe Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/03/07/hurricane-party/>