Margaret Rosas, Andrew Mueller and Matthew Swinnerton are the forces behind the Techraising on May 20-22. We were lucky to have it at Cruzioworks, it was a blast.

It started with a line of people waiting to pitch their startup ideas.About 30 people had about 35 ideas (some got so enthusiastic they pitched more than one).

The ideas ranged from a new type of shell for pickup trucks to a video game that lets you create a wall from something you photograph — then shoot the wall to bits. (“Very satisfying” commented the presenter).

In the audience were mentors to give advice and people with various skills to join up with the projects if they liked the pitch. Some of the mentors pitched, too.

Chris Neklason of Cruzio surrounded by mentors Dave Britton and Ned Hearn.

That’s Maeve, a Cruzioworkie, looking cool.

Forming teams and splitting off on the first night  (Friday)

Lots of energy in the space.

Saturday morning Scott McNealy gave the keynote.

And Ryan Coonerty made Scott an honorary citizen of Santa Cruz, which clearly thrilled him.

And then the projects began in earnest. It was fun, but people worked hard: coding, writing business plans, putting together prototypes and wireframes.

Yeah, Santa Cruz!

Cruzioworks’ coworking space held up well to the heavy use. Everybody had lots of Internet, lots of electricity, lots of room to spread out. Some people had two laptops, some had three. They only had 48 hours. Some worked through the night.

Here’s the center of the storm: Matthew, Andrew, Margaret. They did an awesome job of feeding the creativity and the fun.

Mentors

The beer project takes a moment to reflect

The Goop group is here and also the Santa Cruz County Public Library’s cadre. The Library did a cool project linking QR codes to the local history database.

The judging panel! A heavy responsibility. The techraising had a touch of American Idol to it.

Andrew is calling up the teams to present their final projects — final, that is, after just two days of intense development. How viable is a startup after two days?

John Roberts demonstrated a meetup website for cyclists. “It sucks to ride alone.”

The judges.

Here’s a prototype of an automatic beer-making machine — it will brew homemade beer while you’re away.

And Sizemyk and Goop — a lot of good projects.