Just days ago Matt Shobe, BigDoor’s Chief Design Officer, myself and an ad hoc team of talented individuals were knee deep in code developing a new mobile music app in one weekend.

This was the challenge Startup Weekend proposed to developers, designers, marketers and project managers alike – build and demo a product in less than 54 hours.

It was the pace of a startup, times two, then condensed into one weekend. Sleep was a luxury, and time was our greatest enemy.

The goal was to get something working ASAP. Each team was aiming to build a prototype fast, then iterate on their idea.

In an environment like this you reach for your bag of tricks. Whatever your background you’ll enviably go with what you know will get the job done fast.

For designers this could be proven user interface conventions and drawing tools like Adobe Illustrator or Fireworks. For developers this could be services like Google App Engine for web hosting, Facebook for user authentication and of course BigDoor for a game mechanics.

These “tricks” save much needed time allowing you to focus on the core concepts of your product or idea. Startup Weekend became a microcosm of these real world solutions to solve problems in hours rather than weeks or months.

When the dust settled on demo day I’d say 9 out of the 13 teams had a game element in their product or service.

For the winning team that created CrowdSort.me it was a point system tied to a voting mechanic. Likewise the second place team used a leaderboard to generate a video playlist for Shubz.tv.

Not only did examples like these make for fun and creative solutions, but it reminded me of how flexible BigDoor’s API is and how common these mechanics are.

Personally it was my first Startup Weekend event, but it will not be my last. Now that I’ve recovered from the sleepless blur that was the weekend, I can say confidently I’m ready for more.

Hope to see you at the next Startup Weekend.