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Startup Weekend always sounds like mission impossible: you have 54 hours - from Friday night until Sunday night - to pitch, then build, then demo a product. But the intensity and creativity of the teams that come together for these events are impressive. Great ideas, great products, great teams, and yes despite the short duration, great startups are hatched there.

That's why it's pretty exciting to see the next San Francisco Startup Weekend turn its sights on the education technology industry.

Startup Weekend, an organization dedicated to the worldwide education and proliferation of entrepreneurship, has made a name for itself over the last few years with its unique weekend-long events. Over 17,000 participants have attended one of the organization's 120+ global events, from which over 560 new startups have launched. Thanks to a grant announced today from the Kauffman Foundation, Startup Weekend to continue to grow and better educate entrepreneurs in more cities around the globe.

Entrepreneurship is a trait that knows no boundaries. Those that possess it come in all shapes, sizes, ethnicities and genders, and in some places, the startup spirit is bringing together groups of people that are otherwise at odds with each other. Nowhere in the world is this more evident than in the middle east, where Palestinians and Israelis continue their centuries-long feud, but one organization is throwing all of that out in the name of entrepreneurship and peace.

Back in January, a healthy comment discussion followed a post in which we looked at the topic of "spec work," or freelance work done for a client before an agreement of compensation is formed. One of the most vocal opponents to spec work is Andrew Hyde of TechStars and StartupWeekend fame, whose blunt opinions sparked a debate over how a marketplace for freelance work should properly function. Today, Hyde and a few friends are launching Pick, a marketplace and directory that connects clients with freelancers.

Monday evening I was made aware of a particularly interesting promotion that will be taking place over the course of two days before South by Southwest (SXSW). The event, or tour, is called The Startup Bus, and will challenge 12 participants to create as many tech

It has been well over a month since the devastating earthquake struck near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, and while thousands of relief workers have flocked to the island, some of the efforts are still in the planning stage. Though innovative tech startups aren't the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of a developing nation like Haiti, the founders of Seattle-based Startup Weekend believe their model for entrepreneurship and innovation is the kind of spark the country needs to get back on it's feet and prosper in the future.

Known by many as The Big Apple, and by some in the tech scene as Silicon Alley, New York City has been an international hub for media, art and business for decades. More recently New York has ebbed and flowed with the success and failures of the Internet startup culture, and is now well on its way to cementing its reputation alongside Silicon Valley as a driving global force in the industry.

In November of last year, more than 50 people came together for Startup Weekend Los Angeles. They pitched 45 different entrepreneurial ideas, eventually narrowing them into seven teams. They spent Saturday and Sunday working around the clock to create working prototypes of these ideas with help from an expert panel of mentors, speakers and even lawyers.

Then they voted, and the top vote-getter - Mingly - was born, and has since been invited to Twiistup, a showcase for hot upcoming startups in Los Angeles at the end of January.

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about the emerging phenomenon of weekend code-a-thons in which programmers and designers get together over a short period of time to try to build web apps really fast. We went over some of the different approaches to the weekend code-a-thon and interviewed a participant in the Rails Rumble in an attempt to try and figure out why these get togethers are so attractive. An upcoming event in Santa Clara, California called Weekend Apps is taking a slightly different approach and not just focusing on app building, but also about building a sound business.