And startup weekend has begun!

Brett Bumeter (@brettbum) is the owner of Softduit Media and entered social media building on 18 years of experience in sales, intelligence, process management, finance, accounting & contracts.

He left the high rise corporate world and an office with a view of a man made pond in Buckhead, for a Cove on Lake Wylie across from Charlotte, NC where a WiFi connection and an international airport keep him connected to the world.

In 2005, Brett began working as a business developer, web designer, blogger, & blog marketer. Writing intelligence estimates & strategy recommendations for Army Intelligence & Fortune 500 companies lent itself well to writing blog articles, & a double major in finance & accounting + a master’s in tax law didn’t hurt.

He has developed social media campaigns for Izod, Digital River & Nuance makers of Dragon Naturally Speaking. He has provided blog consulting services for CEOs of firms in Ireland, New York, Belize, Las Vegas, Burbank, Toronto & many more. He works with clients to increase their customer relationships & attract new business through social media.

Brett speaks at conferences around the country helping other businesses, bloggers and web designers profitably expand their success with social media. He is also a product evangelist, trainer & blogger for WindowsLiveWriter, MindManager, Dragon Naturally Speaking, Artisteer & WordPress. He covers consumer electronics, software, social media, solar power, personal finance, politics & comedy. A Jack of all trades turned professional philosopher.

He offers social media marketing, SEO, and ghost writing services using industry proven strategies. As a blogger, he continues to profitably build strategies that evolve every day in an industry that changes weekly.

Brett has a Bachelor’s of Science from Illinois State Universit, Double Major in Accounting and Finance.  He holds a Masters in Laws from St Thomas University School of Law in International Taxation.  He has graduated from various military intelligence schools in  signals intellegicence and electronic warfare.

Brett will be speaking this year at WordCamp RDU, WordCamp Birmingham, and IzeaFest.  You can definitely catch him at BlogWorld as well.  Plus he runs a Local WordPress Meetup group in Charlotte and training labs called the Lab on the Lake.

Startup Weekend – Holden Beach is only days way. Is everyone excited?

Follow the countdown here: Holden Beach Startup Weekend @ The Tiny Timer

Josh Tucker (@itninja ) has spent most of his life in the NC Triangle area.  While his most leveraged skill is PHP development, his desire to constantly learn new geeky things has led him to a diverse work history of tech shops, systems integration companies, a glass and metal shop in the Bronx, a startup tire recycling company, a startup healthcare EMR firm and most recently providing professional IT consulting services for home users and small businesses.  Aside from learning, his passion is people and he believes technology comes second to empathy.

His hobbies are as diverse as his work history.  When he isn’t working, Josh enjoys restoring his historical home with his wife, AV convergence into home networks, mobile computing and security (both IT and physical).

Josh Gibbs (@jkgibbs ) grew up in the foothills of Tennessee, but don’t let this hillbilly fool you. His unique skill-set of graphic design, marketing strategy, and informational heuristics has allowed him to drive successful marketing campaigns and develop creative pieces for companies like Cisco Systems, VMware, Hewlett-Packard, and Salesforce.com.

In his spare time, Josh works with smaller companies to help them create a niche for their businesses in the online marketplace by using a mix of traditional, social and new media outlets. Additionally, Josh likes developing fun (and useful) Web apps–like TheTinyTimer.com –that improve on existing solutions by approaching them from a user’s perspective. Along with a development team, he is the lead designer on an Xbox Arcade game that has been approved for release later this year.

Josh earned a B.S. in advertising with a focus on Web usability from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Currently, he serves as the Web marketing director for SharedVue, a cloud marketing technologies company.