The second installment of StartupWeekend has been launched (in beta form) compliments of the folks in Toronto. They pulled it off, they started with a bunch of good ideas, settled on LobbyThem, and were off to the races.

So what is LobbyThem you might ask? Well, according to their blog:

Now an individual can have the same power over their politicians as the most powerful lobbyists. Lobbythem.com will allow 1 person to pose the question that they want their elected officials to act on.

People will be able to go online and either search to see if their issue has already been posed or, if it hasn’t, have the opportunity to pose it and see if others agree. Once any issue reaches a pre-determined threshold (developed now at 100), it will be forwarded to the relevant politician for comment and action.

Politicians respond to things that will endanger their continuance as your elected official.

This is so exciting on so many levels. My hat goes off to the team in Toronto, I know that they put their all into it and got it to beta in a weekend. I am sure that there were many lessons learned along the way that will be applied to future startupweekends, and I cannot wait for us to leverage what they have done as well as the other upcoming weekends that will be going before DC.

Just 5 more weeks and we will be firing up the engine room here in DC and showing the world what we can do in a weekend.