The energetic startup community in St. John’s, N.L., will stage its first Startup Weekend next month, and has already sold out more than half the spots available for the 54-hour technology-business competition.

Jason Janes, a co-founder of Startup St. John’s, and Chris Gardner, the founder of the Common Ground co-working space, are putting together the event for the weekend of Nov. 8 at teh Genesis Centre at Memorial University. It will allow 60 people to spend a weekend putting together companies, the best of which will hopefully become bona fide enterprises.

Where Janes and Gardner have excelled is bringing the broader community in St. John’s in to support the event and learn about what’s happening in the startup world. The sponsors include Rona and Red Bull. It all helps in developing links between the tech-focused businesses and the broader private sector.

“Within the Startup St. John’s community, we’re bringing more people to the event and attracting more people in the community,” said Janes in an interview Wednesday. “We want to bring real value and a real learning experience (to the participants) and offer a safe, friendly environment to pitch their ideas.”

Startup Weekend is an international organization based in Seattle, Wash., that organizes events around the world giving teams of people one weekend to form a business. Participants — business people, programmers, designers — gather on a Friday afternoon and people present ideas for businesses. Teams form around the ideas they like and go to work on building the business.

The business types contact possible customers to validate and hone the idea, while the technical and design people begin to build a prototype. By Sunday afternoon, the teams present what they’ve done and a panel of judges select a winner.

Gardner said the winner will receive a range of prizes designed to encourage the team to continue to develop the business. These include six months’ tenancy at Common Ground and a day of mentorship with senior consultants from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Janes said all 30 tickets for the business participants have sold out. They had planned to have 20 of these spaces but added 10 due to strong demand. Of the 15 spots available for programmers and 15 for designers, there are still spots available.

“Right now we have enough for a very successful event,” said Janes. “We just want to make it an over-the-top event.”

Sally Ng, the executive director of Planet Hatch in Fredericton, will travel to St. John’s to help with the event. The judges lined up so far are Ron Taylor, the CEO of the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Technology Industries and management consultant Marvin Chaulk.

Startup St. John’s, which is less than a year old, already has 197 members, and Janes hopes Startup Weekend will attract enough new members to put it comfortably over 200.

Startup Weekends have already become regular features in Halifax and Fredericton, and Janes and Gardner are already talking about another such event in the Newfoundland capital.

“We are already conceiving of what session 2 would look like,” said Janes. “It will be encased among many other entrepreneurial, innovative events.”