Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
- Passion at work
From Mavericks at work
“.. in business, as in basket ball, the smart take from the strong – that the best way to outperform the competition is to outthink the competition.. ” and it’s the “..mavericks do the work that matters most – the work of originality, creativity, and experimentation..” totally driven by passion!
Which makes me really excited about the sold out Refesh event on Monday: where passion meets ignite presentations!
We will start the evening with a passion presentation by Peter Flaschner followed by 6 Ignite presentations and since I am the last one that evening (and it is Monday too!), I will make my TinEye Ignite presentation extra tasty!
StayFresh: 7 PM – 10 PM, Centre for Social Innovation @ 215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 120 (Map)
Ignite Speakers:
- Erin Bury, RedWire
- Rachel Azagury, CreatingABuzz
- Saul Colt, Freshbooks
- Kieran Huggins, MyTTC
- Noah Godfrey, GigPark
- Leila Boujnane, Idée Inc.
Photograph (c) marfis75
- HackLab.To Pi Day Partay!
Pi Day is happening on March 14 and to celebrate in ultimate geekiness, the HackLab in Toronto is having a pie party! Well it is a pie contest really disgusied as a pie party!
Entrance to the party is a $10 donation (which will go towards lab expenses), or bring a pie. Homemade pies only! Quiche and other savory things made in round dishes count as pie.
Things will start up at 7pm at 170a Baldwin Street. Join us!
- WineCamp – Toronto version
WineCamp is tomorrow and I am looking forward to some wine learning. I am a wine snob – read does not drink Ontario wines, but not because I don’t think they could be great, oh no, simply because my knowledge of Ontario wine is limited. Sandy Ward is going to fix that tomorrow! After being in Canada for so long, it is about time I learned something about its wines! I am afraid France will always have my heart and my cheese plate!
- Research in action at University of Toronto on March 24
And it is happening again. Research in action presented by the department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto is taking place on March 24, 2009 from 1 PM to 6 PM. And of course as all previous years, the website describing what is usually an awesome get together and demonstrations by awesome group researchers and projects is pathetic.
I have been saying for 3 years now that if you want industry relations and collaborations you are gonna have to do a little bit better than this:
The department hopes “Research in Action” will provide a catalyst for new partnerships- and play a role in building the City of Toronto as a leader in high technology.
Bla bla bla. Please give me the following:
- A description and links for each project that is in the showcase. I want to read the project description not google it from the description provided in your advertising postcard
- A link to the teams working on the various project. I mean how can I develop relationships with folks I don’t know? Can I please get to know you? Links, profiles, videos, anything?
- Linkable descriptions for the projects: If you want to spread the word, than I need links to forward to colleagues who may be interested in some of the projects you will be showing. I know my colleagues, I also know what they are interested in. I can get them to you but only if I have what I need. Links = getting the word out = participation = building a community. It is not complicated.
- Stop sending out postcards. And no, I don’t need a description of last year’s projects on this year’s website. I need this year’s descriptions.
Ok, folks, please get to it. Pronto. Please help me help you. Oui?
Now that my rant is out of the way, here are the details for attending (and yes, you will meet some great folks!): Tuesday March 24, 2009; 1 PM to 6 PM at the Bahen Centre for Information Technology; 40 St George Street, Room 3200. Registration and further *limited* details here.
- DemoCamp TO Networking Tickets
As of 18:15 today there are still 28 free networking DemoCamp tickets if folks are interested. Go get them folks! Once these tickets are gone, that will be it.
- DemoCamp Toronto: DC19 March 3, 2009 – Sold out!
I know I missed DemoCamp and I am sure you have too since we get constant inquiries about the next DemoCamp. We are back in the planning bandwagon and will be able to set up a whole series of DemoCamps in Toronto in the coming months. So stay tuned for details.
The next DemoCamp TO is happening March 3, 2009.
There are two sets of tickets, the demo tickets and the networking only tickets. Everyone attending will need a ticket (your registration receipt from Eventbrite is your ticket). The demo tickets allow the ticket holders to view the demos on the second floor of the pub; the networking tickets are limited to the ground floor and will allow ticket holders to networking with attendees.
Since this event is sold out I am not going to bore you with the details of how to register! I am sorry that we are limited by the venue size as it would be awesome to see many of you – we don’t have enough face time in our industry! If you are aware of a large free space downtown that we could use for the next democamp, please get in touch. I can be reached at lboujnane (@) ideeinc.com We are always looking for free space and this is a limitation in organizing DemoCamps.
We are of course looking for awesome presentations – as always. This is an opportunity for you to show your peers what you have been working on, get some feedback and impress!
How to present?
All presentations are 5 minutes. There are 2 types of presentations:
- Demos – 2 slides, if necessary to describe the problem or market, then functioning software that can be demo-ed
- Ignites – 20 slides x 15 seconds/slide, slides advance automatically every 15 seconds
As a presenter, you get 5 minutes to tell us your story and demo your application. To submit your presentation please drop David Crow and email at david (@) davidcrow.ca or simply use the forms at Strutta. If you have any questions, please drop me a line lboujnane (@) ideeinc.com
David has all the DemoCamp details including prizes!
We have a wonderful group of sponsors who stepped up to support DemoCamp Toronto: Hyndman Law, RedFlagDeals, Sun Start Up Essentials, MeshU, AshleyIT Services and Microsoft BizPark.
- Honoring the Internet’s Best: The Webby Awards
I have been indicted inducted into the Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences and will be a judge in this year’s annual Webby Awards. For more than a decade, The Webby Awards (hailed as ‘The Oscars of the Internet’ by The New York Times) has been celebrating and discovering the most creative and innovative people and sites online. The Webby Awards recognizes the very best Websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile sites and content created specifically for the Web.
And this year I am looking forward to being one of the judges. I will be in awesome company joining such members as Virgin Founder Richard Branson, musician David Bowie, Flickr Co-Founder Caterina Fake, The Huffington Post Founder Arianna Huffington and creator of ‘The Simpsons’ Matt Groening. The 13th Annual Webby Awards celebration will be in June 2009 in New York City. Last year’s events were emceed by Seth Myers of Saturday Night Live and Judah Friedlander of 30 Rock, and attended by over 800 industry luminaries and celebrities, including music legends David Byrne and will.i.am, Stephen Colbert, Michel Gondry, Lorne Michaels and Tim & Eric.
Looking forward to an exiciting evening with you all.
- It is personal
That would be the user generated content conference in February 2009 in California. I will be speaking at the conference and I am looking forward to it. I am surrounded by user generated content: open source software in the software space, wikipedia, flickr and creative commons, ThinkBig, just to name a few. I am looking forward to meeting some of the other speakers and putting together a kick ass presentation.I am obsessed these days with search, particularly searching user generated content. You can’t use what you can’t find. I know that everyone else is more concerned about trust and accuracy: like in can you trust what you are reading and is it accurate. Search will find the accuracies and inaccuracies all the same! Searching photographs is particularly painful since we typically rely on keywords to be associated with images to find them. It is a starting point but it is limiting. Large scale image searching on the web is still in its infancy. We have seen a lot of development in the search space this year, with the introductions of visual search features, colour searching, keywords + geotags but we still have a ways to go. What I have been thinking a lot about is the creation of a world visual repository: imagine (soon) being able to take a photograph of anything and getting back (useful) information about what you photographed, via mobile devices preferrably.
How far are we from this dream? I say: not very far. Not very far. Start work on stealth project now!
- Queen’s Entrepreneurs Competition 2009
I am looking forward to being one of the judges for QEC 2009 (Queen’s Entrepreneurs Competition). Although their website needs major help (!), the event promises to be awesome. Previous years account for that already! For the 21st year in a row, Queen’s University is putting on the Queen’s Entrepreneurs’ Competition (QEC). The QEC is a business plan competition that brings students from top schools around the world to Kingston to compete for over $25,000 worth of investment grants. There will be 16 finalists which is going to make for some exciting judging…Besides the competition, meeting the other judges and speakers, I am looking forward to meeting like-minded entrepreneurs and hearing some of their stories and of course offering any help I can.
- ProductCampToronto
ProductCamp is coming to Toronto! That’s exciting. I never attended the Toronto Product Management Association meetings. I never found them to be very relevant to our high tech product management worlds (we are a strange bunch at the ideeplex) so I am very interested to see how the ProductCamp unconference will shape up. All the details fit to blog are here. This is just a drive by blog post as I don’t want to forget about getting involved. Congrats to Chris Herbert’s for the launch and Chris Gurney whose post pointed me in the right directions.
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