Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
- 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.
- TinFoil Hat Contest!
(** Photo by Dick)
I am planning on having fun this evening at the Toronto Tinfoil Hat Contest organized by Funkless! But folks, please have mercy on me as I still need to make an early flight in the morning…
Will you join me?
Saturday June 28, 2008
Renaissance Cafe, 1938 Danforth Ave. (just west of woodbine subway)
8pm SHARP. Construction begins at 8:15There will be amazing people, amazing tinfoil constructions, and amazing prizes.
Oh and Mark McKay and I will be the extremely bribe-able judges! I hear Mark McKay does not like pineapple juice and he is a big fan of ChurchKey. You don’t know Mr. McKay? He is the host of Happy Hour with you guessed it Mark McKay. He is a geek video master, a Mesh and MTV Canada videographer and I am a big fan even when his videos get banned!
This evening is brought to you by Cynthia Gould and Lady Tinfoiltress aka Heather Leson and I am honored they invited me to be a judge. I promise not to use our image recognition technologies.
**Dick from Solid State had a great little description for why he takes photographs: "We’ve moved from the ages of bastardry, colonialism, sexism, racism,
fear of atomic discharge and other 56k problems, and now, we’re going
to the frickin’ MOON. On holiday." Awesome.
- Toronto Geek Girl Dinner
The next Toronto Geek Girl dinner is happening tomorrow. All the details fit to print can be viewed here. And by the way, tomorrow’s event is also Toronto Geek Dinner’s first year anniversary. Happy birthday!
- Damian Conway
Don’t wait run to the lecture.
Damian Conway – World Premier Tour – Toronto 2008.
This Perl Monger extraordinaire will be visiting Toronto and delivering, free to the public one of his signature talks! Expect the unexpected.
His talk is currently entitled:
"Temporally Quaquaversal Virtual Nanomachine Programming in
Multiple Topologically Connected Quantum-Relativistic Parallel Timespaces
… Made Easy"He was probably on peyote when he submitted his talk title, but whatever, this is Damian Conway folks, so book your evening.
Details:
Date: Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Time: 18:30 to 21:00
Location: Bahen Centre for Information Technology,
Room: BA-1160, University of Toronto, 40 St. George Street (west side of street, just north of College Ave.)
- RubyFringe

I spent time with Pete Forde this week – one of my very few open evenings – and each time I have a chance to spend some time with him I realize how much alike we are. Well I know I am not as mellow as Pete and certainly not as kind and considerate but boy do we ever get along. So much so that I did not see the time just fly by until it was getting close to midnight! Poor Pete! All that said: RubyFringe organized by the Unspace folks is shaping up nicely. I know there will be tweaks until the last minute – because after all this conference is full of punk rock spirit!I think that as of now RubyFringe is nearly sold out if not sold out at all.
When: July 18-20, 2008
Where: Toronto, Metropolitan Hotel
Schedule and speakers.I am looking forward to seeing you there.
- DemoCamp 18 in Toronto
Photo by Jennifer
It is time for another DemoCamp.
DemoCamp 18 will be held in July. We have all been extremely busy and
it has been a few months since our last DemoCamp (held in February!).
So put on your blue suede shoes and join us. Details below.For those of you who are new to DemoCamp: DemoCamp is one of the must attend events (well besides Founders and Funders)
of the Toronto tech and startup community. Don’t be shy. If you need
introductions or need to figure out who does what, show up early and
introduce yourself to the DemoCamp stewards. We will be happy to
connect you with others with similar interests (we are all geeks! some
of us are even super geeks…).DemoCamp is brought to you by (in alphabetical order by last name!): David Crow,
Jay Goldman, Joey DeVilla, Jay Goldman, Greg Wilson and yours truly.DemoCamp Details:
- When: Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 from 17:30 to 21:00
- Where: Supermarket, 268 Augusta Avenue, Toronto
- Registration can be done here
When you register to attend DemoCamp, you will notice that there are 3 type of registration fees:
- A general ticker: these tickets are free. You will need to register as soon as possible as these sell out very very quickly
- Community supporter tickets: these tickets cost $5 and this fee goes
toward supporting DemoCamp and helps defray any costs associated with
holding DemoCamp
- Community all-star ticket: These tickets cost $10 and again help us
defray costs associated with holding DemoCamp. If you are an awesome
supporter you would buy one of these tickets!
- Sponsor tickets: These are limited to 5 sponsor and cost $200For DemoCamp 18, we are looking for the best demos and ignite presentations ever…Apply to demo here.
The no Powerpoint (or Keynote) rules apply to DemoCamp, so bring
your application and leave the slides home. See you around folks.
- Lunch 2.0
We had a great time at the Whishingline Studio. I did not think I was going to be able to attend but the TinEye robots smiled upon me. It was nice to visit the Wishingline studio and to meet Scott’s team. I used to run by his studio location so I was familiar with the area. Wishingline is on Queen street very East of the Ideeplex.
I learn so much from seeing people work in their environment and that’s why I am so found of Lunch 2.0. If you are wondering what we do during a Lunch 2.0 event? It is simple: we get to see a local startup office, learn about them, see any work they are willing to showcase and meet other people … and grow our little community.
I am looking forward to the next Lunch 2.0 event. If you are a local startup, design studio, software firm and are interested in holding the next Lunch 2.0, get in touch lboujnane (at) ideeinc.com and I will be happy to get you going. We can now confirm that the Wishingline studios are not an igloo, although they are in Toronto (Canada)!
- Funders and Founders
Jevon MacDonald and David Crow are at it again with the second Toronto Founders & Funders dinner on June 4, 2008.
I had a blast at the first one and got a chance to meet some amazing folks. I am hoping for a repeat on June 4. My schedule is a bit insane these days and I will be making it back to TO just for the dinner! I fly back out to NYC on the morning on the dreaded 6 AM flight. I will be praying for no delays as I am presenting at the American Publishers Association Annual Conference at 9 AM! I will wear my superwoman cape and fly above the traffic!
- CIX – Canadian Innovation Exchange
If you are coming to CIX (Canadian Innovation Exchange), come say hello.
I am on the Canadian Innovation Success Stories panel and will be around.CIX is being held in Toronto on April 29th-30th. Participants include a mix of (Canadian and US) VCs, angel investors and some of Canada’s greatest entrepreneurs. This is a great opportunity to network with other entrepreneurs, pitch, see pitches (great line up of presenting companies) and check out the innovation and entrepreneurship landscape in Toronto!
You can register to attend here and the full details of my panel is below:
Canadian Innovation Success Stories
Tuesday April 29th
14:50 – 15:45
Carlu Concert Hall, 444 Yonge Street, TorontoMeet the leader of an innovative company that has made it happen! What
are the key reasons for their success? What adversity did they need to
overcome to succeed and how did they do it? What did they learn along
the way?Host
Ian Portsmouth, Editor & Associate Publisher, PROFIT MagazineSpeakers
Justin Belobaba, Founder & CEO, Medical Telcom Group
Leila Boujnane, Co-Founder & CEO, Idee Inc.
Ron Neumann, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Communitech
Jeremy Wright, CEO, b5mediaThe awesome line up of presenting companies includes:
- Accipiter Radar Technologies Inc., Fonthill, ON
- Acquisio, Saint Lambert, PQ
- Akoha Inc, Montreal, PQ
- Big Deal Games Inc., Toronto, ON
- Blueprint Software Systems, Toronto, ON
- Brainpark, Inc, Toronto, ON
- CellWand Communications, Toronto, ON
- Coveo, Quebec City, PQ
- Digital Payment Technologies Corp., Burnaby, BC
- dthree Inc., Mississauga, ON
- HomeZilla, Toronto, ON
- Kaben Wireless Silicon Inc., Ottawa, ON
- Mobidia, Inc., Vancouver, BC
- Octopz, Toronto, ON
- Planeteye Inc., Toronto, ON
- Redwood Technologies, Calgary, AB
- Spatial View Inc., Toronto, ON
- Standout Jobs, Inc. Montreal, PQ
- Streametrics Corporation Inc., Montreal, PQ
- StartupCamp Toronto
StartupCamp Toronto is happening next week and it is going to be awesome and I am not just saying that because I will be opening up the sessions with a kick ass presentation… I am saying that it is going to be awesome because so so much is happening in the Toronto startup scene right now. The scene is a far cry from what I saw just a couple of years ago and I am sure, totally sure that it has to do with the maturity of the tech community in Toronto. I am loving it!
I am looking forward to seeing everyone, fresh faces and the VCs who will venture out of their respective dens to grace us with their presence. All kidding aside: I am very happy to be participating at StartupCamp. I can guarantee you:
- smart VCs: oh yeah, the smart ones will be there!
- great entrepreneurs to talk to and learn from
- great sharing of knowledge
- great potential employees to hire (keep your eyes peeled for great talent!)
- a fantastic opportunity to get to know your community and get involved and perhaps join a startup if you are not currently working at one (what are you waiting for?)
- and most importantly a set of innovative companies who may be the talk of town in the months to come
I can’t help you with tickets as I think they are now sold out; but if you would have loved to participate, please ping Jevon MacDonald to make sure that he starts working on StartupCamp 3 for Toronto. The great folks at StartupNorth are doing a great job of keeping the spotlight on startups.
The format for the StartupCamp ievening next week is simple: 5 Startups will have 5 minutes each to pitch. The audience will then have 10 minutes to ask them a series of questions, typically "are you a pain killer or an a vitamin" type of questions, marketing plans, growth plans and so forth. The startups will be selected in advance and the list of presenting companies announced before the event. Watch StartupNorth for further details.




