There can never be too many girls in tech, so join Tech Chics YYZ for an evening to connect with other female entrepreneurs like you. Tech Chics YYZ is a Toronto based network for emerging and established female entrepreneurs in mobile, web and software platforms. 

The first get together of Tech Chics YYZ is happening On Match 7th. Registration is open and this is a free event. The two hours event promises to be filled with “50,000 foot wisdom, perspective, proven expertise and tactical advice from those who’ve done it and are in the process of.”  Geared towards high caliber tech founders, CTOs, investors and promising young start-ups, this event is intended to foster collaboration, mentoring and partnerships.

So there you go!

I hope you are all enjoying an awesome break and looking forward to 2012, I know I am!

2012 is going to bring in a slew of awesome conferences, lectures and hackathon to attend. As I am putting together our Hackdays hackathon schedule for 2012 I realized I have not told you all about Art Science Camp and since I am helping Jen Dodd (the managing director of Subtle Technologies) organize it, it is about time to remedy that.

Art Science Camp is an unconference organized co-presented by Hart House and Subtle Technologies (disclosure: I joined Subtle Technologies’ board). Every year Subtle Technologies brings us the Subtle Festival. For 15 years the Festival has been bringing people together to promote wonder, incite creativity and spark innovation across disciplines. The Subtle symposium, performances, workshops, screenings, exhibitions and networking sessions provide a forum to explore ideas and pose questions at the intersection of art, science and technology. I am sure you will want to attend next year’s festival! But in the meantime, join us for Art Science Camp.

So what is Art Science Camp: It is an Art, Science and Technology unconference. A two day conference which will peek your curiosity and broaden your interest by intertwining art, science and technology in a series of peer presentations.

Art Science Camp starts on Friday February 3rd, 2012 at 7 PM and gathers artists, scientists, students, engineers, architects, designers and geeks. The Friday evening party is the venue for collaboratively creating a program of events to take place the next day. Everyone is encouraged to bring a crazy idea, a work in progress, or a vital topic for discussion, and to organize a session around it. Anyone interested a presentation or a discussion can claim a presentation spot on the schedule.

Last year, the first Art Science Camp included presentations by:
Eric Boyd – wearable electronics designer, Toronto Hacklab leader

Dan Falk – Knight Science Journalism fellow, popular science author

Michael Nielsen - quantum computation pioneer and author.

Like last year, Art Science Camp is going to aim at bringing together people who would not normally have conversations with each other, and create a space for surprising and serendipitous connections.

The first Art Science Camp last year sold out, and this year it is about to sell out, so if you are interested in getting a ticket, don’t delay. Registration is open and we have close to 100 attendees already.

We are also looking for sponsors to make this year’s unconference unforgettable. If you can land a hand, help with sponsorships, sponsor lunch, dinner or drinks, please get in touch. An awesome sponsorship which helps defray the cost of this volunteer event starts at $250.
If you have any questions about sponsorships or how you could lend a hand, get in touch.

•  Art Science Camp (#artscicamp)
• Date: Friday February 3rd at 7 PM to – Saturday Feb 4th at 6 PM
• Location: University of Toronto, Hart House, 7 Hart House Circle
• Registration: Open
• Cost: $10.00
• Available for sponsorship

[Photograph (c) Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center]

Are you ready for Toronto’s entrepreneurial event of the year?

Join Chris O’Neill of Google Canada, Austin Hill of Brudder Ventures, Leila Boujnane of Idée Inc., Nancy Peterson of Homestars, Darren Anderson of Vive Nano, Erin Bury of Sprouter, Mike McDerment of Freshbooks and many, many others at the Small Business Forum – Toronto’s entrepreneurial event of the year!

On October 19th, more than 2,000 entrepreneurs, prospective entrepreneurs and small business owners will attend Enterprise Toronto’s 10th annual Small Business Forum. This year’s theme – finding and retaining customers!

When: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 8:00 AM – 9:00 PM
Where: Metro Toronto Convention Centre
255 Front St W, Toronto, ON, Canada

Joins us!

If you have not hear about hohoTO then you must be living under a rock!

A group of us have been working very hard in the past week to get Toronto’s Geek Event of the year under way. And I have to say that I am totally blown away by what we have accomplished in a matter of 72 hours: scheduled the party (it is now for Monday December 15, 2008); booked the venue, sold tickets, got sponsors and in total fund raised over $10,000 from our generous sponsors and ticket buyers all to go to the Toronto Daily Food Bank. But I want more. I am a demanding person I know. I want every single one of you out there who has not bought a ticket to buy one immediately. Why? Because our ticket price is going to increase on Tuesday and it will increase by $5 everyday until December 15. So buy your ticket now, or allow me to part you with more of your money on the day of the event because… you know… you will want to attend and tickets at the door will be prohibitive!

All the event details that are fit to blog follow:

Location: The Mod Club

Date and Time: starting at 19:00 on Monday December 15, 2008

There will be incredible geeks to meet, chat to, drink and dance with. There will be awesome food. A great charity to support and an awesome way to end the year. Planning this event has brought back fond memories of my early years fundraising for the Food Bank, the Toronto Humane Society and Aids Action Now: things get done before people care! A great thank you to the entire Toronto technology community who has been incredibly supportive in the planning and fundraising for this event. A great thank you to all the folks who rolled up their sleeves without asking questions and got working, working, working to get things done. We are at the half way mark (the event is in a week) and I still wish we could fund raise double the amount of money we currently fundraised, why you ask? Because these are difficult times for a lot of people, you have seen the scary headline…

Please give generously. Please buy a ticket for yourself or someone whose company you enjoy! Please help us make a difference for The Toronto Food Bank. And if you can’t attend the event, well, please consider buying a ticket anyway, your donation will go straight to the Daily Bread Food Bank.

Only positive thoughts forward.

(Photograph copyright Tim)

We need you to get the word out to everyone in the software/technology space in Toronto as we would love to see everyone before the year end. The number of tickets for the party is limited so getting your ticket is a must – ’cause begging ain’t gonna to get you in the door.

When: Tuesday Monday December 16 15, 2008 starting at 19:00

Where: The ModClub

Who: Geeks! and everyone else.

You are all welcome to join us. All proceeds from the party will go to supporting the Toronto Daily Food Bank. More details to come your way in the very near future but don’t let that stop you from getting your ticket(s) now.

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 $200

For 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.

The good folks at StartupNorth are organizing Toronto’s second StartupCamp. It will be an awesome event to attend. So if you have not already registered, get yourselves to the event registration page pronto. This is sure to sell out. The event will be held at the Carlu following the first StartupCamp format.

The format is simple: 5 startups will be selected to present their respective pitches. Each startup gets 5 minutes. So polish that pitch before you show up! Once each presentation is completed, the audience gets involved in a Q&A and grills the presenting startups. I am sure it is nothing compared to what you would have to put up with if you were preparing to raise a fund so come prepared and have fun.

Event Details:

What: StartupCamp Toronto
When: Tuesday April 29th, 2008
Time: 6PM – 9PM
Location: The Carlu, 444 Yonge Street, 7th Floor, Toronto

Register here.

Compensation for your board
Brad Feld (Mobius Venture Capital) has a great post about board compensations and since he comes at this question from an entrepreneur’s perspective (in an early stage company), a board member and an investor / VC in companies that had board members at early stages he provides a balanced perspective.

His key points:

• 0.25% to 1.00% vesting annually over four years
• Single trigger acceleration on change of control
• Clear understanding as to how the vesting will work if the board member leaves the board
• No direct cash compensation
• Reimbursements for reasonable expenses
• Opportunity to invest in the most recent financing

Web 2.0 Economics
One of the questions post TTN was around Web 2.0 economics and exit strategies involving a GEMAYANI acquisition: again Brad Feld nails it in his post: "Raise $2 to $6 million to be spent over a two to three year period, with an exit of a $20 to $50 million sale to one of the GEMAYANI’s"

Venture Capital
An Entrepreneur on Series A Financings: Niel Robertson – CTO of Newmerix writes about his experience with early stage venture financing. A good read.

Building the Team!
In this post, Bernard Moon writes about building a team from an entrepreneur’s perspective. Trust is essential. As far as I am concerned trust is the cornerstone on which your team is built. If you don’t have trust, you don’t have a team and once trust is broken your team is done for. Bernard Moon adds a few items to the trust mix:

• Find out what motivates people
• Check egos at the door.
• Keep the communications channels open.
• Recruit the best talent available
• Test drive your team future team member

Why Most VC’s Don’t Sign NDAs

10 Rules For Web Startups
Evan Williams of Odeo has a great ten rules list for web startups. Give it a good read.

And let me finish with Entrepreneurial Proverbs from Marc Hedlund. Read his post, read the comments too. This is a sweet, sweet, sweet post! Marc Hedlund is an entrepreneur-in-residence at O’Reilly Media; he actually just left the entrepreneur-in-residence program to start working on his venture full time.

Some of my favourite proverbs include:

• Momentum builds on itself — just start.
• If you keep your secrets from the market, the market will keep its secrets from you
• Work only with people you like and believe in
• Great things are made by people who share a passion, not by those who have been talked into one

And perhaps if you need a bit of structure to get you going, Getting Things Done is here to help. The basic principles and guidelines can easily be read here. I found that you don’t have to agree with all the approaches and recommendations. Pick what works for you and start improving how you work. Pen and paper work too.

Keep on trucking!

TTN is back indeed. For those of you who are not familiar with TTN, find out about it here:

Ah, the revival of TTN. First things first: sorry about the very long silence. I have been insanely busy and traveling with really little time in Toronto to organize a get together. But here I am now.

I received a lot of feedback from you all and here is what TTN will be:

• a founders (only) forum for technology firms in all stages.

This forum will be dedicated to helping founders grow their firms. We will invite speakers, dissect our challenges, and you (as a founder) can benefit from the knowledge and expertise of other founders who
are willing to share what they have learned over the years.

So, if you are a technology/software founder, you are welcome to join TTN. I can already hear the screaming: what? a founders only forum? oh by gosh what do I do if I am not one but enjoy the company of founders? what gives? can you not be all inclusive? well, no. You can always join us for beers after the session. But founders only. We are mean peeps!

I know I won’t hear the end of it: how can you do that, this is the decade of the unconference, everyone should be welcome, it is the camp world, it is the [.....] fill in the blank. Well, TTN worked for us in the past. We like a small group of tech founders to discuss specific challenges and learn from each others. The size limit is 10 for this session. We will open it to more people in the next session. If you are interested in participating email me at lboujnane at ideeinc dot com. See you next week.

TTN Session Details:

When: Tuesday March 7, 2006
Time: 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Where: the Idée office at 223 Queen Street East
Agenda: Setting up a board of advisors, tips and tricks and how to work with your board

After the session we can all adjourn for a couple of drinks at c’est what on Front street.
TTN will also a bi-monthly gathering rather than a weekly one.