Tagged: toronto

TinFoil Hat Contest!

Tinfoil

(** 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 8:15

There 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.

DemoCamp 18 in Toronto

Robotcircle

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.

StartupCamp Toronto

Startupcam

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.

StartupCamp Toronto

Startupcamtoronto

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.

DemoCamp Toronto: Number 17

Democamptoronto

Folks: it is on, DemoCamp 17 is happening in Toronto. We are looking for fantastic demonstrations to excite us! So if you are working on anything you think would be an awesome presentation at DemoCamp: we want to hear from you. Now. So please submit your presentation proposal and register to attend.

Join us at DemoCamp 17:

Date: Monday Feb 25, 2008
Time: 5:30pm – 9:00pm
Where: Toronto Board of Trade, 1 First Canadian Place, Toronto, ON

Now listen folks, DemoCamp is a participant-driven event. It can only get better with your participation, it can only become smashing with your interest and participation. If you are out there, working in technology and interested in helping further build this little community of ours, then come on out. There are no excuses for not participating. If you are a first time attendee: please ping me. I will introduce you. I will take you around and I will make you wonder why you have not attend all the previous DemoCamp. You can ping me at lboujnane {@} ideeinc.com – Looking forward to welcoming you! We are a very welcoming bunch. Really!

Schedule

5:00 – Doors open
6:00-7:00pm – Demos
7:30-8:00pm – Ignite Presentations
9:00 – We move to the pub to continue our conversations and share a few pints.

We are looking for demos and Ignite presentations.

DemoCamp rules:

  • All demos are 5 minutes demo presentations
  • No powerpoint for the demonstrations; we have made a couple of exceptions in the past but really we want to see your working stuff and not a powerpoint. Plus powerpoint is evil – we all know that – and we are good. So no powerpoint!
  • Ignite presentations take the same amount of time: 5 minutes. They should be entertaining and fun. You get 20 slides x 15 seconds per slide. All Ignite presentations need to be submitted in advance so either you are ready to rock the house or not!

So, what are you waiting for: submit your demo or Ignite talk now. I will publish a little guide to doing demos at DemoCamp but for now I will leave you with this little write up from Dave Winer and just remember:

If you have five minutes to tell your story, make sure that by the time minute #1 is over, the prospect has seen enough to be totally blown away.

Back to running and blogging!

I am back to running: nothing like a snow storm to get me out there. Yesterday’s 6km run on Queen Street amounted to being a lovely obstacle course. Getting home I felt fantastic so I went ahead and baked a chocolate cake for the office and prepared French toast for the morning breakfast – and now the Idealists will be having both French toast and chocolate cake at Idee! The benefits of running! (and much energy afterwards).

Today’s links:
VC Baby video, enjoy!

Programmers and dress code: what’s with the beards? Somebody should help these folks and introduce them to Gillette!

The story of stuff: a great video. Warning: long video

According Wired Magazine, the person who got the “Here Comes Another Bubble” video pulled down from YouTube was Lane Hartwell. She is the photographer whose photograph of Owen Thomas appears in the video. I love Lane’s photography and it is sad that she took down here Flickr photos. I can see her frustrations but can’t there be a happy medium? How about just some link love, attribution from the video creators. I mean that’s really not hard to do!

Tim Bray’s "Message from the Web" is a must read!

How to evaluate a product idea: this is timely as we are engaging in a new product development!

The visual search King

Ideecluster_2

Paul’s glamour shot is gracing the pages of StartupNorth. The man loves his hardware! No really. He does. I will have to write up a little blog post about the Idée cluster. But in the meantime, drop by and read Jevon’s MacDonald piece. Vive Idée! and thank you Jevon – yes, we are up to some great things… that we will share soon soon.