Montreal Tech Watch

Highlights from the meetup:

• I thought there wouldn’t be many people, because I knew many were out of town, to SXSW or to other conferences like TED. When I entered Cafeteria, I saw a couple of guys who were already there last month, like Carl Mercier, and of course Ben Yoskovitz but what I quickly noticed that there were many new faces. That was a nice suprise.
• The idea of meeting over a breakfast is really cool. It is much more natural than a pure networking event, you sit down, order something, and talk about upcoming projects and the tech scene. People get to exchange very easily without the akwardness you can find sometimes at the typical “5 a 7″ in town.
• Also a very good thing is the focus. Everyone is involved in tech, and they are genuinely interested when you talk about start-ups, telecommunications, computer science, new media like blogging or even stuff like AJAX, instead of the blank stare you get when you talk to the typical Montrealer.
• The concentration of innovators and entrepreneurs is so high that you actually feel the entrepreneurship and the energy in the air.

Now, some of the people I met:

• Stirling Westrup is quite a phenomenon by himself. I noticed his democamp t-shirt and knew he was a programmer. Actually, he has 20 years experience in programming. He co-founded a startup (Strategy First Inc.). He also worked for a startup in the .com era, to build a digital signature system to track files. He has lots of stories to tell about programming, management who don’t understand programmers and hockey games. If you are looking for a tech head in c++, c, distributed computing or database, he is looking for a project right now. You can find more about him at pooq.com (members section)
• Serge Simard is a partner from ZINC solutions, which help companies implement VOIP technology. Voice over IP is a very hot technology right now as businesses and indivuduals want to get the cheap rates and all the good stuff that comes with voip. They are growing and should be launching their own products too.
• Thomas Jelonek is CEO of MoreIdeas, a company that specializes in computer vision. They have developed an expertise in recognition of image patterns. I have to say I am curious about their upcoming products. Like the pharmaceutical industry, solutions in this area are worth millions, if not more. And the difference with your typical web2.0 company is that they can actually patent their technology.
• Phil Churn is the CEO of mycarpoolstation, an upcoming carpooling website. He is very enthusiastic. I talked to him about AlloStop, marketing and innovation. Like ZINC solutions, I think this has a lot of potential, especially here in Québec, as Ontario has outlawed carpooling.
• Mathieu Balez just got back in town. He just spent 3 weeks in Montréal and he already wants to launch a social networking website, focusing on innovation. An innovative website to get more innovative ideas… Anyway, I joked with him about PowerPoint, the software he loves so much. What struck me with him was that we got a very similar career and experience.
• Next, I talked with René St-Pierre, CMO of moreideas. I talked about Montreal Tech Watch and he said he wants to blog too. Of course, blogging takes a lot of time, but then, it is much more better than your typical corporate website, more informal than a press release, and you get to start a dialogue with like-minded people too, which is cool. (By the way, if you don’t blog, somebody else is going to define you. So better do it yourself.)
• John from montrealstartup.com was there too. He is looking for opportunities, ideas and concepts in Montreal. John is a very cool guy, but what’s most imporant is that he actually has the experience and funds to help Montréal entrepreneurs. If you have a project in wireless, telecommunications, consumer finance, internet, he should be definetely one of the first guys you should meet. We have a very good conversation about the Montreal tech scene (or the apparent lack of). I said to him that I was very optimistic about what is actually happenning.
• I met Kristina too, a multicultural girl who has a blog/ezine about startups. The project is very ambitious and it just left me wondering if she actually sleeps. She was looking for partners, programmers and video bloggers for the blog. If she plays her cards right, it can become a reference for startups and entrepreneurs.

I had a quick talk with Ben Yoskovitz too, and about his new startupspark blog, for b5 media. He is trying to publish user-generated content. But like Kristina’s project, I am thinking this needs full-time investment, and more. Or you would need an army of monkeys to get it done. Oh well, we will see what comes up with startupspark.

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