Montreal Tech Watch

Today, the Montréal tech community gathered at Bistro Etc, on the plateau. A comment left on an earlier post mentionned that 9 am might be a little too late, and I thought it might be a sign that the monthly meetup was showing signs of fatigue. However, I met there as many people as - if not more - the previous breakfast, and talked with a lot of people who came there for the first time.

I have contacted the centre d’entrepreneurship, at HEC montréal, and the equivalent one from UQAM, in hope that students entrepreneurs would show up. And yes, the first guy I met was from the HEC Montréal business school. Henri is doing research on interactive marketing. Although he is not active on the web yet, he plans to launch a business soon. Mehdi is another student I met. He is doing a master at Concordia, and I guess he was looking forward for advice and to connect with other tech guys. I hope more students get involved too in the next tech events in Montreal.

I talked with Guillaume Thoreau about user interfaces and the Wii. Seems that you can setup the wii joystick for your mac and pc. He is also interested for the web dev book for montreal. He might present a user interface book for the first meetup.

A set of photos from the tech entrepreneur breakfast

Mitch Cohen, the cofounder for clixconnect, told me how his new company is doing. It seems they already have a core of customers. He also told me that it was already his 2nd company, as the first one he run for 4 years was acquired last year. My overall impression was that he was a very sharp guy - business-wise. We will see how things will fold out in the upcoming months for clixconnect.

I talked to Adrien O’Leary who is going with great enthusiasm into interactive marketing. For instance, he just registered to interlogiq. He tells how ‘traditional’ marketers and new marketers clashed in the first 5 à 7 he attended. He is going to the yulbiz - that’s an idea, I might go the the next yulbiz to take pictures.

Sandy is the new marketing girl for ilovetoplay.com, and Marc Chriqui, the founder, was there too. Although I have yet to see what Sandy will be doing for ilovetoplay, I think she has great opportunities. She knows how to talk about a service and is ready to get out there to talk about ilovetoplay. I talked about facebook apps, and Marc said they could use it as a marketing tool, to get users - and their friends - go to ilovetoplay.

I met Marc-André Cournoyer, the new ruby guru for Standoutjobs. We talked about software developers and startups in Montreal. Typically, most graduate students from ETS or Polytechnique want to go to CGI or IBM Montreal, the big consulting companies I generally compare to factories. Even if they want to take risks, they are generally unaware of what’s up in montreal. THINGS HAVE TO CHANGE.

Fred Ngo and Ben Yoskovitz took the time to come too. I didn’t have a chance to talk in depth with them though, but it seems things are doing great for standoutjobs.

I had a quick talk with Frederic Brunel too. He has a long experience in low-level programming and video games. But like most tech guys, he does a lot of stuff too. He is working for a montreal company who is launching a product that creates computer-generated movies - ie you control 3d characters on the screen. Should be great for storyboarding and for non-professional directors. The success of the Movies video games proves how users are craving for a product like that.

Phil Chrun from mycarpoolstation.com was brainstorming about a video job ad, with yann, the video guy from standoutjobs. He is looking for a tech guy in Montreal - a bug squasher and a web2.0 programmer - so he will be advertising mycarpoolstation in the video.

I hoped Erwan would be there. He didn’t came, but Alok from fonome was. This is a critical moment for fonome, and things are unfolding right now. I am sure though that the right ressources will be found and setup in the next few weeks.

So folks, this is it for the 5th montreal tech entrepreneur breakfast. I couldn’t talk to everyone - if you have been there, leave a comment and I will insert it in the post.

More reports:

• Marc-André ’s post
• Mitch Cohen’s post
• Fred Brunel’s post

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