Montreal Tech Watch

There is a huge array of marketing and tech entrepreneurship blogs on the web (too many to list here in fact); however if you would ever want to start a Montreal-based software company, it’s valuable to also follow Montréal bloggers and get a local take on marketing, product design, business and tech entrepreneurship. In this regard, I thought about showcasing the following blogs:

• Rednod is written by Alistair Croll, with blog posts covering mostly marketing. There are gems in the blog about product design, strategy and marketing. Alistair Croll is also a great communicator and I find he is gifted in finding just the right medium, angle and words to charm you & the potential user of your product. Alistair Croll also writes at bitcurrent.
• StartupCFO is written by Mark MacLeod, self-described as “serial startup CFO and operator”, and currently CFO at Tungle. You can find great insight in his blog about startups financing, leadership, business plans & execution. He also writes about operations, something that isn’t covered much in other blogs.
• Instigator Blog is written by Ben Yoskovitz, who is also CEO of standoutjobs. Ben writes a lot about entrepreneurship and gives valuable and practical advice on how to build and grow a startup; with also a personal touch, as a father and a Montrealer. As you may find out thought, the blog is updated less often that it used to be, since he needs to focus on standoutjobs.

This is just a personal  list of startup blogs; but I find them valuable and essential if you are a Montreal tech entrepreneur. And since the list is of course limited and arbitrary, you are also invited to submit your list in the comments.

Alok Chowdhury and I are launching a StartupDrinks next wednesday, from 5.30pm, at Café des éclusiers. The place is Café des Éclusiers, 400 rue de la Commune Ouest (map)

Here is a description of StartupDrinks:

A simple concept: startup culture in cities around the world gathers around a bar to have a pint and discuss what they are working on, what they need help with and what they can do for each other.

But really, this is open to all technology enthusiasts, and we hope to turn into a regular meetup for the local technology community. The first version (photos) gathered a crowd of 15-20 entrepreneurs, developers, investors, ISV owners. Now, we’re aiming to gather (much) more people and making sure you get to meet new & existing connections.

Now, for this upcoming meetup, we don’t have yet any fancy schedule — just come, have a drink and chat with people. We’ll be going along the crowd though and try to discuss if there is interest into getting with more features for the next StartupDrinks, for instance getting a company/startup to use the event as a launch party.

So that’s it folks! Come and bring friends! If you also know “wannapreneurs” or developers who haven’t yet come to local events, forward the event details to them!

There is a meeting open to all tomorrow regarding bill C-61. The bill is viewed by many as an abuse, which was solely submitted because of lobbying from the US music and cinema industry, as well as media groups in Canada; while the MPs who submitted it said that it’s a necessary upgrade to Canadian law.

The meeting takes place at Station C, 5369 bvd St-Laurent, suite 430, from 6.00pm; and aims at organizing citizen actions locally, campaigns and brainstorming next steps. The movement was started by Evan Prodromou (also well known for its various wiki projects and support of new and open practices such as Creative Commons), and we already had a first meetup last thursday, with 20+ people coming to discuss the Bill’s details.

I encourage anyone to come there and participate as Bill C-61 will have many consequences in the future, in the way you will enjoy music or any digital media. Personally, my opinion is that artists and authors should have the ultimate word and should be able, on an individual basis, to formulate what rights&obligations users have when they consume their work. If the artist state that nobody should be able to copy or reproduce his/her work, or if there’s no limitations when purchasing their work, then it’s ok with me — but in any case, I don’t think it’s the government’s role to decide on an universal basis what users can or cannot do with digital media. This might suprise you, but hey, it’s a personal opinion.

Company: Feeling Software

Position: Developer specialized in Computer Vision

Responsibilites and Tasks:
Feeling Software is developing the world\’s first 3D reconstruction solution focused on interior environments. Apply immediately at hiring@feelingsoftware.com if you\’d like to:
• Improve the 3D reconstruction solution using Matlab and C++.
• Participate actively in the design, implementation and review of new features.
• Refine, optimize and debug code to ensure highest quality solutions.
• Continually learn and grow to a position of technical leadership.
• Learn, implement and extend cool algorithms from the literature.
We are looking for:
• A team player focused on achieving results quickly.
• Commercial software development experience, ideally with C++ and Matlab.
• Creativity
• English fluency
• Bachelor\’s or Master degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Required Knoweledge:

Compensation:
Competitive salary + stock options

Additional info:

http://www.feelingsoftware.com/content/view/46/68/lang,en/

How to apply:
Email hiring@feelingsoftware.com

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Submit a job ad

Usually, I quote this kind of article in the found section of montrealtechwatch, but I think this article is an eye-opener on the dire case of (future shortage of) technology talent in Quebec.

The MontrealGazette freelancer Stephanie Whittaker tells the case of Vanier College:

This year, Vanier will graduate only about eight students from its three-year computer technology program.

“We’ve suffered from the Nortel effect for the past few years,” Popovitch said. “Young people have been hesitant about entering the IT sector and their parents are cautious about their children’s college program choices.”

..

“We used to get 300 applicants in the late 1990s for 100 places in the program.”

By contrast, she added, about 20 students now enroll, but by the end of the program, fewer than half graduate.

This echoed an earlier article on montrealtechwatch.

I mentionned a while ago that MTW would be transitionning to a full-team of bloggers, and many more UI improvements.

At that time, the motivation came from the meetup at Laika, where many suggested that it’s one of the main ways that could make MTW sustainable and become a long-lasting actor in the Montreal Tech landscape.

I couldn’t mention it back then, but one of my inspiration was GamersGlobal, an european video games website. They’ve got a publishing system where every reader is invited to register an account. Readers can then write content and edit articles, with valuable users getting higher ranks. Here is their pitch:

Do you want to do more than just read news or articles about games? Then join the GamersGlobal community today and grow from “User” to “Editor”! Together with our professional journalists, you’ll be part of an accurate, high-quality, up-to-date gaming website. It’s easy, it’s free, it’s fun

The beauty of the system is that they’ve created a community where they get both quality and quantity, original content, with a solid user base, with sections like “New” gathering contributions by users, “Special” which gets contributions by the editorial staff, Top and Hot which are variations on most commented/most viewed articles.

I’ve discussed with quite some time with the technology team of GamersGlobal. They were using Drupal with customized modules, and MTW could get the same CMS, which then solved the problem I raised. But the discussion ended and another completely different system is coming.

So what’s not to like with GamersGlobal’s CMS? Well:

• MTW would then need a Drupal technology team and commit to it. I don’t have anything against Drupal, but it’s a software I have no experience in
• MTW would turn into a pure media outlet, where the only prospects for revenues are advertising. As everyone knows, it’s an industry that is getting hit hard these days, so that wasn’t a good bet. I also don’t like the idea of pushing pageviews up, and the idea that you only get substantial revenues for millions of pageview …
• I think MTW’s real value is not in the content, but in the community that was created around the website. The website gathers tech entrepreners, developers, industry experts, even investors, and I thought there was something to do about it

Talking and meeting technology people from Montreal since MTW came up, I also knew there were consistent problems in Montreal that makes it very difficult to be an entrepreneur:

• It’s very hard to find co-founders or partners for a project, and there is no place yet that solves this problem,
• Finding people to work on your project is also difficult
• Most of the early adopters and experienced entrepreneurs get into the “loop” after a while (going to events that matters, knowing what’s important in Montreal, getting on twitter or other websites to stay in touch with others …) but for newcomers, e.g. for students, the path is daunting. I’d even say, there isn’t even a clear path if you are a technology enthusiast in Montreal,
• Part of the problem in Montreal is that the density of people interested in technology and entrepreneurship is so low that it’s very easy to loose “faith”. You either move to Northern California or just do something else. I believe in places like Montreal, or for that matter in all cities that are NOT Silicon Valley or Boston, you need a central place to get like-minded people connected, share projects, get feedback, and keep the energy high, etc.

The upcoming system for MTW aims to solve all of the forementionned problems. In case you haven’t read between the lines, it’s a mix between WordPress, digg and Facebook (well it’s more like Facebook than WordPress). I’ve shown an early preview of the system to a few “stakeholders” (the same people that would use the system) and the reaction has been very good. There is also very good prospects in making it a business — and more importantly making it a platform where everybody wins and where we’d get a place that supports technology enthusiasts, like a virtual Silicon Valley, making the need of starting a technology venture in the Valley irrelevant. Potentially, the system could also be extended in other cities, but that’s a completely different story.

So that’s the explanation why MTW wasn’t updated for the past weeks, and probably for the week to come too. Thanks to keeping up with the website!

Company: SmartHippo

Position: Ruby on Rails Developer

Responsibilites and Tasks:
• Use Rails 2.1 to design, develop, unit test, deploy, and document an engine that will collect and interpret financial rate data from external web sites.

• Provide support and perform system maintenance/upgrades.

Required Knoweledge:
• Bachelor’s degree and/or 3-5 years experience developing, testing, deploying and maintaining web applications using open source technologies (i.e. LAMP, Java, Rails).

• Prior experience developing Ruby on Rails applications is a must

• Minimum of 3 years experience with SQL-based database development (in particular MySQL).

• Experience with OO design patterns and agile engineering practices (test-driven development, object-oriented design, refactoring)

• Deep understanding of common web concepts and technologies, such as: HTTP, Javascript (AJAX), HTML, CSS, XML & XPath, REGEXP and other related technologies

• Experience in building of the lexical/semantic parsers using Hpricot or REXML is a strong plus

• Experience with concurrency (i.e. use of DRb) is an asset

• You work well as part of a team, but you’re a self starter who doesn’t need to have their hand held. You excel at converting needs into solutions even in the absence of detailed specs and requirements documentation.

Compensation:
For the right candidate, we offer a competitive salary and benefits package and participation in the company’s stock option plan.

Additional info:
All candidates considered for the position will be expected to complete a project which demonstrates their Rails proficiency.

How to apply:
Apply online at http://jobs.smarthippo.com

View the complete list of job listings
Submit a job ad

This weekend, I stumbled into a review of ma-bimbo from Le Soleil, which apparently is one of the hottest websites in Québec right now.

The website is actually from a french company, with a french and an english version, but due to its popularity, I thought it would be interesting to mention it here.

So Miss Bimbo caters to *girls* teenagers, and is an online game where you “grow” a virtual character, with the objective of being the most popular and richest. The characters can get on diets, go to tanning salons, get breast implants, find a wealthy and handsome man to marry, do some esthetic surgery, become a social starlet, etc. In the article, the website’s founder compares it to a modern day version of the Barbie doll, and says it’s really an innocent virtual game.

Whether it’s “ethical” or not is a judgement I’ll leave to you; what’s interesting is that they’ve tapped into a niche that works very well in Québec (and in Europe as well). In just the past month, the website had a total of 893.000 visits from Québec (in a province with 7 million population !!!), with 130.000 visits from Outremont and 112.000 from Ste-Foy. And this is mostly word-of-mouth, as I haven’t noticed any advertisements in any media about the website.

I’ve spoken in the past with other entrepreneurs if a website catering to a local audience was viable, and most of their replies was that it had to be “generalist” — looks like this isn’t true anymore, if you’ve got enough imagination.

Kristina has an enthusiastic report of the last CVCA 2008 conference. I especially like the video; it gives you an idea of the conference if you couldn’t be there.

Featured on the video are CVCA officials (Rick Nathan), heads of PE firms (John McIntyre, Birch Hill Equity Partners), Jevon MacDonald, Andrew Waitman (Celtic House Venture Partners), and William Woods, from CNQ the new stock exchange for tech companies wanting to raise money, even if they’re at an early stage.

This is only part 1 of VC-TV’s coverage of the conference; and you might want to follow her blog to get the upcoming part 2 and 3

Editor’s Note: This is a feature article from Alistair Croll, from rednod and bitcurrent. He has extensive executive experience in marketing and operations and is now launching rednod, a “startup accelerator”. Alistair Croll also provided us helpful advice for Blitzweekend; and writes for webware and gigaom.

Web sites matter. And the previously thankless job of web operations is getting more visibility.

O’Reilly called operations the secret sauce of many companies. Which is weird, because a few short years ago, web operators didn’t even know what to call themselves. They were the guy who knew how the load-balancer worked, living in that weird space between web design and networking. They wrote scripts, and understood BGP. But as designers and marketers, we took web operations for granted.

No more. As soon as an app goes live, it needs operating. A few high-profile failures have shown the world that reliable, scaleable websites take good architecture, reliable infrastructure, and constant vigilance. Allen Lewind wrote that “Failing to do so will inevitably cost these companies users, performance and money.”

Operations is also in transition. With cloud computing and on-demand hosting, much of the equipment is out of our hands. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do; on the contrary, operators now need to keep tabs on their managed hosters and virtual machines. So whether you’re a “server hugger” or have all your stuff in the cloud, you need to worry about web operations.

Montreal-based Bitcurrent is a loose federation of analysts and technology pundits that look at the challenges of web operations. Several of the organization’s partners built the underlying components that make the Internet run today; others have built out some of the world’s biggest web applications.

And we want your help. We’re conducting a survey of Web Operations, trying to understand the challenges and trends web operators face.

If you run a web application, head over to Bitcurrent and take the survey. You can respond anonymously if you like. Tell your friends to respond. Spread the word.

In return, you’ll get access to Bitcurrent’s forthcoming report, The State of Web Operations. Plus, in conjunction with MTW, we’re giving away a free pass to the Bitnorth conference that’s happening in September to a random survey respondent. Fill out the survey and you’re automatically entered in the draw.