Open Questions to Montreal Tech Entrepreneurs (41)
We all owe a lot to Ben Yoskovitz who started the monthly Tech Entrepreneur Breakfasts February last year. Thanks to meetups like this, plus other events such as BarCampMontreal, entrepreneurs could meet, discuss new technologies, and grab an opportunity to start together new ventures.
This was in November 2007
A tech breakfast in June 2007
I’ve just had a quick exchange with Ben on where the breakfasts are going. Since he’s busy as CEO/founder of Standoutjobs, he hasn’t been able to announce, let alone go the last 2 tech entrepreneur breakfasts (although there were still 10-15 people at the two latest meetups):
I’d like to resurrect them for August - but I’m swamped, which makes it hard to organize… So I don’t know how strong interest really is …
We then thought about asking directly to you guys what should be done with the tech breakfasts. Should we change the location? Should we change the style of the event? Should we expand or to the contrary re-focus the event? Should more event “features” be added? Is there anybody willing to help and swing in something?
Here are other similar events worth to look at:
- Open Coffee Club
- Boulder New Tech Meetup
- StartupDrinks (although relatively different format)
- php beer, which are quite geeky, with interesting discussions around beer.
- …
Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks for posting this Heri.
My reason for keeping the Entrepreneur Breakfast so flexible was to minimize the organizational involvement required. But even at a simple level, it takes work, and people want to get more and more value out of something instead of having it stagnate.
I like meeting at breakfast (although drinks are nice too!) because it fits into my schedule. I know others struggled with that, but we’ve seen 20-30 people show up.
It’s just a question of: What do we do with the Breakfasts next?
It’s been over a year, and if they’re going to continue and evolve we need community feedback.
I’m looking forward to it.
Personally I love the idea, however in its current format it is just too late for us, this may not be popular but I believe these events should be held from 7 to 9 am this allows for a more productive day. As they say the early bird gets the worm ;-)
I haven’t been so take my comments for what they are worth. One of the reasons I did not go is that i don’t like the restaurant format. I’d like to see something in a venue that only includes the people attending (not non-techies trying to enjoy a nice breakfast) and where we could have presentations.
The Boulder tech meetup and similar events I’ve been to in Boston all have these elements. The boston ones for example are at MIT.
In general though, I think get togethers like these are great and should be continued.
I only had the chance to attend 2 events (April and May I believe), that’s not enough to get the feeling the event is stagnating.
Here’s some feedback that is more short term:
- It would be great if everyone could swap places at some point so we can talk to more people.
- Earlier? :)
As far as long term ideas, maybe deciding on a topic for each breakfast. I don’t know how feasible that would be in a public restaurant but there could be someone giving a quick presentation ( visual aids not necessary) on that subject and trigger open discussions.
However, I kind of like the unstructured nature of a breakfast. Something like the above would make sense if it’s after most people had the chance to eat and talk a bit.
Even though the events that I coordinate are ‘dinner themed, I certainly agree with Mark that it would be great to have events in a very casual, non-restaurant space.
Schedule-wise, breakfasts are a bit more difficult for me to attend. I do like the idea of outdoor ‘brownbag lunch and learn’ sessions (when it isn’t raining…)
I’m up for joining a ‘planning task force’ so if anything comes about, please keep me in the loop.
It appears my initial reply did not get posted :( I agree with Bruno, earlier would be great.
I wish there were specific local bars and restaurants that we all could attend randomly in the Plateau, Old Montreal, etc. (You know, like the stereotypical lawyers spot… or the cop bar… etc.) Somewhere where we can all attend randomly and also hold events when necessary. e.g. Venues X, Y, and Z are recognized / known for attracting tech types, startups, and hipster digital workers. Not sure if a bar is the best place for this type of thing because people are rather averse to the alcohol culture here in North America… but being Irish there’s no better place than a pub to meet good friends and talk business, politics, etc.
Having a day job, mornings and early evenings (5 a 7) work best for me. The only reason why I could never attend the breakfasts is because of the location. I know it’s a lame excuse, but being a public transportation user, I think it’d be great to have something in downtown. It could even be in a food court. Eaton center for example has free WIFI and is not very crowded in the morning.
It doesn’t have to be fancy. All we need is a leader to follow and a place to meet :)
If I might add my grain of salt, I must say that breakfast was originally considered to provide some alternatives to the meetup/drinks pattern, thinking that some entrepreneurs might prefer early morning (esp. those with young kids).
I still think morning is a good time, but I would suggest improving on the format to use a place with bigger tables (that’s hard to find when you can never predict how many people are going to be there). Contrary to Mark’s suggestion, I think it should stay more laid back with no specific schedule or presentation, more like OpenCoffee than DemoCamp.
What needs more space in the local community is discussion about the business of tech startups, not the technology part, I think that’s pretty much covered.
@Rob : Laïka is pretty much what you are asking for, they have good food and tea too, not just alcool.
http://praized.com/places/ca/quebec/montreal/Laika
I love the format, but would also prefer it to be earlier .
As @Sylvain Carle has stated this is a good time for thoes of us with children.
I would also recommend Café Veritas http://www.cafesanteveritas.com/ as a possible venu, thye Café is some of the best in the city and their breakfast rocks.
4 try :) Indeed earlier is better. between 7 am 9 am would be great.
I’ll second Laika. Super close to my office at Standout Jobs. ;-)
Summing up ideas, plus personal opinions:
- move the breakfast from 9am to 11 to earlier hours, such as 8am to 10am
- add a co-organizer to help get things together (that’s Tanya)
- move somewhere between the plateau and downtown (2 suggestions for laika, and 2 suggestions for somewhere downtown). Ideally, the place should be casual, neutral, and nothing fancy. I think a coffee shop around sherbrooke would then be more suitable (than say a restaurant where you actually have to eat a “nice breakfast” as Mark says). so that makes it Montreal Tech Coffees :-)
I don’t have ideas for the Coffee shop though (maybe use the power of praized to get a place likened by everydody)
Personally, presentations would be interesting, but as Ben suggests, it’s very heavy on logisitcs/organisations and it’s not something you’d want to do every month.
Yeah, let’s invoke the power of praized!
Go to any praized powered community (facebook and praized.com can do just fine) and tag your choice with “mteb” (no quotes). Then, we can see what places ranks highest with a tag search, this is somewhat undocumented but trust me, it works ;-)
http://praized.com/merchants/tag/mteb
(it will take a few minutes to show up, give our indexer a chance to catch up)
And btw Heri, as soon as you are PHP compliant for MTW, I will stop sending links to praized.com and use the local MTW community directory for places…
I’ve just tagged 5-7 places with mteb at praized.com (although not sure because opening hours were not displayed)
I suggest we all do that so we can get the list. then it’s up to Ben (and Tanya) to decide about the place.
posting links to praized is ok, btw
Thanks for all the suggestions - hopefully we see more.
Laika is a reasonable choice given its proximity to a fair number of people within the community, but is it even open at 8am?
I like the idea of a more casual place where you can sit anywhere you like and move around - I think the lack of movement is the biggest restriction in a restaurant setting.
1. I think moving to 8am-10am makes sense. I may not make it at 8am, but that doesn’t stop others from getting together.
2. I’m not completely opposed to presentations, maybe Tanya and I can take suggestions and find some people who can do that sort of thing every so often, but don’t make a habit of it.
3. I would ask that EVERYONE involve him/herself in promoting the event. What was most interesting about the Breakfasts was that NEW people showed up every single time. That tells me that new people were hearing about it and getting interested enough to try it out.
Hi, all. I’ve enjoyed going to the MTEB breakfasts, but I haven’t found a lot of value in it lately, and haven’t gone in a while. It was nice meeting a lot of folks I didn’t previously know, but now that I know them, why re-meet once a month?
If the breakfasts aren’t worth Ben’s time, they’re not worth my time. If the organizer isn’t going to show up, that’s not a big incentive for me to show up either.
Some things that might be really useful for me:
0. A dedicated space. There are a lot of restaurants in the area that can set aside a space for us to use. That gives a better sense of delineation.
1. Presentations by entrepreneurs. A great way to throw out some ideas, get feedback from others in the same field, and hone your presentation skills. Also nice to get a feel for what others are doing.
2. Presentations from others. I’d love to get a presentation from the city of Montreal or other gov’t officials about what incentives there are for tech entrepreneurs. Talks by VCs about who they are and what they do and why they’re different. Visits from out-of-town guests would be fun too.
3. Presence throughout the month. It’d be nice to have a mailing list or other forum for discussion and maybe more informal drinks or something similar on a weekly basis.
4. People I know. Sorry, but if prominent people in the local tech community aren’t going, I’m not going to go. There’s a critical social mass necessary, and we haven’t been getting it.
5. A purpose. I think we need to work together as a tech community to make Montreal a high-tech hub. A rising tide raises all boats — it’s easier for everyone when Montreal better known and represented on the world tech stage. If the purpose is just to chat, fine. But I think we can set a purpose of advancing Montreal’s image, and think about what we can do to help that.
If it’s going to be a casual shoot-the-shit kind of get-together, I expect to do it with people I know and like. If it’s going to be more meaningful, I’m more willing to put in the time and effort to show up.
I like (very much) Evan’s points. Lots of food for thought, although it’s about going to the “next level” and having someone championing the event and doing hard work.
(as opposed to the previous comments where it was more about laid-back meetups)
But again, I’d really like to see something like he describes in town.
Evan - Lots of good points, but just so we’re clear, I was never really the “organizer” … more the “instigator”. It was not my intention to get into organizing monthly “events” - because as you know from your experience organizing events, it takes a ton of time / effort.
The original intention (and reason I suggested doing something) was because people were complaining that there weren’t enough casual gatherings. I suggested a breakfast because I can’t often make evening events.
And I haven’t gone in most cases because I’ve been out of town.
I also never wanted the breakfasts to hinge on me. It’s not about me, it’s about the community. Of course that doesn’t mean you can completely rely on the community to self-organize, but I also don’t have the bandwidth alone to do as you’ve proposed.
Personally, I like the “shoot the shit” style, and the opportunity to meet new people in a casual atmosphere, but the reason I handed this over for questions was because it’s not about what I want, it’s about what is of value to the community.
Comment from the peanut gallery :
I love that you guys have tech breakfasts - I’ve often considered going our of interest, but didn’t want to crash the party :)
That said, I do organize 3e mardi | Third Tuesday Montreal, so in the spirit of knowledge sharing, here’s my point of view on organizing events with a speaker :
1. We’ve found that you need an exclusive venue or at least exclusive space within a venue - impossible to do this kind of event when other patrons are sharing the space
2. Exclusive venues require a minimum - we chose Lolita’s on Sherbrooke at St Urbain because of its central location and negotiated a $500 minimum bar tab with the owner. Apparently, contrary to popular belief, marketing and PR people don’t drink much. As a result, we’ve never gone over $300, so one of our sponsors has always had to kick in to pick up the difference. Not ideal, when you’re already working with volunteers and trying to maintain good relationships with sponsors.
This, combined with a couple of minor factors, have led us to start looking for an alternate venue for the fall.
Note: An exception to this, for a breakfast event, might be Commensal on St Denis. They have a small closed space downstairs which can accomodate about 15 sitting around a conference table. It’s tight. They also have their entire downstairs floor - I’ve booked this in the past - it’s not really ideal, but might meet your needs.
3. We’ve decided to discourage our speakers from using powerpoint or other presentation platforms for our second season - Third Tuesday is supposed to be informal and we found that powerpoint presentations are a barrier to conversation, which is our ultimate goal.
4. We have a sponsor who has picked up the tab for audio-visual, paying for DuoCom to come out and provide tech support for our events. Mikes, projectors etc. It’s an approx $10 000 per annum value. Requires sponsor management.
5. Organizing Third Tuesday requires quite a bit of work, because it is somewhat structured - finding a speaker, ensuring proper communications, negotiating monthly with venues and sponsors. I have a great committee of 10 doing everything from logistics, to finding speakers etc. and I’m hoping they’ll all come back this year, because I definitely need the help.
This is just my experience - it may not apply completely to your situation, but I hope it gives you a sense of what is involved in a more formal undertaking.
Best of luck with your upcoming Breakfasts!
And if you don’t know about Third Tuesday but are interested in attending marketing/pr events on social media, feel free to join us. You’ll find us on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7357761729&ref=ts
Cheers!
Michelle
I’ve been to most of the Mtl Tech Breakfasts and I’ve also attended the Open Coffee in Boston, so in no particular order here are my thoughts based on my experiences:
- 08:00-10:00 would suit me fine.
- I *hate* the idea of having presentations. I’m going there to meet and catch up with people. The relaxed atmosphere and sit down format, means that unlike most events, you can have meaningful conversations with a number of people. For presentations we already have BarCamp, DemoCamp, StartupCamp, MoMoMo, Third Tuesdays, a plethora of conferences, etc.
- Accessibility is important. That being said, the current location is only a short walk from a metro station.
- I’m not very keen on a downtown location because, well, it just feels too corporate. Maybe not a good reason, but hey I never claimed to be totally rational either :-)
- While I love Laïka, I don’t think it would be a good choice for the mtb, because it’s set up for small intimate meetings, not large groups. Also, it can get quite loud.
There’s so much great conversation going on in this thread. I don’t really even know where to begin.
@Bruno- I like the idea of a topic or theme which allows all of the attendees to share their experiences.
@Rob- I agree that a MTL Tech local would be cool. I remember many ‘press clubs’ where the reporters would all hang out (or maybe I’m just dating myself by thinking of ‘Murphy Brown’!)
@Michelle Sullivan- Thanks so much for sharing all of your learnings from 3e mardi | Third Tuesday Montreal.
I agree with Evan re: Presentations by entrepreneurs/ Presentations from others/ Presence throughout the month/ Purpose (although I would see defining this as a wiki for brainstorming or some such collaborative tool). Getting more organized as a MTL tech collective is certainly something I’m interested in lending a hand with.
Laika is open at 8am… We could try it out for the Summer / Fall until I can find some additional locations to suggest to the group.
Breakfasts are a great alternative, and I agree with Ben — particularly for those of us who call the West Coast a lot, they’re a good idea, since we’re not done in the evenings until 7 or 8 PM sometimes.
In my experience, what works best is:
- A chance to mingle, which usually means moving around or shuffling seating somehow
- Round tables so you’re not just talking to 3 people
- Some kind of structure, even if it’s just a topic to get people going. We do this at Unconferences a lot - give the group a question to answer, have them hand in surveys at the end, and publish the results
- Nametags, possibly color coded for entrepreneur, investor, etc. that encourage mingling
- SMS reminders (maybe a Twitter account we all follow) so everyone knows where one is happening.
What’s a downer for these things:
- Having it too far from work
- Running late. IMHO we need to be done by 9AM, so a 7-9 event is fine with me
- A noisy venue
- Too many distractions. Wifi is a liability; if they really need you, they’ll call ;-) and you’re there to spend time with the attendees
Ben: no criticism intended. I was more trying to reflect a common perception; nobody wants to go to an event if the organizer isn’t there. It sounds like the best thing to do here is get you out of the (perceived) organizer role.
I’m also very happy seeing the MTEB stay casual, but if that’s going to be the case, I wonder if the solution isn’t making it _more_ casual and more frequent. Just say: 8AM every Tuesday, entrepreneurs will be at XYZ spot for breakfast.
Evan: No offense taken. For me, the perfect circumstance would be that no organizer is needed…everyone knows people are gathering on X day at Y time at Z place, simple as that.
It takes a few people to remind the rest - and I don’t mind doing that and being more vigilant about promoting the event.
I could even see us setting up a wiki / event site of some kind to track who is coming, any topics people are interested in discussing, etc. Truth be told, that sounds like a nice extension to MTW (not trying to give Heri more work though!)
My feeling is that the biggest issue right now is the LOCATION. Find a great spot - where we’re the only ones in the space, with round tables, that’s easy to intermingle / move around and I feel like the Breakfast would evolve comfortably from that point forward.
So we need more suggestions on location…
[...] With Heri’s help at Montreal Tech Watch we’ve got a great discussion going on what to do with the Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfasts. [...]
interesting thread. i haven’t been to one of these things in a while, but i did go three times. here was my thinking:
1) i like meeting people, but cold-meeting people can really be hit-and-miss. and when you kind of sit down randomly with people you don’t know, you may be stuck having breakfast with someone you may not want to spend an hour eating with. i’m sure you guys know what i mean. it’s basically like a blind date.
2) i agree with Evan that there is no critical mass of web-related people there, or at least none that i know. they need to be enticed to come or something– that’ll help bring even more, etc.
3) breakfast at the very least makes this event *different*. you make an effort to come, etc, and it differentiates itself from the usual yulblog, yulbiz, etc etc.
4) on the topic of introductions, it might be nice to have someone who kind of is the organizer and helps to introduce people, etc. (like, “hey julien, you might want to talk to john over there because he does X.”)
anyway, hope that helps. i’ll come back if something else comes to mind. :)
In my case, breakfast does not work for me (and I have young kids!). I also agree with Julien’s point (#1) on the sitting down to meet people can be hit and miss. That’s why YulBizes are usually good meetups for me as you can move around in a relaxed environment (Cafe Melies) at the end of the day. In any case, socialization should be a major aspect of these meetings.
My 2 cents:
1. Time: 8 to 10 am work better for me. Like Denis, I’m a public transportation user, and I’m to lazy to wake up at 6 am ;)
2. Location: Downtown is cool. I just need hot water and a bag of tea for my breakfast. But please not in a food court, those places are to depressing (@Sylvain: Welldone for the Mteb tag on Praized).
3. Style: I like the open style of Mteb. I don’t want to start the day with a business/tech presentation. We have too much occasion to do this in Montreal (I don’t need to list them… we are on MTW).
@Julien 4): I agree with you. It’s cool to have an introduction to other participants.
*** Big thanks for the organisation of Mteb. I like this event, where I meet interesting people and I find a lot of help ***
I’ll start a list of potential locations and bring it back to the group for a good old fashioned community vote!
wiki anyone?
Hey all, I’ve never attended a MTEB, mostly because I had this idea that I might be stuck for a 2 hour breakfast idly chatting with people that might have no common interest.
Another point is that it’s pretty tough to identify who are the most relevant people you want to meet at a given get together.
I’m picking up on ideas already thrown:
-Arrange a place where you don’t have to sit down. Ideally, the place would have high tables with a couple stools and some sort of buffet (doesn’t have to be fancy), so you can walk around with your plate and meet many different people.
-Before the event, have a page (Facebook? wiki? custom?) where people planning to attend can sign up, give a brief summary of what they do and who they’d like to meet, along with a picture so they’re easier to spot at the event. This would also allow people to email each other in advance of the breakfast to make sure they do meet.
-Is there any way to contact some marketing/accounting/law/VC/press groups so that some of them show up too? I’d love to meet marketers or journalists that could help my small business, for example.
-Maybe generate large font nametags from the webpage mentionned above, with different colors for entrepreneurs, VCs, and other professionals.
I would definitely be interested in such an event.
I’ve been to a few MTEB’s and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I like the breakfast theme. From what I can tell there is no real pressure to eat if you don’t feel like it.
9am is better for me because I’m driving in from the West Island, but I can survive an earlier start time, although I would prefer 7am to 8am due to traffic.
Personally I would rather not do the presentation thing. If you sit next to someone you have nothing in common with there are other people at the table. If you are stuck in front of a presentation you are not interested you can’t talk to anyone!
Hi everyone,
I’ve been to quite a few MTEB in the last year and met some a the most fascinating people there.
1) it’s casual, and it should stay that way. It’s a great place to meet great people in a relax environment.
2) Having a wiki website for people to write who they are, why they’re coming and what exactly are they looking for (if they’re looking for something), leave their full contact and linkedIn info. It would be a major upgrade form MTEB
3) No formal presentations please, there are more than enough venues for those. Informal and laid-back was key to the success of MTEB. A theme could be a good idea, we could just the Wiki to have people propose one and vote on it.
4) It’s on the Plateau, which is nice for a lot of people. Most of other events are in Old Mtl or Downtown. My vote is : it should stay that way.
5) As Sylvain pointed it out, mornings are good if you have kids. 8:30 is best for me (just after I dropped my son at school)
6) I Love the Laika, it’s my second office. BUT it does NOT open at 8am most of the time. I’ve hit closed doors 2-3 times in the morning. They open mostly at 8:30 (unless they changed that lately). They are also often very busy and very noisy. Not perfect for a group of 20-30 who wants to talk. Also hard to get a dedicated seating area, which as Evan pointed out, is a necessity.
No other location to suggest. Funny, one would think there are many good places for breakfast in Montreal that have good food and a relax environment.
7) Did I mention getting a wiki would be a great idea ?
Just so everyone knows, we did have a Facebook group setup for the event:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5502019497
And then I setup an event listing each time (example):
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=13095875628
I’m not saying Facebook is the best tool for this, but I do want to make sure we use something simple, that’s ideally, been designed for meetings, so it has the built in functionality we need:
* sending invites
* RSVPing
* commenting / wall
* displaying contact information (if people want to include it)
* etc.
[...] missed some of the action which might have happenned here, but there should be a follow-up soon; plus a few user comments might have been lost in the [...]
First-timer here, though I’m a regular at MontrealPython…
+1 for Early
+1 for round tables and being able to mix around over the course of the morning.
Re: the whole what-to-talk-about thing, instead of structured talks we could have an impromptu “birds of a feather” topic list, like you see at large conferences. Let people propose whatever questions or issues they have on their minds, and groups will gravitate together and move around as the conversations shift. This doesn’t have to be planned in advance - just post a sheet by the door.
I agree with all the people who share the view that the uniqueness of the MTEB is that it is informal. I think it should stay that way.
From my point of view, “word of mouth” is sufficient to constantly attract new people to the event. The fact that the event is held on a fixed and repeating schedule is a great idea and should stay that way. On top of that, MTW is always there to remind us of the breakfast date… Thanks to Heri.
I’ve been coming to this event and met really interesting people and I really appreciate the format as it is. Of course, the people you met on any given breakfast depend on a certain number of coincidences but I find that it’s what is so special about this event. If you keep coming, you will find the type of person you’re looking for. If you’re not looking for any one specifically, I’m sure you will have a great time!
For the record, I’ve been going to this event for the last 8 months and have met new people every time.
Thomas
[...] everyone for the feedback on the Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakast! The post was up initially to “gauge interest” for these breakfasts, and I think the [...]
Great information. I’m researching laser printers for my small office.
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