Montreal Tech Watch

One of my most memorable experience was studying two years here. No, it wasn’t due to the lush environment, nor the crazy melting pot of international students, but because of the never-ending hard work and competition. And by hard, I mean solving impossible problems everyday. I never broke any sweat before, as things always appeared so easy; but there, everyone was as smart and as capable, if not more.

The concentration of talent, and the mix of work, projects, and deadlines did push me to the limits. Everyone thought the same way, and at the end, we all longed for it to finish. 

I also recalled this back at Blitzweekend. We gave a deadline to teams, we had the most motivated entrepreneurs, designers and developers in the Montreal area, and we also had a great setup which favored communication, and of course hard work, which resulted into applications, software, and in a few cases, businesses at the end of the weekend.

Now, the point about this article is now to tell about my experiences, but to tell how environments can work for you, or against you.

In both stories told above, the environment did push us to our limits, by seeing peers coming up with innovative new ideas, by watching people working relentlessly on projects, all in a friendly but intense competition. You’d walk in at those moments, and you’d start doing something, even if you had doubts.

In our case, much has been written about places like Silicon Valley or the Boston area, the Meccas of technology entrepreneurship with all the necessary universities, the money and the energy etc.

Now, I can’t really do anything about money or universities, although we do get a fair share in Montreal, but I believe we can do something with the last part, energy. 

Currently, there are all the ingredients one could imagine in the city, from events, supporting experts, VC and angel funds, places, technology groups, conferences and hackfests, plus star technology companies. But as far as I can tell, there are still a few things which are very hard to do, such as finding co-founders for a new technology company, or asking questions to the community, or as mentionned previously, an environment capable of showing the energy and giving support for engineers, entrepreneurs, developers alike, everyday. 

At one point, MTW did the job. I had back then the time, and could spend a few hours here and there to connect people, ask and encourage a few guys to continue their open source projects or would-be startups, hold startupdrinks, and even contribute to a team, whenever possible. The model was not scalable though, as one can guess. 

So here comes TechEntreprise

The network is meant to create the same sort of energetic environment that would push you to excel, connect, work, and innovate in technology. If you want to meet people and publicize an event, go there. If you want to see what’s up with marketing experts or python developers in Montreal, it’s going to be there. If you want to find help and post jobs, then it’s also going to be there. If you want to talk about your new shining software, then yes, it should be there too. 

The promise is to create a strong, dynamic technology community in Montreal, and possibly in other places too. Quote from the website:

We bet that Montreal can become a technology centre, and believe that TechEntreprise can be a key resource and platform for this to happen.

Here is also a few Q&A for the unavoidable comments:

- Does this impact news and blog posts in Montreal Tech Watch?
No, not at all, MTW is going to be about the results, such as new products or covering events, whereas what you’d see in TechEntreprise is more about the process of building these products. So MTW is going to operate the same way. 

- Is this serious?
it’s not complete and there are lots to be done, but yes, as serious as it can be, and much more serious than any other “feature” or announcement done previously here. the word “beta” would be suited here, although I can’t use since it’s overused. 

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