Montreal Tech Watch

The second FreeHackers event was held last week, and like the first meetup, it was a success. 

If you are new to the concept, do read this post, which is a report about the first FreeHackers event. Compared to the first one, we had the same setup at Bolidea, the same date (the second saturday of the month), and practically the same schedule. 

We did have more people though. This time, we had 3 people from foulab, the new hackerspace in Montréal, who were curious about the concept and what exactly was happening at the event. Also the team from Arkalumen were there, plus coders and hackers from the previous meetup. Others came in, but later, such as Evan Prodroumou from identi.ca

The event was hosted by Bolidea, a new technology incubator founded by successful entrepreneurs aiming to bring solutions to problems, and working closely with tech and biz entrepreneurs.

I’ve got to say thanks to Raphaël, and most importantly Magda from Bolidea, who hosted wonderfully the event, and prepared food & drinks for everyone. Their support means a lot, and without them, the event wouldn’t have been possible — and also adding to the fact that I couldn’t unfortunately spend all the time I wanted to organize and wrap up the January meetup. Bolidea has just published about the January FreeHackers.

Raphaël is one of the entrepreneurs working with Bolidea. He was continuing to work in the offices that saturday, and he told us his story and relationship with Bolidea.

Bolidea offices. They have a simple, yet sophisticated setup which I love

How awesome is it to have this bike in your main entrance?

Felipe Coimbra discusses with hackers about double inputs

Foulab members, and also Pierre Phaneuf.

One of the tables became the main focal point of the meetup. You can see laptops everywhere. The Internet dropped 2 times during the event — most probably due to the unusual high usage.

There was a TikiWiki hacking session in another section of Bolidea, with Louis-Philipe Huberdau, and Marc Laporte.

It’s a little bit humbling and magical to have all of these developers and hackers at that place. One discussion at one point was about designing an input system that would allow the use of 2 mice in Adobe Photoshop. The discussion evolved around electronics, ports programming, and overriding of drivers.

One thing we are working on for the next events is the format of the event. For the past 2 events, it was largely free-form, with my goal of emulating Blitzweekend. However, we might use more guided schedules for the next ones, such as having presentations + workshops on a given subject. Alok Mohindra is going to craft a schedule for the third meetup, and I’m looking forward to see how it would unfold at the next event. If you have ideas or thoughts about this event, do not hesitate!

See the pictures at Flickr