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Archive for February, 2009

A plan for digital creativity in Quebec (19)

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 · by Heri · Technology, entrepreneurship, startups

16/04/2007: Is Education Crippling Creativity?

Yves Williams, a web entrepreneur, who is now doing AgentSolo, has a lengthy article about the need for the technology community in Quebec to gather and get the provincial government to come up with a digital plan in his blog.

This follows a recent action by Montréal bloggers last autumn, who sent a letter to Quebec’s prime minister, highlighting structural problems in the province’s technology infrastructure, as well as the sad state of small and big businesses which were lagging behind, outside of the innovation-hungry startups.

Yves Williams finishes the blog post about the need to go further and get all actors and the players of the industry to do something. You’d need to go read the post, and also go through the comments, which shows how his thoughts echo pretty much what many were thinking.

I thought it would be interesting to sum up the state of technology in Québec. This is not by all means an exhaustive post, by just links to a few interesting facts.

First, the last major works done by any Québec government was back at the “.com boom”, when the “Cité du Multimédia” was created, when everyone was crazy about the Internet and wanted to invest in everyone who had a website and an idea. The plan didn’t work out: the only industry which spurred from the government initiative was the video games industry, thanks from the likes of Ubisoft. The “Cité du Multimédia”, where new digital companies would be grown, with generous tax cuts, didn’t work out. If you go there currently, it’s mainly used by hip communication agencies and other companies wanting to benefit from the tax cuts. The initiative was a failed one, in my point of view.

Other initiatives, from different levels of government, were to put money in the hands of private angel investors, such as brightspark ventures, who’d in turn help local tech entrepreneurs. They also funded other initiatives such as AngesQuebec or TechnoMontreal (see here), whose goal is to gather the players of the industry and accelerate incubation and expansion of tech companies.

We’ve also seen various fiscal measures and plans for the technology sector in Québec, the last of which was last May.

So it doesn’t really look like the Québec government isn’t doing anything to help tech in Quebec and Montreal.

What I see though from this is that they don’t necessarily know what kind of sectors to invest in, and also, they don’t necessarily “get” the best means to achieve it.

I don’t necessarily have an answer — and I am not even sure that asking the government to take more actions is the answer. What can they do? Install 1Gbps fiber optics networks, like in South Korea? nope, telcos are the ones able to do those things efficiently. Maybe have a law stating that all businesses should have modern websites and upgrade their IT infrastructure? hmm, no, that sounds like what “enlightened leaders” would do in Zimbabwe. Build data centers, install city-wide wireless in Quebec cities, or create more “IT organizations”? nope, again, would do more harm than solve any problem.

One thing I’d like the government to have is to get a highly expert technology person that would tell them when not to f*ck up. France has for instance Ms Nathalie Kosciuko-Morizot, “Sécrétaire d’État en charge de la prospective et de l’économie numérique”, who’s very dynamic in her role (see photos of her visit to South Korea/Japan to view latest technologies). The current US government has also an interesting tech focus, with the guys at Blue State Digital being the masterminds in everything web.

Another thing that the Quebec private sector can’t do is have huge incubator centers like this or this, so this is also something that governments can weigh in, but it would need to be driven as well by people who know what technology is inside out (instead of just throwing money at the thing, and believing the first digital marketing person who does a lot of noise)

I believe the current mayor of Montreal as well as different politicians had plans to “brand” Montréal as a city of culture and arts. I’ve read a recent article, in how Gilbert Rozon stated that Montréal should be instead presented as a city of creativity (french article - english article at the Gazette). He is a wise man, and if Montréal should succeed, I believe that’s how things should be done, a vision which goes from art, cutlure, technology, as well as other areas like design. That’s a city where Montréalers could thrive in, and the québec tech community should support that vision.

Picture Credit: “Do Schools kill Creativity?”, by djenan

Upcoming: “The Next Generation Player” with Clint Hocking, Wed. 25th February (2)

Monday, February 23rd, 2009 · by michel · Events, video games

I don’t expect many MTW readers to choose this event over StartupDrinks, but for anyone who might be interested, this Wednesday at 7pm the IGDA and SAT (1195 St-Laurent) will be hosting Clint Hocking, Creative Director at Ubisoft. Admission is $5 at the door.

The talk he’ll be giving is titled “The Next Generation Player”, and is likely a slightly more polished version of the one he gave at the Game Design Expo in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago (techvibes has a summary). We can expect him to use numerous statistics and some informed prediction to take a look at how the next big change in games won’t necessarily be coming from new technology, but rather the demographic shift, as Generation Y replaces X in terms of both players and the creative leaders within the games industry. One thing to keep in mind is Hocking’s focus has always been the hardcore gamer, so he probably won’t even touch on the truly “next-gen” types of players — those people who play ARGs and games like Akoha.

Those interested can head over to the Montreal IGDA website for more detailed information, everyone else: Have fun at StartupDrinks!

Upcoming: Montréal StartupDrinks, Wed. 25th February (7)

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 · by Heri · Events, entrepreneurship, startups

The guys at FlowVentures had the “scoop” on this one: the February edition of StartupDrinks is this week.

For those late to the party, StartupDrinks are the de facto gathering of the Montreal Tech Community. Meet entrepreneurs, bloggers, investors, service providers, hackers, and pretty much involved in one way or another in startups.

This time, we’re coming back to Brutopia, which has been a hit last month, again from 5.30pm this upcoming wednesday 25th

Register for Montréal StartupDrinks on TechEntreprise

Brutopia is on 1215 Crescent Street. The bar brews its own beers, which is good for err… drinks. For those who were hungry, we also went to the nearby 3 Brasseurs on Ste-Catherine afterwards for an after-drinks.

Here are pictures from last month’s gathering. around 45 people came, which is extraordinary since we had a snow storm that day. I’m not expecting again more than 60 people coming this time.

StartupDrinks January
StartupDrinks January
Montreal StartupDrinks
Montreal StartupDrinks
Montreal StartupDrinks
StartupDrinks January

Register on TechEntreprise

Update on FreeHackers Montréal meetups (6)

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 · by Heri · Events, Hacking

With Bolidea and Alok Mohindra (Arkalumen), we did a poll on how the last FreeHackers meetup went, to see how attendees felt about the event, the structure, if they liked it and what we could do to improve.

FreeHackers (see original report here)

You can see the public results of the poll here.

Here’s one thing: everyone who answered the poll had a positive feedback about the event. I won’t say rave reviews, but it’s obvious to see that everyone who was there liked FreeHackers.

Of course, it wasn’t perfect — from an organizer’s point of view, and from attendees, the most “uncomfortable” part was the scheduling. Or perhaps to better rephrase it, the lack of schedule. I did previously Blitzweekend, a weekend rally where teams would create and launch projects overnights, an unequivocal success; and I have to say that so far FreeHackers hasn’t reached that level of success.

We had to think about FreeHackers (hmm lots of work too I admit) and how it’s organized before doing other FreeHacker meetups, and this is one possible schedule:

  • have someone present a new technology, programming language, framework or any other project he’s working 
  • then have a workship where attendees could hack and try out the presented tool/framework
  • this would last for a couple of hours; we’ll have also a couple of other workshops, suggested by other attendees, 
  • the 2nd part of the meetup, a full 3 hours, would be left for free hacking
If you remind democamps or other barcamps, the first part of FreeHackers would follow the unconference spirit, where the event is made by attendees for attendees. Upon registetration/entry, an attendee would be invited and ask how he or her would contribute. 
It seems to me that this proposed schedule brings a mix between free hacking AND an interesting schedule where people could learn new stuff and engage. 
So that’s what we thought about. Of course, that’s just one suggestion, and if you are a programmer/sys-admin/soft. engineer interested in those kind of events, I’m expecting you to leave a comment and write if it’s ok or if you have any other ideas. We’ll then see if there’s interest, get a common vision, and set a date for the “relaunch”. 
So do leave a comment. Or get in touch on Twitter. #FreeHackersMontreal

SmartHippo adds 200 new lenders to its mortgage comparison engine; aims to bring more transparency (4)

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 · by Heri · startups

SmartHippo announced this week they have added 200 lenders to its database of mortgage lenders/brokers. 

SmartHippo uses a mix of data scrapping from public web pages, with also partnerships with mortgage lenders. Having more of of those lenders means more choices for mortgage shoppers, who can also add reviews and ratings to those lenders. As you might know (or not), the goal of SmartHippo is to bring more transparency, public data and interaction, all of which were absent in this market.

George Favvas, founder of SmartHippo, believes that more transparency and voices of consumers is what the finance industry needs (or needed?). Here’s a video of him at finnovate2008:

SmartHippo focuses on the U.S. mortgage market, and indeed, if there’s a time to bring change to the market, it’s certainly it. One could ask questions though how they align themselves to the announced current plans and acts in the U.S. aimed at revolutionizing how the housing market works. Their announcement does not address that; while it appears to me that it’s the elephant in the room. I’d wish they had an evangelist or a rep touring the US, which would connect daily to the dire issues in the field, getting local stories. Or maybe they do… I guess that’s something hard to gauge when looking at a company which does all of its business in a foreign market.

Got Water? Montreal Twestival tonight at Suco Lounge (10)

Thursday, February 12th, 2009 · by austinhill · Events

Did you know that dirty water kills more people than ALL forms of violence, including war? Twestival Montreal is one of 175 cities around the world hosting an event today, Thursday, February 12th to raise money for charity: water.


charity: water for Twestival from charity: water on Vimeo

Charity: water puts 100% of money raised towards building wells and provide access to safe, clean drinking water around the world. A $20 donation = 20 years of clean, safe drinking water to a person in Africa.

Twestival Montreal features some amazing raffle prizes for the event, including our grand prize of a trip to Vancouver courtesy of Air Canada and Opus Hotels. DJ Luv and DJ Maus will be sharing music duties, radio personality Winston McQuade is our MC, and we’ll have a photobooth set up for you to take home a souveninr of a great night.

Come down and join the fun while helping to provide access to clean, safe drinking water for people around the world.

Location: Suco Lounge in the Opus Hotel (2108 boul. Saint-Laurent)
Time: 18:00 to 23:00 (6pm to 11pm)
Tickets: $10 in advance (http://montreal.twestival.com) or $15 at the door
View Larger Map

You can follow the action on Twitter on TwestivalMTL, but we would love to see you come out and support such a great cause.

Special kudos goes out to the event sponsors for helping us put on a great event with special thanks to Aquabrass, Opus Hotels, Air Canada, Molson, Akoha and Aquaovo

Montreal’s Twestival is being organized by a great group of volunteers including,

Volunteers:

Adele McAlear@adelemcalear
Alexandre Enkerli -@enkerli
A. Charlotte Riley -@acriley
Felipe Coimbra - @felipecoimbra
Arjun Basu  -@arjunbasu
Arié Moyal@amoyal
Aaron Foley - @aaron_foley
@_FX_
Oza Meilleur- @OzaMeilleur
Michelle Sullivan- @msullivan

Supporters:

Maria Varvarikos Peart - Agence Zoi

Thoughts (20)

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 · by Heri · Mobile

Number of the day: 58 millions mobile phone subscribers now in France, with 1 million having 3G access. That’s a penetration rate of 91.3%, while Canada is at 51.3%62% (last stats from cwta.ca). So one could think:

  1. Canadians don’t know about mobile phones,
  2. OR they are “culturally” attached to landlines,
  3. Canadian mobile carriers don’t know how to market, sell or package phones,
  4. handsets manufacturers have all decided that the Canadian market isn’t worth it, so they aren’t releasing the hot phones here,
  5. there is no true free competition,
  6. the Canadian market is too small and/or too costly to maintain for mobile carriers
It sure isn’t a good sign for local mobile innovation.

[upcoming] Montréal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast, 10th Feb (5)

Sunday, February 8th, 2009 · by Heri · Events

Tech Breakfast
This is a reminder, for those who haven’t seen the post on Ben Yoskovitz’s blog. The bi-monthly tech entrepreneur breakfast is next tuesday morning:

The Montreal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast will be on Tuesday, February 10th @ 8am.

Here are the details:

  • Who should attend? Anyone that’s into the tech and entrepreneur scenes in Montreal. That includes entrepreneurs, startup employees, angel investors, venture investors, service providers, students, etc. Every event sees new people, and hopefully the connections made turn into real value in the long-term.
  • When and where? Tuesday, February 10th at Boccacinos on McGill St.(downtown) at 8am-10am.
  • How do we connect? Stay connected using our Facebook Group.
  • How do we RSVP? It would be great if you RSVP’d so we have a sense of how many people are coming. You can do so using the Facebook Event listing.
  • Who is sponsoring? BDO Dunwoody!

WebSense acquires Defensio (1)

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 · by Heri · entrepreneurship, startups, web2.0

defensioWebSense, a computer security firm, has announced it acquired Karabunga, makers of Defensio, a strong anti-spam system available for wordpress installs and to other web applications which would want to filter user-generated content.

Financial details of the acquisition, which closed 31st Dec. 2008, were not disclosed.

Carl Mercier, who founded Defensio, joins WebSense as director of software engineering.

Defensio will be integrated into WebSense’s current systems and products. By using defensio’s “intelligence system”, they have been able for instance to discover malware and trojan on various websites, such as Barack Obama’s my social social network. This is very good for Defensio, which has been so far a hyper-specialized product: with the integration at WebSense, it could be used for broader usages, for a bigger market, and WebSense could bring it to the next level. In retrospective, Karabunga might have taken years to offer these services to customers.

Needless to say that it’s very good for the Montréal/Québec/Canadian tech scene. In rough times, this is exactly the right proof to remind new entrepreneurs that there are opportunities to grab. There were voices such as StartupNorth, Rick Segal, Mark McLeod, Ben Yoskovitz, Austin Hill, Mark at Wellington Fund, TechVibes, David Crow amongst others, which covered extensively the Montreal and Canadian tech scene, acting as cheerleaders, event instigators, starting camps & conferences, and writing about entrepreneurship & venture capital; but if one had to step back, you’d realize that there were in fact lots of chatter, and not enough startups, not enough products developed, not enough entrepreneurs entering the system. And most importantly, one shouldn’t forget the final measure of success is how many successes you get. 

Success can be acquiring paying customers to sustain and grow the company, squarring a revenue model (à la plentyoffish), getting the startup public, or being acquired. 

For me, if we should have a hall of fame for the year, Carl Mercier should be there. We’ve got here a serial entrepreneur, who started Karabunga, just a few months after coming back from the valley, launched Defensio quickly, with a clear and defined value proposition, managed somehow to sustain the service while updating the technology used (changing from Rails to Merb for the front-end) and coping with an unproven technology (AWS’s EC2), and then successfully sold the product, all in a less than a 2 year cycle. 

Of course you can’t exactly copy & paste Defensio’s success story, but if I have to sum up the startup’s strong points, it would be:

  • pinpointing a problem to solve. In this case, spam was a growing pain, and was talked about by all bloggers and all “influenters” 
  • getting a product which could be marketed & monetized very clearly. Everybody understands the freemium model, where blogger would get the service for free, and professionals and companies would pay to use the service for intensive use. 
  • focusing on the delivery

One can’t deny that Carl was lucky in a sense, WebSense was the perfect buyer, and Defensio could also be overwhelmed by spam at one point. There is also the last thought that Carl could have gotten VC investment, still keep ownership, and then grow the service for a couple of years, to become the white knight of security on the web. But those didn’t happen.

Congratulations Carl!

More on the acquisition:

Found

  • I really think Montreal lacks PR. I have a lot of friends from high school (Toronto) and university (Ottawa) who work in IT (managers, directors, team leads) who come to visit me in Montreal and laugh at me when I tell them they should consider moving out from Ottawa and Toronto to Montreal (to start their own company or work for some of our clients).Read more: http://www.montrealtech.net/prof
  • Nearly a fifth of the Montreal region's workforce forms a super-creative core made up of the techies plus cultural and entertainment types. ...Montreal also benefits from its dense, compact geography. Most experts agree that innovation and productivity are driven by density, and Montreal ranks third among all North American cities in average population density.
  • TECHNOLOGY NEWS, DISCUSSIONS, START UPS, IT JOBS IN MONTREAL, QC AND TORONTO, ON
  • We plan to sprint a few time in the coming weeks. Here’s our schedule: Thursday 2010-07-29 (packaging) Tuesday 2010-08-03 (Django translation) Thursday 2010-08-05 (packaging) All sprints will be at Brasseurs Numériques, at 1124 Marie-Anne, suite 11. Attendance is limited so please RSVP on the wiki. Thanks a lot to AUF for supporting the translation sprint with food and drinks.
  • The last sprint was a productive one, yet we left with a few outstanding issues. In order to correct those while everything is still fresh in our mind, we don’t waste anytime and go for another sprint on the Python packaging system this Thursday, 2010-07-15. The sprint will be at Brasseurs Numériques, 1124 Marie-Anne, suite 11, starting at 6h30 pm and going as long as there are hacker
  • "One unexpected benefit [of using StatusNet] is a reduction in company email," Motorola's team leader of Open Source Technologies, Rami Levy, says in the case study. "We initially just wanted to increase social communication and such in the company. As the value became obvious and usage grew, we decided to leverage this to reduce corporate email volume.”
  •     Aux cinéastes qui se révoltent face aux politiques de financement du cinéma, j’ai envie de rappeler que notre médium se transforme. Que les gestionnaires et investisseurs s’illusionnent encore du mirage de Star Wars n’empêche pas que des conversations se cultivent entre créateurs du web et ceux des images en mouv
  • The 10 or 20 seconds it takes to read a resume seems to always generate a lot of controversy. Candidates comment on how disrespectful it is, how one can’t possibly read a resume in that time and some get angry at recruiters when we talk about this. I hope this article will help everyone understand how we do this. I realize that some still may not like it and will still be angry, but at least
  • A Canadian IT recruitment agency has reported a large number of overseas specialists relocating from America to Canada. An IT recruitment firm has reported it has seen an increase in overseas professions migrating from America to Canada.  Kovasys Inc, based in Montreal, cited the reason behind the increasing attractiveness of Canada for IT professions being the reduction of the ann
  • Hello/Bonjour,An English message will follow:====[Français]====Nous sommes heureux de dévoiler le programme de la conférence ConFoo.Avec plus de 130 présentations réparties dans 8 salles, ConFoo vous apporte le meilleur du développement Web. Prenez note que le tarif depré-vente prend fin le 22 janvier.Nous sommes fiers d'accueillir plus de 100 sp&eac

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