Deborah Lewis and Jeff Musson, two entreprising event organizers, are inviting all Montrealers technology entrepreneurs and digital media fans to gather at the Maple Leaf Digital Lounge, a central meetup place for Canadians at the upcoming SXSW in Austin.
The lounge is an ambitious initiative to highlight what’s hot in Canada with startups from East and West Canada presenting. Of course, as most of you know, it’s not so much the sessions and keynotes that makes SXSW interesting, it’s really all the people you meet in the corridors, invaluable connections to be made, and an opportunity to finally meet the people you’ve been in touch virtually for the past months. The Maple Leaf Digital Lounge provides an ideal place to meet other entrepreneurs, developers, designers, bloggers, investors who are involved in the Canadian technology space.
As for the value of the initiative, SXSW is the mecca for digital startups. Everybody knows the story about Twitter and Foursquare launching at SXSW. With HD screens showing live tweets at SXSW, Twitter got the initial traction for its viral loop … and the rest is history. The Maple Leaf digital Lounge aims to provide a similar “launch platform” for digital ventures: a StartupWeekend-type event where teams compete to build a product in 3 days, a lounge and a bar, happy hours plus panel discussions and presentations (See here the agenda for the weekend) It’s easy to get word-of-mouth going on from fellow Canadians. If you’re going, be sure to check that agenda page and register. If you’re looking to connect before going to SXSW, Adele McLear (@adelemcalear) has also published a list of Montrealers going
As part of an effort to highlight and help startups from Montreal going at SXSW, I will also be publishing pictures from the event here. If you are on Twitter, be sure to cc: pics and tweets to @mtw and I will highlight them on montrealtechwatch.com
