Company: Tabbi Media

Position: CTO / Co-Founder

Responsibilites and Tasks:
About US

The Company is a retail mobile marketing start-up with a focus in the emerging Point-of-choice market (Point where a customer chooses between different items in a physical environment). Engaging with customers at that point allows for cross-sale and up-sale opportunity in an interactive way never achieved before. The main offering includes a front-end mobile advertising system, a multi purpose client and server side management system used to create campaigns and gather people, product and campaign intelligence , an in-store positioning system as well as a back-end data analytic system.

We have an extensive network of contact In Canada, USA, & Middle-east. Team members and advisors include :Advertising VP’s , Owners of major grocery chains, brand managers, A lead consultant top fortune 10 company, Ex President of a major US credit Union,Point of Sale expert at major retailer , A.I specialist, Ex VP and EX president of major Wireless carriers etc.

Our CTO Match:

• Roles and Responsibilities : Managing programing team, coding , reporting, technical documentations, reviewing previous work to ensure portability into new “commercial” deployment, lead new development . technical writing for patent applications.
• Must have attitude : Detailed oriented,determined, energetic , passionate, resourceful, strong willingness to learn and adapt.
• Nice to have (personal skills): vast network of contacts, previous start-up experience
• Compensation : Equity

Lets “date” before we commit !

Requirements:
Technical requirements:

General : Mobile & Networking skills

Specific (technical Skills)

• C++
• J2me
• Javascipt
• MYSQL
• Perl
• PHP
• Python
• “R” ( Revolution Analytics) * can be learned but central component.

Nice to have (Technical skills)
Hadoop
RF engineering
Statistical skills

View original job listing
Submit a job ad

Partner: Erik Yeargan at Innobec Ventures

Position:Partner with iPad Dev Experience

Responsibilites and Tasks:
I am looking for a partner with iPad development experience/interest to help build version 1.0 of a design-driven application for launch by October 1st. This version is short and sweet, but will allow the project to bootstrap future releases.

Requirements:
Objective C and iPad GUI experience.

View original job listing
Submit a job ad

We held the first edition of Tap In Tuesday at Café des Éclusiers last tuesday. It’s a mentoring event where one experienced entrepreneur will spend time with new entrepreneurs, discuss about his path and problems, and provides potential problems that attendees might be currently facing. In this case, Sébastien Provencher (@sebprovencher) was the experienced entrepreneur; telling how he went from the original idea, how the original Praized team was formed, how they looked for funding in the United States but finally managed a deal right here in Montréal, and how Praized managed for the past 3 years, with now the third iteration of their product, Needium. Sébastien was very open and didn’t hold out details that others might keep private, such as his discussions with VCs, the problems they faced in product development, the ups and downs at Praized, and also the excitement of building a product.

There were many questions by attendees, mostly about financing how-tos, relationships with VCs, building a startup in Québec. It was an opportunity for a dozen of entrepreneurs to get precise answers. This is not always the case for events like StartupDrinks, Founders & Funders, or any other event I’ve seen in Montréal, since most of the time, there is a long time dedicated to introductions and general small talk, then the inevitable discussion on “how can we work together”. Here, the focus is about learning and everyone is welcomed to ask questions about the “entrepreneur process”.

My impression is that this first edition was successful and that’s also the general feedback I had by talking with attendees. The fact that there is no other similar event in Montréal, and the fact that we had very precise questions confirmed this.

Gabriel also has a more detailed report, which I invite you to read

There are also more pictures here

Thanks to all the attendees for coming, thanks to Gabriel for leading the event, thanks again to Sébastien Provencher for his welcomed generosity.

This is the third and final post presenting the results of the tech entrepreneurship survey. The first one was about the current strengths of the Montréal technology community, the second exposed the challenges and problems met by technology entrepreneurs, while this post will present potential opportunities, for actors of the community and also anyone having an interesting in making Montreal a better place for technology.

The results are presented here. Like the previous 2, the items on top are the top answers, ranked by average from the 108 respondents. A few surprises, which after a little bit of thinking aren’t surprising at all after all:

Opportunity #1: A mentorship program to connect new and experienced entrepreneurs. This was the most surprising, imho, and it reveals how many entrepreneurs or tech developers are already on the verge of committing to their projects and startups, but lack guidance amongst all the diversity of paths offered to them.

The good news is that Gabriel is leading a mentorship event today at Café des Éclusiers (ha! ahead of the results), with @sebprovencher as a mentor. I’m excited for this event, and look forward to see how we can make it work.

Opportunity #2: More angel investors, seed funds and VCs. This is tied to the challenges presented earlier (see #5). Since it appears on both results, this appears to be a true limiting factor. Hopefully, there is the upcoming FounderFuel, but there is definitively more space for alternative means of funding

Opportunity #3: Global events & conferences promoting local startups Could we organize an event à la South By South West? or a conference similar to TC50? The answer today is no. It takes significant time and resources to organize events at that scale. The need is there though, so event organizers should see now how they can partner with other groups and key associations, and hopefully, we’ll see one in the near future.

Opportunity #4: Startup school program à la techstars This is doable although like #3, it would require most actors in Montréal to work together to make it happen

Opportunity #5: Initiatives bridging Montréal and global tech centers This is definitively doable. We had many startup instigators coming from other provinces, the States or Europe. We have also many Montréalers going regularly to other global conferences. They could be dubbed as “Montréal tech ambassadors”. In a similar way, there’s also something to do with MTW

Opportunity #6: More initiatives growing the community; bridge local groups There is a division currently amongst all the different developer groups (the Javascript people, the ruby, python or php folks), also amongst the marketing/entrepreneur groups. There’s a lot to do to make those groups talk to each other, through common events for instance. MTW played a role in the past of uniting those groups, and this is going be one of the focus in the future

See more results in the report

Again, thanks to everyone who helped promote the survey and took the time to answer it.

This post follows last week’s about the strengths of Montreal as a technology entrepreneurship center, with results and analysis from the MTW survey. Those initial results highlighted Montréal’s characteristics, a creative, low-cost and friendly city, which are more or less its USP.

The report dedicated to the challenges met by technology entrepreneurs in Montreal is now online. Since the 2nd question had more choices, I will only comment the first 7 answers

1. Challenge #1: The community and its different resources are not visible enough to outsiders. Indeed, one can be a student or a 9 to 5 engineer in Montreal without being aware that the city has its share of startups. I believe 99.99% of Montréalers don’t have any idea that you could actually launch a technology “startup” in Montréal, nobody knows about MTW and even less about MSU or bolidea. I can see several explanations:

• The community uses in majority the English language while we are in a french-speaking city
• Technology is much less popular than say, cultural events (arts, music concerts, festivals) are heavily promoted and supported, by the media and the government
• There are physical main places promoting local startups and tech companies
• There is no offline media or newspapers promoting the community
• The events might too geeky and not open enough to the general public
• There are no Youtubes or Facebooks in the city
• etc.

I have ideas on how to go past this challenge, but this wouldn’t certainly be solved by one sole actor. NextMontreal plus other initiatives can certainly help.

2. Challenge #2: No urgency in making it “Big”; unawareness of global markets. This is a criticism found frequently when people compare the attitude in Montréal compare to what’s felt in other cities (say the valley, tel aviv, or places like hong kong). Often, it’s told that Montrealers like lifestyle business, and target only local markets with no desire to explore other markets.

This might be improved by highlighting more what’s done in other cities, and pushing Montréalers to expose themselves and also make them discover other places, with probably strong coaching behind

3. Challenge #3: Entrepreneurship and risk-taking are not encouraged. This is also probably related to the problem #2. Well, Canada is a developed country, life is easy, and there’s strong social support from the Quebec government. Whatever your plans are, people are cool with it. So why would anyone try to revolutionize the world? One has to be strongly motivated to have the guts to launch a startup.

Creating a focused, strong and entrepreneur-oriented community helps. That’s probably MTW

4. Challenge #4: Poor promotion strategy & practices I haven’t seen a Montréal-based startup who nailed an effective Twitter campaign, and apart from identi.ca, it’s hard to see any startup who managed to had a wildly successful viral product. For email marketing, I like what Cakemail does but well that’s a bit given they know how to use it. Same for facebook, adwords or any other promotion strategies. The fact is, for a city knows for its music, tv, cinema, advertising, and festivals activity, there is little creativity and thought given in promotion from Montreal startups.

5. Challenge #5: Difficult to find and convince investors I think we have good existing investors but there isn’t probably enough and there is no diversity either. In recent news, it’s always the same names (MontrealStartup or iNovia) so a new entrepreneur has very limited options. If there isn’t a match with MSU, where can you go? BDC? apply for grants at different SAJE or CDEC centers? which is crazy, since you’ll discover after 3 months they don’t understand high-tech

I don’t have any solid answers for this problem (well, read: I don’t have enough resources). Probably Teralys or the government only can help improve this

6. Challenge #6: No media site with a global audience to support local tech

Well the answer is easy, we need a site like MTW but with the 1 million rss subscribers.

Jokes aside, this is probably the same problem as #4. In a city knows for its creativity, we can find ways to create more buzz. Stay tuned for this.

7. Challenge #7: No focus on useful, user-friendly, sticky and complete products This was referring to the fact that many local startups are in fact technology projects, with one or a collection of features. Features don’t make a product. Features don’t ease anyone’s daily life. Features cannot be sold in a market. Features impress engineers but doesn’t solve any problem.

Technology founders should get inspiration from successful startups like Tungle, which makes a useful tool. There is probably a lack of great UI and UXP specialists, and not enough people knowing what’s product design. Montréal needs more Caterina Fakes or more of those guys

There are more problems listed. Go over to the report to see the details

I am working actively on #1 and #6, with major initiatives to be announced soon. Plus one potential for #2. We’ll see. But as written above, one can’t do everything. I hope you’ll join the fun and lend a hand gladly from time to time to get together a stronger community.

Again, thanks for all your help, first in promoting the survey, and second by answering the survey. I’m putting together the last and final report of the survey and it should be up very shortly.

The compiled survey results aren’t all out yet, but a first glance from last week’s survey shows that a mentorship program was the #1 most wanted, well beyond other initiatives such as organizing democamps, getting more investors, or getting a startup school or house.

It’s a surprising result. For me, it shows that there are already many developing their projects or already having a product online, but they lack guidance and experienced advice on how to tackle obstacles, or even basic advice on how to properly start their tech project.

Since a survey is useless without action, we’ve discussed about setting up a mentorship event. It’s called Tap in Tuesdays and is instigated by Gabriel Sundaram, whom you’ve surely met if you’ve been to various entrepreneur events. The first event is scheduled next week, at Café des Éclusiers (we’re back!).

Sébastien Provencher (@sebprovencher) will be the mentor at the first event, bringing with him 12 years of experience in the search and local business. With the Praized Media team, he has created active online communities, raised $1m seed round, launched 3 successive products, and secured partnerships with Yellow Pages and Google. Entrepreneurs, marketers, or even those of you who have a project in mind but can’t really see how to jumpstart the project would greatly benefit from a Q&A and discussion with Sebastien Provencher.

Of course, this is only the first event, and there are no elaborate plans on how relationships will be setup. We want to make is informal for the first time, and then see how it can be improved at the next sessions. Gabriel has more information on the event’s website.

If you want to come, get a spot by emailing tapintuesday@gmail.com

hope to see you there!

One week ago, a survey was posted on MTW, with the goal of assessing the state of Montreal technology landscape. The survey was setup to find first the strengths, second the problems and finally, the opportunities for Montréal as a technology and entrepreneurship center.

As a few noted, it’s not a scientific survey, with sometimes a few opinionated or incomplete choices. A more methodical survey is possible, but it would have required weeks of planning, analysis and then lengthy execution. I prefer quick results, and then refining and correcting from there. It’s a more spontaneous approach, and as seen from the feedback, most liked it.

Before presenting the results, I would like to thank each one of you who contributed on promoting the survey. More than 50 people posted the survey on Twitter, links were shared on Facebook, and I also saw it on emails. It’s with the help of your unique networks that we can get the word known and get the voice of Montréal out there. I’m thinking now that we could use something similar to help promote new projects launched by local Montréalers and help each other.

Now, the results.

Strengths of Montréal as a tech entrepreneurship center.

For those who forgot it, it’s the ranked results for the first question of the survey. Choices listed on top are the best strengths as seen by the 110 people who took the time to answer the survey.

1 – Montréal’s diversity, creativity, and coolness. Score: 3.4/4  I posted the link on a previous post, but you all know Montréal is a hotbed of innovation. Its music and arts scene, its multicultural diversity, its global success such as the Cirque du Soleil, its openness makes it an ideal place for innovation and creativity. All major video game companies have now recognized its potential and have all developers teams here.

2 – Low costs plus tax credits. Score: 3.2/4 Most people who’ve been to major US and European cities are surprised how cheap Montréal. You don’t have to dedicated half of your pay to live right in downtown Montréal. For companies, salaries are low, both for skilled and unskilled workers, and there are diverse tax credits for innovative technology companies, allowing them to go past the dreaded 1st year launch. This is a crucial element for developers and entrepreneurs wanting to dedicate a few months on a technology projects, without worrying too much about rent

3 – Friendly Community with regular events, making it possible to talk. Score: 3.1/4 We’ve come far from the early days of 2005 and 2006. Ben Yoskovitz started it with the Montréal tech entrepreneur breakfast, then we had all of a sudden democamps, barcamps, startupdrinks, montreal.rb, mtlnewtech, etc. Thanks to all the past and current event organizers @sfllaw, @fredngo, @sylvaincarle, @marclaporte, @ylarrivee, yannick gingras, @arach, @heri, @quebecvalley, @jeremyclarke, @bolidea, @twtfelipe, @ptelio, @rayluk, @robin_ahn, @jefftala, @startupifier, @uxmtl and I am surely missing many others.

4 – Its universities and higher education system. Score: 3.0/4 MontrealInternational states it better than me:

Montréal’s universities are focal points for research, discovery and innovation activities. With its international calibre of researchers, its 11 universities − four of which are major universities and seven are affiliated schools − and its partnerships with governments and the private sector, Greater Montréal is a leader in innovation. Moreover, the Montréal region is Canada’s university capital, as it ranks first place for the number of university diplomas awarded at the ubdergraduate and graduate levels. In 2007, more than 170,000 students were enrolled in universities in Greater Montréal, of whom nearly 42,000 students graduated, with more than 6,500 graduates in  the high technology sectors. In the future, innovative companies will be able to count on a large pool of university graduates to meet their needs for a qualified workforce.

5 – The city is a bridge between North America and Europe, and attracts new talents. Score: 3.0/4 Quebec is unique in North America, due its French roots. Montréal is the 2nd French-speaking metropolis in the world, is located in North America, in one of the continent’s densest region, the St-Laurent valley, and as such, has attracted for dozens of years immigrants, from Quebec of course, Europe, Latin America and Asia, but especially is dear for all french-speaking countries in the world. It’s the equivalent of NYC or San Francisco from all West Africans, Belgians or Swiss. Paris is the de-facto capital of course, but it has heavy and historical structures and traditions weighing on innovation. Most youths and entrepreneurising individuals thus prefer to settle in Montréal, french but definitevely rooted in North America.

6 – Support from the Government, such as the launch of the Teralys fund. Score: 2.6/4 Support from the québec government is more visible than in any other province. Read previous article with Jacques Bernier

7 – No Facebook or Google Headquarters who would capture top talent. Score: 2.3/4 Compared to the Valley or Seattle, there is no huge technology company who would draft all the top developers. Any startup with a decent team can hope working with bright developers, designers and marketers without worrying (too much) about other companies snatching them up in a few weeks.

8 – Dynamism of investors and VCs. Score: 2.2/4 VCs like Chris Arsenault, or investors like @msu are going to local events, talking to entrepreneurs and even doing more than their roles by launching local initiatives such as the Notman House. But most importantly, they believe in local companies, announcing regularly new funding rounds.

What can we get from these results? If there is any marketing planned for Montréal, then we’ve need to highight first #1, which is Montréal’s innovation, creativity, diversity and openness. That makes a difference when settlers choose the city over other Canadian, American or European cities. I’ve mentioned it in a previous post, but it might be worthwile to talk about the music, design, fashion, or video games creative forces in Montréal, even on technology blog like MTW, because after all, that’s why most people are attracted to the city.

Also, #2 and #3 are obvious too, and even easier to demonstrate than #1 .

More results are coming in the next days. There are very interesting results about Montréal’s problem and opportunities. Stay tuned, folks!

Christmas is early for some of us apparently. While many are working hard on getting benevolent investors fund their projects, and trying to get their product online with minimal resources and time, Duncan Moore (@duncano) “just” applied to an innovation award started by U.K. based web development agency Deep Blue Sky Digital. The award’s homepage lists 5 criteria for winning projects: innovation, value, engagement, realism and originality, and Duncan Moore’s proposal apparently won over the judges, with £10000 worth of web design, development and consultancy to bring life to the idea in a couple of months.

For a web entrepreneur, this is equivalent to discovering in a evening walk a genie in a bottle, granting his wishes. Of course, you would also wish about having DHH as a lead developer and Caterina Fake the app designer, but that wouldn’t be possible, even with a powerful genie, so we have to consider Duncan Moore as the luckiest and perhaps also the most creative person of the month, having won the web award for innovation.

I did an email interview with Duncan Moore and Jim Morrisson, Deep Blue Sky’s rep.

Can you present yourself?

I’m a Montreal-based independent consultant. Together with a network of experienced freelancers, I provide services related to online strategy, naming, and content strategy & creation (copywriting & translation). Previously, I helped to brand and launch both CakeMail and Bloom Digital Platforms, the makers of AdGear. In addition to client work, I have been building another Web application, currently in private alpha, which will take some of the pain out of the naming process by making it easier to verify the availability of names online.

Duncan Moore (left), a while ago at BarCampMontreal3

Can you tell us succinctly about the idea? Such as the problem it is going to tackle and the general approach you’ve chosen?

The idea has to do with link-sharing on Twitter, which has become the way most of us get and share our links these days, although it was never designed for that purpose. We think we can add some functionality that will improve the link-sharing experience on Twitter.

Any other people behind the “idea”? Or you are the only person so far committed to the idea?

I discussed it at length with at least one trusted collaborator who is an experienced programmer, in order to validate feasibility before submitting it, but at this stage it’s just me. Once it’s launched, we’ll see. If it really takes off, it will likely need additional resources.

Aren’t you both afraid of working with a partner thousands of miles away?

Duncan Moore: Not in the least. When I was at CakeMail, we had team members in Easter Europe with whom we collaborated daily. More recently, while orchestrating the rebranding of Nexalogy, there was a critical point in the process when I was in Hawaii, the Nexalogy guys were in Montreal and designer Daniel Mireault (@dmireault) was in Thailand. Despite the distance, the end result is solid.

Jim Morrison, Deep Blue Sky Digital: Not from our perspective, no. From our correspondence thus far Duncan strikes me as just the kind of forward thinking person we enjoy working with. We have quite a few local clients but we also enjoy really great relationships with clients further afield for years sometimes before finally meeting face to face.

The prize is listed as “£10,000 of free Design, Development and Hosting for someone to bring their groundbreaking idea to life on the web.” Is it something you do frequently or is it the first time? Can you provide us of examples of websites or applications you did with less than £10,000 ?

Jim Morrison, Deep Blue Sky Digital: This is the first time we’ve done this. In September I instituted “Fridays” at Deep Blue Sky. All our Fridays (that’s 20% of our time) is spent on internal projects; learning, experimenting, blogging and having a bit more fun. First we got our own little site redone (deepbluesky.com), then we built findmebyip.com which has had a bit of an impact in the HTML5/CSS3 space, we designed an interactive QR-Coded lion sculpture which lives in the centre of Bath (spotthelion.com) and then finally we launched the Web Innovation Awards. Building the winning idea was the team’s choice of how to spend some of their Fridays.

Most of our standard CMS websites come in under £10,000 to be honest. dickiesworkwear.com is an example, at 8 European languages. The most fun and interesting have been iStylista.com – an intriguing personal shopper service – and of course cheddarvision.tv which was just an insane idea that caught people’s imagination… taught me a think or two about building lots of servers in a hurry too!

Can you present Deep Blue Sky? Especially, what are your technologies or methodologies you wish to highlight with this AwardingIdeas project?

Deep Blue Sky (@deepbluetweets) is a digital agency specialising in joining three disciplines together; design, development and consultancy. We believe pretty strongly that the three disciplines need each other to be effective. We’re just about to enter our third year as an agency and we’re really enjoying the projects that our clients are trusting us with.

One thing that’s lovely about working at an agency with a client base like ours is that we get to split our time pretty evenly between going out an learning about a client’s business and then implementing some innovative ideas to move that business forward. Sometimes the conversation happens in a boardroom and sometimes it happens in a cowshed – quite literally.

We a very creative, ideas driven little team and so projects like Awarding Ideas, Spot the Lion and FindMeByIP.com give us an avenue to express ideas that client work sometimes doesn’t quite provide.

Congrats again to @duncano! I’m looking forward to see his idea online.

BitNorth, an annual informal conference for technology communities but open for anyone, is scheduled at the end of the month. The event has a unique formula, with settings far away from Montreal, is similar to BarCamp in the sense that everyone has to participate, AND it’s the only tech event in the year without any Internet access. As seen in last year’s edition, it’s an eclectic and fun crowd with creative ideas.

For anyone who haven’t been yet at BitNorth, here’s an email interview with Alistair Croll (@acroll), the event’s original instigator

Can you present yourself? Can you also present the other team members organizing BitNorth?

The original idea:

I spend a lot of time running conferences with Techweb, O’Reilly, and others. Often, that’s one person talking, and others listening. And as everyone says, the best part of the conference is the networking in the lobby. So back in 2008, I decided I’d like to have a different kind of conference — one where everyone who attends is a participant. It seemed like Montreal was missing this kind of event. Through Ian Rae (@ianrae), we found an amazing facility up North called CAMMAC, which is the Canadian Amateur Music Association’s summer camp. And then word got out to around 50 people.

The tone of the event:

It’s very informal — this is a camp, after all. I’d describe it as one third TED, one third Foocamp, and one third Ignite. The only rule is that there are no spectators. While many of the attendees are in the tech community, the topics people present vary widely: from the carbon footprint of beer to carbon dating to dating in Mexico; from quantum theory to kite repair to the history of Ultimate Frisbee; from how root cellars work to Dubai’s building boom to the importance of personas in UI.

It can get a bit vulgar at times, and by Sunday we’re all feeling pretty scruffy. But that’s by design: some local companies have offered to sponsor it, but so far, we’ve declined. We don’t want to compromise on the event or have to regulate things too much. If you want formal, polite conferences, there are plenty of those.

The CAMMAC facility is amazing, too. There’s a lake, with canoes and a boathouse; hiking; and a campfire area for night-time.

Who runs it:

Since we run it at a loss, it’s mostly volunteers. The first year, it was just me, with a bunch of locals helping; the second year, Alex Bowyer (@alexbfree) and I ran it, with help from others; this year, since I’ve just had a daughter, my sister is helping out. The folks at Syntenic (Ian Rae @ianrae and others) and IDG (Kim Fuller) all lend a hand, too. And everyone who attends is contributing, of course.

Attendees:

We try very hard to find a male/female balance. Christine (@_hristine) wrote about this and I firmly believe that having a balance there makes a huge difference to the conference vibe and tone. We also have about 10 people coming in from California, and 5 from Boston, this year — so it’s become a fairly distributed group.

We don’t really market the event much — CAMMAC can only handle 60 people or so if everyone wants a decent room, and we fill up pretty fast. It’s hard to strike the right balance between an open event anyone can attend, and picking people who will be a good fit. So we open registration to returning attendees first, then their friends, and finally the general public.

What’s that human2.0 idea? Future androids you want to engineer? or does that represent the typical 2010 Montréaler using Foursquare in his iPhone and at the same working remotely with a global team on his laptop?

This year’s theme:

Human 2.0 is a blog Alex Bowyer, Angela Case (@acase) and I launched earlier this year, that looks at the convergence of computers and humans. IMHO this is the biggest ethical and technical question of the twenty-first century, and we write and share links on the subject there. So this year, we figured we’d suggest that as the theme.

The themes are just a suggestion: in 2008 it was “the other 99%”, talking about how the rest of the world uses technology; and in 2009 it was “disguise”, since it was Hallowe’en.

If BitNorth is Ignite, TED and FooCamp together, surely there were great ideas presented at the last edition. Do you know of any projects launched or startups influenced by previous Bitnorth edition?

Projects and startups:

It’s not really focused on tech startups, although there’s a fair amount of tech. Will Stevens showed us how to fix a kite, and that’s part of his new venture, Kiteaid. James Duncan and Bryan Bogensberg sold their cloud startup, Reasonablysmart, to Joyent, shortly after the first conference, in part with the assistance of other attendees. Several other attendees have gone on to work together on projects.

There have been some couples who met at Bitnorth, too, which is always nice.

In the end, when you spend a weekend with someone in a summer camp — someone described it as “a sleepover for smart people” — you definitely get to know them better.

by katrientje

In an interesting note, why isn’t there no Internet at BitNorth? That’s like a basic need for us techies. Add that to the fact that you actually have to go away from Montréal. No coffee shops with Ile-sans-fil. Perhaps there is no 3G coverage. Perhaps you have also arranged that there won’t be any power plugs. And outdoors. Gosh… Will you scan for iPhones and blackberries at the entrance to prevent ad-hoc wifi networks?

The “disconnect to reconnect” part:

When we first found the place, we didn’t know it had no net (and nearly no phone signal.) When we found out, we quickly scrambled to brand the event (“disconnect to reconnect.”) And you know what? It worked. Instead of tweeting, liveblogging, and checking in, people interacted.

In 2008, one of the attendees — who runs engineering for Conviva in the Valley — had to get online Sunday morning because they were launching their service. So he huddled over the only connected workstation, in the basement, while everyone else got chair massages and participated in the Birds of a Feather sessions upstairs.

Last year, the place had actually added a Wifi router and satellite, and some people were able to get online. But at the end of the weekend, everyone voted to not turn it on this year. There’s something awesome about disconnecting for a weekend and just being with people. And if those people have all spent time researching something they’re passionate about, and are participatory and outgoing, you won’t want to get online anyway: there’s more than enough interesting in the room with you.

Can you give us a taste of the topics presented at this year’s BitNorth? Surely, you got hints from friends registering?

This year’s topics:

I don’t want to give too much away, because finding out what the topics are is part of the fun. But here are a few of them:

• Understanding and teaching scale
• Food, love, and sex
• Democratizing healthcare with microfinance
• A better way to mug: how to improve assault through effective communication
• Toys to improve collaboration
• Why classical music sucks
• How to make tamales (mexican dish)
• Lessons learned from my MIRA guide dog
• Tablets versus unions: the future of education

Also, while everyone chooses the topic of their Short Bit — usually 5 minutes in length — that (and the open bar on Saturday) are the only parts that are certain. We add other stuff: in 2008, we had a panel of 4 kids aged 9 to 14 telling us how they use the Web, as well as guided hangover meditation and professional chair massages. Last year, we played Werewolf until the wee hours, ran a gameshow, and did Powerpoint Karaoke as an icebreaker. In fact, some of those Karaoke decks were used at Chirp by Anil Dash and @ev from Twitter.

Incidentally, we also plan way ahead of time — next year, it’ll be on September 15; no topic yet, though!

So it’s August 1st, middle of the summer and most of you are probably on a terrace, back or going to holidays, plus maybe a few hardcore techies still sleeping from a hard night coding (raise your hands hahaha)

Today we have a light and quite modest post I entitled “Montreal is the best startup city in the world”, since a few people on Hacker News were wondering what’s the best city to relocate if they can’t get a visa in the US. Here is what I wrote as a reply:

• Strong, diverse and friendly startup scene. From 2 to 5 startup events every week. see calendar (View @mtlnewtech for more). Many local developer groups (ruby, python, php, .NET, javascript, uxmtl, etc.
• Strong existing angel investors + new VC funds being created. You mention Toronto but actually there is more money flowing in Quebec
• Montreal is half european and half north american, half-french, half-english. Lots of diversity, lots of creatives. Literature : “Nearly a fifth of the Montreal region’s workforce forms a super-creative core: techies & cultural & 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” (thanks @sebpaquet for the find)
• Montreal is 2nd happiest city in the world
• 4 universities, plus engineering and business schools, such as McGill University, Hec Montréal, @SUPINFOMontreal or ETS
• cost of living is cheap. Not as cheap as Bangalore of course, but cheaper than Toronto, Boston and of course cheaper than San Francisco or London, U.K.
• lots of initiatives, one startup incubator (@bolidea), another one coming in September, blogs and publications dedicated to the community (MTW or also upcoming @nextmontreal), student/entrepreneur groups (@Startupifier), startup weekends (one coming in early October), conferences drawing hundreds of attendees (wordcamp, rocococamps, startupcamp, podcamp etc), big startup space soon (@notmanhouse)
• plus of course many technology projects launched every month, in average 1 or 2 new products launching every week. OstrichApp launched 10 days ago featured on apple.com, BeyondTheRack funding, statusnet, vanilla forums, Tungle etc.

Note: You are welcomed to add more points, since I intend to bookmark this page and provide the link next time there’s a young entrepreneuring mind on Hacker News or a blog like TC.