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Events

#wcmtl WordCampMontreal gathers all wordpress fans (10)

Monday, August 30th, 2010 · by Heri · Events, web2.0

Clever cupcakes @ wordcampmontreal

As told by netfirms sponsor, WordPress is the #1 installed blogging and cms software. It has been embraced by corporations, consultants, SMBes, but also big publishing companies such as Wall Street Journal or LeMonde.fr. I know it’s my #1 recommended software for anyone wanting a web presence, with a website and a template up up in less than a couple of hours. As a matter of fact, its ubiquitous presence made competitors focus instead on niche markets, and made entrepreneurs go to other areas, such as mobile development or facebook/social applications development.

That’s why WordCampMontreal was in my top conferences to go this summer. It’s great to see again the early adopters who I already met 5 years ago (although not all of them), when WordPress was still up against blogspot (or even movabletype and livejournal). But the majority of the audience were not early adopters: php developers, web designers, bloggers who just got started this year, etc. It’s a diverse crowd, and it was reflected in the unconference’s schedule: theming wordpress, integration with forums, making it bilingual, SEO for wordpress, multimedia and wordpress, deploying wordpress on windows etc. I was sort of hoping for talks about federated/distributed buddypress, or maybe wp realtime and mobile blogging talks, but that’s a little bit too advanced probably. We got great food though, and the little extra-touch which surprised me.

Thanks to the organizers (Jeremy Clarke, digibomb, Shannon Smith) who did a wonderful job. Thanks also to the wordcampmontreal sponsors (Netfirms, Make Web Not War, also Philippe Martin’s N’ayez pas Peur)

More pictures (alexa clark)

Upcoming: PodCampMontreal, Sept 11th, 12th (11)

Friday, August 13th, 2010 · by Heri · Events, Marketing, web2.0

PodCampMontréal, Montréal’s biggest social media conference is in one month ahead, sept 11th and 12th.

The event is organized as a camp, meaning everyone is invited to present, all in informal settings. The format has been proven successful, with sessions ranging from blog marketing, social media monetization to discussions on the future of media, or social media 101 sessions. This year’s edition will probably have interesting sessions on Twitter, new services like Foursquare, and I expect also sessions on social media for mobile.

But Sylvain Grand’Maison (QuebecBalado Fono), one of the original instigators of the event, presents it better than me:

(view in HD on vimeo)

I like especially when he talks about Montréal in the latest 30 sec. of the video.

If you are in Montréal Sept 11th and 12th, don’t miss PodCampMontréal. I have been to the last edition, with insightful tips and also a way to learn about the latest trends, but as everyone knows, it’s a great way to meet in the corridors all the bloggers, journalists, new media citizens and influences from Montréal and other cities.

Tap In Tuesday, mentoring event with Sebastien Provencher (8)

Thursday, August 12th, 2010 · by Heri · Events, entrepreneurship




Tap In Tuesday @ Café Des Éclusieurs


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. Tap In Tuesday @ Café Des Éclusieurs 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”. Tap In Tuesday @ Café Des Éclusieurs 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.

Upcoming: Tap In Tuesdays mentoring event with Sebastien Provencher, August 10th (12)

Friday, August 6th, 2010 · by Heri · Events, entrepreneurship

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!).

Gabriel Sundaram

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!

Upcoming: BitNorth August 27th to 29th @ Lake McDonald (8)

Monday, August 2nd, 2010 · by Heri · Events, Hacking, Open Source, entrepreneurship, web2.0

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

Bitnorth08

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.

Lazy music BOF

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!

Upcoming: WordcampMontreal, August 28-29th (11)

Friday, July 30th, 2010 · by Heri · Events, web2.0

wordcamp-9

Matt Mullenweg (wordpress creator, @PHOTOMATT) and Jeremy Clarke (@jeremyclarke) at WordcampMontreal 2009, Photograph by EvaBlue

WordCampMontreal (@wordcampmtl) is scheduled in exactly one month. As most of you already knows, it’s a camp for WordPress, the most used blogging and CMS software, the one that your uncle uses to post his travels, or the one that a huge media company such as LeMonde.fr uses for their millions of users. WordPress, known for its versatility, extensibility, developer and design-friendly code, “plug & play” install, open source code, was and still is at the forefront of the social web and is a model for many publishing software. And as such, it’s one of the unmissable technology events in Montréal this year.

There are already 15 presentations planned, spanning from SEO, buddypress, plugin development, etc. Spots are still available. I hope to see more about plugin development and platform integration (using it with Facebook or a Rails app for instance).

Register on EventBrite. ($40 fee)

Organizers are also actively looking for sponsors. WordCampMontréal gathers all the city’s digerati, influential bloggers and video-bloggers, php developers, top web designers, which makes it an excellent opportunity for any company looking to reach this kind of audience. Talk to the team or pick directly a micro-sponsor spot on EventBrite

StartupDrinks.ca, now in 10 Canadian cities (5)

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 · by Heri · Events, entrepreneurship

Awesome initiative by Raymond Luk and Robin Ahn, who are launching StartupDrinks.ca

StartupDrinks.ca

I’m amazed on how this picked up and there are now 10 Canadians cities joining the “movement”. I haven’t been able to be as active as I was before (which is an understatement, *cough*); and I’m glad to see Flow Ventures taking the lead and gathering tech entrepreneurs, and everyone interested in startups.

The Montréal StartupDrinks are of course due Wed 25th November, from 5.30pm @ Brutopia.

1215 Crescent Street, on Ste-Catherines Street.

For those who haven’t been yet, it’s an informal gathering, an opportunity to share, meet the Montreal tech entrepreneur community, to celebrate the launch of StartupDrinks.ca … and of course take a drink. Everyone’s invited, if you have a startup or not, if you’re a veteran or just someone considering launching a tech venture.

November StartupDrinks @ Brutopia 5.30pm, 28th October (8)

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 · by Heri · Events, entrepreneurship

Montreal StartupDrinks July, co-edition with Toronto

It’s the end of the month, and the monthly meetup for Montreal tech entrepreneurs is planned tomorrow wed 28th October, as you might have read on the Flow Ventures blog.

The event gathers Montreal entrepreneurs, developers and any Montrealer interested in startups. It’s been running for more than a year, and gathers every last wednesday of the month from 40 to 70 entrepreneurs. It’s a great (free) way to mingle and get to know what others are working on.

Subscribe to the event on techentreprise

Venue: Brutopia, 1215 Crescent St, Sth of Ste-Catherine

When: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 from 5:30pm

Event organization driven by Flow Ventures

Note: I won’t be able to personally come to this event

September StartupDrinks @ Brutopia 5.30pm Sep 30th (4)

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 · by Heri · Events, entrepreneurship

As you might have seen on FlowVentures, Montreal StartupDrinks are on tomorrow!

Register here

As the name suggests, the event gathers technology entrepreneurs, startuppers, developers, investors, as well as experts helping startups. We’re expecting 60 and more people for the evening, with always new entrepreneurs coming in to join the community.

The event starts at 5.30pm till the end of the evening.

The other good news is that StartupDrinks are spreading in other cities, after Toronto and Ottawa, there’s an edition also scheduled in Waterloo.

If you know about co-workers, students, engineers, marketers looking to launch or working on a startup, don’t hesitate to forward them the event.

Register for the event

Last Drinks of the Summer, Canadian TechStars grads in Montreal

StartupDrinks @ Helm

Montreal StartupDrinks July, co-edition with Toronto

StartupDrinks during the last summer

Montreal StartupDrinks July, co-edition with Toronto

Last Drinks of the Summer, Canadian TechStars grads in Montreal (9)

Monday, August 31st, 2009 · by Heri · Events

demo day

TechStars, the Boulder Colorado based startup program similar to Y-Combinator recently graduated another 10 companies. The event was attended by approximately 350 people, including tech bloggers such as Robert Scoble and investors from a number of “web 2.0” VC firms including First Round CapitalFoundry Group and Union Square Ventures (Fred Wilson) and our very own Montreal Start Up.

The team behind  one of these graduating companies is Vanilla. Vanilla provides open source forum software that is used to power hundreds of thousands of sites around the web. Vanilla already had 300,000+ Installations, 450+ Plugins and were doing 200+ downloads every day – all of this before even attending TechStars.

So why did they decide to join the TechStars program? Simply because they wanted to turn there product into a business !

The team behind Vanilla, are Canadian entrepreneurs Mark O’Sullivan and Todd Burry. The guys will be in Montreal this Thursday and they have agreed to tell us a little about their experience at TechStars: what they’ve learned about turning a product into a business, how to approach investors and some insight into the value of belonging to the TechStars alumni community.

We are going to take this opportunity to have a “Last drinks of Summer” for the Montreal tech community. The event is open to anyone and is going to be held this Thursday, September 3rd at Helm from 5pm-8pm.

Alongside main actors of the Montreal tech community such as MontrealStartup, the event is being organized in conjunction with Station-C, so it will be also be a great opportunity for anyone looking to meet up with freelance designers and developers.

Photo credit: Demo Day, techstars, by Andrew Hyde

Note: you can use techentreprise to see who is also coming up.

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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