The event is not your regular “job fair” : we want to feature on stage all the great talent out there who have passion and are looking for more than just a “9-to-5″ job, and are considering startups a great option for their career path. Too often, we focus on companies, projects and startups, and we do not focus enough on individual talent and people that makes the community what it is.

Celebrating talent

As such, we want to reach out the Montreal tech community: tell us why you are a talent. In front of a large crowd, we want programmers/designers/entrepreneurs to be proud and highlight their achievements. Did you win at a recent Startup Weekend? Is your github project forked by many others? Did you win a design award? Are you a star on Twitter? Do you want to present a weekend project you’re proud of? We want to celebrate all those small and big achievements that makes Montréal a great city for innovation and creativity.

Win the respect and admiration of peers

Since we can’t get hundreds of people on stage, we’ve decided to feature only a selection. This is how it works:

1. Write about a recent project or achievement you are proud of. Don’t forget the hashtag #MTLStartupTalent so we and everyone can view it. You can also link to a website, to a video, an event, or a photo showcasing your achievement.
2. Everyone can view the #MTLStartupTalent hashtag. We will select the best according to the “RT” the tweet gets, or according to pure awesomeness of your achievements
3. We will feature 3 talents per category on stage during MTLStartupTalet: programming, design, marketing/business. Each will present himself/herself and their achievements, and win the respect and admiration of your peers.

Startup co-founders, the best hackers, investors, media are going to be at #MTLStartupTalent so it’s your chance to get the admiration of your peers. Start rocking on Twitter!

Here are some of the questions that will be addressed:

• Are you really sure you’re cut out to compete overt the same resources, talent, and capital with other entrepreneurs?
• What makes you different from other entrepreneurs trying to build start-ups?
• What can you do as a founder to attract the best people and funding?
• What are you doing to build the network you need to be successful?
• What are you willing to sacrifice to get the company built?
• When was the last time you went down to Silicon Valley/Alley?

Join us to talk about the difference between Entrepreneurs or Wantrepreneurs. This will be a bit of a reality check!

GrowLab is a Vancouver based start-up accelerator similar to the likes of Founderfuel and Techstars. It provides entrepreneurs with seed funding, office space and three months of intensive mentorship through a global network of successful startup veterans.

The event is offered at the unbeatable price of FREE here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2786740215/efblike and will be held at Maison Notman House.

It’s been getting a lot of buzz on twitter (@growlabs) so I suggest registering as soon as possible while tickets are still available.

ildar khakimov

Le défi Startup Weekend Montréal

Cette fin de semaine, 135 développeurs, designers et spécialistes en marketing et en administration se sont rassemblés à Startup Weekend Montréal, et ont été mis au défi de concevoir, développer et lancer une «startup». L’événement a commencé fort vendredi avec une allocution de Yona Shtern, le fondateur du site à succès BeyondTheRack.com et de François Gilbert, directeur général d’Anges Québec. « Être entrepreneur, c’est une façon de vivre, d’exprimer sa confiance en soi et ses convictions profondes » a affirmé François Gilbert. Ils ont été ensuite été invité à rejoindre dans un panel de discussions Jean-Sébastien Cournoyer, partenaire du fonds de démarrage Real Ventures et Chris Arsenault, associé directeur au fonds de capital de risque iNovia Capital.

61 idées ont été ensuite présentées par les participants, avec au final seulement 17 projets sélectionnés. Les équipes se tout de suite lancées au travail, avec pour défi la réalisation en seulement 54 heures.

Support complet de la Communauté d’affaires

Tout au long de de la fin de semaine, 54 entrepreneurs à succès, chefs d’entreprise, et experts reconnus en design, marketing, technologie et services légaux ont conseillé et supporté les équipes. Ces mentors se sont assurés qu’ils ont validé les hypothèses en parlant à des clients potentiels, les ont aidé dans leur modèle d’affaire, et ont rappelés aux équipes la nécessité d’avoir un produit fonctionnel.

Im-patient, la solution pour de meilleurs services en santé?

Les équipes ont été jugées à la fin de l’événement sur la qualité d’exécution de leur modèle d’affaires, de l’exécution, de la validation du produit auprès de la clientèle cible ainsi que sur la composition de leur équipe. Le jury composé de Senia Rapisarda (BDC), Mr. Claude Ananou (SynOpp), Mr. Johann Gest (Fasken Martineau), Mark Mcleod (Real Ventures) et Caroline Pelletier (Anges Québec) ont remis le prix du jury à l’équipe de im-patient, une application mobile qui permet à ses utilisateurs de simplifier et d’accélerer leur visite médicale. Humm.it a quant à lui, gagné le prix coup de coeur.

Des chiffres qui parlent d’eux-mêmes

En tout, 100 000 $ de prix ont été décernés, dont des forfait complets de services légaux, des services d’incubation, rencontres et coaching auprès investisseurs, services de design, et entrées dans des conférences internationales comme C2MTL ou Startup Festival. « Startup Weekend Montréal a pour la première fois rejoint d’un côté la communauté des startups de Montréal, avec des organisations comme Notman House, MontrealTechWatch ou FounderFuel, et d’un autre côté l’organisation de HEC Montréal, qui a eu un effet multiplicateur et donné naissance à un événement d’envergure.» selon Heri Rakotomalala, co-organisateur de l’événement.

Startup Weekend Montréal, c’est en tout 8 projets d’affaires dans les réseaux sociaux et jeux, 4 projets en ecommerce, 3 projets en applications mobiles et géo-localisés, 1 projet en santé, et 1 projet en publication numérique.

Startup Weekend Montréal a pour partenaires principaux HEC Montréal, Fasken Martineau, Real Ventures et la BDC, et est un événement co-organisé par la Société des Relations d’Affaires et MontrealTechWatch.

Références:

Antoine Delacressonnière (@delacrouz), one of the Montreal Startup Weekend organizer, works in the SRA office. The student association Société des Relations d’Affaires along with Montreal Tech Watch are the organizers of Startup Weekend.

Alexandre Adou (@alexandreadou) works on his iPad. A SW organizer practically works full time on the project for weeks and weeks, especially as the number of partners rise. There are always questions and requests from sponsors and mentors. Emails and phone calls come in hundreds a day, and it’s a tough challenge making sure they get all they need… and more!

Startup Weekend has many volunteers working in communications, catering, logistics, and security. Most are from the HEC Montreal business school.

Yldar, who contributes regularly to the community, with Montreal Tech Watch (read last photo series) and Notman House, was at the SW launch on friday evening.

There are also volunteers from the startup community, who come in with social media expertise to make sure Montréal Startup Weekend gets great visibility.

Antoine tells participants how the voting system works. It’s not always perfect, but after chaos comes then the teams selected for Startup WEekend.

Maxime Grandjean, is the

Alexandre “believes in his project”. Even though he was not selected by other participants, he still came back Saturday AM to work on Instabuy, the QR Code tool to buy acha

Projects gather front-end designers, developers, and a good ratio of marketers and entrepreneurs.

Here you can see a typical team: mac laptops, the odd developer, the executive, and the designer with funky colors and innovative ideas. Robotgrrl presented the Edubotts education

Olivier Cabanes, bolidea co-founder, talks with Marc-Antoine Ross, also a serial technology entrepreneur. Montréal Startup Weekend is a great opportunity for the startup community to connect with the “new generation”, i.e. students, and other people considering startups as an alternative career choice.

The Yaround team hustled their idea, with cool t-shirts and a panel.

Jim MacDannald works on a site for fantasy olympics sports.

Startup Weekend is also a great opportunity for marketers , business developers, lawyers to connect and get challenged on new ideas.

JS Cournoyer, a partner at Real Ventures, gives advice to one of the team.

Anna Goodson talks about the beginning of Anna Goodson management, to an all-girl audience. It’s an inspiring talk, and most relevant, in a community predominated by male entrepreneurs.

Robotgrrl!

Red Bull comes in with the music

Marketing brainstorming. The team does the Innovation Collective, is big on marketing and business plans.

woowoo ho Startup Weekend

Red Bull girl deliveries at Startup Weekend, to bring more energy and smiles.

Volunteers and organizers drawing out the battle plan

Some attendees couldn't wait to show off their projects before the start of the event

No one is posing in this picture (except for Marc of startupifier and a volunteer)

sponsors of the event including Lou who sponsored the event with his time and effort

A bit of networking before the event kicked off

Networking

Heri, one of the organizers

The space was sponsored by HEC

A few words by the organizers and volunteers

The speakers asked by a show of hands how many people had an idea they would like to pitch

Speakers included (from left) Jean Sebastien Cournoyer Partner in FounderFuel, Real Ventures, Yona Shtern, Co-Founder - Beyond the Rack, Chris Arseneault - iNovia Capital, Francois Gilbert President Directeur General of Anges Quebec

I personally attended the Ignite event and found her presentation quite interesting. She’s very enthusiastic and seems to be truly fascinated with all things Youtube.

On February 9^th she’ll hold the very first edition of Youtube Association at Maison Notman House. Event is targeted at Youtube video creators. The goal is to bring together content makers for collaboration and idea sharing. If you’re just thinking of experimenting with Youtube you can pick up marketing and production insights.

Montreal will be the first city to hold such an event. As opposed to Vlogger fan events where you can catch a glimpse of your favorite Youtube celebrity, this event is targeted towards aspiring Youtube stars.

As one famous Russian Vlogger (+100500) mentioned in an interview, “I owe my first Youtube post to my friend who kept bugging me to make a video”. Today +100500 is sought out for T.V appearances and even movie deals. Youtube Association event could be that final push that you need to get started.

So bring your artistic body to Maison Notman on February 9^th and discover something new. 10$ lets you through the doors and gets you a drink. For registration and payment go to: http://youtubeassociation.eventbrite.com/

Oh, and if you’re a fan of TheReplygirl, she’s going to be there also!

If you’re interested in sponsoring the event Aimee’s twitter handle is: @onehundredjobs

This post was originally posted on Louis-Philippe Huberdeau’s blog, co-founder of new hiring startup hirevoice. It’s hot on the trails of an earlier MTW blog post

We learned a lot at CUSEC this year. However, for the first time, it was not from presentations. The first presentation I watched entirely was on Saturday, when we decided it was time to rest and enjoy.

The rest of the time, the HireVoice team (Étienne and I) were hard at work, running a survey among the attendees to figure out what motivates them to work for a company. We gathered data on an analog medium (paper), uncertain that the digital age would resist the amount of devices attempting to connect during a conference attended by 400 software engineering and computer science students. Bell’s network could not handle it. Analog was the right way to go. Compiling the data turned out to be a huge task, but we got a few interesting points out of it. We finished everything yesterday.

First off, everyone was really nice. We surveyed 109 students in two days. Almost everyone accepted. We don’t really hold grudge against the two who walked away.

Second, relocation is not really an issue. The competition for talent is global and talent is going global too. 65% of respondents are ready to relocate for a job. The good news for Montréal is that a lot of those born and raised in Montréal have a preference to stay here.

Going back to a normal life, I read a post on Montreal Tech Watch indicating that the next challenge was getting students into startups. I went back in our dataset. Here are some numbers:

• 55% of the students surveyed listed a start-up in their employers of choice (among the sponsors)
• For those indicating a desire to work in Montréal, the numbers are very close (within error range), and keep in mind that you can also get those from outside to relocate to Montréal too.

If you want to recruit top talents getting out of universities, make sure you have a killer work environment, plenty of challenge and a product or services they can be proud of.

HireVoice is a Montréal-founded start-up interested in employer and candidate perception.

The event is free (with free breakfast and lunch), and covers everything you need to know about mobile development on the latest smartphones: Android, NFC, HTML5 plus also Samsung technologies such as bada and SmartTV. If you are looking to connect with Samsung and do a special app for them, Samsung reps will also be there to discuss, answer questions, and also give you tips on how to get to the Samsung Apps store.

The event starts at 9AM, and has 2 tracks: one mobile track and another focused on TV. Each presentation/session lasts 30mn, and there are also many breaks to let you talk to other participants to switch tracks. The afternoon covers IceCreamSandwich, Flash on TV and more goodies. All in all, a great day to learn for mobile developers.

Register on the Wavefront website

That’s where the MTLStartupTalent initiative Feb 1st is interesting. With 4 local startups (Seevibes, Wajam, MatchFWD, Yelp Montreal), the group will be meeting directly students looking for opportunities (either first job or an internship), with around 40 students from the business school ESG and more students from AGEEI, a student association from Faculté des sciences (Computer Science).

The event is called “Démystifions les startups”, and as the name suggest, it’s an effort to dissect and promote the “startup way of life” to students who usually hear about jobs at Unilever, Desjardins, CGI who are lure them away in corporate ranks. The event is done for the community, probably organized through a couple of quick emails and done in lost hours, but the idea got nevertheless the interest of many career centers and also many students who liked the outreach. There will be probably more at ETS, Concordia, Polytechnique etc. to give a prime spotlight to Montréal startups.

For startups who missed the opportunity, there’s more: with the Centre De Gestion des Carrières, there’s an upcoming workshop on Feb 9th on teaching them how to hire an intern. It’s especially good for startups who are looking to get help for a product launch, or for the first commercialization phase. There has been questions on what’s the grants out there, and also what exactly should be in a internship offer, so here’s your chance.

RSVP http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2811185331