It’s announced as a conference full of good keynotes, from successful entrepreneurs like BeyondTheRack founder, renowned Internet marketers, and other Internet execs. View more on the eventbrite page. As the name suggests, the presentations were curated to accelerate startups.

It’s more than a conference though, as it’s designed to create connections between investors and entrepreneurs. The keynotes and the fireside chats will be followed by a cocktail where startups can meet investors. The event is instigated by the C100, a Silicon Valley-based organizations aimed at helping Canadian-based businesses, so you are guaranteed to meet SV-based investors. Who knows? It can the ticket of success for your current startup.

What’s often missing from these events is guidance to teams about what’s next for them, in terms of becoming a viable startup. It’s often a hit or miss, before they become ready for launch, VC or angel funding.

It’s with this in mind that I discussed with Charles Morand, a senior analyst at the Business Development Bank of Canada or the BDC, involved in the “Anges Financiers” event, and also at Startup Weekend. Charles Morand also mentored teams at the event, and I wanted to see what was the investor’s point of view for those local startup events.

Q: Can you present yourself, and your position at the BDC?

My name is Charles Morand and I am a Senior Analyst in the Strategic Initiatives and Investments group. We focus largely on the early-stage end of the VC market and do mostly indirect investing (e.g. accelerators, seed funds, angel funds), although we do issue convertible notes to the most promising graduates of the best Canadian accelerators.

Q: We’ve seen the BDC getting involved in the startup community, by sponsoring Startup Weekend Toronto, Startup Weekend Montréal, HackingHealth, and now the $100,000 BDC Innovation Award. Is there a plan behind this? Is the BDC looking to support very early-stage startups?

Our group was created in response to the major funding gap that exists for early stage Canadian technology companies. We therefore focus heavily on investments (e.g. accelerators) and initiatives (e.g. Startup Weekend) that have positive impacts for the early-stage ecosystem. So yes, there is a plan behind what we do

Q: What do you think of the hackathon model where a hundred or so programmers and tech entrepreneurs get together to design and launch a project in one weekend?

We’re big fans of them. They’re relatively cheap to put together and they’re a great way to get the local entrepreneurially-minded talent (technical and otherwise) together. Sometimes that’s all it takes for someone who has the fire to make the jump and become an entrepreneur – we’ve seen that happen in a couple of cases already. Some of the projects we’ve seen come out of the hackathons have been very impressive. Moreover, it’s often a chance for the whole community to get together and network.

The one caveat to that is that startup competitions of all kind are gaining in popularity, and that means greater demands on a limited pool of mentors, sponsors, etc. My advice to organizers of such events is to focus on putting together fewer, high-quality events rather than more frequent mediocre events.

Q: What could be done to support the most advanced projects from Startup Weekend and other hackathons? Right now, it looks like there’s a real gap between being a winner a Startup Weekend and being seed-ready.

That’s a good question and one that a lot of people struggle with. In a majority of cases, there is indeed a gap between being seed- or angel-ready and having just won a hackathon or startup competition. There are some interesting initiatives in other places that could serve as models, but there’s nothing yet here that provides support at the very early stage on a scale that would move the needle from an ecosystem standpoint. Maybe that’s the next thing the organizers of the top hackathons and startup competitions in Montréal should tackle – get together and bring a solid project to us and we’ll be happy to see how we can support it!

A Montreal-based student and also encryption specialist, Nadim (@kaepora) is also famous for crypto.cat, a communication tool that is used by many security groups and also activists worldwide to send privately messages, without fear of detection. The messages are encrypted, and not even the operator of the infrastructure cannot read the messages.

Even with the cryptocat cred, Nadim was still impressed to get messages from Sabu, and even more surprised to be invited to join in attacks. As most of you know, Sabu has know been revealed as the 28-year old NYC resident Hector Xavier Monsegur, paid by the FBI to reveal the identies of hacker “friends”.

Other signs show the growth of the hacker community in Montreal: in less than 3 weeks, Hackus will be in Montreal, with a software, hardware, and social engineering tracks. The initiative is advertised to most Comp Sci students in Montreal as well as various InfoSec companies. Teams are challenged for 2 days to solve simple to complex challenges, such as rooting a server, cryptography challenges, or hacking the network layer. For programmers or “regular” sys-admins, it would interesting to attend the event and see what are the challenges in security, if you are on the other side of the fence… especially if your server experienced an intrusion or injection recently.

Other initiatives also contribute to the growth of the community. Every month, MTLSEC has organized informal get-togethers where anyone can meet professionals or anyone interested in security, from governance issues to low-level implementation. The next meeting is tomorrow at Nyks Bistro near metro Place des Arts.

That’s without counting REcon, a world-class computer security conference. The event attracts companies and individuals interested in reverse engineering and exploitation techniques, and contribute into establishing Montreal as a security and hacker pole in North America.

That community is fuelled by the support of new startups like Subgraph, a developer of the open source security tool Vega. Many student groups from ETS to UQAM to Concordia are also heavily invested in that community… on what side you might ask. But that’s for another article.

Somewhere in an African village a father is having a conversation with his son.

“When you were just a little boy, we didn’t have phones that check water quality.”

As incredible as it sounds, the technology is very real. The prototype was developed in just a few days by a local Montreal team during a hackathon called “Random Hacks of Kindness.” The event is about technology for humanitarian needs.

The Open Source Android App is called “Portable Microbiology Lab” and here is how it works:
A user puts a water sample on a 3M petrifilm and tells the App to register GPS coordinates of where the water was taken. After a 24 hour incubation period, the user photographs the petrifilm (example below).

The App then applies filters to the image and counts the bacterial colonies. Sophisticated image recognition shows if the bacteria is ”e.coli” (very bad), “total coliform” (bad), or environmental bacteria (not so bad): this is done by analyzing by the color and nearby bubbles.

Afterwards, all the information including the image is uploaded onto a server. In the future it may tell humanitarian workers and residents that a Tanzanian lake at XYZ coordinates has a bad concentration of e.coli.

The beauty of the app is that water sources can be as small as tiny water wells, but information about its water quality is available through something as huge as the World Wide Web.

Application developers are working closely with John Feighery PhD, a former research associate at NASA, who will perform lab trials this April to test the accuracy of the app when it comes to counting and analyzing bacteria.

If the lab trials succeed the Portable Microbiology kit will hit Tanzanian soil as early as July for additional field testing.

Android phones capable of taking these pictures cost less than 120$. Combine this with affordability of ‘Portable Microbiology kits’, that can be incubated using body heat, and we may end up with a sustainable solution to help fight water problems that plague many parts of the world.

This goes to show the value of hackathons such as RHOK Montreal, which themselves are a lot like incubators: Put a bunch of smart, passionate people in one room, incubate them for a few hours and let them grow whatever they want.

Oh, the magic of Petrifilm!

Team working on the App includes: Clayton Grassick, Gina Cook (@cesine7), George Peristerakis (@peristerakis), Amir Pakdel, John Feighery (@rocketboy76), Adriana Olmos and Pablo Duboue (@pabloduboue). RHOK Montreal was organized by Angelique Mannella (@angemannella).

by ildar khakimov (@ildarius)

Like previous events, it’s held at McKibbins on bishop st (corner Ste-Catherines), and is an event designed for the technology community: there’s no entrance fee, and as such, it’s a great opportunity to meet newcomers.

Here’s the line-up:

• DrupalSun is an online aggregator of curated RSS feeds, featuring a UI optimized both for easily skimming new items and searching through archives. It’s made by the folks from EvolvingWeb
• QA on Request is a web and software testing company. We specialize in testing mobile apps, web sites, video games and software projects during the development phase, making sure they are bug-free and ready for launch.
• Recruit.ee: Helping students and startups connect.
• Plus 2 other startups.

RSVP on twtvite. See you there1

Here are selections of pictures taken from the event.

Who are the event organizers? What’s your experience with social APIs? Anything you’re doing currently with social APIs?

BuildSocial was started by our team at UrbanOrca. We are a few crazy startup-ers who love to build social products, and believe strongly in the power of social data and APIs. Our social discovery product is heavily integrated with platforms like Facebook, which has been an important part of our early success. My first experience building a social product was at RootMusic.com, which is now the largest music app on Facebook with over 30 million users.

While Canadian companies haven’t been known for their leadership in the social arena, we have recently noticed some cool social projects emerging in Montreal. We started BuildSocial to bring this community together, pool resources and learnings, and give the community a voice in the global startup ecosystem.

It’s been a few years that companies have included social media monitoring strategies plus elaborate Facebook apps in their marketing campaigns. Are you also welcoming marketing agencies, IT companies and established companies at BuildSocial, or it’s going to be startup-focused?

BuildSocial events are for entrepreneurs, developers, designers, and product managers who are building a web or mobile product that is heavily integrated with social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Foursquare.  Big and small companies are welcome to attend, but as entrepreneurs we are slightly biased towards startups J.  Most importantly, the events are free for all!

The event has been introduced as a meetup. Is it about meeting people, or is it focused on the learning aspect? There are 2 talks scheduled in the event.

Both.  Each event will have a learning and presentation component, followed by a time for casual discussion and networking.

Our upcoming “Building on Facebook” event includes 2 amazing presentations, where we’ll learn tips for mastering the Facebook API from some of Montreal’s brightest:

• Serial entrepreneur Carl Mercier will be discussing his latest project (still in stealth mode)
• Nicolas Cadou and Alice Bevan-McGregor (senior members of Le Site) will share learnings from building the Facebook game Bachelor Bachelorette (based on the popular TV show)

Like any good tech event, presentations will be followed by free beer to help stimulate some great discussion and networking.

The event is Wed, March 14 6:30pm at Notman House. There are a few spots left. You can sign up at www.eventbrite.com/event/2990329155

It’s introduced as “BuildSocial is a Montreal community”. Does that mean it’s going to be more than a one-off meetup? Anything more planned beyond the March 14th event?

We plan to have a monthly event, each one covering a unique theme. Our vision is for BuildSocial to be a sustainable community, which will require the active support and involvement of its members.  If you’d like to be involved in any way please contact me (@andrewsider, andrew@urbanorca.com) or Paul Herrera (@pherrera, paul@urbanorca.com ).

Bringing Much Needed Tech Innovation to Healthcare

Friday and Saturday 24 and 25th of February, 138 developers, 28 designers, and 66 health professionals went to HackingHealth to bring tech innovation to healthcare. Using the “hackathon” model well-known by web developers and tech entrepreneurs, they brainstormed and developed together new solutions to fix specific problems in the healthcare industry.

Notable projects were Text Rx, a tool documenting text messages between nurses, doctors and specialists to paper or electronic medical records. It’s a useful service that was ideal for the hackathon, and could also be developed in the short timeframe of the event by using Twilio.

HemoTrack (@hemotrack) also received attention, with a new mobile app that promises to cuts costs of hemophilia treatment, by collecting real time usage of Factor VIII, bleeding events and uploads information to an online site.

The project that won the audience’s hearts and minds

The 3D Kinect project was voted as the most innovative solution amongst the 19 registered projects. Using off-the-shelf Microsoft Kinect, it uses the 3D depth sensors to scan a patient’s body and classify burnt body areas.

The application can then estimate the severity of the burns, and then help doctors give proper care. The proposed application specifically addresses the loss of bodily fluids by severely burnt patients, by calculating the right amount of fluids that needs to be given to the patient.

Martin Coulombe, engineer by profession, gave the pitch friday night, and was assisted by a team composed of one plastic surgeon, 2 software developers and a communication specialist.

A future commercial success?

Experienced entrepreneurs and other professionals during the hackathon saw also the potential of the project. A few other projects during the hackathon did not have an appropriate business model, as project instigators were planning to convince governments of planned savings. While very helpful to patients, other similar projects did not take into account potential market friction. While it still needs more work in the software and needs also proper testing, the 3D Kinect project was clearly the project with the highest potential at HackingHealth.

It might be too early to ask, but with the created momentum, what’s next for the ideas and projects at HackingHealth? It’s not just about the 3D Kinect project: the teams and structure brought together at the event are the results of more than 3 months work of gathering partners & support, and it’s an asset that organizers should leverage to support future tech healthcare innovation.

The hackathon was planned at the Sauvé House in the beginning, but due to the popularity of the event, it was changed in the past week to the Thompson House. Backed by a team of volunteers, the organizers welcomed health professionals from all around the country, startups, programmers, designers, investors, plus of course the organizations supporting the event.

The Sauvé Foundation was the first organization to support the event. Others joined in, such as the BDC and Nightingale, the main sponsors of the event.

As you can see, the house was packed, and more people are expected to come saturday morning. The attendance proves that healthcare needs new solutions now.

Here, organizers and presenters are checking in details of who is going to present, and in what order.

John Brohan from Android Montréal suggests an application to know if an elder person has fallen. An accelerator sensor will send information to an Android tablet and can alert if there is a problem.

Pablo Duboue, Free Software fan and hardware hacker, offers his natural language processing expertise to teams. He also had a RFID project which aimed to transfer healthcare files to patient’s Nokia N9 phones.

It was interesting to see healthcare professionals from Edmonton, Alberta and around the country to pitch their problems and solutions. There’s much to do, and they received a well-deserved applause from the audience.

Meanwhile, a few programmers were already working on applications at the back of the room.

Martin is passionnate about the potential of the Microsoft Kinect, a hardware device available in all hardware stores, which can get a 3D reading of people, with also image recognition capabilities, a microphone and more sensors to enable new applications. He presented a project to cater to heavily burned patients.

All pitches received a lot of attention from the audience. Investors were taking notes, as well as programmers and other talent looking for ideas to work on. What’s also interesting is that a brand new web application was created for the event. It’s called sparkboard, with a list of projects, team members, project discussion, and more to enable collaboration.

David Chouinard, also TEDxMontreal organizer, pitched the idea of taking care of online accounts of dead relatives. The first technical barrier was how to know if the person died, and he was exploring various natural language processing ideas to solve the issue. Daniel Drouet, from local startup ajah.ca, and a data extractor guru, discussed with David various technical ideas.

As the evening progressed, hackers were invited to meet those who pitched and create teams. Most teams were looking for front-end and back-end techies.

Here, organizers and sponsors are asking what attendees and VIPs were thinking about the event. There was a lot of energy, and everybody agreed that it was about time an event like this was coming in Montreal, Canada.

A few teams were already busy brainstorming, making plans and downloading software.

There’s drama on Twitter about the Women vs men ratio at the confoo.ca conference, due wednesday next week. There are 5 women speakers announced, vs a total of 109, which makes it 4.5%, a sad statement of the industry, perhaps discouraging even more women to enter the technology industry and tech entrepreneurship.

Leila Boujnane (@leilaboujnane), founder of popular Idée Inc, and also organizer of various community events in Toronto, and also Montréal, was surprised yesterday at the lack of women speakers at confoo. What started as a very simple statement was received as an attack on confoo, and Anna Filina (@afilina), Vice-President and main organizer of the conference, replied harshily to Leila.

Since then, others joined in the argument, David Crow (@davidcrow), Yann Larrivée (@ylarrivee), and many others. Leila Boujnane wrote about the issue, stating things need to be changed, and Anna Filina wrote also on her blog why and how they had so few women speakers.

The gender ratio issue is not new. Last year, FounderFuel was heavily criticized for not having any women mentor at launch, only to include Tara Hunt, CEO of Buyosphere, at the end. It’s the same for Startup Festival, which received negative feedback for lacking diversity. Startup Festival had then the creative idea to have a panel of grannies, which made finally headlines on the Gazette. For Startup Weekend Montréal, we had a partnership with Montréal Girl Geeks dinners, and also brought in Anna Goodson, who did a talk on women entreprenership Saturday midday, to inspire startup women.

I won’t comment on confoo: criticizing a conference is easy, especially if you check things out a week before the event. An event like confoo takes at least 6 months of preparation, and as Anna stated, it’s not an entrepreneurship, marketing conference or SXSW. Moreover, if you work in the industry, you know the numbers and what programmers focus on, and it’s not beautiful. I also agree with Leila though: confoo needs to open up, think about the value they really bring in, and agree it’s not all about numbers and how many speakers you bring in. If they do not care, other organizations working with them care, and Montréal also care.