It’s already the end of August, with another new installement of StartupDrinks Montreal. If you read MontrealTechWatch, you are warmly invited for a drink and (re)connect with other fellow Montreal techies next wednesday 26th.

It’s a parallel event, with the Toronto edition held at the same time at C’est What. For Montreal, we’re doing it at Brutopia on Crescent Street. Brutopia is a winner thanks to its selection of beers and location.

Read last month’s report if you haven’t been lately to one, or if it’s the first time.

We’re especially calling students to come over for the drinks. If you know anyone in university who is interested into technology entrepreneurship, we’d appreciate if you can extend the invitation to them. It doesn’t matter at what stage one is, and I believe making diverse minds meet would make StartupDrinks even more interesting. So forward the link to friends & students, suggest the meetup, put it on Facebook or your other social networking website.

We ask everyone to register on TechEntreprise, in order to print name tags. ALL EVENT DETAILS also available there

Co-organized by FlowVentures

With the invaluable of our friends at StartupNorth for the Toronto event and @davidcrow’s magic touch

Solutious, a company started by Delano Mandelbaum (@solutious), has released last monday Rudy version 0.9

Rudy allows simplified development and deployement on Amazon’s cloud computing platform by using a Ruby DSL (Domain Specific Language), allowing then quick and easy provisioning of custom environments on Amazon’s hosting platform.

The best use case for Rudy might be software development companies who’d use Amazon as a staging and a testing platform, since the servers are only needed for a fraction of time, compared to the “real” production environment, which might be at Amazon, or much more probably in a different hosting company.

Since an example is much better than long text descriptions, compare the following lines to the usual raw command lines a sys-admin has to type to provision instances on EC2:

 machines do
   env :stage do                   # Define an environment
     ami 'ami-e348af8a'            # Specify a machine image

     role :app do                  # Define a role
       disks do                    # Define EBS volumes
         path "/rudy/disk1" do
           size 100
           device "/dev/sdr"
         end
       end
     end

   end
 end

 routines do

   startup do                      # $ rudy startup
     adduser :rudy
     authorize :rudy               # Enable passwordless login

     disks do
       create "/rudy/disk1"        # Create and mount a volume 
     end                       

     remote :rudy do               # Run remote commands via SSH
       mkdir :p, "great"           # $ mkdir -p great
       mysql_init :start
       your_script 'arg1', 'arg2'  # Call your own scripts
     end
   end

 end

The user only has to provide the AMI, and of course the custom scripts to setup and launch its software stack.

I really like Rudy, since it illustrates what Amazon is best at: provisioning for a finite timelapse a custom infrastructure, for a specific job. Fire the rudy/ruby script, provision as many instances as you need, launch the job, get test results. It will bring shorter development cycles for software companies, and also an easier path to try out EC2.

BookOven, a startup by fellow Montréalers Hugh McGuire and Stéphanie Troeth, under development for the past year, launched an alpha version last week, with one simple feature showcase. It allows anyone to edit excerpts of an author’s work, also called by BookOven bite-sized edits.

It’s usually a short sentence, presented in the work’s context, and the user is given the opportunity to submit an improved edit. As soon as this is finished, another edit is presented to the user.

I find the mechanics used by BookOven to be similar to HotOrNot, where the visitor gets a few seconds to submit his/her thoughts to the system, which would then give a crowdsourced feedback to a user-submitted picture. Obviously, BookOven works also along the same line as Librivox or Wikipedia. Those online destinations bet on building a fanatical user base bringing user-generated content, rivaling quickly with more established entities in results quality. Wikipedia is free though (as in free beer and Free Software), so it would be interesting to see how users would see themselves contributing to a commercial work.

As the BookOven blog suggests, this is only one of the final product’s feature, which would ultimately give the opportunity to anyone to submit their litterary work, and publish it on BookOven.

I wouldn’t dare to comment if BookOven would actually revolutionize the book publishing industry or not. It’s of course a compelling alternative to traditional publishers. But the service would also need to be able to gather readers to make it interesting to its customers. I couldn’t also get myself to continue to use the service; the service obviously caters to writers, and also the Wikipedia/Librivox contributors work, none of which I never participated in. If you fit that description, I invite you though to try out the service. It has a wonderful user interface, as well as a dedicated team which am sure would love to answer to your feedback.

BookOven is funded by MontrealStartup and is based in the “no-name” shared startup space

Like many tech people in Montreal, Ian Rae (@ianrae) went through Coradiant in the early 2000’s, before eventually starting his own business. He now runs a successful company which I’d describe as the “Jaguar of web hosting companies”. It might not be affordable for all companies, but it does offer top of the line expertise and service that would be hard to find in more “mainstream” companies like Rackspace.

Ian Rae has had many ideas, and one of them was to get technology entrepreneurs and companies together in a space. I actually met him 2 years ago, and my immediate answer was that he wasn’t the first one to think about this, and the hardest thing was covering operational expenses and marketing, like Mark McQueen from the Wellington Fund pointed out in an earlier MTW post.

Unlike many in Montreal tech scene, who make much more noise than Ian Rae on starting incubators and the like, it seems actually Ian Rae got things starting off the ground, quietly. He now has a large space, in a University Street building. The office is of course Syntenic’s headquarters, with its staff setting up servers hardware and also Syntenic daily operations, but it also is home for several Montreal startups, a few funded by MSU, plus also companies where Ian is an active contributor, and also consulting companies providing key advice to startups.

Not shown in the pictures are the variety of office spaces being occupied by the various Montreal startups.

If you see this, it’s immediate to conclude that it’s a de-facto startup incubator, with all the advantages (proximity of entrepreneurs, people focusing on innovation, technology-oriented allowing quick development, having a central space for discussion and meetings), and none of the disadvantages (since everything has been managed very informally so far, with tech companies coming in by word of mouth). There’s also no marketing at all done, and it’s easy to see the national & international potential of such a place, plus the immediate benefits for any entrepreneur who’d move in there.

Ian Rae says he doesn’t want to compete at all with projects like Station C ; he’d just want to “let’s get things working right now, we’ll see how things go in 90 days…”. Seeing the success so far, I’m asking myself questions if the entire community wouldn’t be better after all to support that space, and see if it’s possible to present it as the main hub for Technology in Montreal … although it probably needs a clear plan and clear intentions before being presented as such.

In the past year, Marc Gingras was known for evangelizing product simplicity and ease of use. I remember him at a StartupCamp Montreal edition, and he spent nearly two thirds of his allocated “time slot” to make the case why user experience and easy of use was primordial for Tungle… My reaction, and most of the entrepreneurs I talked to (apart from the likes of David Dufresne who were already “sold” to Marc), was that his speech was obvious, but, really, how complex can appointments management can be? Just get iCal interface, and you’re done.

Fast forward, and Tungle, as a product, and as a team, impresses me. When you use Tungle, it’s the same feeling as using a macbook, Google’s user interface or 37Signals’s backpackit. The product feels incredibly polished, from the placement and color of every pixel, to the user flow, where every click and every button feels that they’re just right where they need to be.

With this solid product base, Tungle has recently introduced new features. One of them is the short url, such as Tungle.me/Marc, a handy and memorable link, which works well in Twitter too. Tungle has also released last may a direct booking API which allows third-party websites to book time slots; and it’s easy to envision then Tungle as a central platform for time management for business users, giving it much more potential than “just” a calendaring application. Last week, Tungle was also a launch partner for Xing’s OpenSocial initiative, giving its 7.5 million members access to Tungle.

Today, Tungle is in all its aspects a very strong product. I wonder what would happen if they had the marketing genius and hyperactivity of Freshbooks in terms of communication; making it a Great montreal startup.

Jasmine Antonick (@jasmineAntonick), a Canadian living in the valley, calls out for Canadian startups to present at Under the Radar Nov. 09.

I’m looking to find some killer Canadian mobile startups, as I want to showcase innovative companies from outside the borders of Silicon Valley ;) And, I’m a Canadian living in San Francisco… It’d be great if you could post a “Call for Companies” on Montreal Tech Watch.

Under the Radar will uncover the next wave of vetted, test-driven startups that have launched within the year, showcasing the newest companies created by founders with a quest for innovation and a plan for disruption. Under the Radar brings startups, industry leaders, press, and investors together with one ultimate goal: to get the deal done.

In the past three years 54% of presenters have gone on to raise funding and/or be acquired by Google, Microsoft, FOX Interactive, Salesforce, British Telecom, and others

Event page for more info

You might be like me, i.e. too busy on work & projets to even think of blogging. Or you might be contemplating technology entrepreneurship and startups, as told on high-profile media such as TC or HC

Either way, it’s end of July, which means it’s time for this month’s StartupDrinks. 

What is StartupDrinks?

StartupDrinks is an informal event where entrepreneurs busy in startups, developers, and everyone interested in technology entrepreneurship are invited, grab a drink, share what you’re doing, and get feedback from Montreal startupppers. It’s the ideal moment if you want to talk about a new marketing campaign you’re designing, or about a hard technological problem you are trying to solve. 

Who will be there?

The event gathers entrepreneurs, investors, bloggers, students, and is co-organized with FlowVentures. We’ve hard a regular attendance of around 50-70, and we expected the same number (if not more) this time.

Interested?

The event is this Wednesday July 29th, from 5.30pm at Brutopia, 1215 Crescent Street in Montreal.

Subscribe here if you’re planning to go.

Raymond Luk, from Flow Ventures, announced an investment in a 2nd startup called Art AnyWhere.

Art Anywhere is an artwork rental service, matching any artist and individuals wishing to decorate their home or offices.

Behind the startup is Christine Renaud, known by a few Montreal entrepreneurs for e180, another education web venture which she headed for the past year. I am also sure Raymond Luk is also heavily involved in Art Anywhere, at least on the core idea, business and strategy side.

I have to say the simplicity of the idea is elegant, one of those ideas where I’m certainly eager to try it out. Even though it’s a different industry, this reminds me strongly of netflix’s DVD shipping service, where subscribers get to keep a fixed number of DVDs home, with netflix taking care of logistics, and also taking care of the DVD supply and the recommendation algorithm, so that their users get the best DVD for them.

Of course, this service supposes that inviduals rent, not because of the object’s monetary value, but because of art and the quality of the art work, leaving out people attracted to art because of the rarity and because other people would envy them.

Congrats both to Raymond Luk and Christine Renaud, wishing both of them all the bests!

Since MTW and FlowVentures began Montreal startupdrinks last summer, we’ve had regularly an attendance of 60 to 90 people each time, went to two different places (Café des Éclusiers and now Brutopia on crescent), turning into what I call the de-facto meetup for the Montreal technology community.

It’s a great way for new tech entrepreneurs to meet other entrepreneurs, discuss about venturing into the technology space, along with tech-oriented programmers, speak about business with fellow startuppers, angel investors, or VCs, every last wednesday of the month.

For this month, we’re making exceptionnally 2 worlds meet, with a joint event with the Montreal Girl Geek Dinner. It’s a regular event instigated by Tanya McGinnity. Like StartupDrinks, it has now a regular and growing audience, filling rooms every time for their girl geek presentations.

I’m excited to see this happen, as we’ll get most probably 150+ people for the event, and a new talks + drinks formula. Of course, the most interesting thing is getting the 2 communities to mingle — who knows, you might meet a co-founder or get expert help for your startup, or get to know new ideas.

The schedule is as follows:

• Wed. June 17th, 5pm: A Talk by Christine Renaud from e-180 (@180) at Montreal Girl Geek dinner
• Wed. June 17th, 6pm: Montreal StartupDrinks, where it’s all about taking a drink and talk about tech startups and entrepreneurship.

The event will be hosted at Brutopia again, upstairs, on 1219 Crescent Street. Look for Tanya McGinnity, Robin Ahn, also Raymond Luk

If you are interested, DO register here. It takes 30 seconds and we need it to make name tags.

Once again, it’s a community event, and FREE. As such, we need your help as much as possible to get the word out. If you can put it on twitter, or facebook, forward the registration page to friends, then the better it will be. 

Felipe Coimbra released last monday twtBizCard, an add-on service which allows twitter users to exchange business contacts with replies, a virtual handshake if you like.

The story is not so much about twtBizCard. Of course, the idea is interesting, since after all, LinkedIn does 15 million uniques a month. But for me, your twitter profile is already your business card in itself, with its quick bio, website, and also features for sending replies and messages. Meet someone, add to twitter, keep in touch, exchange tweets, and you’ve done already so much more than what a simple business card can do.

So why did I write this entry on MontrealTechWatch? Well if you go through twtapps’s history and if you know Felipe Coimbra, you realize that twtBizCard is actually the 10th Twitter application in 5 months, which makes it about 2 new twitter applications every month. And you know that with that speed of development, twtapps is bound to get the jackpot, at one point of another. twtpolls, twtvite, all of those are already well trafficked, but I’m sure there will be one which will get massive traffic.

In comparison, a heavyweight app like TechEntreprise, or any other web app managed by n-person teams, seem to be developed in slow motion. One could argue that those “traditional” apps have more stickiness, user data history, and rich interfaces, etc. but developing twitter applications undeniably has a big advantage in release cycles and as a result, in overall products risks. Felipe Coimbra might not even be optimizing for stickiness: just view the quick description, and click a button to interact with the app, and voilà, you’re back to twitter. Those quick, short burts of interactions might be the future of web applications.

Interestingly, Felipe also makes I-stats, a real-time web analytics software. I’m assuming Felipe relies on those detailed data to do optimization and maximize metrics such as user interactions through split tests for instance.