One of the early web’s pioneers, Philip Greenspun, is now a helicopter piloting enthusiast and is donating a Helicopter Ride as the grand prize for the programming contest at BarCampBoston2.
Can anyone top that for BarCampMontreal2? :-)
DemoCampMontreal2 Date Change Tuesday, Feb 27 2007
Just a quick note to notify everyone that the date for DemoCampMontreal2 has been moved by one day; it is now Wednesday March 28th (Previously the 29th). This is due to a scheduling change with the SAT. I have edited the BarCamp wiki to reflect this change.
If this is a problem for any of the presenters, please let me know ASAP.
Now, I’m off to DemoCampMontreal1! See you there.
DemoCampMontreal1 is Next Week! Wednesday, Feb 21 2007
BarCamp and DemoCamp and Montreal 6:03 pm
Just a reminder that DemoCampMontreal1 will be held next Tuesday, February 27th, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. All details are on the BarCamp Wiki. As I have mentioned before, the SAT is generously sponsoring this event with their amazing space!
The community has stepped forward with 5 exciting demos, and I am encouraged at the number of new names that are appearing on the registration list. It will be good to touch base with many familiar BarCampers as well. If you can’t make it to this one, there is always DemoCampMontreal2 and BarCampMontreal2.
As an added incentive, BarCampMontreal1 T-Shirts will be available for pick-up at DemoCampMontreal1! Yes, they have finally been made, and this really is the easiest way to distribute them. :)
If any of you have a blog, please do post about DemoCamp and spread the word.
See you guys next Tuesday!
siliconisland.ca Monday, Feb 19 2007
Miscellaneous 11:33 am
Well, it’s time to upgrade my blog… I now have a proper domain name: siliconisland.ca. Wheeee, go me!
Sizzling Energy in the Montreal Tech Scene Wednesday, Feb 14 2007
BarCamp and Entrepreneurship and Montreal 9:30 am
Yesterday, I attended the Montreal Tech Entrepreneur’s Breakfast organized by my friend Ben Yoskovitz. The event was a smashing success. Over 25 people came, and they were the exact kind of people I have been aching to meet ever since I contracted entrepreneurship fever; the kind of people that I was never able to meet before, for one reason or another.
To understand why I am so happy with this turn of events, I have to provide some background on the state of the Montreal Tech Scene. I had been meaning to post about the state of the Montreal Tech Scene for quite some time, but my friend Julien Smith beat me to the punch with his posting “Montreal Needs Brains” a couple of weeks ago. The following quote summarizes my feelings on the matter quite succinctly:
People in other places, they talk. In Montreal, we don’t– like, ever. Somehow, the geek culture, where people talk about their ideas and help develop them, it doesn’t happen as much here. It’s weird.
His post (and the followup post) unleashed a firestorm of controversy; but it rang quite true to me. In fact, the Montreal Gazette published an article (“The Invisible Industry“) saying pretty much the same thing back in December. The article recounts my desperate networking experiences:
Local computer engineer Fred Ngo tells a similar story. He went to a tech powwow in Boston, hoping to find like-minded Montrealers who wanted to start their own businesses. What he found were people from Toronto and as far away as Europe. “Of course, me and my buddy were the only ones from Montreal there,” he recalled. And then the irony of it all hit him: He had left Montreal to find Montrealers.
What had happened is that I went to Startup School in Boston, organized by Paul Graham. And yes, that really was my thinking: That I would find other Montrealers there; presumably because they would have read the same stuff that I been reading and thus heard about Startup School.
I was to be disappointed; I did not meet any other Montreal entrepreneurs there. (To be fair, I met Carl Mercier a few months later when I randomly found his blog because he mentioned that he also went to Startup School — The magic of Google at work.)
“Why didn’t you try harder in Montreal?” You ask. Believe you me; I tried. I went to every business networking event I could find. YES. CEO. BNI. They were a blast to attend (afterall, I could always talk about Cat’s Corner), but I did not find startup entrepreneurs there. I found instead entrepreneurs who were starting photography studios and investors who only understood investing in ethanol plants (and demanded 50-page business plans). While all entrepreneurship is to be applauded, it wasn’t my own cup of tea, and I would not be able to find the right co-founders and investors in such a setting.
So there I was, one summer day in 2006, having lunch in Chinatown with my buddy JJ (who went to startup school with me), brainstorming big ideas (and lamenting the lack of other people who do the same); when a huge one hit me. Why not do a BarCamp in Montreal? I had heard about it months ago, checked the Wiki to see if there was one in Montreal (of course there wasn’t, grumble grumble), but it only just occurred to me that if I don’t stop saying “I wish there was BarCamp in Montreal” and actually bear the torch on this, nothing would ever happen. That very day, I announced BarCampMontreal1 on the BarCamp Wiki (I think Austin Hill had already put up a landing page at that point with a few names on it) and the rest is history, stored in the BarCampMontreal1 wiki archives.
My own feeling; corroborated by talking with a few others at the breakfast, is that for some reason everybody was just waiting for something to happen (which is weird since, as entrepreneurs, we are action people). That thing was BarCampMontreal1. It showed us tech entrepreneurs that we are not alone. Ever since, a certain energy has been in the air, and we are all feeling more confident than ever.
Nowhere is this energy more apparent than the initiatives that are taking place:
- DemoCampCUSEC1 just happened.
- DemoCampMontreal1, DemoCampMontreal2, and BarCampMontreal2 are upcoming.
- Ben has decided to make the Montreal Tech Entrepreneur’s Breakfast a regular event. The next one is March 13th.
- Josh of YashLabs has started The Montreal Tech League.
- The Montreal Gazette is planning a local tech blog, spearheaded by our tech reporter friend Roberto Rocha.
These are all amazing initiatives, and all of us who profess to be a part of Montreal’s tech entrepreneur scene need to support these initiatives.
Montreal is going to hit a home run this year. I can feel it. And no matter who hits that home run, it will boost all of us along with it.
BarCamp Activity Saturday, Feb 10 2007
BarCamp 12:43 am
According to the BarCamp Activity page, I’m the #1 all-time most active user of the BarCamp wiki. That’s world-wide.
Crazy.
I think I need to make fewer, bigger edits rather than lots of small edits. ;-)
Books vs. Internet Thursday, Feb 8 2007
Entrepreneurship and Programming 1:02 pm
I’ve been getting some email from interested readers wondering what I’m up to lately. It turns out that being a tech entrepreneur isn’t all that exciting day-to-day, especially when you’re in stealth mode… because there isn’t much to talk about!
Especially in my case, since I’m in full-on learning mode. I hereby present exhibit A, my stack of programming-related books. (I’ve run out of space on my bookshelf so they’re sitting on the ground.) The top 8 books have been acquired within the last month, and I still haven’t even gone through 10% of any one of them. On the other hand, in the last month I’ve probably learned more than I have in all of 2006!
This leads me to a tangent — books are still the best way of learning stuff, even in this age. I first thought I could do away with books and just rely the internet for what I need to know, but it turns out that when I find a webpage or a forum posting about how to do something, I can never be sure what version of the software the answer applies to. Is the answer about Apache 1.x or Apache 2.x? Is it about PHP 4 or PHP 5? I can make a guess based on the date, but that obviously sucks. However, when I buy a good book, I know that the quality of the writing will be high, and I can be sure that it covers the latest revision of the software.
Anyway, all this to say that I’m in hermit-hacker mode these days, with the accompanying hermit-hacker schedule in full effect. This means rarely going to bed before the single digits, and rarely waking up before the double digits. But don’t get me wrong… it’s freakin’ fun.
Besides, it’s minus double digits outside… What else could I possibly be doing? :)
