Recap: DemoCampEdmonton1

Last night was Edmonton’s first DemoCamp, and I think it was a major success! I counted about sixty people at one point, with some standing along the back walls. I liveblogged the whole event on Twitter. You can see my tweets at #hashtags and Twemes. I’ll summarize the key info in this post.

We had six demos, though I think we need to aim for more demo and less talk next time. Here’s what we saw:

1. Greg Campbell of Spieker Point Inc. showed us http://www.spiekerpoint.com
2. Daniel Boulet of Loa Corp. showed us http://www.loapowertools.com
3. Dave Bodnarchuck of Event IQ Inc. showed us http://www.inviteright.com
4. Bob Hesketh of Chinook Multimedia Inc. showed us http://www.chinookmultimedia.com
5. Peter Urban of Smibs Inc. showed us http://www.smibs.com
6. David Cree of FunderFish showed us http://www.funderfish.com

I think the demo of the evening was definitely Peter Urban’s. The applications they are building are really slick looking, and could be quite useful (its a CRM type app). He was also a really engaging speaker.

The audience was a fairly diverse crowd. We had five women, three or four students, lots of developers, a few investors including Randy Thompson, and Don Iveson who is the city councillor for Ward 5. The two companies with the most representation were Zigtag and Nexopia. There was a serious lack of Microsoft dudes, so we’ll have to make sure EDMUG comes out to the next one!

There were a few announcements about upcoming events:

• The next DemoCamp is tentatively scheduled for April 30th, 2008.
• Our city’s first BarCamp is tentatively scheduled for July 19th, 2008.

Mark your calendars! You may also want to join the BarCampEdmonton group on Facebook.

After the demos were done, most people headed over to Windsor pub for a few beers. I know lots of introductions were made, and people seemed to be having a good time. It’s great to see the community growing like this in Edmonton, and I have no doubt that the next DemoCamp will be even better!

Some things we can improve on:

• Larger room, preferably with lots of power outlets!
• Open Wi-Fi access (only those with U of A accounts could connect)
• Reach out to more groups in Edmonton and area
• Food? Everyone loves free food! Maybe we can find a sponsor

Thanks to Cam, Mark, Kevin, and all the other organizers for a great event.