Recap: Start Me Up at ICE 2009

Tonight at the ICE Technology Conference, six local software startups demoed their wares to about 50 other technology professionals at Start Me Up. The event was designed to help bridge the gap between the CIPS (old school) and startup (new school) communities, and I think it achieved that to a certain extent. The demos tonight included:

• ContentMover by Smibs & YellowPencil. Peter Urban and Forrest Zeisler demoed how easy ContentMover makes it to import, clean, and redesign an existing website in preparation for moving it to a new CMS.
• Edistorm. Reg Cheramy showed his collaborative, web-based brainstorming application that helps organizations capture great ideas.
• Kiiro by Kiiro Software. Gene Smith demoed how Kiiro, a collaboration and project management application built for Microsoft SharePoint, helps teams get their work done and saves organizations money.
• SHINE Youth Clinic by Dub5. Adam Rozenhart and Jeff Siegel showed their volunteer management and scheduling solution built for the Student Health Initiative for the Needs of Edmonton.
• MyStops by Grayscale Apps. Andrew Vilcsak, Sinan Maani, and Sari Maani demonstrated their popular iPhone-based transit stop scheduling application.
• Surveyor by Touch Metric. Tys von Gaza and Sean Healy showed how iPhone-based Surveyor can be used for on-site customer satisfaction surveys, market research, and more.

The format of the evening would have been familiar to anyone who has attended DemoCamp in the past, but for many in the room it was brand new. Much to my delight, everyone seemed to enjoy it, and there was definitely no lack of questions, comments, and feedback for the demoers. For someone like myself, who has seen all of these demos in the past, it was still very interesting because each one had something new to show. I also found the audience remarks quite intriguing (they asked different things than the typical DemoCamp crowd, as you can imagine).

I think the attendance tonight could have been a bit better, but it was still quite good for a first-time event. One of the people in the audience suggested that the event be moved to lunchtime next year, so that more of the conference-goers could attend. It’s a good idea, and shows that there’s both the potential and the desire for Start Me Up to grow.

Thank you to our demoers for the evening, and to Erin and her organizing team for recognizing the value of connecting with Edmonton’s startup community and making this event happen!