Why 2012 is going to be a big year for Startup Edmonton

I can’t believe it has been nearly four years since Edmonton’s first DemoCamp took place! Who could have imagined, on that winter evening in the dungeon-like basement of the University of Alberta’s School of Business building, that sixteen DemoCamps would take place over the subsequent years. But they have, and they are still as popular as ever, regularly drawing 200 people from a wide variety of communities – entrepreneurs, programmers, designers, investors, and lots of others. DemoCamp Edmonton 17 is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, January 18 – don’t miss it!

I also never imagined that DemoCamp would eventually lead to Startup Edmonton, but I’m glad it has. Ken, Cam, Sam, and Tiffany recognized that DemoCamp was actually part of something bigger, and they decided to do something about it.

We help connect creators, innovators and entrepreneurs to start and scale bold new ideas through events, mentorship, workspace, and accelerators. Our vision is to make Edmonton a hotbed for creativity and entrepreneurship. Our mission is to amplify creative innovation and activate startups. Our goal is to invest in 500 creative entrepreneurs over the next 5 years.

DemoCamp helped showed us that Edmonton is full of smart, talented, creative people with really innovative ideas. But having an idea is not enough – you need to take action. That’s where Startup Edmonton comes in.

The organization has been around for a while now, organizing events like Launch Party and TEDxEdmonton in addition to DemoCamp, but it became much more official on December 5. That’s the date Startup Edmonton turned into a fully-fledged non-profit company. Here is the board of directors:

Todd Babiak – Co-Founder, Story Engine Inc.
Brad Ferguson – CEO, Strategy Summit Ltd.
Veer Gidwaney – CEO, DailyFeats.com
Chris LaBossiere – Co-CEO, Yardstick Software
Chris Lumb – CEO, TEC Edmonton
Mack Male – Co-Founder, Paramagnus Developments Inc.
Gregg Oldring – Co-Founder, Mailout Interactive / Inkdit
David Quail – Co-Founder, Attassa
Darin Rayburn – Executive Vice President, Melcor Developments
Kevin Swan – Principal, iNovia Capital
Sheetal Mehta Walsh – Founder/CEO, Shanti Microfinance

Though not everyone could attend the first meeting in person, there was great energy in the room as we went through introductions and got down to business. Here is our management team:

Ken Bautista – CEO
Tiffany Linke-Boyko – COO
Cam Linke – Director of Product/Community
Sam Jenkins – Director of Development
Edwin Radke – Controller

Rock stars, each and every one of them!

The year ahead

Ken and the team spent countless hours last year planning, networking, connecting, pitching, building – basically doing all of the things a startup needs to do. They’ve put a solid foundation in place, and they’re the right team to drive the organization forward. With the help of our founding partners, I really feel like Startup Edmonton is going to make a big splash in 2012.

The investment ecosystem in Edmonton (and Alberta) is pretty good at funding things that already have momentum, but there’s a serious lack of viable products flowing into that funding pipeline. Yet we know from DemoCamp and other events and initiatives that there is no lack of ideas. How can we get people with ideas to turn into entrepreneurs with fundable products? That’s the challenge that Startup Edmonton will tackle. Here’s how:

Inspire – DemoCamp and other events to bring the community together
Create – Hackathons, Startup Weekend, and other events focused on prototyping
Accelerate – Incubator for early stage tech startups to rapidly take their prototypes to the next level

Startup Edmonton is already pretty good at “Inspire” and efforts related to “Create” are ramping up, but it’s “Accelerate” where things will get really interesting this year. The tech accelerator program is called Flightpath, and it will invest in up to 30 early stage software/digital media startups over the next three years. These are small financial investments, but combined with mentorship, learning, and networking opportunities, the goal is to help startups make meaningful progress in a short period of time. To turn more ideas to into fundable products.

You will of course see more DemoCamps, Startup Weekends, Launch Parties, and other events in 2012. But you’ll also see the startup space that was teased a couple of months ago – a physical space downtown “where geeks, entrepreneurs, and creatives collide.” You’ll see more opportunities to share your knowledge and to learn from others. You’ll see the launch of Flightpath and the first class of startups. You’ll see a more concerted effort to build awareness of startups in Edmonton.

And I think you’ll start to see that creative entrepreneurs and Edmonton’s future are beautifully intertwined.

It’s going to be a great year – get connected!

Vibrant Streets X-posed

I was across the pond in London last week, so I was unable to attend the Downtown X-posed event that took place on Thursday at the Shaw Conference Centre. Though I wasn’t there in the flesh, I did participate by way of a video!

Here’s my video on vibrant streets downtown. It focuses on 104 Street, the “blueprint” for future streets in Edmonton’s downtown.

I saw some really positive feedback via Twitter, so I hope the video was well-received at the event.

The features I went through in the video are not the only things that make a street vibrant of course, but I do think they are important. The bottom line is that people make streets vibrant, so we need our streets to attract and support people. No other street downtown does that better at the moment than 104 Street.

I <3 YEGDT: Downtown X-posed

Hundreds of Edmontonians will gather next Thursday at the Shaw Conference Centre for a full day event focused on downtown. Organized by the EEDC and the Downtown Vibrancy Task Force, the Downtown X-posed event will provide an opportunity to learn more about the broad array of things happening downtown, and will also give attendees a chance to provide input and feedback on how we can continue the positive momentum.

The vibrancy and character of a community’s downtown is a critical part of its identity. Think about places you’ve travelled to and you’ll know exactly what we mean. Please join us for a dynamic, one-day, one-of-a-kind event to learn about Edmonton’s downtown – what we have now, what’s in the works, what’s yet to come, and some new things we might need to consider. Come learn, talk, connect and get involved in your downtown. As goes your downtown, so goes your city.

It has been a pretty great year for our downtown. EPCOR Tower, the first new office tower in two decades and also our tallest, opened. Despite some hiccups, both the arena project and the new Royal Alberta Museum appear to be moving forward. The province is working to complete the renovations of the Federal Building and the adjacent Centennial Plaza in time for next summer. The first phase of construction on Capital Boulevard is underway. MacEwan University has started working toward its single sustainable campus. I could go on – the point is, there’s a lot happening! Megaprojects aren’t enough though, we need more people living and working and shopping and learning downtown. What are the barriers this? How can we make it happen? What are we missing? Join us next week to discuss those questions and more.

I had the opportunity to talk about the event yesterday on CTV Edmonton:

Downtown X-posed runs from 7:30am until 3:30pm on December 15. Tickets are just $50, which includes breakfast and lunch. You can purchase tickets here. If you can’t make it, be sure to follow along with #yegdt on Twitter.

YEGWOOD Launch Party & TreeFarer Shades Giveaway!

yegwood One of the highlights of this year’s Fringe Festival was Sustainival, an amusement park on the grounds featuring carnival rides powered by used vegetable oil (Sharon wrote about our experience here). With sales of more than 25,000 rides and lots of positive feedback, the first iteration of Sustainival was a big success for founder Joey Hundert. Now he’s focused on his next venture: YEGWOOD.

YEGWOOD is a group of fashion & environmentally conscious people. We like our style and we love our planet.

We’re also from Edmonton, which isn’t necessarily a global hub of progressive fashion. We’re not knocking our small town of a million people, but great wears can be hard to find here. So, we set about our task of bringing absolutely righteous apparel & accessories to YEG. Thus, YEGWOOD was born.

I remember seeing the Yegwood booth at the Fringe Festival, and of course it caught my eye because of the name. Their first product was the WeWOOD watch, a line of watches made from recycled wood. Now they’re offering wooden sunglasses, also using recycled wood. And maybe soon, prescription glasses too:

“We have our labs here in Edmonton and we have been experimenting with prescription frames, so all of the folks who have inquired about using our glasses for their day-to-day glasses, we will be able to offer something soon. In the mean time, we have some seriously beautiful sun glasses for Albertans to enjoy during our upcoming sunny winter (yes, we are willing a sunny winter to happen).”

To celebrate, Yegwood is hosting a launch party on December 17 at Da Capo. You can see the event details on Facebook or on ShareEdmonton. One of the highlights is a photo booth sponsored by Georgie Magazine. Simply get your photo taken wearing a part of the sunglasses and you could win a pair for free!

Here’s a promo video for the event featuring the Da Capo crew:

I’d encourage you to check out the event to learn more about Yegwood and the new sunglasses. If you can’t make it though, don’t worry – Yegwood has given me one pair of TreeFarer sunglasses to give away here!

The TreeFarers are inspired by the classic Ray-Ban Wayfarer. The rust FRAMES & TEMPLES (arms) are made out of a reddish softwood with a tight grain pattern. The HINGES are spring-loaded to flex in either direction (in & out), ensuring the right fit across a broad spectrum of faces. The LENSES are polarized poly-carbonate with a medium tint; they are UV400 rated.

The glasses have a retail value of $119. There are only about 50 available for the holiday season!

To enter the contest, simply leave a comment below telling me how you plan to live more sustainably in Edmonton in 2012. The winner will be picked at random from the comments. The contest closes at 12:00 AM on December 18 (midnight on the evening of the 17th).

You can like Yegwood on Facebook to keep up-to-date on news and announcements. Check out Metro’s article on Yegwood too.

Looking for a C# Web Developer to join Questionmark in Edmonton

I’ve had luck with job postings for Questionmark in the past, so I wanted to mention that we’re looking for a web developer to join our team:

We are looking for a talented senior C# developer to join our development team in designing and creating the next generation of on-line assessment delivery software. The senior C# developer will work closely with a Product Owner and other team members (C# developers and QA) in a SCRUM (Agile) environment. They will be responsible for delivering potentially shippable functionality each Sprint using the latest technologies (ASP.NET MVC, WCF, .NET 4.0, etc.).

If you have experience building web applications using core web technologies (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS) then you might be interested in this opportunity. That said, we use ASP.NET MVC and jQuery quite extensively so experience with those is essential. The other tiers of the product utilize .NET 4, WCF, Entity Framework, and SQL Server, so experience working with any or all of those technologies is preferred. The project you would be working on is a very important one for the company, with lots of opportunity to both flex your technical muscles and to have a big impact in the marketplace!

Our development teams are cross-functional and work in two week iterations. We use Visual Studio Team System 2010 to manage source code and other artifacts, and Visual Studio Lab Management to facilitate automated testing and deployment.

Our Edmonton office is located downtown in the Empire Building on Jasper Avenue at 101 Street, right above Central LRT Station.

You can view the job posting on Monster, or email me directly if you have questions or are interested in applying!

EPCOR’s 120th Anniversary

Last night EPCOR held an event to celebrate its 120th anniversary. A few dozen EPCOR employees, board members, VIPs, and other guests met on the 20th floor of the new tower for a brief program before being invited up to the 28th floor for a reception and the opportunity to step out onto the balcony of Edmonton’s tallest building. President & CEO Don Lowry spoke briefly about EPCOR’s history and the opportunities ahead. He also thanked Mayor Mandel for his leadership and presented him with a pair of ice grips for his shoes, a nod to the Mayor’s recent slip and fall.

The 28th floor of the building is where EPCOR’s executive and legal offices will be located, and they are set to move in this week – the last of EPCOR’s employees to do so. I’m told the interior was being worked on right up to the reception, but the last minute completion didn’t show. Guests were invited out onto the balcony for a unique view of Edmonton at night.

Looking north

Looking west

Looking back at downtown

There seem to be more opportunities to look south (from the Crowne Plaza, Coast Edmonton House, or the CWB building, etc.) so the view north is not one most Edmontonians are familiar with. It’s amazing at night to see just how far the lights go. You can see my post about the new EPCOR Tower here.

Founded on October 23, 1891 as the Edmonton Electric Lighting and Power Company, EPCOR has grown significantly over the years, and today provides water, wastewater, and electrical distribution services to over 1 million people across Western Canada. With a series of acquisitions in Arizona and New Mexico, EPCOR is becoming a series player outside of Canada as well.

Here are a few highlights from EPCOR’s history:

1891: Electric lights come on in Edmonton.
1903: First water treatment plant built at Rossdale
1933: Edmonton’s first traffic light installed at Jasper Avenue and 101 Street
1955: Rossdale switches from coal to gas
1976: E.L. Smith Water Treatment Plant opens
1996: EPCOR Utilities Inc. formed
1999: Aqualta renamed EPCOR
2009: Capital Power Corporation established

EPCOR was named one of Western Canada’s 10 Most Admired Corporate Cultures and one of Alberta’s Top 50 Employers in 2010 (see a full list of awards here). President & CEO Don Lowry was named Alberta Venture’s Business Person of the Year in 2010 as well.

Here’s to another 120 years!

Recap: EEDC’s 2012 Economic Outlook Luncheon

EEDC On November 15, EEDC held its annual Economic Outlook luncheon at the Shaw Conference Centre. Hundreds of Edmontonians filled Hall D on Tuesday to hear from a panel of senior leaders moderated by Dr. Mike Percy, the former Chamber of Commerce president and until this year Dean of the School of Business at the University of Alberta.

This year’s panelists included:

Dr. Jodi Abbott, President & CEO, Norquest College
Diane Brickner, President & CEO, Peace Hills Insurance Company
Pierre Gratton, President & CEO, Mining Association of Canada
Ron Liepert, Minister of Finance, Government of Alberta
Paul Verhesen, President, Clark Builders

The five panelists each shared their thoughts on the local economy before fielding questions from the audience. Here are a few of the more memorable statements the panelists made:

“We are very, very lucky to live where we do.” – Paul Verhesen
“Productivity and innovation are down as a result of not having to compete with others.” – Paul Verhesen
“I’m not sure there’s a better place than Alberta in the world to do business.” – Ron Liepert
“We do not have the population base to meet the expected labour-market demand.” – Dr. Jodi Abbott, indicating Alberta would have 77,00 unfilled jobs by the end of the decade.
“Mining is back.” – Pierre Gratton
“That will go.” – Ron Liepert, indicating the Royal Alberta Museum would in fact move ahead.

For more, check out the Edmonton Journal’s Storify of the event.

At the luncheon in 2009, I learned that Alberta’s aerospace industry is a billion dollar business. This year I learned a little more about the mining industry in our province. The Canadian Mining Journal summed it up well:

Canada’s mining industry will invest as much as $140 billion in this country over the next five years, and almost 50% of it will be in Alberta. The province will grow thanks to 12 mining projects proposed for development by 2016 with combined costs of $67.7 billion.

The $67.7 billion will be invested primarily in the oil, gas and oil sands development that Alberta is most known for, however significant investment is also anticipated in coal, limestone, salt, shale, dimension stone, ammonite shell, sandstone and sand and gravel.

Apparently Alberta accounts for 70% of Canada’s coal production (by weight) and is home to more than 540 mining industry suppliers.

Here is the Edmonton Journal’s story about the luncheon. Here is the Edmonton Sun’s take. And here is Avenue Edmonton’s article.

I thought EEDC did a great job with the event. The luncheon was livestreamed by the Edmonton Journal, and though they ran into some issues with the sound, it did appear to get more Edmontonians involved than usual. EEDC smartly chose a hashtag ahead of time, and made it clear to everyone that they should use #outlook12. They also displayed the tweets up on the big screen, and although it consistently ran behind, I thought it was a useful addition to the event. I expect both will get better in future years!

As enjoyable as the luncheon was, I found myself wishing there had been a handout or better yet, a QR code to scan that would take me to more information. I thought the panelists were great, but I can’t say I left with a strong sense of how Edmonton’s economy is expected to do in 2012. Fortunately, there is a bit of information online if you look for it.

Here is Cushman & Wakefield’s prognosis:

Overall vacancy is expected to increase in 2012 as a result of the market dynamics caused by recently completed Epcor Tower in the downtown core. Regardless, confidence in Edmonton’s economy is strong, despite continuing global economic uncertainty.

Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation (CMHC) predicts 18% more housing units will be constructed across the province in 2012 than were built this year.

Edmonton will likely have 3,750 construction starts of multi-family housing this year, down less than four per cent from a year ago, says CMHC.

And from the City of Edmonton’s long-term economic outlook:

Few economies have prospects as bright as northern Alberta, at the geographic core of Canada’s economic future. As the research and industrial workhorse of the province, Edmonton stands tall as one of Canada’s most dynamic and prosperous urban centres.

The Economics Society of Northern Alberta is holding its 2012 Outlook Conference all day tomorrow at the Sutton Place Hotel, so watch for more news to come out of that event.

What else have you come across related to our economy in 2012?

Mercury Opera’s 104 Underground (an operascape)

104 underground Mercury Opera took over the Bay/Enterprise Square LRT Station tonight to stage an operascape featuring the talents of Alicia Woynarski, Lauren Woods, Jill Hoogewoonink, and Nevada Collins. They were accompanied by the Vif String Quartet and wore costumes by local fashion designer Natasha Lazarovic.

Mercury Opera’s presentation features an all-Canadian cast of rising operatic talent singing the sensual Mon coeur s’ouvre from Camille Saint Saens’ Samson et Dalila, The Queen of the Night’s Vengeance Aria, Mozart’s dazzler from The Magic Flute, and the exquisitely sublime Flower Duet from Lakme by Delibes. The performance culminates in a special rendition of one of opera’s favorite chart toppers,Puccini’s Nessun Dorma sung as a quartet.

The event got underway at 6pm with four businesses on 104 Street taking part. Ticket holders were invited to enjoy light refreshments at Coup, 29 Armstrong, deVine Wines & Spirits, and the Eyecare Group. Sharon and I walked over just after 7pm to find Coup full of people! We made our way from one venue to the next before heading down to the LRT station platform for the performance.

Coup filling up!

Ed pouring wine at deVine Wines

The food mostly consisted of cheese and meat platters

At around 8pm, everyone started moving underground. It was quite a sight with the LRT station platform so full of people! There were dozens of cameras, and not only from patrons hoping to capture the performance – OMNI had a bunch of cameras present to film a documentary about the event.

One of the OMNI cameras

Waiting for the performance to get underway

The setup for Vif

To ensure the LRT could still operate, volunteers used police tape to separate the event from transit riders getting on and off the trains. ETS officers also helped to keep traffic flowing smoothly.

Transit riders on the left, event attendees on the right

The performers arrived on the LRT!

They used the raised, circular benches as stages

There were big cheers when the train carrying the performers arrived. They wasted no time and started right away, eventually making their way to the circular benches in the centre of the platform. At the end of the show, the four performers came together to receive flowers and to perform an encore. The left the same way they came – on the train.

Two performers were on the east end of the platform and two were on the west end

Enjoying the show!

The four performers at the end of the show

It was particularly cool for a transit geek like me to see the trains coming and going in the background as the performance continued. And what a performance it was! The sound quality in the station was much better than I anticipated, and the lighting and reflective surfaces of the station walls and ceiling made for a very unique look. I think everyone really enjoyed it!

Tonight’s operascape is precisely the kind of event that I’d like to see more of in Edmonton. Congratulations to Darcia Parada and her team – I think its safe to say tonight was a big success! It’s so great to have people like Darcia – she had a vision, and she made it happen. Bravo!

You can see the rest of my photos here. Be sure to read Gig City’s preview as well.

Recap: DemoCamp Edmonton 16

Tonight was our sixteenth DemoCamp here in Edmonton. Held at the Telus Centre on the University of Alberta campus, DemoCamp is still going strong in our city! Tonight’s event continued the new format adopted at the last DemoCamp in September: 7 minutes for demos, 3 minutes for questions, and announcements interspersed throughout the evening.

Reg has been the official DemoCamp Edmonton timekeeper since the beginning!

We had seven demos tonight, in order of appearance:

Tinderizer – Daniel demoed his bookmarklet app that lets you send articles from around the web to your Kindle with the click of a button. There are similar services available now (like Readability) but Daniel has continued improving his offering since first releasing it a year ago.
Transit Heat Map – Next up was an interesting web app that helps you visualize how many stops you can reach within a certain amount of time. After you pick a starting stop, you can quickly discover which parts of the city are accessible within 15 minutes, and which parts might take an hour. Reminded me a bit of Mapnificent.
Browser Horde – Kevin demoed a web-based platform for solving complex problems. Similarly to SETI@Home and other distributed computing systems, complicated problems are broken down and solved using computing resources from volunteers. The difference is that Browser Horde runs entirely in the browser.
Darkhorse Analytics – Daniel ran us through the web-based analytics app that Darkhorse has been building for the Emergency Services industry. The app consumes data that EMS agencies already collect, such as trip times, wait times, etc., and provides an easy-to-use dashboard to make sense of that information.
Solvers Market – Alex demoed his question and answer site, billed as “an intelligence exchange platform.” Similar to StackExchange and other sites you can post a question for others to answer, but the site also incorporates money, so you can earn money for solving questions.
Fluik Entertainment – Victor showed the very successful Office Jerk game and its successors, Office Zombie and a new Christmas-themed version of the game. Office Jerk reached #1 on the iOS app charts.
Willstream – Joel demoed the mobile payments solution that is currently focused on the market in Senegal. The idea is to build a service that supports the three-party interaction that is common in developing markets (funds owner, spender, and merchant).

I’m not sure there was a clear favorite this evening – all of the demos were great! I love seeing projects like Tinderizer and the Transit Heat Map, built to solve a specific problem without requiring big plans for commercialization. Browser Horde is perhaps a bit technical, but seems suited to some specific problem domains and if they can find enough volunteers, could be quite successful. Darkhorse Analytics certainly seems like it could be a big, big winner. The research and effort that Daniel and his team have put into the product really shows, and I think a lot of folks in the audience were really impressed with the demo. Solvers Market demoed a couple weeks ago at PanEx, and while interesting, still needs to find a clear differentiator in a crowded market. Willstream’s demo unfortunately didn’t go very well (they had some issues with data being deleted today) but I think the concept has promise. I hope they can make it work.

Fluik has become a great Edmonton success story, and seems poised to continue producing hits and to keep growing (they’re already at 20 people and are hiring). Office Jerk was released on April 28, 2011 and immediately found success. Growth has continued ever since, with the game being downloaded more than six million times in just its first month. Keep an eye on Fluik!

There were a number of event and other announcements this evening:

The YEG Founders Club is getting started. The group aims to provide a place for entrepreneurs to connect with one another. Follow @yegfounders on Twitter and watch for more information.
The next Founders & Funders event will take place on December 5. The invite-only event is an opportunity for founders of technology startups to connect with investors.
MediaCamp Edmonton is scheduled to take place on February 4, 2012.
Grant MacEwan University is launching a usability lab, and would like to open it up to community. You can contact Sharon Bratt for more information.
The next Startup Weekend is scheduled for January 27, 2012 and will coincide with Global Game Jam.

Stay tuned to Startup Edmonton for additional events and announcements!

Tonight’s after-party at Original Joe’s Varsity didn’t seem as packed as some in the past, but it was still a great opportunity to connect with the demoers and others in the community. Thanks to everyone who came out tonight. See you at DemoCamp Edmonton 17!

Category: Uncategorized

Why 2012 is going to be a big year for Startup Edmonton

Top 10 Posts for 2011

Vibrant Streets X-posed

I <3 YEGDT: Downtown X-posed

YEGWOOD Launch Party & TreeFarer Shades Giveaway!

Looking for a C# Web Developer to join Questionmark in Edmonton

EPCOR’s 120th Anniversary

Recap: EEDC’s 2012 Economic Outlook Luncheon

Mercury Opera’s 104 Underground (an operascape)

Recap: DemoCamp Edmonton 16

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