Startup Weekend returns to Edmonton

Startup Weekend Edmonton is back! The weekend of February 11-13 is your opportunity to do something about that idea you’ve been thinking about – and that’s just one of the many good reasons to attend. Startup Weekend is a great opportunity to network with other people in the community, to learn something new, to gain valuable team building experience, and maybe even just to feel that sense of accomplishment we all love. Not to mention the rush of going from concept to working demo in just 54 hours!

Edmonton’s first Startup Weekend took place last June. About 30 local developers, designers, and other creative people got together and formed six teams that built some really interesting projects. You can read my recap of our last event to get a sense of how the weekend went, but here in a nutshell is the process:

Friday Night: Everyone shows up, we have some brief introductions, and if you have an idea you pitch it. It’s messy and fun but we then form teams out of all the ideas, and each team begins to plan and prepare for the rest of the weekend.
Saturday: Teams dive into building their project. Breaking it up into tasks and time management are key. Throughout the day there are lunch and dinner breaks with speakers talking about startup-related topics.
Sunday: It’s crunch time! Teams finish up their projects so that they can demo it in the evening. Around 6pm, all the work stops and the wider community gets to see what each team accomplished over the weekend.

Cam is going to cover all of that in more detail on the Friday evening as well. It’s a short amount of time, which is part of why it is so exciting!

One of the questions that people ask a lot is if Startup Weekend is only for programmers. The answer is no! In fact, teams need individuals with all kinds of skills to be successful. Anyone can have an idea and help flesh that out into a project. Artists and designers can help with the look and feel. Business people can help with the pitch or maybe even work on a business plan. Storytellers can help make the project compelling to customers. Of course someone needs to test the project out. I’m sure you can think of dozens of others skills that could be brought to the table. The most successful companies need more than just programmers!

There are Startup Weekend events happening all over the world. In fact, there are going to be 150 this year alone! If you’re unsure about the event, check out the Startup Weekend blog and read through some of the stories from other places. It’s really amazing what has been created, not to mention all of the relationships and other great things that have been formed as a result. Innovative ideas like Planely, which aims to make it possible to use the “lost” time we spend on airplanes to network and make friends. Also be sure to check out My Edmonton which was created at Edmonton’s first Startup Weekend has since grown and evolved into a really useful app!

Edmonton’s second Startup Weekend is taking place at the Computing Sciences Centre on the University of Alberta campus. Tickets are $99, but if you purchase yours today or tomorrow, it’s just $65. That includes food for the weekend and a Startup Weekend t-shirt. It’s a heck of a deal. You can see the event listing and other information on ShareEdmonton.

Stay tuned to Startup Edmonton (and on Twitter) for updates. We’ll be using the hashtag #SWEdmonton if you’d like to follow along on Twitter.

I hope to see you there!

Edmonton Notes for 1/23/2011

If you walked outside and proclaimed it to be April, I don’t think anyone would fault you. This mini heat wave has been a welcome change from the icy cold temperatures and piles of snow we’ve had! Especially since the City’s response to all of that snow was “effective, but still fell short” – whatever that means.

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

City Council voted on Monday to enter formal negotiations with the Katz Group to develop a downtown arena, and on Tuesday, they conditionally approved the organization’s rezoning application.
After nearly 30 years, West Edmonton Mall is finally getting a major overhaul. Phases 1, 2, and 3 will be renovated mostly at night over the next 18 to 24 months.
In 2010, the City of Edmonton issued building permits for nearly $2.73 billion worth of construction projects, an increase of 11% over 2009.
One of the things on the agenda for Tuesday’s TPW meeting is the new Walterdale Bridge, which could cost $250 million. I wrote about the project and the open house back in November.
Local tech company Cleankeys got a financial boost this week from AVAC Ltd.
The City of Edmonton is looking for citizens interested in serving on one of three advisory committees.
The Edmonton Capitals are joining the new North American League.
Congrats to local startup TestFlight for getting some much-deserved love on TechCrunch. They showed off their solution to deploying iPhone apps at DemoCampEdmonton12 in September.
From the long-overdue-dept: the University of Alberta is looking at the possibility of adding a civic planning program.
The Edmonton Police said Friday that certain crime decreased 18% last year, though sexual assaults actually increased.
The federal government announced funding on Friday for 21 arts, culture, and official languages projects in Edmonton.
For more headlines from the past week, check out theedmontonian.com.
Axis Café is closing, and they are holding a celebration on Thursday at 7pm.
Tuesday night is the next UX Book Club meeting.
Nerds Night Out is happening again on Wednesday evening at Ceili’s downtown.
The Edmonton Rush will play their first home game of the season on Friday against the Calgary Roughnecks. The Rush are still looking for their first win in 2011.
The Oil Kings are in action at home twice this week, on Wednesday against Saskatoon, and on Saturday against Prince Albert.
Winter Light continues with Illuminations in Churchill Square on Saturday.
For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.
On Tuesday, City Council will be talking about Smart Bus technology, which includes GPS location services. Let them know how badly you want it!
Donate-a-Ride ends on January 31 – it’s not too late to give a ride to someone in need!

Ice on Whyte wrapped up today. This one was my favorite! Photo by Jennie.

Fantastic sunrise in Highlands, by Tre Photographic.

Edmonton’s 2010 Grey Cup Festival Never Happened

In November 2010, Edmonton hosted the 98th Grey Cup. The Montreal Alouettes defeated the Saskatchewan Roughriders for the second straight year to capture the CFL’s top prize. Of course, the event was more than just a football game. We’re festival city, and we turned the Grey Cup into a very successful festival. There was something for everyone, and downtown was full of people, which unfortunately doesn’t happen very often. It wasn’t a perfect event, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an Edmontonian who would consider it anything less than a success.

Here’s what Todd Babiak wrote (archive):

Ten years from now, only the statisticians and the really, really heartbroken will recall the winner of Sunday’s Grey Cup game in Edmonton.

What we would like to remember, in 10 years, is that many thousands of warmly audacious people from Saskatchewan came to witness Edmonton’s transition from a cosy little prairie city to something else.

I would go further and say that we absolutely need to remember what we accomplished with the Grey Cup Festival. We need to be proud of it, we need to learn from it, and we need to improve upon it.

But, the Grey Cup Festival never happened.

If you try to visit the festival website, at http://www.greycupfestival2010.com, you’re redirected to the website of the Edmonton Eskimos. As far as the web is concerned, the festival never happened. And in 2011 and beyond, the web is all that matters. Think about it for a second – less than two months after the event took place, the most important online record of it has vanished.

Ignoring the fact that the website barely worked during the festival (which is an important, but different issue), this is troubling. I have written before about the need to preserve our local, digital, cultural artifacts. The web is the single most important platform for doing so. The web is accessible and pervasive. Too often, however, it is not permanent. We can and must do better. We also need to stop thinking of event websites as only being relevant during the event.

Now obviously the festival happened. And there are other places online that provide evidence and a record of it. There’s the Wikipedia entry, the many blog posts that were written, thousands of photos uploaded to the web, etc. But all of these should be ancillary to the event website, not a substitute for it. And there’s no guarantee that they’ll exist in the future. For instance, you can read Todd’s article today, but in six months it will no longer be available on the web (hopefully my archive link is…this is a problem the Journal is aware of and hopes to address).

The saddest part about this particular instance is that I guessed it would happen. I should have spoken up sooner. The good news is that I archived the entire site on November 27, 2010. You can see the front page here.

I don’t think this is an easy problem to solve, but I believe it is important that we do solve it. I’m going to do what I can to help educate others about why this is so important, I’ll continue learning from the very smart people we have in the “archival” business, and I’ll continue doing what I can to help archive.

Recap: DemoCamp Edmonton 13

Last night we held Edmonton’s thirteenth DemoCamp, our second in the larger space at the Telus Centre on the University of Alberta campus. It was another fantastic turnout, with close to 100 people eager to see what startups and developers in our city are working on. We had a great turn out at Original Joe’s afterward too (and if you’ve been to DemoCamp before, you know that’s where the magic happens). Snow can’t keep the local startup community down!

We had five demos:

Scott Montgomerie showed us My Edmonton, an app he originally developed with a few other people at Edmonton’s first Startup Weekend. It started life as a real estate app, but evolved to be more of a local utility, with information on events, news, property info, and nearby services. My Edmonton is available both on the web and as an iPhone app. You can learn more at the blog.
Our second demo was from Yegor Jbanov, who showed us Deckle, an online print job automation tool. Targeted at the professional printing industry, Deckle integrates with Adobe Creative Suite and supports precision printing, such as for cheques which have strict requirements on layout and positioning. Yegor said that if you can do it with InDesign, you can pretty much do with with Deckle.
Mo Hamdan was up next, to show us Promptu Manager, a tool for managing fixed assets. Promptu is a Windows application, with a user interface very reminiscent of accounting packages such as Simply Accounting or Quick Books. Unfortunately the demo didn’t go as smoothly as Mo had hoped. It’s difficult to make a series of data entry screens interesting, I guess.
Our fourth demo was from Trevor MacDonald, who showed us Pluggin.it. The idea is to leverage your social network to help you sell stuff. Let’s say you have a car that you want to get rid of. You can offer a reward and then get your friends to “plug” your listing, and if their assistance leads to an eventual sale, they can claim part of the reward. Pluggin.it is in beta (they are having a launch party tonight) but looks pretty polished and definitely has some potential. You can learn more at Brittney’s blog.
Our final demo was from Andrew Czarnietzki, who works at 3DI (here’s a profile I did in 2009). He showed us a game he developed in his spare time that makes use of some of the interesting technology available to him at 3DI, such as pureLIGHT. It was really interesting in that it used “weird geography” and light as its unique features. When you fired your weapon, for instance, the light would bend around the geometrical shapes in the game. Looks like it would be a fun game to play on Xbox Live or something like that!

As a fan of open data and local apps, I really enjoyed My Edmonton. If you haven’t seen it before, check it out. I think Pluggin.it is a neat concept as well, and everyone really seemed to enjoy the demo. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of uptake it gets. My favorite demo was probably the game though – I love it when developers experiment with stuff just because they love it. Who knows, maybe one day Andrew’s game will be available on Xbox Live!

A few announcements:

Global Game Jam Edmonton is taking place from January 28-30.
Startup Weekend Edmonton is taking place from February 11-13.
Edmonton is now included in StartupDigest, so sign up to get notifications about events and other cool stuff that is happening.
Stay tuned to Startup Edmonton for information on all of the exciting things we have planned for 2011!

Thanks to everyone who came out to lucky number 13. See you at DemoCamp Edmonton 14!

DemoCamp Edmonton 13

Sick of hibernating inside because of all the snow and cold weather? Join us on Wednesday evening for Edmonton’s next DemoCamp – lucky number 13! If you’ve never been to DemoCamp before, it’s time to stop missing out. There is no better opportunity to connect with Edmonton’s technology and startup community. Here are the details:

Date: Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Time: 6:30pm (and drinks/networking afterward)
Location: Telus Centre 150, University of Alberta (map)
Cost: Free – sign up
See the event on ShareEdmonton or on Facebook.

The rules for DemoCamp are simple: ten minutes to demo real, working software, followed by a few minutes for questions. No slides allowed. You can read my recap of our last DemoCamp here (the archive of recaps is here).

If you can’t make it on Wednesday, follow along online using the #democampyeg hashtag. Stay tuned to Startup Edmonton for more technology and startup events.

See you Wednesday evening!

Edmonton Notes for 1/16/2011

Check out Edmonton notes throughout the week at Edmonton Etcetera!

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Snow, snow, snow. That’s what people have been talking about. I won’t bore you with yet another news article. But here’s a fun link: Edmonton’s Best Toboggan Hills.
The proposed downtown arena was in the news a lot this week. Here’s a good article from Paula Simons.
The Indy is going to happen here in Edmonton after all. Organizers hope to make the event more of a festival, similar to the Grey Cup.
Here’s a good post on the downtown arena from The Charrette. Also check out Dave’s post. He wrote what lots of people were thinking.
Our City’s latest homicide brought social media into the discussion. I was interviewed about it by CBC and iNews880.
GPS information is coming to St. Albert transit. This is high on the wish list for many ETS customers.
A new hotel opened recently in the City’s west end – the Courtyard Edmonton West.
The City of Edmonton has lifted an advertising ban that prevented liquor ads from appearing on buses and LRT.
The head of corporate communications at the City of St. Albert has resigned.
Everyone’s favorite new Twitter account was interviewed by the Edmonton Sun.
Here’s a write-up on the Alberta Avenue Farmers Market. Check it out, if you haven’t done so already!
The deadline to opt out of the 2011 distribution of the Yellow Pages is February 12. To opt out call 1-800-268-5637 or fill out the online form.
The latest ratings were released recently, which meant every local news organization was talking about they are number one. Global says the News Hour is number one. CTV says News at Six is number one.
At least one analyst thinks the Katz Group might be for sale.
For more headlines from the past week, check out theedmontonian.com.
City Council is talking about the proposed arena all day Monday and Tuesday. You can see the agenda for tomorrow here. You can watch live or listen online here.
Here’s the latest edition of The Unknown Studio, featuring an interview with Mayor Mandel.
For upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.
Edmonton Next Gen is hosting an information session on the City Centre Redevelopment Project on Tuesday. Registration is full, but follow along on Twitter. Postponed.
Minnesota is in town on Tuesday to take on the Oilers. Dallas visits on Thursday, and Nashville visits on Sunday.
The Oil Kings are in action at home this week as well, on Friday night against the Moose Jaw Warriors, and on Saturday night against Medicine Hat.
DemoCamp Edmonton 13 is taking place on Wednesday evening at the Telus Centre. See you there!
The Edmonton Pet Expo takes place Saturday and Sunday at the Edmonton Expo Centre.
Ice on Whyte continues all week! Don’t miss it!

Edmonton Skyline by Edith Hoffman

Check out more photos from Ice on Whyte here.

Edmonton Notes for 1/9/2011

All week I post interesting Edmonton links, photos, videos, and more at Edmonton Etcetera. Check it out!

Have you dug yourself out of all the snow yet? Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Alberta Venture’s latest list of the fastest growing companies features an all-Edmonton top three.
Here is my roundup of 2010 year-in-review articles for Edmonton.
You can now get bus route and stop schedule information by sending a text message to 31100.
Two Edmontonians are behind a new documentary that unlocks “the mystery of humankind’s migration into the Americas”.
Some sad news for Edmonton’s music scene: Brent Oliver, a well-known musician, promoter, and former club owner, is moving to Winnipeg.
Oil Country, meet “The Oiler”.
Lucinda Chodan was named the new editor-in-chief at the Edmonton Journal this week.
The host of CBC Radio’s Edmonton AM is moving on – Ron Wilson delivered his final morning broadcast on Friday. He’s now responsible for daily story assignment for all CBC News Edmonton platforms.
Edmonton is getting a new comedy festival in October!
The Peter Hemingway Fitness and Leisure Centre is back in business! You can read about the completed upgrades and maintenance work here.
There have been quite a few store closures lately, including the Gap at City Centre.
Chris Mooney is the new president of the Realtors Association of Edmonton.
It sounds like Japanese Village is opening another location in South Edmonton.
Apparently Edmonton’s head-office sector continued to shrink in 2010.
Cleankeys is a local company that has been very successful at making an easy-to-clean computer keyboard. Great story!
Here’s how to look hot in winter shorts in Edmonton.
SEE Magazine has an article on Building Our City Core.
This letter discussing the recent back-and-forth between the Somali community and the police is worth a read.
Rio Terrace, Parkallen, Sherbrooke, Fulton Place, Capilano, and West Jasper Place are the neighbourhoods that will be either starting or finishing the neighbourhood renewal program this year.
For more headlines from the past week, check out theedmontonian.com.
Making room for a downtown arena, from Chris.
Here are the Digital Media People to Watch in Alberta in 2011 according to Techvibes.
Edmonton Next Gen is looking for presenters for Pecha Kucha 9, scheduled to take place in early March.
Here are some great photos of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, taken by Douglas Dollars for the organization’s 60th anniversary.
January 14 is the submission deadline for two art project RFPs: Beverly Entrance (PDF), and Engineering Services Building (PDF).
Quick plug for @sarahjanet – Daddy and Baby Time is starting again on Wednesday at the EPL Strathcona Branch.
The Kootenay Ice are in town to take on the Oil Kings on Wednesday.
Ice on Whyte starts on Thursday! You can see all dates and times on ShareEdmonton here.
I’m looking forward to this event on Saturday – Meet, Tweet and Greet with EPL Writer-in-Residence Marty Chan!
For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

Have an item I should include in my weekly notes? Let me know!

It’s both a great sunrise, and a perspective on downtown you don’t often see.

My favorite ice sculpture today, part of the festivities at Deep Freeze 2011. More photos here, and here is Sharon’s great recap.

Edmonton Notes for 1/2/2011

Posting over the holidays has been fairly light as I have been enjoying a much-needed break, but I have posted a few things at Edmonton Etcetera and will get back to normal this week. Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Happy New Year! It was relatively warm on Friday night for the fireworks at Churchill Square.
Edmonton’s first baby of 2011 was born at 12:04 AM, and sadly, our first homicide of the year came just a few hours later.
According to the City of Edmonton, the amount of waste processed at this time of year is double what it is normally. Be smart about recycling your holiday waste!
The arena was back in the news this week, as the report on the Katz Group’s rezoning application was released. The Charrette has a nice overview here.
The 2011 Donate-a-Ride campaign kicked off on Thursday at City Hall. Over the last 15 years, the program has donated 752,782 tickets worth over $1.2 million.
Christmas might be over, but you can still help the Christmas Bureau by making a donation.
Mill Woods Town Centre, built in 1989, has been acquired by Bayfield Realty Advisors and RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust for $94,600,000. The deal includes the shopping centre, medical office building, and 6 acres of vacant land for future development.
Here’s another video from Edmonton Tourism, this time showing off local attractions through the eyes of a runner.
Should Councillors be tweeting? I thought Adam made some good points in his post on the issue.
Sharon has a great recap post for the local food scene – Epicurious in Edmonton: 2010 in Review.
Speaking of food, Valerie has been posting a fantastic Food Trends 2011 series. Here is the entry I’m included in!
I never thought I’d see it, but the Edmonton Journal featured a tag cloud on its front page this week! I look forward to much more in 2011.
The Edmontonian also has a tag cloud and a feature on 2010 Headlines.
Georges Laraque had a letter published this week, once again urging the City of Edmonton to move Lucy the Elephant.
Detroit is in town Tuesday night to play the Oilers, and the Islanders visit on Thursday.
MacEwan’s Showcase Band Concert takes place on Friday evening.
The Regina Pats play the Oil Kings on Saturday night.
Next weekend, Deep Freeze takes place on Alberta Avenue. It’s the first of the Winter Light events.

Happy New Year!

Edmonton Notes for 12/19/2010

Less than a week to go until Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

City Council passed the final part of Edmonton’s new Capital City Downtown Plan on Monday. One of the most exciting aspects of the rezoning is a five-year pilot enabling developers to building housing without any parking. For more, check out this wonderful guide to the rezoning.
We’ve had a ton of snow this week. Can you believe that our police cruisers don’t have winter tires?
Lots of people will be out and about this week, finishing shopping, attending Christmas parties, etc. The City is warning you to make sure you avoid bandit taxies. Though if you’re downtown between 11am and 11pm until Christmas you can take one of the free Telus taxis!
At 6am tomorrow, the Dawson Bridge will re-open after a year-long rehabilitation that should ensure the bridge remains functional and safe for decades to come.
Mayor Mandel said this week that a decision on the proposed downtown arena should be made by April. In case you missed it: I completed my three-part series on the community revitalization levy on Friday. The final installment looks at the proposed downtown arena.
The Journal has been posting write-ups from a year-end interview with Mayor Mandel: Mayor’s can-do style has made him enemies is one example. In another article, Mandel suggested that Northlands and EEDC should merge.
I love reading stories like this: Edmonton-based International Mascot Corp. is the world’s largest supplier of high-quality character costumes, such as the 100 colorful Smurfs they just produced for the launch of a new movie!
Ex-Oiler Georges Laraque was in the news this week, after he offered $100,000 to the City of Edmonton in exchange for moving Lucy the elephant to a sanctuary in California.
Speaking of the Oilers, their new cheer team debuted on Tuesday evening: the Oilers Octane.
A new website launched this week that aims to make it easier to connect local non-profit organizations with landlords and property owners that have space available. Check out Edmonton SpaceFinder.
Some of our Councillors tweet, and some even tweet during Council meetings. CBC interviewed Don Iveson and Kerry Diotte on their tweeting habits.
Here’s an interview with Jack Michaels, the new voice of the Edmonton Oilers on 630 CHED.
Ross Grieve, Executive Chairman and retired CEO of PCL Construction Holdings Ltd., has been appointed to AIMCo’s Board of Directors.
Neat update from Dave: Edmonton housing first programs featured in the Huffington Post!
A funny column from David Staples on the different types of LRT passengers.
The battle of the University of Alberta’s plans for South Campus is heating up.
For more headlines from the past week, check out theedmontonian.com.
The Edmonton New Technology Society (ENTS) is offering discounts on monthly memberships this holiday season! They’ve got a cool interactive floorplan at their website.
Another interesting marketing approach from Edmonton Tourism: Discover the Edmonton River Valley with Two 17-Century Explorers.
Looking to do some walking over the holidays? Check out the new Edmonton Walking Maps iPhone app.
Check out what some creative University of Alberta students are up to: Personal Edmonton Planner.
Have you checked out The Charrette yet? It’s a new local blog focused on urban planning. Check out their weekly news round-up here.
If you’re looking to check out some of Edmonton’s free holiday attractions, consider using this handy guide from the Edmonton Journal. It even uses Foursquare!
You can also see holiday events on ShareEdmonton.
Saturday is Christmas Day!
For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.