Tag: events

Happy Canada Day!

It’s almost tradition for me to wish readers Happy Canada Day now (2005, 2006, 2007). I’ve had a pretty relaxing day so far, even though I did do a little bit of work earlier. Sharon and I are going to head down toward the Legislature grounds pretty soon to see the waterfall, and of course, the fireworks.

I had been looking forward to visiting the brand new Apple Store at West Edmonton Mall today, but found out yesterday that the launch has been delayed until Saturday. I’m not sure where he read this, but Bruce Clarke says the first 1000 people through the door will receive a free Apple t-shirt.

Happy Canada Day!

Talking Twitter at BarCampCalgary2

twitter I decided to fully embrace the idea of BarCamp on Saturday, and put my name down to do a presentation. I hadn’t planned to do one, and I certainly didn’t have anything prepared, so it was a “game-time decision” as I like to say. I figured I’d talk about Twitter, since I talked about it all the time anyway. I titled my talk:

Why Twitter Will Rule The World

Catchy right? Must have worked, because there were a lot of people in the room. I started with a brief overview and introduction, and then started showing some third party tools that make Twitter really useful, such as Summize and TwitterLocal. I also spent a little bit of time extolling the virtues of FriendFeed.

The best part of the presentation was the discussion. We talked about the signal-noise ratio of Twitter, and decided that there’s value in noise. We talked about spam, how Twitter breaks news, the scalability issues, and where we see Twitter going in the future. It was great, and the questions people asked definitely gave me something to think about.

Maybe I’ll lead a Twitter discussion at BarCampEdmonton in July. Definitely seems as though there’s interest.

Thanks to John Bristowe for letting me use his laptop (mine wouldn’t output to the projector for some reason). You can follow me on Twitter here.

BarCampCalgary2

Just arrived in Calgary. I’m here mainly for BarCampCalgary taking place tomorrow at Mount Royal College from 10:30am until 3:30pm. More details are here, and a list of attendees can be found here. I’m curious to see how things will go tomorrow – I’m sure we’ll learn how to make Edmonton’s first BarCamp in July a success.

barcampcalgary

Sharon decided to come down with me, so we’re making a weekend of it. That means food plans! Tomorrow we’re going to check out JAROblue for dinner and possibly Tubby Dog. On Sunday, we’re going to go for brunch at Nellie’s (one of the locations, not sure which yet). And on the way back, the plan is to stop in Red Deer to see Tom, for food at one of these places.

Should be fun!

Banff Day 1

I finally left the city today around 11:30 AM and made my way down to Banff. I’m here all weekend for nextMEDIA 08. The drive was uneventful, which is always good. It was extremely windy the entire way, with pockets of rain every now and then. It’s hard to describe how amazing the mountains look when you head west out of Calgary. Even with some cloud, they are impressive and humbling.

I’m staying at the Inns of Banff – it’s a nice enough hotel. The conference takes place at the Fairmont Banff Springs – it’s an incredible hotel. You certainly get what you pay for 🙂

After registering and checking out the opening reception (which had free drinks, yay!) I went to help Kris Krug and Megan Cole do a webcast interview with Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback. That was kind of fun, despite the spotty Internet connection. Jim is very personable and engaging. I think he looks kind of like a Hollywood star, actually.

Fairmont Banff Springs Opening night reception Jim & Megan Banff Avenue Timbers Food Co Beef Tortellini with Cream of Tomato Sauce

Next I decided to walk around a bit, checking out some shops and seeing what people were up to. I stopped at a place called Timbers for dinner – I’ll be posting a review later. Then after getting a coffee at Starbucks I came across The Underground Studio, an Internet cafe. That’s where I’m sitting at the moment! It’s open until 1 AM every day. Internet access is $4/hour, with an extra single $1 charge if you don’t have your own computer.

Both hotels have free wireless, yet both are very slow and unreliable. I guess it’s one thing to offer free wifi, and quite another to make it usable. Thankfully you can usually find a decent Internet cafe!

I’m very much looking forward to tomorrow, though I know it’ll be busy and tiring!

Recap: DemoCampEdmonton2

Tonight was Edmonton’s second DemoCamp – an opportunity for local startups and entrepreneurs to show the community what they’ve been working on. The venue and overall vibe of the event tonight was a bit different than the first DemoCamp, but I think it’s safe to say that DemoCampEdmonton2 was a success.

Again, we had six demos:

  1. Boris Djordjevic from Frontier Solutions
  2. Jack Newton from Clio
  3. Bruce Johnson and Scott Montgomerie from Zigtag
  4. Scott Winder from Boreal Systems
  5. Toby Spendiff from nForm
  6. Patrick Lor showed us a.viary.com

Frontier makes a product called SiteGears that helps companies bring products to market by integrating with businesses at all levels of the product lifecycle. Clio is a practice management service targeted at small law firms. Zigtag is in the social bookmarking space, and see themselves as the “future of search” in the long-run. Boreal Systems make an operations management application for companies in the energy industry. nForm makes a SharePoint add-on called Midori that helps small teams manage projects. And last but not least, a.viary is bringing the power of Photoshop to the web.

DemoCampEdmonton2

My “demo of the night” goes to Clio, with honorable mentions to both Boreal Systems and nForm. Clio’s app is very slick looking, and you can tell they’ve done their homework. They’re focusing on lawyers right now (Jack said that roughly half of the 1.2 million law firms in North America need something like Clio) but it’s easy to see how the app could be applied to other types of practices (like accounting). What I liked about Boreal was that although their app didn’t feel very modern at all, they had good reasons for doing everything they did (such as keeping the concept of a whiteboard schedule). And finally, nForm actually changed data live. They showed Midori actually working…that rocked!

Here’s more on DemoCampEdmonton2 and the participating companies:

  • My initial headcount was 61, but I suspect the final number was closer to 75 as people continued to trickle in all evening long.
  • Two demos used Windows XP, two used Windows Vista, and two used Mac OS X.
  • Clio, Zigtag, and a.viary are all hosted/SaaS solutions. Boreal Systems and Midori are both traditional host-it-yourself solutions. SiteGears is a combination of both.
  • SiteGears is primarily Java, Clio is Ruby on Rails, Zigtag is primarily Java, Boreal is almost finished migrating from PHP to Ruby, Midori is ASP.NET, and a.viary is Flash and Flex.
  • Again, we had a very diverse crowd. John Bristowe and Patrick Lor made it up from Calgary. James Matsuba, who won the Student Business Plan competition at this year’s VenturePrize, was in the crowd. Investors included Spencer Ord and Ken Gordon. Was great to see lots of new and familiar faces alike!

As I mentioned, the vibe was a bit different than the first DemoCamp which was held at the U of A. Choosing a bar as the venue makes for a more comfortable evening (with food and drinks) but it was a little harder to hear the presenters and questions. Another downside was the lack of free wifi, which kept me from liveblogging the event on Twitter.

One of the highlights of the evening was when Patrick Lor got up to present. Cam shared with everyone that Patrick was the driving force behind DemoCamp in both Calgary and Edmonton, so it was good for him to receive a round of applause as thanks from the Edmonton crowd.

Speaking of Calgary, Patrick mentioned that BarCampCalgary is happening on June 14th, so mark your calendars!

Thanks to everyone who came out tonight – see you at DemoCampEdmonton3! You can see some more photos of the event here. This post also appears at Techvibes.

UPDATE: For a more descriptive recap of the demos, check out Eric’s post.

David Beckham in Edmonton!

Tonight I went to Commonwealth Stadium with Megan to watch an exhibition Major League Soccer game between the Vancouver Whitecaps and the Los Angeles Galaxy. I hadn’t really been paying attention I guess, so didn’t realize the event was happening until Megan asked me last week if I wanted to go. I said yes, curious about how soccer would go over in Edmonton and of course, about David Beckham.

David Beckham

He didn’t score a goal, but he was awarded an assist. The Galaxy ended up losing 2-1, but it could have been far worse if not for their keeper. Vancouver was clearly the stronger team tonight. For more on the game, check out CBC.

Every time Beckham touched the ball, the crowd would cheer! It was kind of funny and kind of annoying all at the same time. At one point everyone started doing the wave. Megan and I couldn’t help but think, “this isn’t a hockey game!” For the most part though everyone seemed to be having a good time (despite the intermittent rain), and very few left after Beckham was replaced in the 75th minute.

While walking to the LRT station after the game, we ran into the crowd of people waiting to catch a glimpse of Beckham getting on the bus to leave the stadium. We hung around for a while and eventually saw him emerge, but the photos didn’t turn out so well. He signed a few autographs, but disappeared rather quickly.

In the end, I’d say that soccer is more enjoyable on television (keeping in mind that I’ve never been to a game in say, Europe). I eagerly await the World Cup, for instance! Bringing the exhibition game to Edmonton probably had the desired effect though – to capitalize on Beckham’s popularity as a way to introduce more people to MLS.

Here are my pictures from the game.

comingzune in Edmonton on May 16th

The iPod still has a lock on the market for portable media players, but at least Microsoft is doing some interesting marketing. Over the weekend I was notified about the comingzune parties happening in seven Canadian cities (it seems Montreal was a late addition).

comingzune

The Edmonton event takes place on Friday night at 9pm at The Artery, which Sharon tells me is an up and coming venue in our city. Here’s the map of the location.

I love the band name – The Wicked Awesomes! Never heard of them before though. They are five local guys, apparently influenced by devo. Take from that, what you will.

EdmontonTweetup1 was a success!

edmontontweetup Today we held the first ever tweetup in Edmonton (a meetup for Twitter users) and I think it’s safe to say that it was a success! We met downtown at three bananas cafe in Churchill Square at around noon. I wasn’t sure how many people would come, and was a little worried when I received a bunch of “sorry, can’t make it” messages this morning. In the end though, the attendance was much better than I could have expected, considering Twitter is still fairly niche. We had 17 people, including myself. You can see the full list of attendees on our wiki page.

Some of us took photos, Greg took some video, and Ian even did a podcast! You can find links to everything on the wiki (please add to the list).

EdmontonTweetup

We didn’t have a formal agenda, but that didn’t matter much. As I suspected, everyone found things to chat about. Connections were made and everyone seemed to be having a good time! There was some Twitter-related talk, mainly around apps and how people use Twitter. I talked about the “track” feature and also hashtags. It seems that most people have really gotten into Twitter in just the last few months.

Three Bananas was a great venue, very bright with reliable wifi. Today was a lovely day too, which made it even better.

I think we’ll probably have another tweetup, I’m just not sure when. You can help us plan it by contributing to the wiki page for EdmontonTweetup2.

Thanks to everyone who came – it was great to meet you! And to everyone who wanted to come but couldn’t, we’ll see you at the next one!

Volunteer for one of Edmonton's great festivals

volunteer edmonton Despite another setback for our neighbors to the south this week, summer is definitely on the way and that means lots and lots of festivals here in Edmonton. With over 30 established festivals each year, it’s no surprise that we’re Canada’s Festival City. It should also be no surprise that running 30 festivals requires a lot of time and effort, largely from volunteers:

The estimated number of volunteers required by Edmonton’s festivals is about 5,000 people! Our festivals are a source of community pride and an important element in the quality of life for Edmontonians in the summer – and beyond!

To help attract new volunteers, Volunteer Edmonton is co-hosting a Festival Volunteer Fair next week:

This recruitment event will showcase multiple festivals and will provide members of the community with a “one stop festival volunteer shopping experience”.  We have confirmed that 15 diverse and exciting festivals will be on site, highlighting the volunteer opportunities they have to offer.

I think there are actually over 20 festivals now participating, including the Edmonton International Fringe Festival, A Taste of Edmonton, The Works Art & Design Festival, and the International Street Performers Festival.

The recruitment event takes place on Wednesday, May 14th from 3pm to 7pm at the TransAlta Arts Barns. Here’s a map of the location, and for more information you can call 211 or visit the Volunteer Edmonton site.

Check it out and pass it on!

EdmontonTweetup1 – May 10th

edmontontweetup A month ago I wondered if anyone would come to an EdmontonTweetup, a meetup for Twitter users in Edmonton. I’m still not exactly sure what we’re going to talk about, but enough people have expressed interest that we’re going ahead with the event. Here are the details:

WHO: Twitter users in Edmonton!
WHAT: An event to meet one another in meatspace.
WHERE: Three Banana’s Cafe in Churchill Square (map)
WHEN: Saturday, May 10th, at 12pm noon
WHY: To chat about all things Twitter with like-minded folks!

You can see the above details as well as a partial list of attendees on our wiki page for the event. Feel free to add yourself to the list. There are also Facebook and Upcoming events if that’s more your style. You may also want to follow edmontontweetup or myself on Twitter for updates.

I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone – hope to see you there!