MobileWeekend – Getting started

We’re getting started on planning the Mobile Weekend event. So if you’re interested in helping out or being part of the group that helps organize the event, go visit the official post for Mobile Weekend and leave us a comment letting us know that you’re going to be attending.

The first meeting will be held on Friday, Jan 18th, 2008 at 7pm. At the offices of Innovation Toronto located at 169 Eastern Ave., Toronto, ON.

MobileWeekend Official Planning post.

My privacy… has a price

I registered a domain name yesterday on Yahoo! and just when I was ready to confirm, I saw this:

I find it odd that I should pay to keep my private data, you know… private! Am I misreading the above? or does it sound more like extortion then a valued service? Oh, please note, this is an annual fee, I wonder how long one will have to pay to keep their private data private?

This whole thing just rubs me the wrong way!

Facebook Weekend Beta

We had our first Facebook weekend and it was a great time. The turnout was rather slim, might have had to do with the fact that we only started to advertise it 3 weeks prior to the start date and that we are moving into the holiday season. Our team managed to work through a lot of the business challenges that were facing us, but the true success story comes from a competing team.

That team built and launched their Facebook application. Pet Food Testing, was born this weekend. As some of you know, I have a dog and I absolutly love this concept. The idea is that you can ask to have your brand of pet food tested by an independent testing facility. You can donate some money for testing and invite your friends to do the same. Once there is enough money to cover the testing costs, a random sample (from store shelves in your area) will be selected and shipped for testing. The results will then be posted back for the whole public to see.

So… go have a look, add the application and lets get some pet food tested.

Has it been THAT long???

Well, seems like I’ve been away for a while now. I guess life’s been really busy lately with work and other more social thing. As a matter of fact, it has been so long that my admin interface for this blog has changed… Well time to get back to writing.

Came back to write a quick post here, because it stuck me how much our interaction with friends has changed in the past few year with Web 2.0 and all. I just found out that Kate’s mom is in labour, not by getting a phone call, email, or text message. Nope… I read her status on Facebook. I can’t help but giggle just a bit at the thought of a pregnant woman updating her FB status while rushing the father-to-be to pack the car and not forget the extra blanket

Anyhoo, best wishes to Kate’s mom, hope it’s an easy labour and all the best to you and your new addition. Now to go and wish her well on Facebook too…

Startup Waterloo – 3 weekends?

The Startup Weekend phenomenon is spreading like the wind across the tech community all around the world. It seems only fitting that we should have a few here in Waterloo. After all, this is a haven for startup companies in Ontario. I was lucky enough to be one of the participants in the Startup Weekend Toronto and one of the organizers there (although, I didn’t do that much). That weekend was a great experience, I got to meet some great people and we managed to get out what is sure to be the beginning of a great product.

Here are my thoughts for Waterloo, I’m hoping to run a total of three weekends with the first being on Feb 2nd, 2008 and the others following a month apart later. I’m hoping to run the weekends by technology, let me explain. At the Boulder weekend as well as the Toronto weekend, we had developers from various backgrounds and with different skill sets (sometimes not very compatible), but only one product is picked and so there can be conflict or we just end up with really good hard-core developers that can’t really help. So… here are the three weekends I’m thinking of running:

1. asp.Net: I’m a .Net guy and I always feel left out of events like this. So, if you’re into .Net this is the weekend for you Of course we’ll still need CSS and UI guys/gals and they don’t have to know .Net
2. Ruby on Rails or PHP: I was introduced to Ruby on Rails during the Toronto weekend and I love the concept and layout of the language. I’m going to try to find time to pick it up and I think it would be great to see the RoR guys/gals at work
3. Mobile: We have both RIM and the mobile arm of Google right here in town… seems rather logical to me.

I had a great conversation with Tom Corr, CEO of the Accelerator Centre, here in Waterloo and it looks like he would be very happy to let us use the facility for the events. The AC is absolutly perfect for this kind of event, we have conference rooms with projectors, wireless throughout the facility, a big common room/cafeteria, and much more. A HUGE thank you to Tom and the AC well in advance of any of this being official. It’s great… absolutely great!

I also have two other potential sponsors already, more on that once things become more official.

So… feedback please. I want to know what you think. Let your friends and coworkers know. The more info I get from you, the local community, the better I can help organize this. BTW, if you want to take part in helping set this up, just drop me a line on this blog, there’s lots to be done.

Startup Weekend – NYC and a bit more…

Wanted to send a big shout out to Startup Weekend – New York City! I’ve been following the weekend from afar and it looks like they had a great time and made very good progress with their selected idea, favoreats.com. I wish you guys all the best and can’t wait to see the product in beta.

On a not so happy note… I see that there’s still some fallout from the comments made by Andrew Hyde about the Toronto Startup Weekend and the comments that followed. I was contemplating writing a long post about this and my personal views, but I decided that it might just add fuel to the fire. Instead, I’ll say this. I get the impression that everyone wants to make these weekends successful, whatever name they end up running under. We all want o have a good time, learn, experience and grow. Oh and with any luck built a great product and grow a company. So… why don’t we just put the past behind us and learn from our mistakes and from our successes? If you like Andrew’s approach and want to join or run your own weekend, drop him a line on the Startup Weekend blog. If you don’t like the way he’s structured stuff, run your own like the Birmingham guys are.

I find both regrets and hatred take up too much energy. We’re all an energetic bunch, let’s channel that energy into something productive

Startup Weekend – Toronto – Lessons leaned

I finally have some time to write about the Toronto Startup Weekend experiment. First of all, I’d like to mention that we launched a product into beta. Yay! By that factor alone I guess we can consider this a success. There has been some buzz in the blogsphere about how the SW Toronto was run and organized. Here’s what’s been floating around so far:

Andrew Hyde: showing disappointment at the way things were organized, feeling that the spirit of the event was trampled.

Steve Poland: Agreeing with Andrew, but more mildly so

Brill Pappin: Giving his take having been one of the organizers of the SW Toronto event

And now for my take on it. First, my disclaimer, this is my opinion and mine alone. Ok with that out of the way… I was one of the pre-weekend organizers and had the “role” of product development lead.

Startup Weekend – Toronto – We’re live

Well… almost. Here’s my post on the Toronto Startup Weekend blog.

Startup Weekend – Toronto – Day 2

Well, it’s 3am and I’m about ready to call it a day. I’m not going to sleep till I get our splash page up though. Once that’s up I’ll get some sleep.

So much has happened today the teams really came together and we’ve had a lot of successes. As a matter of fact the dev team completed the first phase of the site and we have a “working” prototype. How’s that for cool? The business team also made lots of progress today. The graphic team was amazing and put up with all of our crap and just kept putting out great concepts. The energy was great!

We also got a lot of help from our American friends, so I’d like to extend a special thanks to Erica O’Grady, Joe Scharf (Vosnap), and Andrew Hyde!

I have pictures and we have video and lots more to post, but that’ll come after I get some sleep

Check out the Toronto Startup Weekend Blog for more.

Stay tuned…

Startup Weekend Toronto – Begins

Today at 6pm, Startup Weekend Toronto will kick off. I’m a member of the management team for SW TO and we’ve been working hard for the past few weeks getting organized and trying to put a bit more structure around the weekend then existed at the original event. Are we going too far… who knows… that’s why this is an experiment. If you’re interested in seeing how we do and how the weekend develops, please check the official blog for the weekend. If you’d like to see the product that came out of Boulder weekend have a look at Vosnap.

I will also try and post pictures and other comments on this blog assuming I have the time to do it.

For now, here’s what our facility looks like: Photos