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It started off with a simple tweet and suddenly I’m organizing a huge startup event in Toronto…

Back in April, I was planning my next trip out to Actuate’s HQ in San Mateo and my attendance at the web 2.0 conference when I came across Startup Weekend Silicon Valley.  I started reading and, while I couldn’t stretch my trip and leave the family for an extra few days to attend, I thought to myself, why hasn’t this event come to Toronto yet?  So I tweeted that same question.

Next thing I knew, the folks at Startup Weekend were in touch to let me know they wanted to do a bunch of Startup Weekends across Canada – covering all the major cities.  Now I’m not going to bore you with all the details that followed.  Let’s just say that I met the Startup Weekend crew in San Francisco at web 2.0 and here I am, organizing Toronto’s first (well, not quite but that’s another story) Startup Weekend.

Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken so long to get here.  Toronto has a vibrant tech and startup community and given that these weekends are going on all over the world and gaining tons of momentum, why didn’t someone jump on this before me?  Perhaps it’s because there’s a perception that we already have these type of events in this city.  If that’s the case, I’d have to disagree.  While we have many great events in Toronto covering this space, there is nothing following quite the Startup Weekend model.

Here’s my plug for the event… I hope to see you all there so please check out the site, register and come out with all your great ideas and skills.

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.

Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde, the weekend is a concept of a conference focusing on learning by creating. It is known for its quick decisions, ‘out of the box’ thinking (oh no, the buzzwords are attacking!), unique facilitation technique and letting the founders show what they can do. The program has already met with success in over 100 cities all around the world.

The participants that attend a Startup Weekend decide what they want to tackle over the weekend and come out at the end with several developed companies or projects. Attendees are responsible for bringing desire and passion to the project and walk out of the room with the task at hand, in a short 54 hours. Sound intense? It is.

Startup Weekends continue to build momentum, happening in cities across the globe every week. Toronto is holding its first Startup Weekend September 24-26, 2010 at Ryerson University. The event will be limited to approximately 100 participants and expects to be sold out quickly.

If you read it here and want to attend, use this discount code (lowpostSWTO) to register for a great price.  Yes, there is a cost – the event is 54 hrs long and covers meals and drinks along with prizes and other great stuff.  Startup Weekend is a non-profit and we only look to cover costs and make the event great.

It’s also worth noting here that Startup Weekend has no rights to any ideas, products or companies that come out of the weekend.  We’re only interested in getting people together to build cool stuff and see where it goes.

Follow @startupwkndTO and search #swtoronto for news and updates about the event.

As a new iPad user, I’m wondering if this device is making me dumb. Don’t get me wrong, I love this device and know that this, and all the “me too” devices that will follow are going to change mobile computing forever. Still, in my digitally obsessed manner, I’ve decided that I want to do all my reading on the iPad. Why not – I have the Kindle app (I don’t like iBooks and already have kindle books that I’ve read on my iPhone), there are various great magazine apps, Press Reader is awesome and it’s a great device for keeping up with blogs. The problem is, there’s so much there, it’s accelerating an issue I was already worried about – the difficulty staying focused on one thing for longer than a few minutes.

Rather than reading through books from a single, beautifully designed device, I can barely concentrate long enough to get through a blog post. This is not a physical design flaw but rather an issue caused by the access to information and other great apps that are sitting there, asking you to go get them.  I continually find myself jumping around from app to app, website to website, checking/sending email, etc.  I’m sure most of you struggle with this all the time, especially at work where you are pulled in multiple directions throughout the day.  Now, imagine that small amount of time you’ve traditionally held onto for dear life, where you can curl up with a good book, being ripped away and replaced with another device, disguised as something to read on, ensuring you are a total slave to technology.

It’s not completely fair to blame this issue on a device as more and more, I find myself somewhat full of panic that there is so much information I want that I certainly can’t waste my time relaxing with a good piece of fiction.  If I’m honest with myself, this issue was percolating before I started using an iPad.  The iPad has just exacerbated this behaviour.

The funny thing is, I’m not sure I’m upset by this new dynamic in my life.  Instead, I feel completely committed to using my iPad for all my reading and finding a way to control my constant urges to access other things on the device.  I don’t need to describe all the benefits of the iPad – there are tons of sites to tell you what you need.  I want to take on the challenge of figuring out the “right” way to interact with my devices, just like the industry/market is learning as it goes.  In this regard, we’re living in a pretty amazing time.

I’m attending the Web 2.0 Expo this week in San Francisco.  Every year, there are a few themes.  Last year it was definitely Twitter and interestingly, even with the massive growth of Twitter since last year’s conference, it feels less relevant this year (or maybe it’s just yesterday’s news).  The big themes this year are: the lean startup movement, mobile, and platforms (everyone likes to say they are developing a platform).

I attended the lean startup intensive session on Monday curated by the man behind the movement, Eric Ries (check out his blog for all info and material on the movement).  I decided to attend this over other sessions because I’m passionate about startups but also because I truly believe that the lean principles can and should be applied inside larger organziations, like my current employer.  I’d like to think that I can apply some/all of these principles in my job now, developing software products and features for Actuate.  Interestingly, while the philosophies make perfect sense:  Define product/market fit, get close to your customers, constantly validate your product with customers and through data, pivot as much as you can or as much as necessary, etc (you can read them all for yourself – this stuff is all over the web), there is little to no information on how to build these practices inside of larger organizations.  I strongly believe that lean principles make perfect sense for defining and building products, regardless of the size of the organization, but in practice, being “lean” is a difficult challenge when many pre-existing structures, processes and bureaucracy are already well entrenched.  These are challenges at most large organizations, at least any that I have experienced through direct employment and through consulting.  As we all know, changing an organizations culture is next to impossible and needs to come from the ground up and likely from the beginning.  My personal challenge will be to do my best to apply the lessons learned from this movement and effect as much internal change as possible inside my organization to work in this manner.  In a startup, it’s much more straightforward, although the challenges are just different. Continue reading »

Since dumping my blackberry after 10 years of loyal usage for an iPhone one year ago, I have guarded my prized toy at all times, especially from the grimy hands of my two little daughters.  In fact, up until a few months ago, there was no way in hell I would let my kids touch my “other” baby!  Recently though, as my older daughter has become a more mature 3 year old (mature is a very relative term here), and in order to stop her from asking the same question again and again, I allowed some tightly monitored access to my iPhone.

image source: http://www.coneinc.com

I was utterly amazed at how quickly a 3yr old, with absolutely no direction, was able to quickly figure out the interface and operate the phone effectively.  This is a testament to the UI/UX design of the iPhone and the game changing nature of touchscreen technologies in general.  On the flip side, I spend a lot of time thinking about how much difficulty my otherwise capable parents have operating computers .  I suppose the next most obvious test would be to hand over my iPhone to either of my parents and see if they are as productive as my 3yr old from the moment they start using the device.

I know there have been countless studies on the learning capabilities of older people vs. young children but I’m constantly astounded by the actual divide between these groups.  One way or another, I think that technology, and especially mobile and touch technologies combined with an evolution in UI/UX design principles will drive a new capability between all age groups and demographics over time.  This evolution alone will drive an amazing trajectory of new technology adoption for just about every consumer segment now and in the coming years.

Justs came home from my third democamp and again, feel inspired and enthusiastic about the tech/entrepreneur/startup ecosystem that appears the be alive and growing in Toronto.

Firstly, a quick roundup of the democamp 22 presenters:

1.  Converstation with Yossi Vardi and Mark Skapinker – Yossi is a seriously accomplished tech investor who likely has an infinite amount of knowledge and experience from over 40 years of starting and investing in businesses.  Still, it was clear that the only way to tap into that knowledge in a meaningful way would be in a small social setting, through story telling (funny stories to be sure).  Clear and concise presentations don’t seem to be his strong point but he is certainly an entertainer.  Both Mark Skapinker and David Crow attempted to ask the question:  What do we need to do in Canada to invigorate the startup community?  I’ll get back to this later…

2. Agilebuddy – A Brightspark company with a tool to enable agile development and project management using an intuitive, web 2.0 interface and offered on a subscription SaaS basis.

3. Assetize – An ExtremeU graduate building an advertising platform to monetize your twitter profile.

4. iStopOver – Another Brightspark venture allowing peer-to-peer renting of space in people’s homes as an alternative to hotels and hostels.  Starting to do the same with office space.

5. Locationary – Very ambitious project to free data and make it available on commercial websites and products with location specific context.

6. Thoora – A Rogers venture and participant at TechCrunch50 last week – they are indexing the blogosphere, twitter and media sites to bubble up the most popular and relevant information, using what appears to be a pretty cool indexing algorithm that can find blogs and information that are relevant, regardless of the number of links to that information.

7. Uken Games -Another ExtremeU graduate and creator of a facebook game called Superheroes Alliance that is image-based and lets you fight, create missions and kill other super heroes, using your facebook network.  They have 50,000 active players and are cash-flow positive.

Find a more detailed account of these companies and presentations at Thomas Purves’ blog or at the democamp site.

I want to get back to the core question that was asked of Yossi and not really answered, perhaps because no one knows the answer.  How do we find and make available the capital necessary to fund innovation and startups in Canada?

Yossi is probably right in that this type of community is supported by creating the right culture.  I find this depressing though, because I’m not sure that culture is an easy thing to change.  I’ve said it before on this blog – Canadians are conservative investors and, to repeat what David Crow said tonight, are only willing to take on serious risk when it involves drilling into the ground.  The VC industry in Canada is largely dead, with the few funds that exist winding down and no sign of raising new funds.  Not for lack of trying I’m sure, but it’s likely too hard to raise any significant or meaningful funds in this country at this point.  To blame the economy is fair but the VC industry in the US is still alive, along with a much larger Angel community and that economy has been much harder hit than Canada.  Again, this points to a significant cultural difference.

There are certainly people and organizations out there doing good and supportive things in Canada but we need more, otherwise our best and brightest will go elsewhere to find the real money.

So where do we go from here?  Thoughts?  Ideas?  Perhaps we need to take the collective energy spent on new and innovative ideas for startups and pour it into a fix for this fundamental problem.