Ok, enough bitching and complaining already. Alicia Bulwik of the ICT Toronto project has agreed to meet with some members of the TorCamp community and our extended community of Toronto tech investors, entrepreneurs and bloggers on October 5th. Thanks to our good friend Allen Gelberg of MaRS for providing space. We will hear an update on what ICT Toronto has been up to and have input into its business plan.
So now that the community has the City’s ear, what does the community want to say?
I missed DemoCamp, again! I developed a really nasty case of conjunctivitis, and didn’t think it was a good idea to infect the best and brightest of Toronto’s technology community. I’m looking forward to the video podcast when it comes out. In the meantime, Jorge blogged about it, so did Olivier.
For those technologists out there with an interest in working with non-profits, you should check out Partnership Platform, a matching service for non-profits with technology needs.
Via Stuart: CIRA elections are on. If you own a .ca domain, you can become a member and participate in the governance of the Canadian internet. Gotta love democracy.
I don’t want to be all doom and gloom, but I do want to highlight a couple of important economic indicators for the future.
Talk of a real estate bubble, it’s bursting and the potential economic fallout will be front and centre for the next while. The real estate bubble, the US current account and trade deficits, consumer debt and consumer spending patterns and high energy prices are all conspiring to put the North American (and global) economy into a high-risk situation. Brush up on your Tipping Point.
Meanwhile, the auto industry is in dire straights for the foreseeable future. When Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of DaimlerChrysler states that it is impossible to profitably make subcompacts in North America, watch out for continued recalibration of the trade economics of advanced manufacturing up the food chain. This is just the beginning of a larger trend, not a short-term blip.
Another TIFF season has come and gone. For more reviews, check out this great TIFF blog, Craig at the Toronto International Film Festival. Craig is seeing 40 films, and writing reviews for all of them. Impressive work.
L’Homme de sa vie (“Man of My Life”):
Replacing The Bubble as my favourite of the festival, L’Homme de sa vie is a wonderfully executed film by Zabou Breitman. Mature, thoughtful, with beautiful cinematography, L’Homme de sa vie tells an insightful and very human story about a contented family man on vacation with his family in the south of France and the relationship he develops with his gay neighbour. It is not a gay film per se. The two men are forever changed by a conversation they have one evening after a big dinner party, and events unfold that explore questions of family, love, fidelity and identity. The colours, visual style and sounds of this film are simply stunning. It features great, understated performances and pacing that communicate the long, lazy days of midsummer. The audience is given the space that allows the subtle human moments to stand out. Highly Recommended.
I have often been disappointed by “Gay Cinema”, but films like L’Homme de sa vie, The Bubble and last year’s Brokeback Mountain have shown what can be done with gay themes and characters. Traditional Gay Cinema has often been hard-edged with a political message, or reverting to awful stereotypes and cliched coming out stories. What is more interesting to me is how gay characters and themes are often able to express universal human themes in new ways. These three films are fantastic examples.
Snow Cake, from Director Marc Evans is a Canada/UK coproduction filmed on location in Wawa, Ontario and in studio in Toronto. The screenplay is a first for writer Angela Pell. Featuring big stars in Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman and music from Broken Social Scene, there is much here for wide audience appeal. The film delivers, with solid performances from Weaver and Rickman, a heartwarming and funny script that delivers a lot of great moments. Weaver plays Linda, an autistic woman whose daughter Vivienne dies in an accident with Rickman’s Alex at the wheel. Alex, ridden by guilt commits to help Linda until the funeral. As he enters Linda’s strange world outside the bounds of social norms and convention, he experiences a new freedom to confront his own past and demons. It is a redemptive story with great moments. While not without its flaws, it delivers on the audience’s expectations. Worth a look.
And, with that, another film festival season is over. I’m looking forward to next year, and look forward to catching some of the films I missed at the festival when they come to theatres.
ICT Toronto is (for now) a two-year project funded by the City of Toronto to develop the information and communications technology industry as a key sector in the Toronto region, with the following vision:
Toronto will become, and be acknowledged globally, as one of the 5 most innovative, creative and productive locations in the world for ICT research, education, business and investment by 2011.
As Joey noted today, judging from the web site and news presence not much has happened since the announcement in April:
It’s almost five months later, and it appears that not much has happened. I haven’t seen a press release since the one for their launch party, and a Google News search for “ICT Toronto” ends up without any results.
Joey goes on to lay it on the line:
In the meantime, Toronto’s techies, without any of the money or manpower earmarked for ICT Toronto have held 4 DemoCamps and a BarCamp, events which have gone a long way to fostering a sense of community and cooperation in the local tech scene. And of course, actually building information and communication technologies, something the suits seem to have completely overlooked.
This is hardly surprising. Silicon Valley was born of good circumstances coupled with the grassroots efforts of ambitious techies doing what they loved, not by government/business fiat. I’d call ICT Toronto a bunch of pointless martini-swilling stuffed shirts, but that’s an insult to martinis and dress shirts, both of which I happen to like.
David, Jay and I were invited to join ICT Toronto as “members” (really an ad-hoc advisory committee) back in June, which I blogged about here. Well, I attended my second breakfast meeting (no martinis, just mediocre coffee and croissants) yesterday sitting on behalf of Toronto’s BarCamp community, and wanted to share some progress, my thoughts and possible future directions. After the jump…
Technorati Tags: barcamp, Canada, cluster, democamp, icttoronto, technology, torcamp, Toronto