Startups and their communities are the seeds of renewal of a collapsed and corrupt venture capital market in Canada, says StartupNorth. "Local communities are important because they are far easier for local Angels and Entrepreneurs to connect to, and they also act as a great filter to help find people who need national and international exposure." read more | digg story

While I was in Vancouver, Jevon, Jonas and co-conspirators over at StartupNorth announced and quickly sold out StartupCamp Toronto1. For those curious about how this "community thing" works, notice how the model is the defunct Canadian Venture Forum turned on its head. Tickets are allocated based on your community of practice: Entrepreneurs, Students and Gurus are free. Service Provider tickets are still available at $199 and you get recognized as a sponsor for supporting the community! $199 for that kind of whuffie is a fantastic deal. Now if the Board of Trade could get hip to the model, we might see a few more tech innovators at those Tech Innovators Breakfasts! In my experience, these breakfasts are an old-skool sausagefest of service providers trying to catch a deal, and if it weren't for the odd enlightened friend of the community like RBC, Idée, Microsoft/David Crow - you would never see a garage startup show its face in such an environment. (I'd link to the next one of their events, but the Board of Trade's website is too painful to navigate and doesn't use permalinks! Hello??) I'm looking forward to putting my community co-creation ideas in front of more people in the startup ecosystem as the BarCamp community continues to gain traction in the eyes of policy, corporate and capital players. I see my role in this is to help these people perceive community and give them tools to engage with it in a way that creates new value for the whole system.

I was invited by Catarina von Maydell, formerly of the Toronto Angel Group, to attend a gathering of investors (mostly angel) at ISCM, the Innovation Synergy Centre in Markham north of Toronto. Investors learned about the services that this hub of so-called "4th pillar" organizations offers to small-medium sized growth companies. The invited investors had an opportunity to learn about and meet with some of the companies that ISCM helps prepare for investment. READ MORE at Startupnorth.ca

StartupNorth.ca: The Life, and Death, of Canadian Startups has launched. Stories from the leading edge of startup life in Canada. It's a place to share the real stories of Canadian innovators that are creating a buzz; lessons from the trenches; resources, criticism and commentary from the edge. I will be making contributions there about some of the bigger policy questions, where entrepreneurs can go to find support and maybe even sharing some of my own experiences. Let me know if there's something cool or helpful that you think should be covered there.

Technorati Tags: canada, startupnorth

I attended the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery07 event at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre yesterday, May 1, 2007. Is it worthy of mention? One major wow moment: disembodied 3D holographic virtual Ray Kurzweil addressing the audience live from the podium:

Take me to your leader.

The Good, the Bad and the Indifferent after the jump...

Technorati Tags: ontario centres of excellence, ocediscovery07

The Good: Great Thinkers

The #1 reason I went to this event was to see Richard Florida. Then I heard about Kurzweil and Homer-Dixon, which sealed the deal. I was impressed by OCE's speaker selections. These three thinkers are something of a holy trinity for me: Homer-Dixon (sometimes referred to as "Dr. Doom") tells a cautionary tale of an increasingly complex future and a civilization at risk of collapse; Kurzweil offers a techno-utopian vision of exponential technological progress leading to the singularity and Florida describes a new and emerging economic and social paradigm - the creative class and creative age that is quickly usurping the industrial age as the driver of economic development. My work and interests lie in the space between these ideas, their intersections and debates, where culture & creativity, technology and public policy collide. How do we solve the problems of the future? How can technology help us? How do we tap the creative potential of each and every one of us? Great material and I was glad to see and hear them in-person, or whatever you'd call virtual Kurzweil.

The Bad: No free wireless.

The Metro Toronto Convention Centre should be ashamed of their wireless Internet access pricing policies. Technology bloggers in attendance could not access the internet from the show floor. The only way to have wifi on the floor is to pay $395 per day for a wireless internet account(!), like exhibitors were forced to do. Many of the exhibitors were student researchers and startup companies. Wireless access effectively doubled the cost of their space on the trade show floor. Disgusting. Guests' only option was a 3rd-party commercial wifi provider 2 levels up at $10/hour. This is inexcusable in 2007. Inside the MTCC, I felt like I had been transported back to the land that time forgot. Several of us left the venue in search of a decent coffee, sweet power and wifi. This is time we could have been talking to exhibitors. Instead of looking at their wireless offering as an incremental revenue opportunity, MTCC could be leading by offering ubiquitous wifi that is reliable, cheap and easy to provision for any event. This is basic required infrastructure to support blog coverage, follow-on mainstream media coverage, enhanced visitor experiences and better results to attendees and exhibitors. Why do I even have to explain this? It insults us both, dear reader.

The Indifferent: The Trade Show = Dead Media

Traditional trade shows feel increasingly irrelevant. The more abstract and "knowledge-intensive" the thing you are trying to "display" is, the more difficult it will be to connect with an audience in any meaningful way. After a very short while, every busy technical diagram large-format poster on a trade show booth divider looks identical. It all blurs together into a meaningless mush of undifferentiated experience. In response to a question from Sara Diamond, President of OCAD, Florida stated that "it is incumbent upon technology and science to reach out to arts, design and media to make their innovations meaningful to people, to customers". The trade show format is certainly well past its expiry date. If organizations like OCE are interested in creating a meaningful buzz around Ontario's innovators, then this is a perfect opportunity to reinvent the trade show by bringing some creativity, design thinking and community-driven energy to the table.

Make it worth talking about!!

I do not know what OCE's barometers of success are, but as far as I can tell I am the only blogger who picked up the event, i.e. it was unremarkable. A search on Technorati, Google News and Google Blogsearch shows nothing on either blogs or MSM sources. This must be a source of concern for OCE when it evaluates the event. Less emphasis on creating speaking platforms for politicians and government agencies and more emphasis on visitor experience and compelling content could actually get the message out there (a message I believe in): the best innovative minds are Canadian and many of the best of them work here in a place called Ontario, ready to take on the world.

The ConceptShare boys have been burning things up just about anywhere that gives a damn about Web 2.0 and online collaboration software. Now ConceptShare is moving from image-based collaboration into rich media: audio, video and flash. Adding new media types only enhances the application's value to a wide audience of designers and their customers, while retaining the key differentiator of the original: you don't have to book a meeting to collaborate. ConceptShare is based on the simple but powerful idea that meetings suck. At the rate they're improving, I think we can expect them to continue impressing customers and industry watchers alike. Bernie, Scott and Chris are very smart guys who can teach the Toronto web development and startup scene a few lessons on how to do it right. Fast, agile, iterative and savvy. Luckily, you will have the opportunity to learn more when Scott comes to speak at the upcoming Mesh Conference. And, as usual, expect them at upcoming DemoCamps and BarCamps in Toronto.

Technorati Tags: meshconference