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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.

READ MORE at Startupnorth.ca

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

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.

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

Swarm

The TorCamp community has a stable ad-hoc always-on chat room in Skype. I thought it might be interesting to start a weekly summary of the conversation for those of you who might be interested but don’t need the distraction, or just for posterity’s sake. Or this could just be a giant inside joke, you decide.

The TorCamp Chat Swarmâ„¢ is a gathering place for smart tech blogger BarCamp types in Toronto, with special guests visiting from Vancouver, San Francisco, Atlanta, London, Rome and other places I’m probably forgetting. The Swarmâ„¢ is a virtual water-cooler for independent, creative, entrepreneurial or self-employed and community-oriented folk. Conversation varies from banal to brilliant to steamy, depending on the flavour of the moment.

Out of Context Quote of the Week:

mark raheja:
depends. if you’re both wearing baby panda costumes…then yes, definitely cute.

Technorati Tags: barcamp, chatswarm, torcamp

When is the ConceptShare Party?

Favourite sons ConceptShare continued to bask in the afterglow, having rocked Under the Radar getting huge attention around the internets. Bernie, Scott and Chris are regulars in the Swarm and give credit to the TorCamp community for their support since demoing at DemoCamp9 in September. ConceptShare is a great TorCamp success story, and they’re doing it from Sudbury, making the 3-6 hour commute (depending on weather conditions) for events in Toronto which usually means brutal hangovers for their weak-kneed Toronto cousins the next morning. Members of The Swarm like to mention ConceptShare whenever possible cause we all want into the massive party they’re going to host someday.

WTF is Up with Will Pate?

Will Pate

Seen here looking part 007 and part Colombian drug lord, Community Guy Obi-Will Pate left for Africa this week. Fresh from his new gig as co-host for commandN.tv with AmberMac, Will begins an amazing new adventure working for a pending new venture called Mazava that has something to do with Africa and disease outbreaks. We’re looking forward to occasional updates in the Swarm, via Twitter and maybe even a blog post or some photos.

How Many Canadian VCs Does it Take to Recognize a Great Investment Opportunity?

Swarmies debated the ironies of the dearth of Canadian VC activity in the web space while a disproportionate number of the most important names in tech these days are Canadian. The conclusion: a collective WTF?!

Welcome Allen Stern

Allen Stern from CenterNetworks.com found The Swarm and quickly fell in love with the vibrant Toronto scene. Allen’s been covering tech for a long time and right about now should be moving to NYC to make the big time. Apparently Hotlanta isn’t that hot tech-wise. In any case, Allen works hard covering tech stuff from CenterNetworks Central. I imagine him in a one-man CNN studio.

TechDads Breeding Like Rabbits

TorCamp babies are coming in a major baby boom wave this fall. Watch for GeekDads and TechDads to emerge as a powerful new community force.

Virtual ScotchCamp – The Swarm at Its Best

April 2nd, fresh from the ETech conference in San Diego, David Crow continued to push for greatness at future DemoCamps. As usual when the scotch and bourbon start flowing, things got a little loose:

James Walker:
it’s all been done
David Crow:
no, i think we stopped looking for hard problems
David Crow:
and decided that everything needed a web login form
David Crow:
and a fucking social network

A fast-flowing and intelligent back and forth ensued, talking Turing machines, Twitter, collective intelligence, free culture, culture & technology, human evolution through/with technology, telcos, wireless data rates, CRTC and regulatory capture, online film funding, net neutrality, OpenMoko, Joost, ATM fees, Public Enemy (“911 is a Joke”), Yochai Benkler, Bruce Sterling @ SXSW. And then my brain exploded.

Maybe it was the hangovers from all the scotch/bourbon, but there was more than half-serious consideration given by The Swarm to buying a hotel (Hotel 2.0?, Swarm Hotel?) a Hotel Chelsea-like creative community for geek living/working. It’s a crazy idea. It also appears to be inevitable.

If you want into The Swarm, ask your favourite TorCamper to invite you in. BarCamp principles apply – no spectators, only participants, two-feet rule.

Next Week in Swarm: Will Jevon tame his wild chat bot? Or will he be voted off Swarm island once and for all? And what is behind the mysterious hatch in David’s shoe closet?

I’m a terrible live-blogger. I really like to have some time to digest and see Remarkk as a place for context and analysis rather than a news feed.

However the TorCamp Skype Chat Swarm is the place to be for live coverage. I am using as the place to capture my notes, and the wider TorCamp community is following along remotely.

I haven’t blogged about this innovation yet, but Tom Purves covered it pretty well at its birth. Since its inception 6 weeks ago, the Swarm has been a locus of self-organization, rants, praise, new projects, new events and even business deals and partnerships. Swarmies are hungry, entrepreneurial and smart as a whip. The Swarm is operating as a Collective Intelligence – ask it any question, it will have an answer.

Add my skypename for entry: markkuznicki, or ask any TorCamper.

Technorati Tags: Canada, venturecapital, startup, torcamp, Toronto

Check out Jevon MacDonald of Firestoker making the call for collaboration to his startup competition in the Enterprise 2.0 space. Of course, they are Enterprise 2.0, so they WOULD naturally move to the new paradigm.

So, are stealth startups dead? If you’re a closely guarded secret, how do you attract the kind of attention you need to forge partnerships, gather users, talent and other resources?

Technorati Tags: enterprise2.0, startup