The Montreal Tech League

Where: Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), 1195 Boul. St. Laurent
When: Saturday, April 28th, 2007 at 9:30 a.m.

There are more than 25 presentations planned for this second edition of BarCamp in Montreal. Montreal’s Tech community and non-Tech community alike will gather at the SAT on boulevard St. Laurent for the whole day tomorrow.

It’s a free and open event. Anyone can attend, but all are expected to participate, either by presenting, by helping present, giving a hand at the organization of later blogging about the event.

Some of the Tech presentations will be:

1. EvanProdromou - How I learned to stop worrying and love the Semantic Web

2. www.mycarpoolstation.com - We supply web-based carpool stations to schools, workplaces, and regions in the U.S. and Canada.

3. Angel Anduaga - Podtattoo Laser Labs permanently laser etches any iPod/laptop/cellphone with any pic/logo/font you provide http://podtattoo.com

4. Sylvain Carle - Parralel Entrepreneurship and a few peeks a two of my startups…

5. Francois Lane - Cake Mail - Fully customizable white label email marketing platform http://www.servecake.com/

6. HughMcGuire - Starting-Up: mistakes I’ve made so far

7. Paul Wouters - DNSSEC 101: Or “How the Department of Homeland Security is NOT going to control your domains” http://www.xelerance.com/

8. Sylvain Carle - Ce que j’ai appris à San Franciso durant le Web 2.0 Expo (avec les développeurs, les marketeurs et les VCs)

9. Avery Pennarun - Versabox or Schedulator or Designing a Company Culture, depending on interest

10. Dave Coombs - Digital Security on Airplanes, and Why You Care (There’s no way I can make it tomorrow. I’m too doomed. Sorry.)

11. Michele Ann Jenkins - Wikis, Web 2.0 and Information Architecture: Wikitravel Extra

12. Martine Pagé - “Présence féminine/where are the girls” — a question based, panel like session about the lack of women’s representation at tech conferences. Is a “women in tech” list, like the one created in the U.S., a solution? Do we even need a solution? Is that a real problem? Une session bilingue (qui se veut davantage un panel) sur la faible présence des femmes dans les conférences reliées à la technologie.

13. François Proulx - iFIND : a location-based social software. Un système que j’ai conçu et développé au SENSEable City Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

14. Josh Nursing Hacking Thought - Systems Thinking and the Myth of Exclusive Or

15. Alok Mohindra - Making phones do funny things, proof-of-concept for FonoMe global inbound telephone service. Will demo plain old telephone to GoogleTalk voice integration using SIP, Jabber, and Jingle.

16. Marcella Lorenzi - Art, science, technologies ESG research group in Italy. http://galileo.cincom.unical.it. Looking for partners for common projects in art and science and/or communication of science. Presentation of some of the activities and products of the group (E=mc2; superstring installation; music from cellular automata, etc.)

17. Paul Farnell - Introduction to my company (SiteVista), and a demo of my Pecha Kucha presentation tool, delicious.salted.com

I will see you at BarCampMontreal2

Friday the 13th was actually a good date for Montreal and the Montreal Technology community. TechnoMontreal, the ICT cluster of greater Montreal, was formally launched at Ex-Centris. TechnoMontreal was born to help develop the economy through the promotion of Montreal as an ICT hub. Montreal’s Tech scene is constituted of 2700 companies in 7 sectors, and account for 1 in 10 jobs in Greater Montreal.

The web site itself has been online for a few months and has as its main goal the promotion of Montreal’s diverse ICT stakeholders.

My friend Laurent Maisonnave interviewed Lyne Bouchard, TechnoMontreal’s president and director about the vision of TechnoMontreal, for YULbuzz.

The interview is really interesting and Laurent asked a very good question concerning the financing of new companies.

Lyne Bouchard also mentioned that searching for Montreal in Google should bring results related to ICT and the economy and that it would be one of the future indicators of TechnoMontreal’s success as for the moment results are about cultural things in Montreal but not ICT. I noticed something similar about two months ago and wrote about it in the Montreal Tech League Forum which you can access from the link in the sidebar.

Another video to look at is TechnoMontréal en action.

“TechnoMontréal will help strengthen the position of Greater Montréal among world leaders in the field of Information and Communications Technology.” -Jean-Jacques Bourgeault, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Montréal International.

To do this, the ICT Cluster will develop initiatives to encourage networking among stakeholders in the sector and to create partnerships with scientific and university milieus, and sectoral associations. TechnoMontréal will also put in place strategies to further promote the industry and its successes.

There’s more about the launch in this article on Montreal International’s site.

“Montréal International will continue to work actively with TechnoMontréal and the other high-tech clusters. This will help increase the appeal of our advanced sectors and promote them worldwide. This productive complementarity of players in development is what characterizes the most prosperous urban areas and is a source of their strength,” Bourgeault said.

Well done Laurent for your first outing as an interviewer for YulBuzz, and congratulations to TechnoMontreal for its launch. It’s directory is big and helps bring more visibility to Montreal’s Tech Scene.

Stéphane Hamel m’a envoyé une invitation au Web Analytics Wednesday de Montréal.

La dernière rencontre, qui fut fantastique, eut lieu au Commensal et était dirigée par Stéphane.

Cette fois, les passionnés se retrouveront au restaurant Le Cartet, 106 rue McGill, Montreal, Quebec ce Mercredi 11 Avril 2007 à 5h pm et c’est Jacques Warren qui animera la soirée.

Il est possible que Sean Power de Coradiant fasse une présentation.

It’s Web Analytics Wednesday time again. Stéphane Hamel sent me an invitation and this time around his friend Jacques Warren will be hosting the meeting for Web Analytics fans at Le Cartet, 106 rue McGill, Montreal, Quebec.

The last meeting was fantastic. This time, Sean Power of Coradiant may do a presentation.

You can convert PDF’s to Word files using our PDF converter software. Our PDF server technology takes the hassles out of using PDF files at Investintech.com.

DemoCampMontreal2 rocked with 5 amazing demonstrations.

The Montreal Tech community has some reports about the events in the case you have missed it or if you want to fondly reminisce about the event or show others why it’s a great night to attend.

Other DemoCampMontreal2 reports

1. Josh of YashLabs. Previous DemoCamp reports by Josh seem to have played an ever so slight role in the launching of BarCampCalgary, with most of the heavy lifting done by Austin Hill.

2. Alec Saunders of iotum

3. Martin Dufort & Alain Lavoie of Kakiloc

4. Heri Rakotomalala of Montreal Tech Watch

5. John Stokes of A Montreal Startup

6. Simon has the best pictures

7. Hugh McGuire has an extensive write-up on his new site.

8. Alistair has a write-up

9. Roberto from the Gazette has a Report on the Reports on his fun and informative TechnoCité blog. Thanks for the link, Roberto

The last week of March is jam-packed with great events in Montreal’s Tech and Tech-Business Scenes. Here’s a run-down of notable events:

1. IntraCom Montreal 2007

This conference was mentioned by Stéphane Hamel during the Web Analytics Wednesday meeting in Montreal. It’s the 7th International Francophone Conference about Intranet and Web technologies.

2. Financing your Technology Startups

Bilal Kader, (organizer of the Montreal Entrepreneur Meetup group) sent an email about the second workshop of The Entrepreneurship Club of Concordia. Mr. J. Pelland, Business Advisor at the Dobson Center of Concordia University will be the guest speaker. The free workshop he will conduct is Financing your Technology Startups.

3. Yulbiz.

This month’s meeting of business bloggers in Montreal occurs at Café Méliès as usual. Fortunately, this time around, there is no scheduling conflict with DemoCampMontreal so we can happily attend both. It’s Yulbiz’s first anniversary too.

4. DemoCampMontreal2.

Hot on the heels of Yulbiz, there will be five new demos in this free-to-attend and free-to-present un-conference meeting of Montreal’s Tech Scene. Geeks, Tech Entrepreneurs, Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists will all be there.

If you’re an astute geek or tech-oriented business person who reads my personal blog at YashLabs, you are most probably already using FireFox and have installed the Operator plugin, which will enable you to easily add these events into your online calendar. All are open-source and free technologies.

Courageously reporting from the trenches of Montreal’s Tech Scene while simultaneously effecting T-Shirt Distribution Duties, Josh of YashLabs and of The Montreal Tech League, has a recap of DemoCampMontreal1 online.

Feast your eyes on this daring display of amazing multi-tasking powers over at YashLabs for Part 1 and Part 2.

DemoCampMontreal1 happens tomorrow. Some of the most active members of the Montreal Tech Scene will be there, and there are 5 working product demonstrations scheduled. It’s free too.

MAP:: Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), 1195 Boul. St. Laurent

Don’t forget to add yourself to the list of registrants on the wiki, and prepare to participate in this gathering of Montreal’s Tech Scene. If you are not presenting (and the five slots are taken already), prepare to help out there or at least later report on it on your blog or some other way.

Presentations at DemoCampMontreal1:

1. OpenID extensions for MediaWiki - Evan Prodromou
2. Growwwing - Thierry Poitras and Daniel Haran
3. Evonium - Alden and Kingsley Woodward
4. Evolution - n-tier dynamic data technologies - Raj Vadavia
5. ilovetoplay - Marc Chriqui

Radiant Ventures - Distributed Calendars - P. Childs and I. Graham

For more information:
DemoCampMontreal1
DemoCampMontreal1-en

See Fred Ngo’s post about it at his new Silicon Island website.

Mission:
- Gather the best Technology, Technique and People Montreal has to offer
- Make the Montreal Tech Scene more visible.

Tech here actually means Technology and also Technique. Therefore, MTL is not just for Techies. Business/Entrepreneur people, Academia, Administration, Finance and Marketing, the Media are also important.

Mantra: Do. Show. Tell. Network.

Benefits
- Be a part of the smartest community based in Montreal
- The power is in the network.

FAQ
1. I want to be part of the MTL! How do I do this?

Super! You’re smart.

- Join the Montreal Tech League Forum. Introduce yourself, link to your website or blog.

- Get the logo or the banner and make it visible on your website or blog. For WordPress, you can use the following at the top of your sidebar (Admin->Presentation->Theme Editor->Sidebar):

<a href='http://www.yashlabs.com/montrealtechleague/blog'><img border="0" align="center" src='http://www.tinyurl.com/2fgr66' alt='MTL Small' /></a>

- Include the logo or “The Montreal Tech League” in your signature wherever possible. For PHPBB, you can use:

[url=http://www.yashlabs.com/montrealtechleague/blog]
[img]http://www.tinyurl.com/2fgr66[/img][/url]

2. What can I do to help the MTL?
2.1. I’m an Individual:

Talk and Blog about us and join us. Make it known on the net and elsewhere that Montreal has a talented and vibrant Tech and Business community. Propose help on specific things, code, administrative services, organize a conference for the League, help fund, share your ideas. First word of the MTL Mantra: Do

2.2. We’re a Company or an Association:

Sponsor the MTL. Help fund us for our projects, offer hosting space, hardware, software, services, mentoring. You’ll feel great you did.

2.3. I’m a reporter and want to write about the MTL in the newspapers or magazine:

Fantastic! Let’s get the word out! Contact Josh.

2.4. We’re a University:

Great! Tell your students about the MTL. Join us too. Tell us about research being done in your departments and the courses.

3. I am none of the audience categories mentioned above but I know for a fact that I am smart, can I be part of the MTL?

Welcome to the MTL :) You are also most welcome if you speak other languages than English. Vous êtes les bienvenus à MTL si vous parlez Français ou d’autres langues.

4. Your idea is super. Can I steal it and build a Tech League for my city?

Thanks. No need to steal. Feel free to build your own Tech League in your area, and let’s collaborate on some inter-city projects too.

5. I have an inkling this isn’t a real FAQ. You wrote all this yourself, didn’t you?

I told you you were smart. Have you joined us yet? You should.