Initially, I couldn’t have any output from my laptop to the projector. It might have been a cable problem. Before the event start, I had chatted with Gary, Daniel, Tamu and Ben. Simon had a large digital clock readout on his laptop to countdown the 15 minutes per presentation, and Tamu was assigned the clock-keeping duties. Simon really is into these time-reversal devices, isn’t he?

Daniel wasn’t completely ready with his presentation, and so we just rotated the schedule. I informed Philippe, who was MC’ing, of the change. So, out-of-the-blue, I was now 4th presenter at DemoCampMontreal4.

1. Braincuts by Categorical Design Solutions

François Magnan, along with two colleagues, demonstrated their online software, Braincuts, which relies on semantic searches and freely available information from Creative Commons licensed sources. The multimedia information culled from these different sources can then be very easily combined through the Braincuts web interface. More precisely, the GUI enables the positioning of the various multimedia elements on a visual timeline by drag and drop.

Effectively, this means that you could position an audio track in parallel to a video or slideshow, and this way you could edit a whole presentation, documentary or educational multimedia package by arranging various multimedia elements. Finally, the whole presentation can be published and shared with other people.

I found this really interesting, because, this is the kind of information aggregation that we are doing when researching and writing an extensive article for our blogs these days. Except, the blog ‘timeline’ is just how people scroll from top to bottom, reading text, and maybe watching a picture or a video along the way.

Now, if Braincuts could be reused to produce new multimedia blog posts, that would be extremely helpful. And to me, automatic discovery of semantically-related multimedia information based on keywords I specify would really earn it a Web 3.0 moniker.

The team has built an accessible and useful interface using only open standards and protocols, and for the GUI, they rely on JQuery, with additional components developed in-house. An impressive demo with lots of potential, especially in the educational realm.

2. David Xu – PodBeans.com

PodBeans (Podcast hosting, Social subscribing) is actually a well thought-out platform with two aspects, one for podcast publishers and one for podcast subscribers.

For publishers, there is a variety of services integrated into PodBeans to make it simple to start your own podcast and benefit from it. The publishing tool is built on WordPress, and makes it easy to upload your files. PodBeans provides the hosting and the bandwidth and both are unlimited. Moreover, PodBeans also contains tool for promoting your podcast, and there are at least two possible income streams – either through ads or paid subscriptions to your podcast if you want to set up premium content.

If you host your podcast and whole site on PodBeans, you can of course customize the look of it through WordPress themes. However, should you decide to include the content on your own site or blog, despite PodBeans hosting your podcast, then you can also do so by simply embedding automatically generated code into your site.

For podcast listeners or viewers (as PodBeans also does videos), it is possible to collect all your podcasts in one place, tag and organize them, and create a new personal feed from them. In addition, you can also discover what your peers on PodBeans have subscribed to. This part of PodBeans resembles Collectik quite a lot.

Overall, there is a good deal of integration of various services and technologies into PodBeans: open-source technologies, open standards and freely available tools have all been put to great use for this website.

3. Mitch Cohen – ClixConnect

Mitch demonstrated ClixConnect, which has a tagline of 24/7 Live-Chat Sales and Support Service. When a visitor connects to your ClixConnect-enabled website, a small popup window opens with either a representative from your own company or else a person from ClixConnect.

This allows the visitor or prospective customer to asks questions in real-time about the website or the products and services you offer through an unobtrusive and movable chat window. In addition, the system, can provide the visitor with automated recommendations on products based on the products being viewed.

The technology used as back-end is proprietary, but at the client site, all you need to do is sing up to ClixConnect and include a small HTML code in your website. In fact, ClixConnect can even do the integration for you for free if you send them your HTML page.

This is clearly interesting for sales and support, as it accompanies the prospective customer from the point of landing through browsing the product catalog until the close of the sale. I think it could also be used to diagnose website usability. If statistics were kept about frequently asked questions on website navigation for instance, then the benefits for tweaking the web design through direct consumer feedback would be obvious.

4. Josh Nursing – Hacking IronRuby, extending the e Text editor with Ruby, Cygwin and wxCocoaDialog

I had no presentation per se, as I hadn’t prepared any, thinking that the 5 slots for presenting were already taken until just 3 hours before the start of DemoCamoMontreal4. But I wanted to show what I had been hacking with around Ruby/Ruby on Rails on Windows so I stepped up to the mike when Mitch had finished.

First, I talked about Microsoft’s just-released IronRuby (pre-Alpha) which will run on top of the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) for .Net and about my tutorial on how to Hack IronRuby, in which I showed how I fixed a bug and also extended IronRuby. It’s easy to do as the source code (C#) and whole project structure is really clean.

IronRuby will run together with other dynamic languages targeting the DLR, namely IronPython, C# and VBx, a dynamic version of Visual Basic. This will enable you to reuse all the libraries from all the DLR languages from your language of choice. I will be able, for instance, to reuse all the IronPython, VBx and C# libraries from IronRuby.

IronRuby is significant to me for many reasons, the first of which is I am really fond of Ruby as a programming language.

Secondly, I mentioned that, to me, Microsoft have some of the best IDEs to develop in. The possibilities for Rapid Application Development of software including database access within Visual Basic are astounding when you know how to use the tool properly. Now imagine how great it would be to have IronRuby integrated with a Visual IDE and target Windows and other platforms.

Thirdly, Microsoft has decided to make IronRuby open-source (using the Microsoft Permissive License), and that means they’ll be accepting outside contributions to enhance and extend IronRuby. Besides, Microsoft will be hosting the source code on Rubyforge rather than Microsoft’s own Codeplex.

And finally, an avowed goal of John Lam is to be able to run the whole Rails framework on IronRuby to test its completeness. Therefore, there is a strong possibility that there will be amazing Ruby on Rails development tools for Windows.

I wanted to show more IDEs for Ruby and Ruby on Rails, but time was limited, and so I showed how to extend the e text editor. e is designed to be compatible with the Mac-only TextMate’s Bundle system. So, with some porting, the TextMate bundles can be reused within e. The latter contains several in-built ones which enabled easy insertion of code snippets, just like TextMate.
What I wanted to do was to access all Ruby methods for the most used data structures, like Strings, Arrays, Hashes and FixNums from e while typing Ruby code – a type of IntelliSense in Microsoft/Windows terminology. Ruby already has great reflection capabilities, and hence, a simple object_name.methods gives you a list of all the internal methods.

The way I did it was to use Cygwin, Ruby and wxCocoaDialog, the latter being a port to wxWidgets of Mac OS X CocoaDialog. That was the technical part of my ‘presentation’ as there was a short but quite complex piece of code there, which I’ll leave for another tutorial post here on YashLabs soon, but suffices to say that this is how it works:

1. A keyboard shortcut triggers a Bundle command.

2. The bundle command is a ruby script in which I referenced the wxCocoaDialog path, as well as the x and y position of the cursor at trigger time.

3. This Ruby script executes and gets all the methods for Strings, and builds a specially formatted array of entries (otherwise some symbols can’t be included in the menu)

4. The Ruby script taps into the system execution (through Cygwin) of wxCocoaDialog which populates a GUI menu with all the methods

5. The menu pops up in the editor, and you can browse through all the entries via the arrow keys or jump straight to an entry by clicking on the starting letter.

I demonstrated this with a string and from the menu, I pressed “u” to reach the .upcase method.

6. On selection of a menu entry, Ruby executes and prints a dot followed by the selected method name within the editor.

Because of time constraints, I didn’t show the other shortcuts for Array, Hash and Fixnum, but they work just the same and as well, and are easy to implement.

What’s also great about this is that the commands are accessible within your Rails code in e too. Because of the compatibility between e and TextMate, something similar can easily be done with TextMate and CocoaDialog on Mac OS X.

I also mentioned Microsoft’s Open-Source moniker adoption.

Daniel Haran – url_pipe

Daniel showed a partial version of his idea of piping urls and feeds through a RESTful implementation.

In his demonstration, he filtered feeds through Google Maps by proceeding the following way:

1. Feeds were geotagged through the piping mechanism

2. In Google Maps, he defined a polygon to restrain his domain of search to a region on the map (imagine for instance an area around Montreal)

3. By pasting the geotagged feed within Google Maps, and with a calculation of inclusion, he was able to further filter the feed he had based on the region defined.

Daniel used Ruby and Rails to prototype url_pipe and is looking for contributions to the source code. The overall functioning is similar to Yahoo Pipes but without the GUI and to YubNub which I have covered before. A more complete url_pipe could come in real handy for local searches, targeted advertising as well as automated discovery and filtering.

Finally, Simon wrapped up by thanking our sponsors and by reminding us of the upcoming ‘camp’ events, including FaceBookCamp for the end of this month.

I was joined by Philippe Chrun, founder and CEO of MyCarpoolStation and we discussed strategy a bit over a beer. I also caught up with Jérôme Paradis of ParadiVision and we spoke about .Net and where it’s all going. Alok Mohindra and I chatted about what lies ahead in the Rails world especially concerning Windows and .Net. Austin Hill was there and gave me some positive feedback about my impromptu hacking ‘presentation’, as did Simon and Roberto Rocha. Thanks guys, much appreciated. Well done Pierre, for co-presenting with Simon.

After some last minute conversations with Tamu, Gary (‘Use OS X’), Daniel and Simon (expect a Perl 6 demo soon), we parted ways.

It was great to present for a change, and to catch up with other people of the Montreal Tech community.

Thanks to Jérôme Paradis for the pics.

Will be presenting at DemoCampMontreal4:

1. Daniel Haran – url_pipe
2. Francois Magnan – BrainCuts by Categorical Design Solutions
3. David Xu | Podbean – a Podcast Social Subscribing Site
4. Mitch Cohen – ClixConnect
5. Josh Nursing – I will speak about IronRuby and Ruby/Ruby on Rails IDEs. I also plan to show how to extend the e Text Editor with Cygwin, Ruby and wxCocoaDialog so as to make programming Ruby with e more comfortable.

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 below, 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.

For more information:
DemoCampMontreal4
DemoCampMontreal4-en

I will see you there.

Anne Goldenberg – RoCoCoCamp Montreal

We were soon joined by Anne Goldenberg who was also looking for something to drink. Unfortunately, there were no clean glasses left for the time being, but we chatted. Anne is doing a double certification at the PhD level in UQAM and also in France. She is very interested in Wikis and their links to the cognitive process and also to politics. Anne comes from France, and has been in Lille prior to coming to Montreal. Somehow her name sounded familiar but I couldn’t pinpoint why at the time. Anne spoke of the forthcoming Recent Changes Camp that she is helping to organize – nicknamed RoCoCoCamp for the Montreal edition. The previous edition about the unconference on wikis was in Portland, Oregon.

Ben Yoskovitz – Standout Jobs

Later on, Ben Yoskovitz generously described the new startup he co-founded with Fred Ngo and Austin Hill – Standout Jobs – to Gary Haran and I. Ben said how the job-hunting marketplace was really quite broken and with Standout Jobs the team expected to enable job hunters and employers to engage in a meaningful conversation so as to get to know each other at a personal level, together with the mutual knowledge of competencies and business environment.

Currently, Standout jobs is hiring a Ruby guru, so do contact the team if you fit the bill. It’s a great thing that they chose to use Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

The job marketplace is upside-down

I thought I heard Ben say that the first thing that employers would do is post their opening on sites like Jobboom, Workopolis and Monster. Here I don’t agree at all as Richard Bolles in “What color is your parachute?” – the job hunting manual par excellence – says it is precisely the last recourse for companies. And it’s even verifiable here in Quebec, where it is said that 85%+ of the job opening markets is hidden. The first thing companies do is try to find the resource internally. And if they don’t, they rely first on internal people to refer them the information about potential candidates.

This is precisely why new immigrants (such as I) have a tremendously hard time finding appropriate work, since when we come here, we don’t have any network per se. We don’t know anybody and nobody knows us. Add to that the fact that some people are not even interested in knowing what we can bring as skills or are super reluctant or doubtful or deliberately stifling our progress, and you can see that things can become very complicated indeed.

I have learned this the hard way and I’m still learning the cultural and work environments here. Where I agree with Ben and the Standout Jobs team and mission is that the job marketplace is really upside-down and something needs to be done. The economic development of Quebec and Canada and their competitiveness depend on new strategies and techniques.

Job hunting here forces me to understand the local culture, and this in turn through comparison, fixes my identity. Job hunting is therefore a process of self-discovery and so it’s welcome.

However, the more I think about the Northern American way, the more I see signs of the wheels of extreme Capitalism and Industry crushing your attention span. And with limited time and shortness of attention span, you start cutting corners and systematizing the making of wrong decisions.

There’s a lot to be done as there are a lot of things that Quebec must improve about bringing in skilled workers from abroad if it really wants to be competitive worldwide.

Post BarCampMontreal2 dinner

A group of us went to a ChinaTown restaurant for dinner – a buffet and there were dumplings among a wealth of other tasty food. i had managed to convince the very busy Anne to come with us, and along the way we talked a little more about what she was doing. Anne spoke of her written study of Koumbit, and that’s when I realized that her name was familiar because Marco of Koumbit had actually sent me Anne’s analysis by email after we met at the Montreal Linus User Group. I vowed to read it.

Annoyingly, somebody infiltrated himself between Anne and myself and so I couldn’t sit near her to continue our conversation as I wanted. I guess I should have proposed that we move somewhere else or ask the other person to move. I joined another table nearby with Angelo Anduaga of PodTattoo and somebody else (he doesn’t wish to be mentioned. I think that’s a tad paranoid). The three of us ended up having a whirlwind conversation about Ray Kurzweil and technological progress, Aubrey de Grey and non-senescence and human ‘immortality’, consciousness and cognitive science. We came to the conclusion that these new technologies when they become available would probably be accessible by people with money first as they would be costly initially.

My own point of view is that advanced technologies and augmented human intelligence may need to be given to people who have a social and humanitarian agenda. Angelo mentioned that one of the first applications of non-senescence would be for CEOs to continue to steer companies. God forbid that they be the CEOs within soul-less organizations that desiccate the earth for pure profit-making.

After our vast, encyclopedic conversation, I managed to get Anne to sit with us for a small period of tea-drinking. we spoke of BarCampMontreal and Homeless Nation. Anne would have fit right in within the earlier conversation about CogSci and Technology. I am looking forward to seeing you again at RoCoCoCamp, Anne.

We also spoke a little with Avery and Erin. Erin is a musician and singer. I told her her name sounded Celtic and she said “yes, it means The Queen of Ireland”.

More encyclopedic conversations

After we had a drink with Fred, Daniel and a few other BarCampers in a bar, Angelo and I walked back home along avenue Mont-Royal willing to share more about our respective viewpoints. We talked for hours literally, fatigue notwithstanding. This was a very interesting exchange, and we have our own respective views about some of the things we discussed but the sharing was done on a basis of differing experience and mutual respect. Angelo is articulate and cultivated, but one has to take some time to listen and understand his perspective. I guess it’s the same for me.

We vowed to meet again another time and discuss our common interests.

There was some controversial backlash about Madame Woo’s initial topic on the BarCampMontreal2 wiki, triggered by anonymous people and hopped onto by others. I believe that the perception about the topic and the presenter’s pseudonym may have been negative and that caused the backlash. I guess the lesson to be learned here (by me as well) is that if it is a serious subject then present it that way. People have such a short attention span these days.

So it’s a great thing that Madame Woo still took it upon herself to change her topic and still go on stage and present. Actually she said she wasn’t prepared, but she did brilliantly and naturally, without any slides. She told of tips on how not to be too lonely when traveling, like for instance, to keep a book or a diary when traveling. Additionally, she advised to be well-dressed. Here again, people have this tendency to make their opinion of you on image.

Madame Woo also spoke of thinking strategically and told us of her hilarious anecdote of being by herself in a place known to be a romantic spot. There’s nothing like being surrounded by couples to make your aloneness apparent.

She did very well, considering she had changed her subject at the last minute because of the pressure heaped on her on the wiki and the controversy and hadn’t had time to prepare. It was an interesting subject which she presented fluidly.

Chris Car – Wireless mesh networking idealism

Chris Car presented a project he started with a friend of his. They wanted to build these small personal cubic wi-fi transmitters which would extend their capabilities through a grid so that others can benefit from the wi-fi access. It was an interesting project both on a hardware and at a software level.

This ties in nicely with the current ÃŽle-sans-fil project which aims to provide free wi-fi hotspots throughout Montreal and other cities.

Moomlyn – Lucid Dreaming

I was looking forward to this presentation as I am fascinated by dreams, their symbolism and interpretation. I am a lucid dreamer myself sometimes.

Robin (Moomlyn) comes from Australia and she flew in for a Mathematics conference if I’m not mistaken. She just took a chance to present this subject at BarCampMontreal2 and it’s a welcome thing. Montreal is technologically and culturally rich and it’s good that we can have diverse subjects instead of just technological demos all the time.

Reality-Testing

Robin was much fun. She described “reality checking” which is a habit you should have in your wake-time so that it becomes automatic in your dreams too. In a most fascinating book I bought on the subject, Patricia L. Garfield’s “Creative Dreaming”, this is called “Reality-Testing”.

What I usually do when I have a doubt about my environment is to try and influence it by thought. For instance, in my dreams, when I find something fishy going on, I just tell myself “oh wait, this may be a dream” and I try to carve the environment by thought or a wave of the hand. As soon as I notice that I can influence the environment, I go into the Lucid Dreaming state, where I can consciously do anything I wish.

The difficulty in the Lucid Dreaming state is the fear of waking up. This fear can be so intense that it does indeed wake you up.

Robin talked about the importance of keeping a dream diary and noting dreams being the first thing you need to do when you wake up. She also emphasized that to be able to recall lucid dreams, you should auto-suggest yourself to do just this right before falling asleep.

Controlling dreams for a positive effect in wake-time

At question time, I asked a question about what could be the useful things to do in a Lucid Dream that would have a helpful effect in real-life. Unfortunately, I did the mistake of describing one of the wild things I do in my Lucid Dreams, and I thought Robin made fun of me. Of course, what I said had been misinterpreted but I didn’t quite catch Robin’s answer (I believe it was about athletes’ performances or something like that).

I should have known there wasn’t going to be any serious answer to my serious question (but then again, as I said above, if it’s serious, then make it so). Actually, in Garfield’s book, she describes how when faced with a confrontational being in dreams, one should always fight to the end, and in case of victory, ask the entity for a gift. Also, in such a situation, it can also help to call for a Dream friend to fight with you. The actual gift and its symbolism must have some repercussion in real-life.

An audience member asked Robin: “Are you dreaming now?”
Robin: “Well, I flew over the oceans, into a country which speaks mostly French, and I’m giving a talk about Dreams in a usually Tech conference. When you think of it, it’s not that plausible…”

After the presentations I caught up with Robin and Madame Woo again (thanks for the mangoes, Madame Woo, that was very generous of you – I like them green).

“Thanks for helping me make a fool of myself”, I said to Robin/Moomlyn.

Different uses of Lucid Dreaming

We talked about what we did respectively in our lucid dreams. Robin takes the opportunity of exploring the personalities of her friends in her dreams. I asked her whether the entities were well-formed, that is if they would reply plausibly to her questions. She replied affirmatively. I told her that it was probably because her subconscious had stored very complete and precise models of her friends. She replied that she didn’t know. Robin/Moomlyn reminded me (in terms of behavior) of an avatar I met in Second Life (it’s a pink midget and was my first friend in SL). She had mentioned in her presentation that her lucid dreams enabled her to not be disturbed by First Life’s incongruities.

Another audience member mentioned that Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life” would be of interest.

My own decisions in lucid dreams are basically two-fold:

1. Levitation and flying.

For many years I have had recurring non-lucid dreams of levitation. It’s a most liberating sensation within the dreamworld. When I levitate, I only rise about 30cm above the ground and I start it by thinking hard about pushing the earth with my feet. I glide along my body perpendicular to the earth’s surface.

Flying is different. For several years, rising above those 30cm of levitating space was quite a difficult thing to do. I had to produce a mental effort to rise, and as soon as my concentration wavered, I started falling. It was also difficult to fly in the city because of the dangers of hitting the power cables (remember: these were non-lucid dreams).

Now, in 2003, when I was reading Garfield’s book, I started writing my dream diary. And a few strange things happened, one of which was that I started having more frequent lucid dreams.

And of course, as soon as that happened, I wanted to test my flight again. While formerly flight was mentally exhaustive and dangerous, in the lucid dreams, my flight was extremely fast and controlled effortlessly – I could fly fast but still avoid any obstacles in my path. I could fly horizontally and dash vertically too.

2. Control over my environment, acting in the dream-world in ways not possible in wake-time.

This is mostly about exploring the liberating effect of having a malleable environment. I deal with people differently than I would in real life and it is also sometimes quite liberating. It is a great way to express creativity which is stifled in real-life.

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.

By her own words, Martine said this is an age-old question. She showed some of the statistics of under-representation of women in technology based on the attendance of major tech events, together with a short clip of a tech conference where there were mostly men and probably two women.

Since this was a panel, the audience got to participate and throw in some questions or suggestions. And interestingly, since Hugh had tagged some ladies on his blog to be present at this venue, they had their say as well on the subject. Madame Woo spoke about how her initial presentation had been forced into oblivion by men. Tamu replied to Evan’s observations. Tamu also discussed some with me. Vero.b made a point which made total sense (I can only remember I agreed).

It’s an age-old question, right? This means it still hasn’t been answered properly isn’t it?

The statistics reflect reality

My own thinking was that the statistics reflect reality and that reality is that women are not that interested in diving deep into tech. Let’s face it, it’s not fun. It can be fun to explore the subject initially, but then you do not get a lot of recognition for it be you a man or a woman. Not unless you make tons of money (that sure gets people interested in you really fast – you get plenty of new “friends” this way). Martine herself said that initially when she saw some of the early presentations listed on the BarCampMontreal2 wiki, she told herself “too technical”.

Gary Haran exchanged ideas with me as well but I had the distinct impression that his ideas were rooted in an ideal. The thing is, us geeks like these ideals a lot. But the ideal situation is a “To-Be” situation. It’s not the proper model on which to base today’s decisions. You have to know the “To-Be”, and also face reality, the “As-Is”. It’s only then that you can trace a route from today to tomorrow.

It’s the same thing that happens when some people say “no way, we can’t say that the statistics reflect reality. This would be akin to saying that women can’t do Tech”. Well no, that’s not the same thing. The statistics reflect the interest, not the capabilities. The women in Tech are very capable. But rejecting the concrete statistics based on some idealist notion will prevent you from making a proper diagnosis today and thus also prevent you from making informed decisions about what should be done today.

Some suggestions

Later on, Daniel Haran (Gary’s brother) told me that there is also the possibility that women are discouraged early by peer pressure from going into tech. Maybe there’s a little of that happening too but I think the extent of it is limited.

So my own suggestion was based on the “unconference” that is BarCamp and also on the state of reality. i.e. we should be able to gather more women and men under the same unconference roof by looking for the subject they are interested in and proposing them to present and have their space of expression in BarCamp for instance.

Therefore, something like the CreaCamp which happens this Saturday could have been organized within BarCampMontreal2 itself. This would have enabled more cross-functional connections, and maybe future creative collaborations too.

The discussion was getting long and so Fred asked if I wouldn’t mind postponing my presentation to some other event. I agreed since the subject at hand was important.

This panel was welcome, not because we would find some solution at BarCampMontreal2, but rather as an example that women could come to BarCampMontreal and participate (Tamu, Vero.b, Shawna, Anne, Claire, Erin, etc…) or present freely (Martine, Michelle-Anne, Madame Woo, Moomlyn), and also have a platform to discuss freely.

It’s a great way to exchange ideas, learn about different things happening in Montreal and the people that make them happen.

What we should do

I think that our work (Fred, Simon and all of us participants) for the next BarCamps will be to communicate the idea that it is a cross-functional event, not just a tech one, especially to women. It is really open. We would do well talking about the event to our lady friends well in advance. As Hugh had done (and he said he took it from Patrick), it could be interesting to tag the lady bloggers (they are natural communicators), but of course, you’d reach either your regular audience or those who know how to look for their links in other sites through Technorati for instance.

And remember that when people are passionate about Tech, it is usually as means to solve some problem, a real-world one, making a platform useful to many. In this case, it is a matter of deciding to let go of prejudices and still go to these events to meet with new people and new perspectives.

It shouldn’t be a problem that you aren’t interested with a subject a priori, because – who knows? – the answer to the question nagging you in your bubble of interest is exactly outside of it or else you would have found it already. That would have been the subject of my scrapped presentation (Systems Thinking as a way to enhance problem-solving).

More in part 4 (BarCamp is a whole-day event, you know. Or else I just write a lot. Or I have a very interesting life that I want to share with you)

The last time I reported about DemoCampMontreal2, I poked some gentle fun to Angel Anduaga as he was struggling with the concept of being able to present his startup without having to speak to anyone in particular – by just editing the wiki for BarCampMontreal2. That’s the way of unconference. I did tell him though that if he absolutely wanted to talk to somebody then he could speak to Fred.

And so it was good to see that he had seized the opportunity. PodTattoo enables the high-quality engraving of your iPod, small device or laptop with a design of your choice. This is done through a high-quality fast laser and the etching can sport black, white and a few shades of gray. Angel mentioned that the dye technology for color engravings would be available as from 2008.

Tattooing your device this way prevents theft because the device is permanently marked. The service does not void your warranty and does not damage your device internals at all.

Angel is looking for investors/partners for his startup and he is looking to expand in other cities than Montreal too.

Simon Law – Say “Cheese” – taking photographs with cheap drugstore cameras

Now, the last time Simon set foot amidst the spotlights to present, we had some riotous fun about engineering omelettes. So with a title like this, I could barely suppress the thought that some kind of cooking would also be in order – cheese omelettes?

Not this time though. Simon went on to describe some very expensive cameras and some other fine and cheap ones. His point: if you want to learn about photography, then start with a cheap one.

Simon said that one should understand how the camera isn’t like an eye and therefore it doesn’t receive light as our eyes do. He mentioned that there were some privileged times of the day when the light is particular beautiful, namely near dusk.

“You see, although this yellow light is shining on me, you wouldn’t say I was yellow… Or else it would be a racial slur.” – Simon Law

In addition, Simon advised to use the Flash only during the day-time. However, not using the flash during night shots mean that you’d have to try and stabilize your camera as much as possible.

He made the point about diffused light or light coming from the side being better than our digital cameras’ straight on flash. The latter makes for very harsh lighting conditions.

Simon finished with a link to a tutorial resource but I haven’t noted it. If anybody did please let me know.

Avery Pennarun – Designing a company culture

Next up was Avery who talked about designing a company culture. His take on technology and business was interesting. Avery said that somehow Web 2.0 had made technology people who could produce related code and applications cool. And thus, on the other side were the people with lots of money but severely lacking in the coolness department.

That is how Avery came to work with investors and banks. He brings them his knowledge of Web 2.0 technology, which many of these financial institutions lack and in turn benefits from integrating such an industry.

Avery also emphasized how important it is to find a trustworthy partner in your commercial endeavors. He seems to have found just this.

Michelle-Anne Jenkins (MAJ) – WikiTravel Extra

You may have heard of WikiTravel – it’s probably the best crowd-sourced travel site on the internet. It has actually won the 2007 Webby award for best travel site. Well done to the co-founders, MAJ and Evan Prodromou, who are also husband and wife.

MAJ presented WikiTravel Extra, a type of addendum to WikiTravel where members can share their photos and also get to know each other better as each member has a personal profile page. Users can browse the location pictures by member too. Another interesting feature of WikiTravel Extra is that as a member you can tag some of your personal blog posts so that the WikiTravel Extra site recognizes it and gathers an abstract through the RSS feed. This allows a global page where updates from members can all be seen together.

After this presentation I’ve spent some time looking at the entry for my homeland (Mauritius) in WikiTravel and corrected the National Anthem. I think it’s one of the shortest and most beautiful anthems ever – and I’m not saying this because it’s my anthem, but rather from the perspective of a composer and songwriter. Lyrics, chords and melody meld in a coherent way.

more in part 3

He was leaving as I arrived, so that means you can expect some coverage of the first half-day of BarCampMontreal2 on his blog and some coverage of the second-half here at YashLabs. There are others who are only now waking up to the necessity of covering these events so that you can expect additional coverage from them too.

Fred was being interviewed by a lady in a corner, while I was meeting with the ever-smiling David Fugère from Code Genome. David looks like a rock-star – you would have thought he’s a singer in a band or something (who knows, maybe he is). He’s using Ruby and Ruby on Rails for Code Genome, and my theory is that this is why he is happy and smiling all the time.

I ate some of the food and it was welcome and talked a bit with Heri.

Co-Working and co-operative spaces

All this time, Patrick had convened a discussion about the Co-Working space which has as project to gather people working in Tech or with Tech in Montreal under one roof. It’s a good idea to foster cross-functional collaboration, but it’s so good that it should really be funded by the organizations whose mission is to promote and develop all things Tech in Montreal or Montreal as a Tech hub. Globally I’m for the idea but there’s already a co-working space at La Bande Passante, which can probably be used for less than the advertised fees for the Co-working space.

This said, it’s a great thing that BarCampMontreal2 itself has willing sponsors – it’s a kind of co-working or co-operative space, isn’t it? Gratitude is necessary here, and is extended to the sponsors: Garage Technology Ventures Canada, Standout Jobs (Austin Hill, Fred Ngo, Ben Yoskovitz), Akoha (Austin Hill – he’s everywhere – except at BarCampMontreal2. He’s resting in Mexico, he needs it. See you soon in full form back in Montreal, Austin), and of course, our very generous host, the SAT (kudos to René Barsalo, the SAT Director and some of the staff who were present on a Saturday to make this event a reality, including a really nice, smiling lady who came and also filmed the event for the SAT and for her vlog. What’s her name, Fred, and where’s her vlog?).

Asia and Kung-Fu

Then, I took a seat in the big room and tried to connect via wi-fi but it wouldn’t work. In the meantime, I was exploring a few of my text files on AI. A lady, MAJ, who was going to present later, sat in front of me and she seemed to have no trouble getting connected.

Marc Chriqui and I talked about technology and development, mainly about Microsoft’s development tools and also Ruby on Rails. I mentioned to him how Ruby on Rails output AJAX natively.

After a while, Fred came over to say hi, and we chatted a bit about his new startup, Standout Jobs. Fred has been really taken up with the project, together with the other team members, Ben and Austin. Austin couldn’t be present this time at BarCamp as he’s on a much-needed vacation in Mexico.

Fred and I talked a bit about Hong Kong and Toronto. I myself went on a month-long trip to Asia in 1988 and visited Singapore (ah, the Omni Planetarium with its 20,000 Watts of sonic power and hemispheric screen…and Sentosa Island), Thailand (Bangkok, the Indra Regent Hotel, and the temples with reclining Golden Buddhas), Taiwan (er… expensive apples?) and Hong Kong. I remember the phenomenal Ocean Park in Hong Kong, and the Skyscrapers, while we were hosted by my father’s long-time best friend, Ah-Liat Lam Lan Yu. Ah-Liat has always been like a father to me. He’s the one who introduced me to “Game and Watch” and gave me an Atari VCS 2600, my first ever game console. Fond memories indeed.

I thought I saw Francis doing some Wushu on the left. Was that you, Francis? Was that some form of Wushu? I’ve done some Bajiquan myself so maybe we should have talked about this – next time.

Afternoon presentations

Angelo Anduaga (hey, on your cards it’s written “Angel” so that’s what I was using up to now) was readying his presentation with the help of some other attendants. So finally, he would have the opportunity of presenting PodTattoo, his startup, probably even without having spoken to anyone.

Mike spoke about his experience in China and the Intellectual Property laws there – and the phenomenon of brand copying or brand piracy if you will. It was a short but interesting presentation.

Simon took the microphone to introduce Alok Mohindra who presented FonoMe, an online system to get calls through standard VOIP protocols. Alok emphasized his appreciation of Google’s technology for Google Talk. He mentioned Asterisk, SIP, Jabber and also Jingle. The technology was demonstrated on the spot with two people, including Simon, calling Alok’s test phone number. It worked! Applause.

In between two 5-minutes presentations, Fred decided to practice his BarCamp T-shirt throwing skills. Yes, since not all the original BarCamp attendants claimed their T-Shirts, they were giving them away. There was no small T-shirt for me which means I need to buff up again soon, ideally before summertime here. [In front of me is MAJ, on my left is the very cool Philippe Chrun of Mycarpoolstation.com and behind me are Vero.b, and Martine Pagé whom I talked to briefly at a YULblog and who's also a scenarist for "A vos marques, Party!"]

David Fugère also got five minutes to present Code Genome’s online project management or project tracking system and it looked sleek. Easy Drag and Drop functionality for tasks re-organization thanks to AJAX and… Ruby on Rails of course. David said that SoftImage were already using his system among other companies testing the beta. Good for you, David. Code Genome’s system will be able to migrate your data from BaseCamp to their own so that you can benefit from additional features.

more in part 2

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

It’s a free and open event where anybody can come and participate. Everybody is actually expected to participate in some way, either by presenting or by helping others present or by giving a hand with the organization.

Now, although the idea of BarCamp was borne out of the Tech world in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, the presentations need not be about Technology, and this time around at the SAT in Montreal, we are expecting a whole group of non-tech people and presentations. The cross-fertilization of ideas from all sides will be beneficial to all parties involved. People will gather and meet with others outside their usual bubble and this can only bring in new ways of thinking, new avenues for collaboration and new opportunities.

To illustrate the variety, we’ll be having these presentations among others including the Tech ones:
1. Simon Law – Taking photographs with cheap drugstore cameras
2. Moomlyn – Lucid Dreaming (I love this)
3. Marcella Lorenzi – E=mc2; superstring installation; music from cellular automata
4. Martine Pag̩ РPr̩sence f̩minine/where are the girls (in Tech). An age-old question.

New this time is the Slide Karaoke – 5 volunteers present slides they don’t know anything about. We cheer them up. It’s riotous.

Ever the gentleman, Hugh McGuire who’s also presenting, tagged some ladies so that they be present and thus equalize the attendance. I for one would love to see Ella present. I saw her at Laïka the other night and went to speak to her as I had seen her play the contrabass at a BlueGrass joint on a Sunday night – the Barfly. It turns out she’s a pretty techie geek too and has many diverse interests including open source (?) and linguistics. Marie-Jo should be there as she’s in the registrant list, and of course, I would like to see Deborah there too. Come on Egyptian Geek Goddess. It’s your community, you should be there.

The first BarCamp in Montreal was launched by Fred Ngo with the help of some friends back then in October while I was looking for an apartment (which means not only I couldn’t attend, but I hadn’t even had the time to search online for the Tech community here – I didn’t even know there was a BarCamp in Montreal).

This time, I will be there with the community and will present:

“Hacking Thought – Systems Thinking and the Myth of Exclusive OR”

with the intention of showing you how to hack your own thoughts and make you better at problem solving and generally at understanding the world. Yes, it’s about the expansion of your consciousness.

Come on over. You know you want this.

Based on more information provided to me during a recent meeting with Raj Vadavia (CEO) and Thomas Fedoryak (Chief Strategic Officer) of Sygenics, I have updated the description of the fantastic Sygenics Evolution technology today so that it portrays the technology more accurately. Thanks to Thomas Fedoryak for the more accurate wording. Josh – 17th of May.

3. DARWIN by Evonium Inc. – Kingsley and Alden Woodward

John set the tone for the presentation as usual and practised his Bruce Buffer John McCarthy impersonation. He also posed for a photograph in a cheeky Wasnot@BarCampbutgotaT-ShirtNaNaNa stance.

Note to self: the UFC will be in Montreal later this year. Attend. Mixed Martial Arts events have done a lot to change how I think about Martial Arts in general.

The Evonium team demonstrated DARWIN, a modular and customizable framework for Information Management. The demonstration itself at DemoCampMontreal1 showed just a small subset of DARWIN’s possibilities, focusing on the ease of adding new data within the framework and updating a form to access the contents.

The real Wow factor here is Alden Woodward mentioning that DARWIN could evolve with your business process. Now, this statement seems innocuous like this, but what if you factor in that you can re-engineer your business process, easily and rapidly customize your whole Information Systems within and with DARWIN to reflect this while the system is still running LIVE?

A nearly real-time evolutive Business Information System – that’s nothing less than the grail of Business agility! Absolutely fantastically impressive, considering that it is time-consuming and sometimes difficult to re-design your Data models, especially if you using a relational DBMS and rewrite your access code. Now, how do you think Evonium achieves so much flexibility within their framework to do that?

Just imagine tracking the efficiency of multiple business processes per business domain to find what works best in each type of business.

The presentation itself could have been geared more towards showing these benefits. It was difficult to grasp the benefits of DARWIN with the demo as I am not familiar with the interface and based on the feedback I heard here and there, many people did not get the message, which is unfortunate as I strongly believe that Evonium have a winner with DARWIN.

DARWIN is applied to Manufacturing and to Science Laboratories and Science Research in addition to Businesses. Kingsley Woodward is the President and CEO of Evonium Inc.

During Question Time, Raj Vadavia popped a question about the underlying technology.

“Don’t you guys work together? PLANTED QUESTION!!!” said John playfully.

But actually, that was the whole point and the subject of the fourth demo, Evolution or Part 2 of my “Wow!” moment.

4. Evolution by Sygenics Corp – Raj Vadavia

Raj Vadavia started by saying how most modern programming languages are object-oriented (like our beloved Ruby) but RDBMS and these languages do not mesh well together.

He then described Evolution, a new technology that frees business logic from being locked into a given data schema, by installing a true real-time dynamic data model directly within Relational DBMS. Raj said that with Evolution, DB administrators need not go down to the level of the relational tables to modify them. Instead, modifications are initiated from a higher level through an API, and instantly reflected in real-time by the adaptive (or ‘plastic’) Evolution data model. Raj added that Evolution was the result of more than four years of research and development and that the technology is patent-pending. Sygenics Corp, the makers of Evolution, found out during their research that RDBMS and their fixed schema models are actually a bottleneck in data-centric business systems.

Raj said that Evolution uses mathematics, more precisely Set Theory, to manipulate the data. Woah! I was transfixed by the idea. Raj continued to speak about Evolution while looking at me but his words had become a blur as I was lost in metaphysics territory. Could it be that there are other things we take for granted within either our Information Systems and the Businesses they integrate into and that applying a new mathematical model could open up amazing optimization opportunities?

From Sygenics’ website:

The fixed table schema that are used by relational databases are the core bottleneck in the development, lifecycle and flexibility of any data-centric software solution. These fixed schema are the weakest link because they were never intended to change or adapt once activated.

Suddenly, a loud booming voice resonated throughout the SAT room.

“Raaaaj?… Raaaaaaaaj?……”.

OhmigodTheSATisHauntedThere’sAGhostInTheMachine!!?!!

“Raj, it’s your subconscious…. You have five minutes left for your demo.”

It was John, of course.

Evolution dynamically modifies its own data structure (within your relational DB, like Oracle and MS-SQL) without having to manually re-tool access routines or migrate existing data to a new schema. This enables fast reconfigurable data models without having to stop your production system, and is the reason why Evonium’s DARWIN can enable you to dynamically rewire your business logic as your business process changes.

If I were an investor looking for innovative Business Information Systems opportunities that night at DemoCampMontreal1, this is where I’d put my money: Sygenics’ Evolution and Evonium’s DARWIN framework. Their concepts and technologies made my mind reel for a few days.

Interface Ruby and Ruby on Rails with these two technologies and you have the core of the ultimate flexible full-stack Business Information Architecture. Couple this with a Cognos and Google Analytics type of analysis and reporting and you have a fantastic arsenal to track different business processes’ efficiencies so as to select the best one based on practical results.

The presentation also suffered from the ‘unfamiliarity with the interface’ phenomenon, but it did show that there was no need to go down to the level of the relational database schema for modifications. But here again, I cannot help but wonder whether the message did get across.

Nevertheless, I’m totally amazed by Evolution. Revolutionary as the website says and I’m inclined to believe it.

Raj Vadavia is the CEO and majority shareholder of Sygenics.

Notes:
- Always distinguish form from content. The two presentations above might have been better formulated with respect to conveying the benefits to the audience, but the technologies and concepts beneath were the most impressive that night and probably the most impressive I’ve seen in the past two years as I’ve mentioned in Part 1.

5. ilovetoplay.com – Marc Chriqui

Marc Chriqui’s stated goal for ilovetoplay.com is to help make people fit, which is a laudable initiative. His demonstration showed the website which helps people find partners for sports activities. He showed the fields within the user profiles and also how photos are added within the site.

Marc also found a creative way of using his 15 minutes of DemoCampMontreal1. After the main presentation, he asked the audience feedback about the marketing aspect for the website and showed us an image with a teasing tag-line.

Tamu, who was sitting in the row behind me, voiced some valid observations about how it can get tiring for people who do not look like the model to see yet another photo not representative of themselves, but Marc replied “You don’t want to be fit?” which created a ripple of laughter in the audience, effectively drowning Tamu’s message.

Well, it’s a good idea to ask for feedback at DemoCamp. Some audience members are even willing to give you that feedback for free, so you might as well listen carefully to their contributions. Another audience member also gave Marc feedback, and John added his perspective too – all relevant.

Note:
- You can use DemoCampMontreal to get feedback on your product and marketing. But make sure you lend an attentive ear if you do get it.

Wrap-up

John announced that the DemoCampMontreal1 team would go to the Ste. Elizabeth afterwards. Then Fred and Simon took turns with the microphone to thank all parties involved and inform people about upcoming events.

Post-demo conversations

Heri and I had talked a little in between demos and I had also caught up with John who said he was away for a while since CUSEC but came back to Montreal. After the wrap-up, I greeted Robin and asked him whether he was going to attend the first Mashpit in Montreal, and he said he’d most probably be there.

I also met Carl Mercier who is a successful serial entrepreneur based in Montreal. Carl, Heri and I swapped business cards spent quite a fair amount of time happily discussing the Montreal Tech Scene. Carl’s business card is a sight to behold – classy and beautiful.

After this, I checked with John whether he was going to the Ste-Elizabeth and then I moved near the bar where there were still a handful of persons around chatting.

Silicon Valley North

I wanted to meet Austin Hill and he was there generously giving the Evonium team and Raj Vadavia feedback on the presentations from his perspective as a VC and Angel investor. Alden, Kingsley and Raj were attentive and open to the feedback. Raj proposed that Austin try to apply Evolution to the problem of sifting and sorting email messages as Austin had mentioned this as an example of a real-world problem that a VC or investor could easily relate to and which would have been advantageous to demonstrate to make the presentations more effective.

I didn’t have the opportunity of speaking to either Raj Vadavia or Alden and Kingsley Woodward about their technology but I did talk to Austin. I asked him about Silicon Valley and the state of the Tech Scene in Toronto and Montreal. Austin mentioned that SV has a lot to do with the mindset but that it was also a question of economics. He said that Toronto is currently ahead of Montreal in terms of activity in the Tech scene, but that he is convinced that Montreal has the potential of becoming the next best SV-North.

That was precisely what I wanted to hear. And with the kind involvement that Austin has in the community, I have no doubt that his words are becoming a reality.

We talked about my background and the Python-wrangler video. Austin said that they were tracking views both on Youtube and from his blog. His blog is an absolute must-read and is a gateway I found when I looked for people in the Montreal Tech community online.

Austin was very approachable and generous with his time, information and even will to help me connect with other people. Generous and friendly, just as I had imagined him from reading his blog and it was a pleasure to talk to him. If SV has Reid Hoffman, Montreal has Austin Hill.

Happiness has a reddish hue

After speaking with Austin, I talked to David Fugère and he was enthusiastic about Ruby on Rails’ support for REST and web services APIs. Aha! Code Genome is using Ruby and Ruby On Rails. That may well be why David is smiling all the time. Ruby and RoR make happy coders and happy businesses.

Sébastien Pierre said goodbye, but I caught up again with him at the metro, and we talked about Software Engineering in France. I told him about INSA de Rennes, where I did my degree. We spoke of Sugar, which I saw him demonstrate at DemoCampCUSEC1, and of the Recent Changes Camp, or RoCoCo, which is forthcoming in Montreal. This will definitely be an event to attend.

The many faces of the DemoCamp format

DemoCampMontreal1 was astonishing for me. Evolution was especially superb as a singularly original enabling technology and concept which in turns makes Evonium’s DARWIN a reality. I saw that a DemoCamp was not just a meeting among geeks but also an avenue to pitch your startup to willing investors since Austin Hill was present and Tom Sweeney of Garage Technology Ventures Canada was there too, a way to get feedback and advice on your product, marketing, an opportunity to hone your presentation skills and meet smart people and even probable partners. A DemoCamp is all these things simultaneously.

Thanks to Fred for getting me involved, Simon and John and all those who helped with the event and thanks to all those who took some of their precious time to chat, especially Heri, Carl, John, Austin, David and Sébastien. I couldn’t talk to everybody but I would have loved to talk to Simon about his recent trip to Norway, his work for Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux distribution and his omelette-engineering demo, and I would have asked Ben about the passion podcast and whether he had had submissions. I will gladly see you all next time.

Memorable quotes

“Let get it on!” – John (imitating Bruce Buffer UFC referee, John McCarthy)
“Julie, I hadn’t seen you for a while – I liked it that way.”- John (to Julie)
“Mon français n’est pas très bien aujourd’hui.” – John
“Planted question!” – John
“Raaaaj? Raaaaaj, it’s your subconscious. You have 5 minutes left” – John (to Raj Vadavia)

“80% de notre objectif est atteint…on avait besoin d’un deadline” – Thierry Poitras

“I want people to get fit.” – Marc Chriqui (on his objective for the presentation)

“It was a metaphor!” – Simon (about his omelette engineering demo)

“We use mathematics to manipulate the data.” – Raj Vadavia

There were beautiful lights this afternoon in the Montreal skyline. It was DemoCampMontreal1 day, and there were more than 40 registrants on the wiki. I knew it would be fun to be there and reconnect with Montreal’s Tech scene, but little did I know that I would see some of the most amazing technologies in about 2 years… This photo is by Simon Law

The previous “Wow!” moment a couple of years ago was right after I typed scaffold :category while following Curt Hibbs’s Ruby On Rails tutorial on O’Reilly’s OnLamp. At that time I wrote an enthusiastic email to the Linux User Group I was in, saying “I’ve seen the future of web apps”. Two years later, RoR use is rocketing and Ruby just entered in TIOBE’s top ten programming languages index – you know the score.

I reached the S.A.T., the “Société des Arts Technologiques”, on St-Laurent early as Fred had asked to help with the T-shirts for BarCampMontreal1 attendants. I tried the door. It was closed. Recognizing Simon inside, I waved to him, smiling. Simon waved back from inside with a warm smile and walked off. Simon is a riot. Have you seen his mysterious and supposedly loosely Software-Engineering-related videos about cooking eggs?

I would have remained stuck outside if it weren’t for a nice smiling lady working at the S.A.T. who said hello as she passed me by. She let me in the room where preparations were underway for the night including testing the triple big-screen arrangement.

T-Shirt Duty

I greeted Simon again and he invited me to build myself a name tag. Our MC, John Kopanas, to whom I had talked briefly at DemoCampCUSEC1, was already on the spot. Fred arrived not long afterwards with a box of T-shirts, telling me: “This is yours!”.

Fred: It’s not in alphabetical order or anything. You’ll be okay?
Josh: Sure, I’ll get to meet people

While Fred was briefing me about the T-shirt distribution…
“Stand very still!”. It was Simon trying to photograph us. We obliged. Time flew.
“Can I move now???” asked Fred after an eternity and threats of cramps setting in, still holding a T-shirt in mid-air in front of me as Simon’s camera wouldn’t focus.

I couldn’t keep the pose anyway as I was laughing.

For about 20 minutes, I was asking people their names and whether they had attended BarCampMontreal1 in which case I handed them a T-shirt according to the size indicated on the list and crossed out their name. I also sometimes prompted them to write their name-tags and guiding them to the DIY coat-check behind me. DemoCampMontreal1 is a type of D.E.Y. event – Do Everything Yourself.

They were a very interesting 20 minutes, since I recognized some of the names from the Montreal Tech blogosphere. I recognized Austin Hill and Alex Eberts from the extremely fun Python-wrangler recruitment video for their Montreal startup code-named Project Ojibwe. Alex told me they had had thousands of views the last time he checked. Seth Godin links to the entry with a few thoughts on the process.

When Ben Yoskovitz introduced himself, I said “Instigator!” and handed him his T-shirt. I even recognized his voice since his recent foray into podcasting, the Passion Podcast. Ben launched a recurring event for Tech Entrepreneurs in Montreal. The first episode was a resounding success.

I chatted with Heri of MadMedia, whom I’ve been in contact with by email recently, and a nice lady named Tamu. Heri has launched a blog where he focuses on news about startups and entrepreneurship in the Montreal Tech scene with a quick analysis on each item – it’s called The Montreal Tech Watch.

Roberto Rocha, from The Gazette, also fetched his T-shirt and we swapped a few words. Roberto is covering news about the Montreal Tech scene with his freshly-launched blog, TechnoCité. Roberto informed me by email today that the blog had been renamed from ‘Montreal Tech Scene’ to ‘TechnoCité’.

I exchanged a few words with a seemingly very happy and perpetually smiling attendant, who was in fact the only one with whom I swapped business cards right there and then at the table while I was on T-shirt duty. I made a mental note to later check back with David Fugère from Code Genome to see what it was exactly that made him so happy and smile all the time.

Some of the presenters also dropped by the T-shirt table, and that’s how I met Evan Prodromou and Raj Vadavia who were presenting first and last respectively. Tom Sweeney of Garage Technology Ventures Canada asked me if Austin was there already. I replied affirmatively and it was easy to spot Austin in the audience through his hip beret. Tom Sweeney is photographed by Simon Law.

Opening

Things sped up from there. John took the microphone to introduce the concept for DemoCampMontreal1 and captured somebody’s iPod for his girlfriend’s 23rd birthday despite Simon’s warning to the gullible audience member not to trust him while Evan was getting ready, followed by Austin who duly thanked all the sponsors of the event: RadialPoint, Tom Sweeney and Garage Technology Ventures Canada, Project Ojibwe, and of course, our hosts, the S.A.T.

Introduction by John Kopanas

Austin Hill thanks the event’s sponsors

Demonstrations

1. Evan Prodromou – MediaWiki extension for OpenID

OpenID is a protocol which enables single sign-on across a growing number of sites supporting the protocol. Evan creatively tried to circumvent DemoCamp’s ‘no-Powerpoint’ rule by displaying the Wiki documentation for OpenID.

Unfortunately, Evan had some technical issues during his demo which were pinpointed to probable DNS problems. This could have projected the wrong impression about the benefits of OpenID, and it did to some extent, but fortunately a member of the audience asked about this, which enabled Evan to explain that the demo wasn’t functioning as expected.

It could have been stressful to open DemoCampMontreal1 in front of a 60-people strong audience and realize that the machines are never going to cooperate fully, but Evan took all the technical difficulties in stride with good self-derisive humor.

Notes:
- Have a backup or offline solution for your demo in case of network issues
- Humor helps alleviate a demo which deviates from your expectations
- The ‘no-Powerpoint’ rule should really be a ‘no-slide’ or ‘no-documentation’ rule

2. Growwwing – Daniel Haran and Thierry Poitras

John was in his usual what-do-you-want-to-get-out-of-your-presentation form which helped focus the Growwwing team’s minds on their goal. Their objective for demoing at DemoCampMontreal1 was to have a deadline to progress on their project. Use DemoCampMontreal as a milestone for Project Management and self-motivation… Fair enough – That’s quite a creative use to a DemoCamp!

Growwwing is a web service which helps small business owners easily set-up a website for marketing their products or services through the use of several already available web APIs. Daniel demonstrated how they could access the Flickr API easily and choose pics with a Creative Commons License and also do basic in-place image editing for a user’s website.

When they encountered a small glitch in the demo, Daniel explained in perfect English that he had been refactoring the code very recently since their main Ruby on Rails developer was on paternity leave. Later on, when replying to a question in French, his reply was in impeccable French. Well done, Daniel.

Growwwing uses RubyOnRails.

Although their objective was really self-motivation at reaching a deadline, the team has blogged that they were told about partnering and financing opportunities among the benefits they derived from presenting at DemoCampMontreal1.

Notes:
- You can use DemoCampMontreal as a way to mark a milestone in your project
- At DemoCampMontreal, there are opportunities to meet potential partners and investors.

Fred has a post about DemoCampMontreal1 wrap-ups on his blog.

Read Part 2.