Tag: Community

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A dozen ears of corns and a bushel of tweets

Kids enjoying outdoor playground train at Herrles

Yesterday was a meeting of the community managers Communitech peer-to-peer group, held for the first time in their new space at The Hub. The speaker was Trevor Herrle-Braun, of Herrle’s Country Farm Market, who talked about how he has embraced the world of Twitter to evangelize his family’s market and its farm products.

While new to social media when he took to tweeting through @HerrlesMarket last spring, Trevor quickly developed an identifiable and authentic voice and has grown a healthy list of followers that today stands at over 500. His tweets go beyond announcing that fresh corn is available as he has found a way to engage the community deeply through Twitter. A couple of keys to success have been a great understanding of what will work for the Herrle family and business, and a decision to take on one thing and do it well. That one thing, from a social marketing perspective, has been Twitter. Neither Facebook nor blogging have been a part of the mix.

It was interesting to hear how a business as ancient as a family farm has embraced new technology to reach customers old and new.

On a related note, I’ve written in the past about some of the independent businesses that enhance the experience of living in Waterloo Region. Herrle’s is one of the places that my family has enjoyed for many years. The fresh produce is an obvious attraction, but the outdoor play area, corn maze, and generally friendly atmosphere all contribute to a great experience.

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Marshmallow-centred design

A group of people build a tower with spagehetti

Last week I had the good fortune to facilitate not one, but two Marshmallow Challenge events. Briefly, the Marshmallow Challenge has the deceptively simple goal of building a tower using spaghetti, masking tape, and string, that will hold a marshmallow highest above a table top. Of course the lessons learned and the experience of building the tower, rather than just reading about it, are revealing and meaningful. The two big ones are to question your assumptions and to prototype early and often to learn as much as possible.

The first event, on Thursday, was the September meeting of uxWaterloo. The competition was close, and the teams all had a great time. After declaring a winner, we watched a video of a TED talk about the Marshmallow Challenge. That was really just a starting point for some enlightening discussion about the experience of building towers and about the ideas explored in the video. My favourite moment of the night was the realization that when designing for user experience, the user isn’t a marshmallow that can be plopped on at the end. Tower-builders that take that approach rarely succeed, and a user interface that doesn’t involve users early in the design process will often fail as well.

The second event, on Friday, was at VeloCity residence at the University of Waterloo. Having experienced the uxWaterloo event, I knew that VeloCity should go well, but I was still taken aback by the large number of students and by the enthusiasm and positive energy in the room. The event structure was the same as for the previous night, and the students dived in and seemed to have a great time with the challenge. Needless to say, I had a fine time as well, and enjoyed the conversations immensely. A major bonus for me was that Dan and PJ from tinyHippos were their as well, their young family in tow, to talk about what’s important in building software products at a startup.

Thanks for the invitation, Jesse.

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uxWaterloo this week and Ignite in November

This week I’ll be enjoying the September meeting for uxWaterloo (the snappily, and concisely, renamed User Experience Group of Waterloo Region) on Thursday at the Accelerator Centre. We’ve got a fun design workshop planned, which should be a great opportunity to work together with UX folks and maybe we’ll all even learn something, too. Come on out.

Looking farther down the road, Ignite Waterloo has announced the date and location for the fourth evening of talks, conversation, and general good cheer. November 18 is the date, and the new location is the Conrad Centre for the Performing Arts. We’re excited about the new venue, and hope to deliver another great event. If you’re interested in being a speaker, head on over and sign up.

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Camping! Leading! Scoring!

As I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks back, July is full of great events here in Waterloo (and nearby Guelph). Last week featured two of them and I’m happy to to have made it out to both.

Communitech held a day-long Tech Leadership conference last Wednesday, which I somehow neglected to mention in my earlier post. Highlights included a presentation by author and Harvard professor Clayton Christensen on business and product innovation, an engaging talk by Fast Company co-founder Bill Taylor, and a variety of breakout sessions. There was also a Tech Expo featuring displays from several local tech start-ups. I was happy to see Alex and Chris from Snapsort there, as well the gang from Tiny Hippos. In fact, the tiny chocolate hippos from Tiny Hippos enabled me bring home a small part of the event for my sons to enjoy. Thanks, P.J.!

The ninth edition of StartupCampWaterloo was also held last Wednesday at the Accelerator Centre. Oddly enough, while the turnout was about as robust as at previous events there were only four demos. All were interesting, though the one that stood out for me was ReserveMe, a product that enables clients of salons to book their own appointments online. While they have a lot more work to do, they showed a polished initial version that solves a real problem and they appear to be off to a good start.

As an aside, milestone of a different kind was reached over the weekend in our family. As I wrote at the beginning of the summer, I’ve enjoyed three seasons full of soccer with my sons this year. My middle son wrapped up his soccer season with a tournament this weekend, and even scored a goal in their final game. As my youngest son had already finished his very first season some weeks ago, that leaves just my oldest son with remaining soccer games this summer. In addition to playing, all three boys enjoyed watching World Cup games on television back in June. Soccer makes for an interesting way to mark the passage of time this summer.

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July yields a bumper crop of local events

Speaking of events that exist due to a community of people who share generously, July is shaping up to be a month full of fun events. Here are a few that I hope to attend.

First up is StartupDrinksWaterloo tomorrow night at Chainsaw in Uptown Waterloo. The conversations are fun and it’s a great group. If you haven’t been before, do come out and see what you’ve been missing.

Update: And, of course, the third Ignite Waterloo event is this Wednesday evening, July 7! Thanks for the reminder, Joseph.

On Wednesday July 14 is StartupCampWaterloo at Accelerator Centre in Waterloo. The demos and discussions are always worthwhile.

Just a week later on Wednesday July 21 there’s DemoCampGuelph at eBar in Guelph. As with the Waterloo event, the demos and discussions are always worthwhile.

Every month the UX Group of Waterloo has an event lined up. This month it’s on July 22 at Accelerator Centre, and we’ll be getting European conference reports from a couple of members.

As ever, a great way to keep on top of this stuff is the Waterloo Tech Startup site, which includes a calendar among other handy tech-oriented resources. There’s more going on than I’ve highlighted here.

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Yet another demonstration that beer and user experience go well together

We had a great discussion (or, rather, series of discussions) at this month’s UX Group event at the Huether Hotel in Waterloo last night. We started off talking about iPad, which was certainly in the spirit of our announced NUI discussion, but soon wandered off down various interesting conversational side roads. From business models, to retail user experience, to music and movies in the digital age, and more, it was a terrific night. Thanks to everyone who came out and made the event so special. And here’s to a speedy recovery for co-organizer Bob Barlow-Busch, who was too ill to make it out. You missed a good night, Bob!

The current plan is to try to assemble a group post that represents our collective take on the evening. Check back at the UX Group blog for more on that.

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Digital Media Boot Camp

A group of people working through a design challenge

On Monday and Tuesday this week I hosted a Digital Media Boot Camp at Canada 3.0 in Stratford, Ontario, on Canada’s digital media future. The goal was to come up with some concrete ideas around how to move forward on the vision of being able to do anything online in Canada by 2017, the country’s sesquicentennial year.

I was struck by a couple of things.

First was the diversity of people that showed up for what was essentially the “general public” stream of Canada 3.0. The range of experiences and backgrounds represented resulted in some great discussions.

The second was the recurring theme that emerged that access to the online world remains, in 2010, a real issue in Canada for a variety of reasons: economic disparity, urban/rural divide, fear, inexperience — all prevent full participation in Canada’s digital present. Ironically, technological barriers were emphasized at the conference, where both WiFi and mobile access were severely constrained.

(As an aside, there was also the irony, visible in the accompanying photo, of talking about a digital future using decidedly analogue markers and flip charts!)

There’s a lot of work to do to make a future a vision a reality.

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This boot camp needs you, no marching required

Next week is the Canada 3.0 conference in Stratford, Ontario. I mention it because I’ll be there on the afternoons of Monday May 10 and Tuesday May 11, facilitating/hosting DigitalMediaCamp from noon until 4:00pm. The great thing is that DigitalMediaCamp is free, courtesy of The Record. All you need to do is register for either Monday or Tuesday and then get yourself to Stratford.

What should you expect? As it says on the site, “the DigitalMediaCamp will allow participants to interact with others, experience new software and provide input to decision makers shaping the future of Digital Media in Canada.” DigitalMediaCamp registrants are also entitled to attend the morning keynote presentations that are part of Canada 3.0, and to explore the showcase booths and more.

Sounds like fun to me. Tell your friends, get thinking, and bring your ideas and an open mind to Stratford. Take the opportunity to work with others to help build a digital media vision for Canada.

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Startup Lessons Learned Conference

Jim Murphy has organized a fun looking event for next Friday, April 23 from noon until 9:00pm at the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo. It’s a simulcast of the Startup Lessons Learned conference happening in San Francisco. From Jim’s event description:

Startup Lessons Learned is the first event designed to unite those interested in what it takes to succeed in building a lean startup. The goal for this event is to give practitioners and students of the lean startup methodology the opportunity to hear insights from leaders in embracing and deploying the core principles of the lean startup methodology. The day-long event will feature a mix of panels and talks focused on the key challenges and issues that technical and market-facing people at startups need to understand in order to succeed in building successful lean startups.

Enjoy the thought provoking presentations and panels from San Francisco, and talk about it with like-minded people here in Waterloo. All that, and it’s free! What are you waiting for? Go sign up!

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A busy couple of weeks

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and I appear to have neglected the blog. Here’s a quick roundup of some of what I’ve been up to.

The most recent edition of StartupCampWaterloo was two weeks ago already, and it was another fun edition with a variety of demos and great conversation. My former Primal Fusion colleague Alex Black showed off the cool stuff he’s been doing at his newest venture, Snapsort. It was fun to see the great progress that he’s made.

Last week I had the great fortune to hear a talk by Alfred Spector, VP of Research and Special Initiatives at Google. Inspiring stuff, and there’s clearly a lot of great work being done at Google in general and at the Waterloo office in particular.

This month’s edition of StartupDrinksWaterloo was last night, and while the free pizza was certainly a plus, it was the conversations and connections that remain the big attractions.

Meanwhile, in between these events and a variety of productive conversations with people, I’ve been chugging away on a product prototype as part of an informal project with some friends. I have to say that the recent warm weather has reminded me of the joys of coding away on the front porch and bringing an idea to life. Looks like I’ll remain heads down on design and prototyping for a little while anyway!