Tag: Community

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Six demos and a BBQ

People watching a software product demo at VeloCity

I went to an end-of-term Demo Night at the University of Waterloo’s VeloCity Residence last night. The evening started with a nice barbecue and an opportunity to mingle and talk with students and other visitors. There was then a program of six presentations by student teams that included two complete and functioning products as well as some product concept presentations, and even a great overview on the subtleties of creating applications for the iPhone. The discussions after each presentation were engaging and instructive. At the end of the night the crowd favourites were the guys from giftah.com, who I had previously seen at StartupCampWaterloo, and who seem to have found a winning proposition in their business.

The folks who run VeloCity are building something special here.

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How fast can VeloCity students demo?

I’ve written previously about a presentation that I made at the University of Waterloo’s VeloCity Residence (which, by the way, led to my Ten Thoughts series of posts). VeloCity is a great idea that seems to be thriving.

For the end of their third term VeloCity is holding a Demo Night on Monday July 27. Here’s what they have planned:

As the end of our third term approaches, we’ve decided to try something a little different to showcase the projects that our VeloCity students have been working on.

We would like to invite you to join us for Demo Night at the VeloCity Residence. Drop by to listen to pitches from 6 of our teams, view demos of their projects, and interact with and provide feedback to the students. Afterwards, join us for refreshments and a BBQ to celebrate the end of the Spring term at VeloCity.

We hope that you’re able to join us in this casual celebration of the accomplishments of our Spring-term students.

Have a look here for all the details.

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DemoCampGuelph on Wednesday July 15

DemoCampGuelph10 is happening on Wednesday July 15 from 6:30pm–9:00pm. I demonstrated Primal Fusion’s thought networking service at the last edition of GuelphDemoCamp, and enjoyed the great questions and feedback. I’m looking forward to this edition and the opportunity to just enjoy what others are showing without thinking about my own demo. As with the last edition, the venue is eBar at 41 Quebec Street.

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June UX Group event is on Thursday

The June meeting of the UX Group of Waterloo Region is happening at 5:00pm on Thursday June 25 at the Accelerator Centre. This month it’s a presentation by Qixing Zheng called From Concept to Production: Prototyping with Expression Blend 3. The event is hosted by the Infusion Angels Innovation Centre and registration is required.

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The solace of a Quantum To Cosmos festival

I’ve written before about lectures that the Perimeter Institute puts on here in Waterloo. Their public outreach program is a wonderful part of life in Waterloo. Science, fun, and accessible? PI has it covered. They’ve recently announced Quantum To Cosmos: Ideas for the Future, an amazing 10-day festival to be held next October. The mix of science and the arts is quite inspiring to see, and I’m excited about this even though it’s four months away.

I’m particularly lucky as PI is walking distance from my home — not everyone has that luxury. Everyone in Waterloo region does have access to PI and this festival, though, and living and working in here is strikingly enhanced as a result. Thanks, PI!

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Popcorn, balloons, and heavy equipment

Various pieces of heavy equipment including hydro trucks

Every year, the City of Waterloo Public Works Service Centre has an open house. This year’s event was today, and my boys and I made the short trip to the centre this morning. It’s an amazing event at which kids can ride in a swing shovel or front-end loader and dig gravel, take a trip in a dump truck, go up high in the bucket of a hydro truck from Waterloo North Hydro, or explore a fire truck. There’s much more too. Add a few hot dogs for lunch and our morning was perfect.

From what I understand, the staff all volunteer their time to be there, and everyone seems to have fun. I’ve been taking my kids for years and I enjoy it immensely. Thanks to all of you who make this event happen — your effort and commitment makes living and working in Waterloo that much more fun.

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Thought Networking presentation at StartupCampWaterloo

I attended my first StartupCampWaterloo last night. It was great – well-organized (without feeling regimented), engaging, lots of energy. I managed to arrive late, having come directly from work and a late meeting, which meant that I didn’t get to pitch my Primal Fusion presentation, but I did get to demo our Thought Networking product anyway. There were some good questions from the crowd and I had some interesting conversations afterward. Overall it felt like a positive response.

The other presentations were quite enjoyable to watch, and there were some interesting products on display. Waterloo is really a great place to work, with so much going on and so many people beavering away on their own thing.

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DemoCampGuelph demonstration of Primal Fusion

Last Wednesday I demonstrated Primal Fusion at the ninth edition of DemoCampGuelph. I had previously presented at the same event early last year and enjoyed it. This time I was essentially doing a demonstration very similar to the one given by Peter Sweeney and Bob Barlow-Busch at the DEMO conference in March.

I have to confess, though, that I was much less polished than those two! To ensure that everyone realized that it wasn’t a canned presentation, I decided to demo our product based on Toronto transit commission, a topic drawn from a presentation made earlier that evening by Jay Goldman. That worked out well.

The event was great fun, and the other demos were enjoyable to watch. One challenge that I had, though, was that because I arrived late I watched the other demos from the back of the crowded bar. It was hard to see and hear everything clearly back there!

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A visit to VeloCity

Today I had the opportunity to make a presentation to students at the VeloCity residence at the University of Waterloo. If you don’t know about VeloCity, it’s worth checking out. In their words:

VeloCity is no ordinary student residence.

It’s a place where some of UW’s most talented, entrepreneurial, creative and technologically savvy students will be united under one roof to work on the future of mobile communications, web and new media.

It’s a place where students, faculty and corporate partners will be active collaborators and beneficiaries of the talent, ideas and innovations that evolve.

It’s a place where the ‘next big thing’ could happen.

My presentation was a pretty simple one – Ten Thoughts on what matters at a startup. It certainly wasn’t meant to be definitive, but it did cover the kinds of things that, in my experience, matter on a daily basis. Some of it was informed by my recent experiences at Primal Fusion. Anyway, it seemed to go over well, and I had some good conversations with a few of the students after I finished.

In the near future I’ll start a little series of posts inspired by that presentation.