It’s been a while since the last Facebook Developer Garage Toronto. Come meet with fellow developers, marketers and agencies, members of the Facebook community in Toronto.   Formerly we called these Facebook Camps and its a great free event for Developers and Marketers.  The evening is free to attend and we have a great line up so far:
Agenda:
6:00 – Doors open – Social/Mingle/Get a seat
6:30 – Introduction
6:35 – Facebook Canada – TBD
7:00 – Iskandar Najmuddin – Syncapse
7:15 – Colin Smillie – Open Graph/Group API
7:30 – Oz Soloman – Social Graph Studios
7:45 – Eli Singer – Entrinsic
8:00 – Daniel Patricio – Orange Rhino Media
8:15 – Social / Mobile Integration – Vortex Mobile
8:30 – Social & Drinks at Pogue Mahone

**There is no guest list for this event – first come first served, doors will close when the venue is at capacity**

Last night with the 18th DemoCamp in Toronto, I think I’ve been to about 11 since my first DemoCamp around #5.   The venue was at the SuperMarket restaurant/bar on Augusta.  The venue was way too small for the event, even though the SuperMarket does have awesome food.   The Supermarket even ran out of beer glasses with so many people enjoying the night.

The Demo’s for the nite were:

1/Refesh Analytics by Roy Pereira

As a partner in Refresh it was a good opportunity for us to demo our Facebook Analytics tool and showcase some of the new social influencer metrics we’ve added for applications.   I think Roy did a good job of covering the product and I think most people quickly understood our focus with.  I was little surprised that nobody asked about the business model.

2/BluePrints by Chris Gurney

Blueprints is a product to help business capture requirements more effectively.  Its combines a the components of a product requirements document with the ability to mockup a user interface.  The tool can then export the requirements as a requirements document, ULM and other formats.  Apparently it will also export test cases too.  I liked the demo and I think its a great product for product managers ( which I’ve been in the past ) but the price point is pretty crazy.  I also wasn’t too excited about using a desk top java based application, I think it would have been better to see this as a web app and maybe a SasS model to lower the cost of entry.

3/ Jabber Chat by Ali Asaria

Ali and the Well.ca team presented a tool they developed for Well.ca to allow customers to chat with a CSR through a web interface.  It was a pretty slick demo with the ability to keep the chat open as user browsed web sites and pass URLs to the user.  I think the most innovative aspect was the integration with Jabber clients so that different chat clients could be supported for the CSR.    I think this was most important aspect for Well.ca but there are a variety of cheap alternatives.  At Autotrader.ca we purchased a solution for $500 that provided almost the same solution but required that the CSR keep a web chat window open.

4/ IRC integration with DrProject by Kosta Zabashta

Many open source projects are using IRC as form of communication between developers and sometimes users.  The IRC integration project aims to integrate these conversations into the project development process.  The first component was the ability to access ticket information via the IRC channel.  This was handled through an IRC bot.  The 2nd component was the ability to tag conversations as part of a ticket and integrate the chat history into DrProjec.  It was a good demo and I can see the practical applications for larger projects.

5/ Bitstrips by Jesse Brown

This was the first demo/ignite after the break and I missed most of it socializing.  From what I saw it provides a tool to quickly create small comic strips that can be embedded into websites.  I grew up loving comics but I think the medium has probably passed.   I don’t think comics have the same appeal in a digital format, especially when we can get videocasts, postcast or even games that are more engaging.

6/ SpreedNews by Dave Coleman

I had seem some PR around the SpreedNews reader around the iPhone launch.  I had watched their video online and their demo was very similar to the video.  I was hoping to see more of the application in action as I’m a little skeptical that its that much faster to read news.  I’m looking forward to see it and I know it won’t be long in a limited beta.

7/ How Startups will Save VC in Canada by Jevon MacDonald

I think its no secret that venture capital in Canada has declined and its in pretty bad shape.  Jevon’s presentation highlighted this  but encouraged entrepeneurs to look past this problem.  I think he’s right in that there alot of Canadian startups that are succeeding without venture capital.  In some cases they are making business decisions to grow in a different way that doesn’t require huge capital ( keeping their day job, or financing with a service business ).  I think it will be interesting to see how this effects Canadian startups.   From what I’ve seen when I visit US based startups is that we’re generally more efficient with capital and we’re getting more done with less.  I think this might be the lasting impact of the lack of Canadian VC situation.

I think it was a great event despite the ridiculusly crammed venue.  The popularity of DemoCamp is going to continue to cause problems for revenues.

Last night was StartupCampWaterloo and I made my first trip out to the Waterloo Acceleration Center. Having gone to a lot of events around Toronto the Waterloo Acceleration Center is awesome, with an open lobby area for presentations. I think there was about 80 people in attendance but it was still an intimate environment for the Q&A.

Stefanus Du Toit provided the first presentation as an overview of this experience with RapidMind. I haven’t heard of RapidMind before and seems they provide tools for rapid development of 3D environments. They’ve done work with the IBM cell processor and a variety other GPUs.

In keeping with the Barcamp theme, everyone that wanted to present needed to pitch the crowd with a 60s overview of the presentation. I think there were about 8 companies/groups that wanted to present and in the end 5 presentations went forward.
The presentations were:

SlashID by Ross Bennett

I’ve worked with Ross before and I’ve been involved with SlashID for awhile. For disclosure, I am also an investor in SlashID. I think the original plans was for a 15 min presentation and it ended up being 5 mins, with 10 min Q&A. Ross did a good overview of SlashID and I think the feedback from the crowd was great. Key improvements for the pitch would be to address the differences between SlashID and OpenID earlier, and place less emphasis on the revenue from users.

Tagiton.com by Adam Joncas

I really like the initial pitch from Adam, about the goals of Tagiton.com in terms of moving a lot of emal discussions out of email. When they demo’d their product though didn’t find the filtering options or the ability to follow conversations to be too great. I think Gmail probably provides better tools today. Tagiton also seemed to be trying to introduce a different definition of the term “Tag”. I think the key take away would be to really look a how they can improve the email flow without launching new browser windows and creating new terms around their “Tagging” engine.

Garageentrepreneurs.com by Natalie McNeil

Garage Entrepreneurs are planning to develop a social network to let entrepreneurs to connect. I found there assertion about competitive sites like Facebook and Linkedin to be very weak. David Crow has some great feedback when Garage Entrepreneurs suggested charging entrepreneurs for access to the network. I think the key takeway for Garage Entrepreneurs is to focus on how to create some unique value for entrepreneurs ( outside of Facebook, or other social networks ) and a better business model that’s not based on users paying.

SmartPatterns.com

The pitch for the SmartPatterns.com presentation was really weak but I thought they made up for it with your demo and discussion afterwards. The company is in the process of moving their software from a desktop package to an online service. They provide the ability to quickly create custom knitting patterns online. While knitting is probably a fairly small market there are a number of opportunities to grow the business. I think the key take away was to get the service online fast and think about opportunities to work expand beyond just the knitting patterns.

Ghoti Studios by Majid Mirza

I don’t think the Ghoti Studios pitch and presentation were in alignment. I was excited initially about the possibility of more efficiently with graphic designers. It wasn’t clear from the presentation how Ghoti Studios planned to make working with graphic designers easier. There are a number of online tools designed to make working with designers easier, like ConceptShare, Octopz, and Kuzimo. I wasn’t certain where Ghoti Studios planned to fit into this process. I think the key take away would be to define the business plan a bit more and try to include the various feedback/suggestions.

Austin Hill wrapped up the night with a presentation of his experiences and recommendations for startups. I thought some of this experiences were one sided, for example his experience with service businesses. I think a lot of business can self-fund through services . I did really like his line about “Code talks” when dealing with financing. I thought this was a great summary of why startups need to get a working prototype.
Overall it was a good line up of companies and I think the interaction with the crowd was great. Jesse and Simon did a great job of trying to get discussions going. Simon was one the best MC’s I’ve ever seen and he should definitely continue with the MC duties.

StartupCampToronto was last night and it was awesome. A much more business focused crowd than DemoCamp, the crowd was a mix of startups and funding options. It was a No Regrets, which is a more intimate environment to have a drink and watch the presentations.

The presentation line last night was as follows:

Freshbooks

I’ve seen Freshbooks present many times and even tried using their software. I didn’t really liked the direction they chose in their pitch as a more service oriented, high touch, service offering. In using their service it does work quite well and eliminates a number of problems for small businesses. Their Q&A session also focused around how to grow the business while maintaining
the same level of service. I think there are some great opportunities for them to grow their business through partnerships and channel sales.

Defensio

Defensio is a tough situation in that they are competing with a free service from wordpress to prevent comment spam. Their algorithm focuses on eliminating spam and false positives through a more detailed analysis of the blog content. I thought it would have been good to high light the accuracy difference between Akismet ( wordpress solution ) and Defensio. I’m also not clear the market
opportunity for the product with many blogs not reaching the level of comment
spam where Defensio would provide a substantial benefit.

CakeMail

CakeMail provides a white label mail delivery system through an API. As someone who has run a number of mass e-mail campaigns ( always opt-in ) I know frustration with sending emails. There are many services available though in this space and its not clear the opportunity for growth.

Workspace

Workspace provides an online IDE ( integrated development environment ) for developers focused on web projects. I like the idea around this in that I’ve always been frustrated with the time required to setup development
environments. The environment also provides some collaboration tools and I really like to see them do a DemoCamp to see more about their product. As a
business I’m a little concerned about competition with free IDE’s and its ability to support commercial software platforms which are more proprietary.

Investmate

I really like the enthusiasm of the Investmate team and they reminded me of the JobLoft team last year with their energy level. They have an interesting solution to target smaller and less experienced investors with investment information. The big problem I see in this model is the licensing and regulation around providing investment advice. There was a number of suggestions around licensing the technology to existing brokerage firms, which is probably a good plan but might not be inline with the brokerage firms goal of landing big
clients.

A great selection of companies and basement of No Regrets was opened for startups that didn’t make the presentation list to run table top demos. The SlashID team and Ogrant were both among the teams running demos and were swamped with questions most of the
night.

Night also featured an announcement of a new venture capital company started in Toronto called Extreme Venture Partners. I met Amar from EVP a few months and have been impressed with his involvement in FacebookWeekend. I think its great to see a few firm forming in Toronto around the technology sector.

The Startupnorth guys did a great job organizing and I’m sure this is just the first of many events.

Its been awhile since I’ve written about a DemoCamp but DemoCampToronto15 was yesterday afternoon at Hart House in the University of Toronto campus. The University of Toronto did a great job organizing/hosting. DemoCamp was in the grand hall of the Hart House, which is awesome local for presentation and mingling. Unfortunately even with the time shift to late afternoon no University of Toronto demo’s were presented.

The Demo’s consisted of the following:

Jester JS by Pete Forde

Pete presented the Jester JS REST library which provides a lot of the same database abstraction that Ruby offers. I’ve never been a fan of abstracting SQL but that’s probably because I know SQL and I don’t want to invest in learning different abstracted methods. It’s a good demo and you immediately understand what Pete was presenting and trying to describe.

Mobile Currency Exchange Rates by Radu Negulescu

Even after the initial technical difficulties with the demo were solved, it was hard to follow the demo and the mobile device virtual machine was hard to see. Probably the most interesting aspect was the fact that the app runs on mobile but this also made it hard to demo.

OMESH Networks by Liang Song

This demo consisted mainly of power point slides because the actual demo was small wireless devices that search out each other the best available network source. It was a very hard demo to follow and power point slides didn’t really do it justice either. I’m not sure the best method to demo these type of physical/mobile devices, it would be better to use multiple people through out the space and show how the devices find the best network source.

Ogrant.com by Sachin Ghelanil and Saroop Bharwani

I met Sachin a few months ago so I was familiar with the Ogrant concept but I haven’t seen the live site before. I think the concept for Ogrant is great in that it uses social media to help connect people giving grants with qualified students. It also gives students more of a voice in the grant process through a voting system on grant applications. Overall a good demo of the site but it felt too short to cover the site functionality, it would have been good to go through some of the student/applicant videos and content.

ConceptShare by Bernie Aho, Will Pate and Scott Brooks

Conceptshare blew the doors off DemoCamp9 with the ability for multiple people to comment on different design concepts. I’ve actually used the site on different small projects and found much easier to use than their competition. In the last year Conceptshare has developed a great client list and recently added community guru, Will Pate to the team. The demo felt very rushed and I
again thought it was too short. It looks like Conceptshare has improved the process flow a lot and continues to add new features. I’d like to see an API so that I can bring content into the site easier.

The demos were anything but smooth last nite and David Crow talks about the some of the issues. I’m not really sure what to do to improve the demo process. I think it will be very hard to limit people switching PC, specially for non-web demos.

I think one thing that needs to improve is the time allotment, I’d be in favour of a flex system that guarantees a min of 5 min and allows up to 15 mins depending on the
quality of the demo. I understand this will be hard to enforce/judge but there were some demo’s last night that just needed more time and would have been better given more time.

The Ignite Presentations were as follows:

Little Geeks by Andy Walker

I first saw Andy Walker on Call for Help and was impressed
with his understanding of technology. His presentation was a little too evangelistic and I didn’t feel that he talked enough about the Little Geeks program and how people can get involved.

Shortcuts of OCE Funding by John MacRitchie

I recently met John through an OCE breakfast with Albert Lai and I was impressed with his commitment to involve the Torcamp community. His presentation covered the OCE funding process and how start-ups can into the process. His presentation was very smooth and well timed to the slides, I think
he did a good job of getting his message across.

Testing Tools by Michael Bolton

Not the horrible singer, or the Office Space character, Michael Bolton the testing expert focused on the advantages of using humans in the testing process. I think he has a great point in that most people view testing as a process that can be automated and are surprised when the testing doesn’t improve the software. His presentation was good and worked well with the Ignite process. I would have liked to see more questions with him about how to handle enormous software projects, like websites, and how automated tools could be included.

Raising money from Suits by Rick Segal

I really like Rick’s blog and I was keen to see his
presentation. Unfortunately it was largely a re-hash of his Mesh presentation but probably very appropriate for the UofT crowd. He provided a good
outline of the process of building business and raising funds. He did a good job of keeping to the presentation flow but I think it would have been better to have more Q&A with him.

Bruce Mau Design by Greg Judelman

I have no idea how this presentation applied to DemoCamp except that Bruce Mau appears to design interesting and beautiful things. The presentation focused on different aspects of Bruce Mau design, including buildings, store signs and websites. Greg did a good job but I was still struggling to connect Bruce Mau design with the DemoCamp group.

Community Networks by Alvin

Alvin’s presentation was a last minute addition but might have been the most interesting of the Ignite series. Alvin did a study on the Torcamp network and
how different people connect to each other. His presentation suffered from the lack of control that the Ignite system creates, where he couldn’t accelerate or slow down at different points. This created some problems for
his presentation. I would have loved to see more detail on his algorithm and how the formation of groups of 3 worked. Overall an interesting presentation though, just needed more time and control over his presentation.

When I heard about concept of the Ignite presentations I thought I’d hate them. In reality they aren’t too bad, mainly because they are never more than 5 mins. Unfortunately this means they rarely provided any interesting content or communication and often end-up being a 5 min rant. I think the key is having someone that can carry 5 min presentation with no slides, most of the good presentations would probably be fine without slides.