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The Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation announced funding of up to $500,000 in 8 companies through the Investment Accelerator Fund. I’ve talked about how I think this program is AWESOME for early stage entrepreneurs, it provides access to capital for companies creating technical innovations that need with commercialization and getting to market. The program is not the only path for entrepreneurs but it is a good program that supports Ontario entrepreneurs. As Paul Buchheit at FriendFeed says, “overnight success takes a long time”. Many of these companies have used more than one OCE or IRAP program to get to this level.

The distribution of the companies is interesting. Six companies in Toronto, one company in Kanata, and one company in Hamilton. Spectrum of solutions covering optical crystal chips for a new generation of laser displays (C2C Link Corporation), water leak detection (Echologics), WAN QoS (IPeak Networks), marketing performance (Kneebone), wireless controller for energy reduction (Regen Energy), in-vehicle sensors (Skymeter) and social media monitoring (Sysmos).

 

 

 

Love starting off 2009 with a funding announcement in a down market.

Microsoft released the initial details about the cloud computing platform at PDC in October. The platform is roughly a 3 layered approach. Best I can figure it’s very similar to an existing server configuration. Just like I have operating system and server topology in a data center design, I need to do the same in building a cloud application.

Steve Marx provides an example Hello Cloud application in Learning to Build on Windows Azure. Basically he writes a standard ASP.NET application, and then separately configures the runtime environment. It’s interesting because it allows for a level of abstraction around the platform: compute, storage and management. CloudEnterprise has an interesting comparison of Windows Azure to Amazon AWS, Google App Engine and VMWare. 

Feature Microsoft Amazon Google VMWare Availability Early private CTP Commercial available Public beta Announced Computing Architecture Windows 2008 virtual machines Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to upload XEN images Python and run on shared application server layer Move virtual machines between environments Storage Cloud Storage Services (blog, table & queue) + SQL Services Simple Storage Service (S3) and SimpleDB Datastore APIs - Message Queue Cloud Storage Services Simple Queue Services (SQS) - -

Table adapted from EnterpriseCloud.info

I’m trying to relate it to my experiences building Rails apps and deploying on EC2 and S3 instances. It feels different than the Amazon AWS approach. It feels less like hosting a VM instance on Amazon infrastructure and using their storage and queuing service to scale my architecture. But learning to use EC2, S3 and SQS took some time. I’m thinking it will take additional time and prototyping to learn how to architect and build my web apps to run on Azure (bigger challenge seems to be teaching me C#). It’s different.  

Intro to Windows Azure Services Platform

• Steve Marx: Learn How to Build on Windows Azure
• Manuvir Das: Introducing Windows Azure
• Steve Marx: Windows Azure for Developers
• Dave Campbell: Inside SQL Services
• John Shewchuk and Dennis Pilarinos: Inside .NET Services
• David Treadwell: Inside Live Services

Windows Azure Blogs

• Windows Azure – Windows Azure team official blog.  Yes, nothing there now, but more will come, so subscribe. J
• Cloud Compute Tools Team – The team that built the Visual Studio integration for Windows Azure.  Points to lots of good resources by individual team members.
• David Aiken – Windows Azure Technical Evangelist
• David Lemphers – PM on Windows Azure
• Gus Perez – Developer on Cloud Compute Tools
• Jim Nakashima – PM on Cloud Compute Tools
• Sriram Krishnan – PM on Windows Azure
• Steve Marx – Technical Strategist on Windows Azure

Other Blogs & Resources

• AzureFeeds – Aggregation of a bunch of feeds (including most of the above)
• David Burela – Playing with Silverlight and WCF in Windows Azure services
• Mike Amundsen – Currently doing some work against Windows Azure tables
• Tanzim Saqib – Wrote a couple nice pieces about Windows Azure, but haven’t seen a lot lately on the topic…

Albert Lai sent me a link to his blog post about 60% Facebook Fund Phase 2 investments being Canadian. Each of these “winners” recieved US$250,000 with “no strings attached” (the initial US$25,000 grant as part of the Phase 1 finalist selection; and an additional US$225,000 as part of the user selection. The Canadians in the group include: Kontagent, MouseHunt and Wedding book.

• GroupCard - GroupCard lets users rally their friends to sign the same printable online card to celebrate any occassion. Each friend can add a message, upload photos or audio, and even make a gift contribution. GroupCard started at Stanford, and is already used by thousands of groups worldwide.
• Kontagent - Kontagent is a “leading viral analytics platform for social network application developers. Kontagent analytics provides deep social data visualization and analysis that delivers actionable insights delivered via a hosted, on-demand service.”
• MouseHunt - “MouseHunt, a HitGrab creation, is a game of epic proportions. Players are hunters, hired by the king to trap mice that infest his kingdom. For each mouse caught, users will find a reward, bringing them closer to being the best MouseHunter in the land.”
• Wedding book - “WedSnap created Wedding book, a social network on Facebook for those preparing for a wedding. Brides and grooms meet on Wedding book to get advice, support, and inspiration during their engagement and wedding planning process.”
• Wildfire - “Wildfire enables consumers to discover, share and engage with interactive promotions like contests, sweepstakes and give-aways and enables companies to easily create their own attractive, branded promotions that are automatically integrated with Facebook’s social features.”

Jevon provides coverage on StartupNorth and it will be interesting to see if Facebook will continue to be a viable social media platform or if it is indeed dead. It always helps to have an additional $250k ($313,925 according to the Bank of Canada daily rate on December 10, 2008).

On my way to the Velocity Project Exhibition in Waterloo, I stopped at the local Chapters mostly because it’s the only Starbucks I know enroute to the University of Waterloo (turns out there’s one at King & University too). There were a number of business books that caught my attention as possible reads when travelling this holiday season.

Anybody read or planning on reading any of these?

Ahead Of The Curve - Two Years at Harvard Business School by Philip Delves Broughton Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means by George Soros Remix Making Art And Commerce Thrive In the Hybrid Economy by Lawrence Lessig The Real Price of Everything: Rediscovering the Six Classics of Economics edited by Michael Lewis   Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era by Mary Jo Foley Reality Check - The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging and Outmarketing Your Competition by Guy Kawasaki How To Be A Business Superhero by Sean Wise Outliers: The Story of Success  by Malcolm Gladwell Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom

GigaOM has a great story about "The Growing Ex-Amazon Club and Why It’s a Good Thing”. This is essentially an extension of the Fairchildren model for seeding companies and talent. Jevon has placed MaRS in the deadpool. Austin, Joey and I have wondered about the role of early employees from successful companies at leaving to start, build and grow new startups.

It leaves me to question where are the RIM alumni? Where are the startups being started by ex-RIM employees?

You can find startups with founders from PixStream or Workbrain. You can see startups with DNA from Zero Knowledge Systems. The only RIM alumni founded startup I can find is Metranome.

Founders Wanted

I hadn’t realized how strong the motto at Reactivity was in our recruiting. We were looking for founders. John wrote about Reactivity’s beginnings back in 2004. I was lucky enough to join Reactivity as an early employee. I think I was employee number 12 and the third employee of Reactivity Austin (after Bryan Rollins and Andrew Willis). Reactivity was trying to build

A metastartup (this is a temporary name only–trying to think of a better one) is a company who’s mission is to foster a community of talented engineers and business people, with the goal of spinning off startup companies from that community, as well as to build a loosely coupled network of those companies.

It was a kieritsu, but not of businesses but of the individuals that build businesses. In recruiting new talent, whether on the design, business, marketing or engineering sides of the house, was to find founders. People that you wanted to leave Reactivity to start a new company. It meant that the goal was to develop every hire into a potential founder. You can see the alumni network of Reactivity designers, engineers and entrepreneurs around the valley. John Lilly is the CEO of the Mozilla Corporation. Mike Schroepfer is the director of engineering at Facebook. Graham Miller is the CEO of Marketcetera. Lynn Pausic runs Expero Inc. Ellen Beldner is the UX Designer for YouTube. Lynn Gabbay is the founder at Novod. Andrew Nash is a Senior Director at PayPal. Bryan Rollins was VP of Product Management at MessageOne before the Dell acquisition. The Reactivity alumni can be seen around Silicon Valley, Boston and New York.

A Magical Legacy – How these guys engineered our world

Fourteen years ago, a company called General Magic promised a handheld device that would make calls, send email, play music, and do almost everything else that makes today’s iPhone so drool-worthy. “Bill and Andy’s Excellent Adventure II” (April 1994) was about the two Macintosh vets – Atkinson and Herzfeld – leading the project. Unfortunately, they were far too early. General Magic sank in 2002. But its legacy lives on, in part because the effort was a formative experience for a team of brillant young engineers. Pierre Omidyar went on to start eBay. Tony Fadell heads Apple’s iPod hardware group. Kevin Lynch cooked up Flash. And Andy Rubin created the Sidekick and Google’s Android mobile platform. Not too shabby. As for Bill and Andy, they are still adventuring excellently: Atkinson works with the artificial intelligence startup Numenta, and Hertzfeld codes for Google. – Steven Levy, Wired 16.12 December 2008

Where are all the startups founded by RIM alumni?

The November 24, 2008 issue of Fortune has an article about the Ten New Gurus You Should Know.

1. BJ Fogg, Founder and Director, Persuasive Technology Lab, Stanford University
2. Patrick Lencioni, Founder, The Table Group
3. Rakesh Khurana, Professor, Harvard Business School
4. Valerie Casey, Leader, Digital Experiences Practice, IDEO
5. Don Sull, Professor, London Business School
6. Joel Podolny, Former dean, Yale School of Management/VP, Apple University
7. Nouriel Roubini, Professor, NYU Stern School of Business
8. Janine Benyus, Co-founder, Biomimicry Guild and Institute
9. Dan Ariely, Professor, Duke University
10. Niko Canner, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Katzenback Partners

Great list of leading thinkers about the changing world of business. They have also written a number of books that are worth spending a couple of flights or evenings reading. These are more inspirational reads than practical hands on advice for entrepreneurs. But they can begin to help entrepreneurs understand the literature that senior executives at companies are reading and how to frame their products and offerings.

Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature Bailouts or Bail-Ins?: Responding to Financial Crises in Emerging Economies

The latest set of announcements at PDC have focused on improving the end user and developer user experiences. Windows 7 is a continued evolution of the desktop user experience. Internet Explorer 8 is a web standards compliant browser.

There is a gaping hole in the browser on Windows Mobile. 

Why does a browser on mobile matter? Look at the Rogers market share this past quarter as a result of the iPhone. Is it phone bling? Definitely. But it is also a device that has a desktop class web browser.

Skyfire announced their open beta today. It boasts an impressive set of features including:

• New Super Bar that combines search and URL entry into one bar
• Skyfire can now be set as the default browser
• New search bar on the Homescreen
• New start page redesign
• Faster start-up and page loading times
• Share a link via SMS
• Invite friends to download Skyfire via SMS
• Save an image
• Download files

And the best part is that Skyfire also supports Flash video on Windows Mobile. The web is the primary distribution channel for content, wether your on a mobile phone, a custom application or dedicated device. The richness of the experience can be improved (see LukeW’s summary of Mix07 Beyond the Browser). And it’s great to see a desktop class browsing experience come to Windows Mobile.

Mark Relph has been talking about Choice and Flexibility (part 2) for customers. Today with the announcement of Windows Azure you can start to see how Microsoft is trying to offer the rich user experience choices and the choice of infrastructure, on premises or in the cloud, for developers, IT Pros and ultimately consumers.

What you get is the opportunity to figure out what is right for you, your developers, your organization, your customers and your applications. The goal is to provide designers and developers a common set of Services that can be mixed an matched. If your a startup, you can decide to keep your application, infrastructure and services in the cloud leveraging the ability to instantly scale your applications and manage your costs. If you are an existing company with a large IT investment, you can leverage your existing corporate infrastructure layering in the pieces that allow you to grow or reduce your costs through the economies of scale offered by the cloud services.

You can start see the applications and tools that Microsoft has been shipping in context. Internet Explorer 8 is a tool for accessing software in the cloud. Silverlight 2 is a way for designers and developers to create compelling rich Internet applications. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a powerful environment for desktop software development. As developers you get a shared set of tools (Web Standards, Javascript, JQuery, .NET, XAML, C#, VisualStudio 2008) that can be used to build applications and services.

 

Developers can begin to build solutions that fit the needs of their audience. It is about being able to build the right solution for your company, your audience, and your market using the appropriate tools and technologies. ProductWiki is building a web service for open product reviews. Me.dium is building a shared social browsing experience. ThoughtFarmer is enterprise collaboration tool that lives behind the firewall. Xobni is mail analytics and improved communications integrated in Outlook.

It’s about choice. The choice of device. The choice of user experience. The choice that fits your business and your customers. It’s about the flexibility of the platform to grow and evolve as you do.

Getting ready to head to LA for Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (which begs the question as a non-professional developer what am I doing at PDC?). I’m preparing for a week of some in depth Microsoft experiences and announcements. Next to the coffee or the bourbon, the keynotes are the best part of a conference. I’m expecting big things from Ozzie, Scott Guthrie, Steven Sinofsky, and Don Box.

I love the layout of the Timeline application. It’s a great way to access details about each session and build a personal schedule. A higher resolution monitor (I’m running at 1280 x 800) would have meant a little less scrolling, but generally a good experience. Here are some of the sessions out side of the keynotes I’m looking forward to.

• The Future of C# presented by Anders Hejlsberg
• A Lap around "Oslo" presented by Douglas Purdy, Vijaye Raji
• Windows 7: Design Principles for Windows 7 presented by Samuel Moreau
• Oomph: A Microformat Toolkit presented by Karsten Januszewski
• Office Business Applications: Enhanced Deployment presented by Saurabh Bhatia, Andrew Whitechapel
• Developing for Microsoft Surface presented by Brad Carpenter, Robert Levy

It’s great to see sessions by the Mono team. Having spent a couple of days hanging out with Geoff Norton at FSOSS in Toronto.  I am blown away by the work that is going on by the Novell team and the Silverlight team to build a new cross-browser, cross-platform runtime. They are building some great tools.

This will be my first deeply Microsoft conference. Yes, I’ve attended the internal events, but I’m really interested in observing and participating with the folks that build Windows applications, applications for the web on the Microsoft platform and learning more about their experiences.

The Student Volunteer program is an opportunity for students to associate with entrepreneurs, venture capitalist, angel investors, and others at Canada’s premiere conference for entrepreneurs and startups.

 

Who is eligible?

Full-time students from any discipline, who will be 18 years old or older on Nov 13, 2008 (if you’re not 18 and interested, drop me a note and we’ll see what we can do).

What is required?

You must commit to 1 day (approximately 10 hours) of volunteer work. You will provide tasks to that help the conference run smoothly including:

• assisting with registration
• providing information about the conference to attendeees
• monitoring sessions
• wrangling speakers
• directing to events and hotels

What you get?

In exchange for volunteering, you get a complimentary full conference registration. You get to attend the parties. Mingle with the participants and the speakers. You get to attend and be apart of the StartupEmpire community.

When will you announce the students?

We will announce the students on November 6, 2008.

How do I apply?

Fill out the form.

PDC is less than a week away, and it appears that the Mix team is busy announcing plans for Mix09 in Vegas.

Agenda & Speakers

There is a great list of the usual suspects and the some new faces including:

• Lou Carbone (check out Lou’s previous Mix sessions)
• Dan Roam, Digital Roam
• Luke Wrobleski, Yahoo, Inc.
• Molly Holzschlag, molly.com
• Nate Koechley, Yahoo YUI

Restyle & 10k Smart Coding Challenge

Do you hate the style of the Mix site? Change it. Use your own CSS and images to ReStyle the Mix homepage. This is a great opportunity for local web designers to create a new experience. 

Inspire the world with just 10k of code.  It reminds me of Stuart Butterfield’s 5k competition. It’s a great chance to win a conference pass, hotel accommodations and a gift card (money) for time in your Vegas.

What could you create for the Web if you only had 10 kilobytes of code? It’s time to exercise your minimalist creativity and get back to basics – back to optimizing every little byte like your life depended on it.

 

Both of these challenges have the same prize:

One winner will receive a pass to MIX09, hotel accommodations and a Visa gift card. Other great prizes are to be announced. Official entry requirements, procedures, rules and restrictions coming in November.

What: Mix09 When: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 (all day) Where: The Venetian Hotel Las Vegas, NV   USA

Did you catch it on StartupNorth? We’re giving away 10 free demo pods to startups.

What is a DemoPod?

A DemoPod is a space that includes dedicated table at StartupEmpire to allow you to show your software. To meet and greet attendees. To generally get the audience excited about what you are building.

It’s somewhere between a traditional booth and a launch pad. As and early-stage startup you probably haven’t invested in a ridiculous booth, which is ok. Bring a laptop or two. Bring a founder or two. Be prepared to talk about what you are doing, why you made the decision you’ have, and what you need next to succeed.

The DemoPods have been used at StartupCamp in Toronto and Montreal.

How do I get a DemoPod?

Fill out an application form, we’ll be making decisions the week before StartupEmpire. That’s November 6 in case you’re counting.

With everyone providing their deadpool lists for Web 2.0 startups and imminent demise of startups it is more critical than ever that start-ups prepare to actually build businesses.You might think the end of the world is upon the startups.

• Bubble-Making Venture Capitalists Start Popping Them
• RIP Twitter
• What’s in the deadpool? 

The Sequoia Capital presentation to their portfolio about the effect of the downturn on startups, available capital, product development, shows a variety of potential impacts on startups and offers some strategies to mitigate the risks presented by the down turn. The goal is to relearn how to build successful early-stage high potential growth businesses. This includes learning how to:

• Perform situation analysis
• Adapt quickly
• Make cuts
• Become cash flow positive as soon as possible
• Spend every dollar as if it were your last

This isn’t rocket science. I love the focus on the financial side of the equation. Good business is about delivering return on investment to it’s shareholders. This has often been ignored by many entrepreneurs in the pursuit of attention. It’s about figuring out how to go from napkin to asking for the money. It’s starts with understanding the challenges that exist in a market place and offering a solution. Mark Evan’s has a great post, Buckle Down but Keep Innovating, on startups need to focus on business fundamentals and keep on innovating. He even provides example startups that have found an emerging business space. Outside of a few attention focused startups, I love that the list includes startups that are focused on solving problems that many marketing departments and digital agencies are experience in tracking conversations (Federated Media has unveiled social media measurement tools).

• Filtrbox
• Addictomatic
• Social Mention
• ReportingOn
• PressFlip

Business models might seem like a very difficult proposition. Peter Frisella has 2 great posts on the TechCapital blog about selecting a business model (Part 1 & Part 2). Much of the challenge with business models in the Web 2.0 economy is that it is not clear how they generate revenue. 

• Models that intrinsically generate revenue

  • For these models it is clear how you generate revenue. For example, it is obvious that a manufacturer can make money by creating and selling an asset and as such this is the suggested model for a manufacturer.
• Models that do not intrinsically generate revenue
  • For these models, revenue generation is not as straightforward. Instead a variety of “monetization” techniques must be employed in order to generate revenue from the traffic or value they create.

It’s about getting back to basics. At StartupEmpire, Rick Segal will be joining us to help run StartupSchool where attendees will see an idea go from napkin all the way through to funding ready startup.  The goal is to have entrepreneurs in each session “who have real world, hard knocks experience that are signed up to share their stories, lessons and tools”.

Tim O’Reilly gets it.

Computer-book publishing magnate Tim O’Reilly is urging young geeks to stop making software that lets you throw sheep at your friends on Facebook or drink beer on your iPhone and to instead start making a difference in the world. He is daring them, in the words of James Collins and Jerry Porras, authors of the business classic "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies," to take on "big, hairy, audacious goals." – Jessica Guynn, LA Times Blogs

It is time for developers and entrepreneurs to stop building frivolous, irrelevant applications. It is time to build enduring business value. The initial conversations about StartupEmpire focused on x things:

1. Inspirational Entrepreneurs – We have the privilege of attending conferences in the US and around the world. We are lucky enough to have seen entrepreneurs and founders that left us feeling inspired. Not everyone is able to attend conferences across the continent, we wanted to bring these world-class founders and entrepreneurs to Toronto.
2. Focused on Canadian Details – Often the content is focused on a local environment and ecosystem, and doesn’t take into consideration the unique environment in Canada. We wanted a conference that focused on the legal, funding, and government opportunities that are available to startups in Canada.
3. Hands-on with Real-World Takeaways – Every time we’ve worked on a startup, there have been practical tools and advice that we’ve each needed to help get to the next step of development. We’re hoping to provide everyone with practical takeaways including: sample term sheets, marketing plans, cashflow statements, shareholder agreements, product roadmaps, accounting ledgers, etc.

Things are getting ugly. But it is a great time to be building a company.

Nat Torkington has a great post, Effect of Depression on Technology, on the Radar Blog. The last recession or downturn or whatever friendly euphemism you’d like to use, gave us 37signals, Flickr, del.icio.us and others. The tightening financial belts will leave many developers out of a job. But this is really about managing costs, building solutions that deliver value to real customers. Downturns are great at getting rid of the fluff. Valuations tend to freefall during these times, but sustainable companies tend to continue or thrive. The hope is that you’ve raised enough money to survive the credit crunch and customer liquidity issues.

Nat’s observations include the effects as developers and entrepreneurs that we’re likely to see, including:

1. Good for innovation
2. Great for free and open source
3. Open source and cloud computing services will benefit from the tight financial situation
4. Most consumer apps will be a harder sell
5. People will have more time than money

It is interesting that Nat doesn’t discuss the impact that this will have on the advertising marketplace. Looking at the latest set of IAB numbers, Google’s “grip on search advertising is tightening”. But it doesn’t talk about the viability of targeted advertising and lead generation as a potential revenue model for startups. I think that Don Dodge discussed how internet advertising works and how a startup built on target advertising might make money. Unlike the last downturn, the online channel has become tightly integrated into businesses. Coupled with a strong tie to performance metrics, it’s likely that online advertising will “consolidate gains over other media during the economic decline”. Advertisers are looking to online and mobile experiences as a way to “boost brand and market share when money is tight”. Startups need to understand the economics and models of the targeted advertising business, this may include deep partnering with advertising networks like Federated Media.

Nat has nailed the role that cloud computing and software+services will play going forward. Why bother with captial expenditure on new servers, when Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others either have or are about to have their servers in cloud that you can rent. Need proof that organizations, both big and small, can benefit from using services in the cloud. Check out the NY Times conversion of their archive and the creation of TimesMachine.

By leveraging the power of AWS and Hadoop, we were able to utilize hundreds of machines concurrently and process all the data in less than 36 hours.

Thirty six hours. No new capital expenditure. Just operational expenditure. For the Times, it seems like a no-brainer to get more content and hopefully more impressions to build their brand. You can see the NY Times use digital channels: iPhone application; the TimesReader application, they are just ways to leverage the existing content to build richer, deeper brand experiences and impressions for readers.

Thinking about starting a company? Build a StartupEmpire, November 13-14, 2008 at the Diesel Playhouse in Toronto.

Mark and the Community Team at Microsoft Canada have been working hard on TechDays.This is the first attempt to move beyond a marketing event. Though you might not get that from the web site. It is a shift from Microsoft speakers standing on the stage with new product announcements and walkthroughs to sharing the stage with non-Microsoft employees showing examples of solutions they’ve built to solve problems (in big companies, small companies, as individuals, etc.).

What is TechDays?

TechDays is a career-development event for developers, IT professionals and IT managers with a focus on the Microsoft platform.

It’s hard out here…

This event is a big change for Microsoft. It represents a shift from marketing and product launch events to a focus on software development and IT as a profession. The goal is to focus on career development of professional and practical developers. To give real-world developers an opportunity to share their stories and experiences with attendees. To provide a public forum to celebrate the people making a difference to their companies, to their communities and to people.

The biggest change is that the content is not going to be Microsoft presenters doing Microsoft demos and product launches. It’s probably not obvious from looking at the speakers page, but 90% of the content is being delivered by non-Microsoft employees. The first seven people listed on the Speakers page are all Microsoft Canada employees. 

Once you scroll past the usual suspects, you’ll find a group of Microsoft friendly people from other companies. Consultancies. Big corporations. Smaller companies. Client side. It includes MVPs like Colin Bowern, Mark Arteaga, Laurent Duveau, and Barry Gervin. And others like Robert Burke and Ken Cox. Sure lots of these speakers are MVPs, it means that they are “exceptional technical community leaders”. They are experts. They write books. They blog. They consult. They build things in the real world.

Baby steps

I think it is courageous of the team to take a chance, they are having to battle internal forces that are resistant to change. They are making a bet that developers and IT professionals in Canada on the Microsoft stack want something more than canned demos and pitches. The bet is that professional development involves hearing from others in the community. About sharing their stories of the trials, tribulations and learnings to make help make others better developers. Yes, it’s about the Microsoft developers.

It is a step in the right direction. I hope that people will support the changes, because it will make the next set of changes easier to get support for.

If you are a Microsoft developer, IT professional or IT manager, then TechDays is attempting to bring the best of Canadian Microsoft community to you in 7 different locations including Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Halifax and Winnipeg. Check out the Mark Relph’s Letter to your Manager if you need help generating support.

I am not sure how I missed this, Amazon EC2 to support Microsoft Windows Server, this looks like it is something else that attendees at PDC can expect.

The 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows Server will be available and will be able to use all existing EC2 features such as Elastic IP Addresses, Availability Zones, and the Elastic Block Store. You’ll be able to call any of the other Amazon Web Services from your application. You will, for example, be able to use the Amazon Simple Queue Service to glue cross-platform applications together.

Existing EC2 tools will be able to launch Windows-powered EC2 instances. Once launched, you can use the Windows Remote Desktop or the rdesktop tool to access your instances.

I fully expect to see this new level of flexibility used to create complex, highly scalable, heterogeneous EC2 applications using a mix of Linux, Solaris, and Windows instances, all on a pay-as-you-go basis.

I’ve been holding off on a Windows host mostly because I didn’t feel like any of the hosts offered me the flexibility of EC2, Joyent Accelerator, MediaTemple GS, Mosso, or others. Because I want to run emerging technologies on my system, it makes it really hard to just purchase a shared hosting account. And I’m not the guy that wants to host a Windows Server in his basement. I like having my Software+Services in the cloud (hosting is something that I’ve outsourced since the 90s, why change that opinion now).

I wonder if the pre-beta bits of Windows 7 will run on EC2?

Jevon beat me to the punch. We have added a great group of speakers to the StartupEmpire program including:

Don Dodge – Don is a Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team and was recently a panelist at the TechCrunch50 conference (check out his summary of TC50 launches: investor services & tools; social networks & collaboration; advertising & commerce; enterprise software). Don calls Microsoft “the biggest start-up in the world” and his job is to work with VC’s and start-ups to help them build great companies

Hugh MacLeod – Hugh is an inspiration to many of us building companies and brands with limited resources. His work with English Cut and Stormhoek are some of the earliest and best examples of using social media to connect and engage people. To build community and evangelists as part of the marketing strategies laid out. And he draws cartoons.

David Cohen – David is the founder and CEO of TechStars in Boulder, Colorado. TechStars is one of the most successful seed stage funds in the world. Don Dodge provided his summary of the TechStars 2008 Demo Day.

The Rest of the Schedule

We are working diligently to finalize a schedule for StartupEmpire. There have been a lot of great speaker submissions, and it has been making more work for me. We really want to provide something that you will find valuable. The feedback has been that we need to have sessions that deliver hands-on, actionable advice with takeaways. We are working to build a program that is more than just people talking. We’re hoping that after each session that entrepreneurs will have tangible bits, e.g., cashflow statements, business plan, sample pitch decks, draft legal agreements, etc. We’re working on finding ways that entrepreneurs can be involved in the program including demonstration opportunities; pitch feedback sessions; and more. If you think we’re missing something, drop me a note. I’m happy to see what we can do to find an appropriate speaker to fill any gaps.

You still have a chance to submit your proposal in the next few days, and we will still take a look for anything that we think we need to get on the program.

Sponsors

Thanks for all your support, we are working hard to create something you will find valuable. We have received a lot of support from our lead sponsors Microsoft and High Road Communications. Mark Relph puts up with me at Microsoft and has been incredibly supportive of the efforts to engage start-ups in Toronto. Martin Hofmann didn’t hesitate when I approached him for help. We’ve had some fantastic open conversations about social media and start-ups for the past 3 years.

Don’t forget to get your ticket before the early bird deadline, or ASAP before we sell out. The venue is small and we can’t really add more seats.

Allan Isfan of Favequest has taken up the challenge of connecting “the people that start companies, and the people that fund them” in Ottawa. This is the fourth regional venue. We’ve hosted events in Montreal and Toronto. The Communitech team is hosting a Founders & Funders in Waterloo on October 9, 2008. Ottawa is the next to pick up the torch.

Founders & Funders is a social event. It was conceived by the awesome Austin Hill and the preeminent Patrick Lauzon in Montreal. The goal was to provide a social setting to help bring the people that start companies and the people that fund them together. This is not a pitch event. It is an opportunity to find out who is doing and funding what in your region.

What is Founders & Funders?

Founders & Funders is a social event aimed bringing together the people that start the next big successful company with the people that fund these companies in their earliest stages. The event is social. It is not a pitch fest. It is not a DemoCamp. It is an opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs and funders in your local community. The goal is to help facilitate opportunities for people to meet, share and build relationships that will grow into the NEXT BIG THING.

Founders and Funders is dedicated:

• to helping Canadian entrepreneurs to meet each other;
• meet potential funders: angel, VC or other money sources;
• to have fun;
• and see how we can help each other create the NEXT BIG successful company.

How do I get involved?

The event is "by invitation only’ and is limited in terms of availability. Please send Allan Isfan allan.isfan@favequest.com a note and let him know why you should participate. You will be contacted no later than October 20 with a confirmation, payment details and location.

What: Founders & Funders - Ottawa
Cost: $100 The event is "by invitation only’ and is limited in terms of availability. Please send Allan Isfan allan.isfan@favequest.com a note and let him know why you should participate. You will be contacted no later than October 20 with a confirmation, payment details and location. When: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM Where: Ottawa, ON   Canada

HomeZilla launced today. HomeZilla is a research assistant for researching and buying a home. It is not a real estate site like Realtor.ca or ZooCasa which are focused on listing houses for sale (read more about Realtor.ca and ZooCasa on BlogTO). HomeZilla is similar but very different, it tries to help home buyers connect with the 95% non-commercial information about their potential neighbourhood including information about:

• 99% of all public Canadian schools
• Over 1000 fire stations across Canada
• Demographics like average age, median income, etc
• Rail transit in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal
• Over 800 liquor stores from across Canada

The services is aimed at helping potential home buyers answer questions such as:

• Where is the closest school, subway, bakery, dog park, etc.?
• What is the average price for homes in this area?
• How much money do people in this neighbourhood make?

It will be interesting to see if Sandy and the team can develop a business model that does not primarily rely on impressions to drive revenue (read Don Dodge’s post on advertising business models). CPM models require a huge number of visitors to drive revenue. There’s a business in market segmentation and targeted advertising. Figuring out a series of business development partnerships with other complimentary local players (ZooCasa, BlogTO, OurFaves, PlanetEye, among others) is a good starting point to help drive some traffic and driving up targeted advertising revenue. Where I could see a very strong partnership is an integration with the ranking and local reputation system being built by GigPark.