Barcamp Montreal 3 Summary
Barcamp Montreal 3 was quite an experience. Met many interesting people. It was on Saturday, November 3, 2007 from 9AM to 6PM at the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), 1195 Boul. St. Laurent. The program and people descriptions are here: http://www.barcampmontreal.org/wiki/BarCampMontreal3_registrants. There were a lot of presentations; below are some of my notes from just a fraction of them.
Hugh McGuire, datalibre.ca, how data will save the world:
- When is the the last time you used either Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia?
- Britannica vs. Wikipedia: professionals might be better, but amateurs may be more useful
Avery Pennarun, transparent Windows application installation
- Native apps don’t have to suck
- One-step error reporting helped them to discover and fix (an unexpected) application crash within hours of launch
- I loved this concept and implementation; in the age of web-based everything for instant gratifications, the old-school Windows installation workflow can learn a lot from this approach
Evan Prodromou, The Keiki Project — how and why
- Evan + wife Maj started wikitravel.org; beat Lonely Planet to win the Webby award. It was acquired.
- The Keiki project is a wiki for parenting
- The “Keiki” name came from Hawaiian for kid (I think that’s what he said)
- He says that here is a lot of opportunities in the “collaborative open content” (e.g., wiki’s) space
Coradiant (re: Zero Knowledge, Radialpoint), Web site monitoring appliance
- Nice tool!
Scott Annon, Mercury Grove, Web groups
- Web groups collaboration is the way of the future
Austin Hill, angel investor
- Think of the process as dating: getting to know each other and long-term relationship
- Canadian angels usually provides 250k to 750k
- Some angels: National Angel Organization, Maple Leaf Angels, Band of Scoundrels, L’angel due Quebec
- Best structures are convertible debt; 20-30% discount to Series A round
- They look for companies that are able to raise Venture Series A
- Angel money is typically used as a bridge (like getting products launched) to Series A
- Angels are individuals, such as lawyers, accountants, 2nd time entrepreneurs
- Individual angels usually invest 50k to 100k, some 500k
- Angels like to invest in their local geography
- Careful who your investors are; look for “qualified investors”; something about strangers and legal liabilities
- Typically 3-6 months to put together a round in Canada