Disqus - Latest Comments for David Crow

Re: DemoCamp Toronto # 21

David Crow — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:05:03 -0000

Ben,

We're trying to announce the presentations 2 weeks prior to the event. So the "deadline" is July 14.

Re: DemoCamp Toronto 20

David Crow — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:37:44 -0000

@Tim Smith

1. Slides and talk tracks are independent. There is nothing in the rules that says your story must be told only using words or concepts on your slides. The slides are there to support the story you are telling.

2. Your opinion is duly noted.

3. You are correct, I inferred from your "anything less than a minute per slide" and the existing rule of 15-20 slides rule tyou were suggesting a 15-20 minute presentation. My apologies.

Re: ecobee – Int/Snr Java Developer & Server Administrator

David Crow — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:10:00 -0000

@arun, No idea, the blog posting is only about 60 days old. Which suggests that it might still be available, you might think about pining the company.

Re: Goal: Do great things…

David Crow — Thu, 20 Nov 2003 15:24:56 -0000

My first work term was at the University of Waterloo Conference Center. It was a great summer, and totally not related to my career. But a great experience.

Re: There is no such thing as information design

David Crow — Mon, 08 Mar 2004 09:46:39 -0000

Shannon's theory actually allows for the concept of "information design". A communication system contains: 1) an information source; 2) a transmitter; 3) a channel; 4) the receiver; & 5) the destination. The theory then allows us to look at the both the message (signal) and the noise in a system.

The "information design" then becomes understanding the possible sources of "noise" and building your message to sustain.

I think you are right, Raskin is referring to "data" and not information. Data is what is transferred, it is the content of the message that is most important. Essentially, I can design a message that is easier to transmit and compress, or richer to ensure that given the sources of noise it is easier to understand. This is less of an issue in a bandwidth rich medium like vision. Where it is of greater concern is a bandwidth constrained medium like hearing where signals are processed (mostly) serially.

Jakub is correct, I can design the information, i.e., the message, but what is much harder is to guarrantee that it will be received and interpretted correctly.

Re: Project Management Tools

David Crow — Tue, 10 Feb 2004 10:07:27 -0000

I started using Basecamp this week. It is simply elegant. The 37signals crew should be commended. My prediction is that Basecamp will win a large number of awards. We are using it for 1 small project, and after a 90 day trial (or so), I will see about purchasing the service and rolling it out to the rest of my department.

Re: Web2Expo

David Crow — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:00:02 -0000

Hey Colin,

I think I just signed away something to O'Reilly earlier today. Jay and I will definitely look into whether or not we can post the slides after.

We may reprise the talk at a future DemoCamp

Re: mDialogue in QuickTime Guide

David Crow — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:35:09 -0000

It's all about emerging technologies, emergent signals and latent behaviours. The distribution network for me is because I'd like to investigate those technologies more, nothing to do with mDialogue per say.

Re: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

David Crow — Tue, 15 May 2007 06:52:41 -0000

The patent announcement hadn't happened when I made my decision. It has brought me back to the deep internal fight about good and evil. The fight about open and closed. I don't think that Microsoft is evil. I think they are unabashed about making money. Their decisions are often disagreeable, but there is a lot of good that can come from them. This is the first time I've had to think about my employer and their local, national and international track record with respect to human rights and intellectual property. Ultimately, my goals are altruistic. And as walkah has told me, 'we'll have to wait and see, only time will tell'.

Re: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

David Crow — Tue, 15 May 2007 13:32:28 -0000

Michael (not Bodalski), just what I always wanted, a non job offer from an anonymous web commenter.

And the comparison to the KKK, it's nice to see a variant of Godwin's Law being used. Wonderful.

Re: It begins…

David Crow — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 01:31:47 -0000

John,

It's a corporate 15' MBP running 10.4.x and Vista in BootCamp. I gave it a go in Parallels, and the performance is just not quite what I'd like. But in BootCamp, it's smokin' fast.

There are a lot of IT related things to the network configuration that I love. The roaming profiles is fantastic, mostly because I am running a minimum of 2 machines.

I really prefer Quartz.

Re: Energizing IT

David Crow — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 09:25:34 -0000

Thanks Colin.

I hope that you get involved. I find our conversations some of the best learnings for me. I'd love find a venue to get you to show the great stuff you've been working on, I am always blown away by the OfficialCOMMUNITY stuff.

Re: Canadians having an an impact on design

David Crow — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:48:36 -0000

Joe's correct, my English is horrible. I've changed the title of the post.

Thanks Joe!

Re: Reconsidering the command line

David Crow — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 11:15:45 -0000

Joseph Becher provides the Google advanced search that contains the search box command language summarized.

Re: Trendwatching

David Crow — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 02:27:23 -0000

LOL,

'I didn't sell out, Son, I bought in. Keep that in mind.' & Christopher MacDonald as the Dad in SLC Punk

Re: Trendwatching

David Crow — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:18:14 -0000

Joe,

All of your statements are correct. I am a Macintosh user. I now work for Microsoft. I am a former employee of a university. And I support charging for research.

I'm not suggesting that all research should be conducted under the guises of selling PowerPoint slides and reports for $500. There is a lot of interesting commercial research like the Adaptive Path's reports or NN/g reports. There is a lot of research like the work at MSR that costs more than $500.

Re: MS Surface in Toronto

David Crow — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 10:23:17 -0000

It’s a really big tablet that doesn’t move is shaped like a table and allows you to use both hands.

Re: Radiant Core is the best for the TTC

David Crow — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:52:32 -0000

I'm sure that Jay and the Radiant Core crew would love to win the work. I'm more impressed with your comments and evaluation. Honestly, Joe's endorsement is high praise. His work continues to amaze me, and it disappoints me very few people have taken the chance to hire you (myself included).

Re: Make a list, check it twice

David Crow — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:36:39 -0000

My reading list is the ones I've already knocked off. However, I'm not quite done <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2F<a href="http://www.amazon.ca%2FFounders-Work-Stories-Startups-Ea...target="_blank">Founders" target="_blank">www.amazon.ca%2FFounders-Work-Stories-Startups-Ea...target="_blank">Founders at Work . I've spent a lot of time on airplanes this year.

Re: Is money the root of our problems?

David Crow — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 12:58:52 -0000

Greg,

I think that the Entrepreneurship 101 is a great program but it's a lengthy one, i.e., starting in November ending in May. I was thinking about something more easily digestible. Maybe this is the one piece that is missing from DemoCampToronto. a short presentation that mirrors the Entrepreneurship 101 schedule.

<ul>

<li>Finding an idea</li>

<li>Finding a business model</li>

<li>Finding a market</li>

<li>Bootstrapping</li>

<li>Building and hiring a team</li>

<li>How to market a product/service?</li>

<li>Legal issues</li>

<li>Pitchfest</li>

</ul>

At "DemoCampToronto2":http://barcamp.org/DemoCampToronto2 we had Wayne Bradley from Development Associates present about the "SR&ED":<a href="http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/taxcredit/sred/menu-e.ht...tax" target="_blank">http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/taxcredit/sred/menu-e.ht...tax credit. The presentation was too long, but it's an interesting opportunity for Canadian startups to benefit from government programs. It's very similar to the great Ignite presentation about OCE's Investment Accelerator Fund.

Re: ExperienceTech!2008

David Crow — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:31:40 -0000

Peter,

I'm always impressed with the efforts of OCRI and the sour grapes of a few members of the Ottawa community. OCRI appears on the surface to do some very positive things for Ottawa and region entrepreneurs. Along with Communitech in the Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge area, it is something other regions could benefit from.

Regarding mega-services. Ugh, I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I think these efforts are futile wastes of time and money. It's only something that could come out of a government town like Ottawa.

You should read:

<ul>

<li>* Annalee Saxenian's The New Argonauts</li>

<li>* Richard Florida's Who's your city</li>

</ul>

I think you're very wrong and this mega-regional approach is SUPER FLAWED!

Re: Exchanging Innovations Canadian-style

David Crow — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:54:55 -0000

Ali,

I never suggested there weren't issues. But if you don't think there is value the opportunity for $495 then my suggestion is that you stay home.

Let's start with the basic premise of the revenue model of event facilities. They often make their money on A/V and food surcharges. So you get the space for free but you're required to pay a per attendee price for food. Typically prices are all per attendee: $15/breakfast; $12/break; $20-25/lunch; $35-50/dinner (maybe more). If you assume there are 2 breaks + 2 meals * 2 days, you're at ~$100/person just for breaks. You then realize that there are AV costs and WiFi is apparently one of the more expensive line items, with venues charging $3,000-$10,000 for WiFi (some venues charge a per attendee of $25/connection).

While these costs don't total the $500, it starts to set the tone. There are costs f running world class conferences. Just ask the Mesh Conference guys.

It should also set the tone about the quality of the startups. You're payng for access to VCs. And you can agree of disagree with this model, it works for the VC folks. There are other events and happenings that get you access. But I don't think that we should assume that all business models need to change. Fuck he record companies are loosing market share but they're still billion dollar businesses.

So the fucking absurdity that everything needs to be free. Information wants to be both free and expensive. For an interesting summary read Chris Anderson. We all hope that you build a successful business. We shouldn't ridicule VCs for wanting a little bit of a filter. It costs nothing to submit your company. I'm assuming that if accepted that it will cost you nothing. So the fees are for the lookie loos. Where I get upset is with infomediaries that charge for their network. The CIX folks are bringing content. They are forging new connections. And they don't want the lame duck, me too, copycat, not technology, no revenue, no market, no audience Web 2.0 bullshit that we accept in Toronto (Southern Ontario) as 'startups'. Two assholes in their garage does not make a startup. You actually need to have a product that solves a problem that people assign a value to, or a content play that attracts the attention of a lot of people.

Re: Exchanging Innovations Canadian-style

David Crow — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:22:28 -0000

We don't blame the Demo or the Under the Radar or TechCrunch40 in their efforts to do very similar events.

I can't help but reiterate: 2 people in a garage does NOT equal a startup! Get over it! There are 3 types of business:

<ul>

<li>* Bad ones</li>

<li>* Lifestyle Businesses</li>

<li>* Venture Fundable Businesses</li>

</ul>

There's nothing wrong with running a lifestyle business. But don't expect to get the respect or attention of VCs. These are funded by people like BDC and SBA. Read about why VCs need Grand Slams. It's not about being nice. It's about strategies that return payouts to your limited partners.

CIX is trying to appeal to the venture side guys. There are events like Founders Lunch hosted by John & Gosia Green from LearnHub where founders can learn from each other. There are lower cost events like Founders & Funders that cost attendees $75 for what amounted to a $150 meal. There are events like StartupCampToronto hosted by Jevon and Jonas of StartupNorth. It's an ecosystem. Healthy ecosystems are diverse. They require a variety of events appealing to a variety of people.

The great thing about Toronto is that we have an ecosystem. Finally!

How can you be sure that this is an event that you should spend your $500 on? I don't know. Look at the people involved. Look at the sessions. Look at the networking opportunities. Define your goals and what you want to get out of the event. You can then at least see if there is a match. Do you need contacts to raise money? Do you need training around early-stage marketing and customer acquisition? Do you want to meet other startups? Do you need to find employees? Some of these are achievable at CIX, and others are not.

I do agree with you. In reading the presenting company pitch it's $495 + $495 so almost $1,000 to do this roadshow. I'm not sure that this is where I'd put my $1,000. It's something that we've all expressed our displeasure to the folks hosting the conference. But that's a choice I would make. There is a strange belief that the $500+ will increase the quality of dealflow. I don't agree. I think it will bring a bunch of later stage companies out of the woodwork, but it doesn't encourage early-stage companies.

The other challenge is what kind of company are you? Are you a transactional commerce company? Are you a media company? Are you a application company? And are the right people attending this conference? Am I at the stage where these investor tend to invest. All difficult questions that require insight and self-evaluation.

Re: Exchanging Innovations Canadian-style

David Crow — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:40:30 -0000

Maybe the question we should be asking entrepreneurs is:

What would you be willing to pay for an event like Canadian Innovation Exchange ?

Comparable events:

<ul>

<li>TechCrunch40 & 'Forty of the hottest new startups from around the world will announce and demo their products over a two day period at TechCrunch40. And they don't pay a cent to do this.'</li>

<li>Under the Radar Future of Web Apps & $685

<li>DealMaker Forum & $195/day (so $390 for 2 days)</li>

<li>DEMO & $17,000 </li>

</ul>

Obviously for TechCrunch this is a media event. So the combination of sponsorship plus media coverage should be enough to cover costs or to justify it as a budget line item. It's probably the closest to Canadian Innovation Exchange which is hosted by Achilles Media who is in the business of running conferences, i.e., they are an event management company. They obviously need to cover their employee and marketing costs. Coupled with CIX is co-chaired by Robert Montgomery and Sean Wise. Sean has been involved with the Banff Venture Forum and NewVenturesBC. These guys are very successful traditional money guys looking to help engage the Toronto community.

What is CIX worth to you? Would you go if it was free? Would you pay $25? $50? $100? $200? $250? $400? How do you determine the value and the pricing?

Answer the survey and provide details about what's valuable to you?

Re: CaseCampToronto7 + StartupCampToronto2

David Crow — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:42:35 -0000

theinterned,

You need to have a StartupCampToronto2 ticket which is separate from CIX.

Re: Rogers and the iPhone

David Crow — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 09:52:10 -0000

Does this fall under the auspices of the CRTC or the Competition Bureau ?

I don't know and apparently it's a little unclear depending on legal arguments.

'The CRTC will continue to deal with issues related to interconnection and access.'

'The Bureau will deal with price fixing, bid rigging and price maintenance.'

So it depends, is this an access issue or one of pricing?

Re: J2EE Web Frameworks

David Crow — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 12:57:22 -0000

My IT group has a hard time understanding n-tier development, never mind a scripting language like Ruby for enterprise development. We've fought long an hard to move them to J2EE (we were using COBOL, PL/SQL and a little bit of Perl for most projects, not just legacy systems). Their not (enterprise systems) group has gone with the Macromedia product suite, lots of ColdFusionMX, Breeze, Flash Communication Server, etc. This works just fine, but it ties me to a single vendor, and excludes a lot of other (easier, better, faster) solutions to many of the problems.

We've had 2-3 major projects that has forced the rest of the IT to understand newer platforms. But for the most part they don't actually understand, they just follow route directions. So there is no support and no reward for learning new technology.

With JRuby, Ruby on Rails might be back on the list of tools. My staff and I have zero experience with Ruby or Python and a fair bit of experience with J2EE. The Instiki and Basecamp projects are fabulous and we should probably have another look at Ruby.

Any insight into J2EE versus Ruby would be great?

Re: J2EE Web Frameworks

David Crow — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 06:39:03 -0000

One option that we've been looking at is J2EE unlying engine (Tomcat) and then ColdFusionMX (preferably Blackstone version 7.0), JRuby and Jython. But you're right, the complexity (development environment, tools, configuration) and development cycles (time = money) is what we are experiencing. It feels like 4 times the code, 6 times the configuration.

Coldfusion is great, we just need something a little more elegant for our non-user driven events and data manipulations. The combination of Fusebox and CFCs has worked really well for most projects, but we need a more robust abstraction and persistance layer. We have been looking at moving a lot of our data access objects into Hibernate objects and continuing to use CFMX as the presentation layer and the controller. But when we start to look at the nice-to-have features (incepetors, validators, workflow, etc.) we have found that other solutions offer more.

Part of our difficulty is addressed in Fusebox 4.x. We need to begin moving away from Fusebox 3.0, but since our latest application has only been live since July a major rewrite is not happening.

We probably need to move from CFMX for Windows to CFMX for J2EE. Currently, the systems administrator does not (and will not allow) any additions to the CLASSPATH on our production Windows 2K3 machine running IIS and CFMX6.1. This has hampered any extensions or augmentation to the existing Coldfusion apps using other technologies.

We've tried using a skunkworks approach to add rogue servers and functionality, but since there is no support at the very top for anything that would rock the status quo, it becomes very hard to implement. All of our machines are behind atleast 2 layers of firewalls and are not accessible to the outside world. For the inside world our boxes are only accessible on the same subnet. The servers are controlled by a separate department with separate reporting structures. There are obvious team and organizational issues that dampen our spirits.

However, we seem to have support to move to J2EE and Oracle (9.2), but still in a very locked down, controlled fashion. But we have some support. Moving to J2EE appears to give us the flexibility to do things like Ruby on Rails using JRuby if we choose.

Re: Mac RSS Readers

David Crow — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 13:16:14 -0000

DrunkenBlog has an excellent of Mac OS X RSS readers.

Re: Rogers Digital Cable

David Crow — Wed, 19 Nov 2003 16:38:54 -0000

Darcy,

I think that Rogers has a number of "Premium Sports Packages" including NFL Sunday Ticket, NHL Centre Ice and MLB Extra Innings that guarrantee all games, but you'd have to check the details of each of these services with Rogers. I have the timeshifting, which gives me access to stations across Canada and the US and there are often other NFL games on each Sunday. But this is definitely not all (every single) game by any means.

Regarding altering my home theatre setup, I had to remove the TiVO from my configuration and I had to add a connection from the digital cable box to the home theatre to get 5.1 surround. This is not so much an issue, but it is just one more cable that is back there. I really want a high performance "Bluetooth-like" way to connect stereo components without adding wires and cables (e.g., HomeRF).

Cheers, David

Re: Rogers Digital Cable

David Crow — Mon, 22 Dec 2003 07:37:30 -0000

I go back and forth about using my computer and my home theatre together. Since my 5 year old Sony DVD player crapped out about a month ago, I've been using my Powerbook to play DVD movies. But I find that I really just want a dedicated device (with hardware level decoding) for playing movies. I like to sit on the couch and surf the web while watching Indiana Jones.

I really want an all-in-one home theatre system that does everything DVD, MP3, Dolby5.1, radio, TiVo, etc. But I want to be able to connect to it over 802.11 and configure and manage it using my Mac (so that probably means and embedded http server that uses FLEX or Royale or Avalon for a thicker client UI).

Re: Getting Real

David Crow — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 04:23:46 -0000

Enterprise applications (among other things) are very different from the web applications that 37signals is talking about.

Do I want my airplane build without spectifications, functional, safety, etc. HECK NO! Do I think that for most web applications we can improve the user experience by removing this functional spec, probably.

When I look at the 37signals applications (SingleFile, Basecamp, TaDaList, etc.) they are beautiful and elegant. Are the the same as building employee self-service for payroll, or online banking? No, but they do demonstrate the need to have more "consumer-like" experiences in our enterprise software.

What I would be asking is what is the value of a functional specification to my project? Is there a way we can make the process lighter weight, or faster by removing pieces that don't contribute "business value".

These are a really uncomfortable ideas. I like contrarian viewpoints, specially when they are backed up with successful projects. The goal is to figure out what part of these ideas work in your context. Do I think that we'll get rid of project charters, budgets or timelines? No, but for sure we'll be scoping our smaller web applications differently in the future.

Re: Why Projects Fail

David Crow — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 17:33:39 -0000

The hard part with traditional project management metrics and offerings is the focus on "on time" and "on budget". These metrics are deceptive, but strongly supported by project management organizations (e.g., PMI). Training and certification from these organizations may not be the best process to build successful software.

Re: Apple’s iCal and iCal/vCal format

David Crow — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 11:43:19 -0000

George, you hit it on the head, iCal is really picky about the extra spaces in the code. I had to make sure to trim any extra white spaces.

Re: Joyent buys Textdrive

David Crow — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 01:43:18 -0000

That's the problem, my VCII account on Bidwell is just so un-freaking reliable. I've moved davidcrow.ca to Dreamhost, and I am moving other 'critical' domains. At this point, I am starting to think about buying a dedicated server and co-locating it somewhere.

Re: Joyent buys Textdrive

David Crow — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 05:14:10 -0000

I'd be interested. Specially given that I was one of the 'monkeys' in the past couple of days that probably reduced the capacity of bidwell (sorry everyone). Though the difference is I wasn't developing on TxD, but I did have a good bug in my code.

I would love a best practices including promotion, i.e., rsync or other alternatives for moving code between dev and test.

Re: The Camp Factor

David Crow — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 09:38:00 -0000

The *camp tag helps explain part of it. It is a question for me about how to ensure value for all pariticpants, why would Rick Segal attend? Is it just the inverse of the venture fair idea? Where rather than walking through the business evaluation, we'll walk through a tech demo and do some interactions.

I must be slow today!

Re: The Camp Factor

David Crow — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 09:46:47 -0000

I'll take you up on your offer of beer.

Are there any VCs or angels that are interested in participating in this sort of thing?

Re: The Camp Factor

David Crow — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 12:35:39 -0000

And MashupCamp which is happening Feb 20 + 21 in Mountain View. Maybe we should just do more of these.

Re: Web 2.0 Innovation Map

David Crow — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 08:55:53 -0000

I am not sure that RainCity or Rich Internet Group are inherently Web 2.0. I think I was listing them because they appear to have experience with AJAX, dhtml and other apps.

Re: Live Blogging from the AGO – Frank Gehry Launch

David Crow — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 14:13:58 -0000

Rob,

It maxed out around 100kbps, with about 64kbps as dedicated performance. It reminded me of 56kbps dialup. Pages took some time to load, particularly those with large image sizes.

Re: BubbleShare WordPress Plugin

David Crow — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 02:44:40 -0000

Seth,

It's a pretty brain dead plugin, and not that different than the BubbleShare add to blog however, I hadn't been able to make the work inside wordpress. I see that you have the iframe working inside K2. Did you do anything extra-ordinary to make this render properly?

Re: BubbleShare WordPress Plugin

David Crow — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 01:14:12 -0000

Hmmmm, I am wondering if I need to improve how URIs are parsed. It feels like this could be used in include a potentially malicious page, but it would have to be included by the author. So it seems like the author that would do bad things, could do them more efficiently than using a WordPress plugin. I don't know.

It would also be great to add a BS button to the WordPress quicktags. Easy enough to do, it's just a timing thing.

Re: BubbleShare WordPress Plugin

David Crow — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 00:10:32 -0000

Mitch,

I'm with you, Albert assures me that they have a real revenue model, a real business model and real customers.

Re: BubbleShare WordPress Plugin

David Crow — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 02:08:47 -0000

Christopher,

Thanks for catching this, just a sloppy copy paste edit mistake on my part. I've fixed this, if you don't want to download a new copy of the file, you can delete lines 49 and 50 (I believe) or just grab the latest file.

Re: Community is the framework

David Crow — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 04:35:21 -0000

Hey Taylan,

You should totally participate in the DesignSlam. Learning from others and their processes is a great way to develop design skills. We've been talking about how to divide up some 'key' players to make sure that there is an experience slammer for every team.

We want everyone to feel welcome. Newbies, old skoolers, whomever, come out participate.

I bet you have something to teach us!

David

Re: DemoCamp5 – April 25 6:30pm @ Bahen Centre, UofT

David Crow — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 01:59:26 -0000

Thanks Gary, my Powerbook was in a bad state yesterday, and my posting from my old G4Cube was a little rough. I added DemoCamp to <a href="http://upcoming.org/event/69874" Upcoming.org">target="_blank">Upcoming.org Event

Re: You say you want a revolution

David Crow — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 13:47:38 -0000

Sponsorship is necessary. Jay had a great idea of making all sponsorships and the sponsorship agreements available pubically on the we, this would include the MaRS sponsorship.

One of the goals of the community is to not exclude anyone or group, and that includes exclusion through sponsorship.

Re: BarCampTdot, fo’shizzle

David Crow — Tue, 02 May 2006 06:07:57 -0000

I love the idea of doing something more family friendly:

<ul><li> trip to Centre Island or with less amusment park</li>

<li>visit the AGO</li>

<li> Picnic in Hyde Park</li>

<li> Tour of Kensington Market</li>

</ul>

All kinds of fun stuff to do in the city.

Re: What the H E double hockey sticks?

David Crow — Mon, 08 May 2006 12:11:21 -0000

Hi Mir,

How do we lower the intimidation barrier? We need n00bies, veterns, people who aren't as cynical as I am. We thrive on conversations. It's the energy from others, the collision of ideas, the participation of the people (specially those that are new to the community) that make BarCamp so valuable.

Participation is a funny thing. I don't tend to present a lot at these events, because I'm learning, I'm interested in the conversations that others want to have. But I try to participate in the conversation, the coordination, the vibe. The description of the 'Social Software' class is exactly the feeling we're trying to capture. You have people who convene discussions, not everyone can convene a session (though maybe they should), and you need to have participants for a conversation. I want to be excited, challenged, offended, intellectually stimulated, and happy to have spent my weekend with a bunch of interesting, engaging people.

The BlogHerNorth talk interests me greatly. I'm going to participate. Kristin is starting to blog (albeit in a very business specific way) and she is going to come out and participate.

Re: What the H E double hockey sticks?

David Crow — Tue, 09 May 2006 01:54:12 -0000

Now it's time for me to get my chops busted. Kate hits it right on the mark. I hadn't thought that my behaviour might be part of the problem with attracting certain groups of people. Definitely not my intention, and I'm sure that there are other things that we are doing that are impacting the decisions of others about coming out to BarCamp to learn and participate.

BarCamp is a mechanism to facilitate community. The community is what emerges around BarCamp. We can only provide a venue and a time to gather. Maybe if we're lucky we can instill the community with some initial values. But it is the attendees who decide who the community is, what they are about, how they they progress, etc.

Re: The Sun never sets

David Crow — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 07:02:10 -0000

We were looking at the Elastic Compute Cloud yesterday and tried to sign up for the beta program, but I'm too damn slow. The price/performance looks fantastic. And I figure Werner Vogels and his team are capable of architecting high availability web servers.

That said, the Sun box really is a piece of art. It works beautifully, it should, it's more expensive than the commodity hardware we're running now, but it's way more robust.

Re: An Open Apology

David Crow — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 12:31:14 -0000

Unfortunately, I did not hear the comment. Omnipresence a feature request that is still incomplete.

If I had heard the comment, I would have spoken out very loudly, and since I had the mic I probably would have done this in a very public manner, i.e., public ridicule.

Re: An Open Apology

David Crow — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:24:25 -0000

Hampton,

Thanks for the respect. And right back at you! You are one of the top 1% of developers I have met in Toronto. (You didn't need to out yourself on my blog ;-)

Since I'm running a start-up I'm not overpaid, technically I'm not paid at all. Damn equity arrangements. BTW have you checked out our product. But it does beg the question of why are middle-class white software nerds talking about this. I just want to build stuff that doesn't suck.

You and Leila are 100% correct. But you are both the best of the best. My concern is that this is not the first time I've heard these comments (not specifically about DemoCamp, but generally about open-source efforts). I want to make sure that our culture is NOT inherently exclusive. We should care about building cool products, great technology and making successful businesses. Sutha, Leila and you are right but you are the top 1%. This will never be an issue for you, straight, gay, male, female, brown, black or white. I think the concern comes for those that aren't as strong, aren't as out spoken, and aren't the leaders. We should protect and mentor these folks, without coddling them.

You're right that this is all conjecture and hearsay, it would be great to hear directly from the students.

Maybe this all stems from my deepest desire to have people like me and to have conflict all at the same time.

Maybe I'm over reacting.

Re: Celebrate failure

David Crow — Tue, 13 Jan 2004 16:34:42 -0000

I started using Editize for my content editor. It works okay, we are having some issues getting it to work well with MozillaFirebird but it seems to work for Safari 1.0 on Mac OS X.3.

Re: Celebrate failure

David Crow — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 07:01:00 -0000

The plan for post DemoCamp drinks is to go to Pogue Mahones at 777 Bay Street.

Re: Celebrate failure

David Crow — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 11:15:08 -0000

Still in the 416 does not a TorCamper make.

You could have come out to BarCampTdot and talked to the Mozilla guys and informed the RadiantCore gang about all of the pitfalls. We need to get you out to these events more regularly.

Re: The Innovation Commons is coming

David Crow — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 04:45:34 -0000

The concept is same, provide a shared work space with a cafe feel. The specific details about implementation may be different, i.e., we can't repeat the Hat Factory or Teh Space or Queen Street Commons or Workspace.

As Austin Hill points out on Ning space for The Indoor Playground that we're also trying to put together a tried and true business plan that others can use to build their own co-working space.

Will this be different? Definitely. Will the spirit of the community be in the DNA? I think so.

Re: Find my purpose…

David Crow — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 03:40:30 -0000

Thanks Patrick,

I think we're all struggling to find meaning and do it in the context of having lives. Tara talks about 'loosing her mojo'. Austin
is making crunchier peanut butter, managing his time and making his efforts count. Mark started all of the thinking about who I am, what I want to do, who I want to do it for, how I should do it, and how I make a living.

I want to have a family, to leave a long-term legacy behind for them. I used to think that this was a monetary legacy. Which is definitely a legacy. You can see the legacies in the Rockerfellers, the Carnegies, the Mellons, the Morgans, etc. Paul includes a recommendation for Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World&... (which will be a fun read over the holidays). Bob Hunter has left a legacy. What will be my legacy?

Re: Wheels when you don’t remember you want them

David Crow — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 00:22:29 -0000

Ahhh, the joys of fanatics. My guess is that the costs are very similar.

The AutoShare pricing would be 6 hours * $9.50/hour = $57.00 plus taxes plus $25.00/year amortized over number of trips. My Zipcar trip was 6 hours * $11.00/hour = $66.00 plus taxes. There's a $9.00 difference, which is 15.79% greater. This does not include the membership fee from Zipcar. Assuming that I use the service twice per month that mean a simplistic amortization of $1/trip. That would be 13.79% difference. There are other Zipcar plans that reduce the rate to $9.90.

I won't argue with Ryan that Zipcar appears to be slightly more expensive. There are still advantages including:

<ul><li>Multiple cities in North America and now London</li>

<li> Remote access to the car, to be able to unlock when you loose or lock your keys in the car</li></ul>

Investigate the choices, make your own decision. There are a lot of degrees of freedom in making this choice. Price. Nationality. Location. Features. Services.

Re: Wikinomics – A spark of openness

David Crow — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 13:58:12 -0000

I thought I was on the 'official guest list'. While Mr. Purves coattails would be very fancy, I was there as a legitimate invitation. Eli cleared me with Lenni.

Re: Value to the audience

David Crow — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:38:06 -0000

Rob,

CaseCamp proves tthat the format can be adopted for other topics including marketing focused events.

I think we need to focus on technology and its impact on culture, media, lifestyles, etc. This would change the demonstrations to focus on the impact it has on people.

I'd like to see demos about:

<ul>

<li>Healthcare applications: patient management; lifestyle monitoring; etc.</li>

<li>Implications of an aging population on design</li>

<li>Web services: using S3 and EC2 to reduce costs and development times</li>

<li>Advertising: making Minority Report reality</li>

<li>Financing: kicking Canadian VCs in the wallet</li>

<li>Communications: Solutions moving beyond the CRTC</li>

</ul>

I want to understand the pain/problem, how the product solves it uniquely, and what the community can learn from the experience of building it.

By bring the conversation up a level, I think we address topics that would be more interesting to others, including journalists, VCs, etc.

Thoughs?

Re: Value to the audience

David Crow — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 03:25:07 -0000

Corporations do all sorts of interesting things and don't need to be excluded. The underlying value of DemoCamp continues to need to be refined. Individuals build interesting things. Companies build interesting things.

Entertain me. Educate me. Challenge me.

We've captured people's attention for a 2 hour time block, what are we going to do with it!

Re: Value to the audience

David Crow — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 23:51:34 -0000

The pay-to-play is only a suggestion.

But if I have to sit through a set of uninteresting, uninformed demos of a tag cloud or a login box. Demos that don't teach me, entertain me or engage me, I'm going to want who ever is demo'ing to pay for beers (to sedate me ;-)

This is a community-driven event. It is about our community members. This means I'm looking for ways to improve the overall audience experience. Changing the rules of DemoCamp to make the audience experience top-notch.

Presenters need to remember that DemoCamp is always about the audience.

Re: Net Neutrality

David Crow — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 10:22:33 -0000

Charging for services is not what I'm against. Charging two different entities for the same service is what I'm against.

I pay for a connection to access content. Youtoogle pays for a connection to serve content. Should Youtoogle have to pay again to for customers on Bell or AT&T or other major telco? This is basically the telco determining what you can view. If Youtoogle doesn't want to pay the telco tax then you don't see that content. Look at the telcos and their access to wireless data, we accept that Telus keeps a walled garden to keep out "unsavory" wireless videos, sites, etc. from their customers. I don't want these corporations determining what I can see. What if Rogers only allowed you to see Yahoo!? What if they blocked Google, AOL, MSN/Sympatico/Live? Is this acceptable?

Re: Is Dragon’s Den bad for innovation?

David Crow — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 12:11:06 -0000

Omar,

You are missing the point!

90% of the pitches are bound to be non-fundable. The problem is that most of those pitches never see the light of day. Instead we're putting "entrepreneurs" on air because they make good television. This is not about educating potential Canadian entrepreneurs. It's about pure entertainment. Just like watching William Hung isn't about how to become a best selling popstar.

Watching other people pitch is important. There are lots of examples of great product and venture pitches. These aren't happening on the Dragon's Den. These aren't venture pitches. These aren't product pitches. To see better examples, check out Guy Kawasaki's How to Be a Demo God - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/how_to_be_a... or watch the pitches at Demo - http://www.demo.com/

Don't be fooled into believing that a Canadian copy of a British television show demonstrates relevance or talent of the people they put on. Shows like Venture - http://www.cbc.ca/venture/ that show the challenges of running, growing and operating a business are much better and much more relevant to entrepreneurs.

We should look for content that inspires, as well as entertains.

Re: » StartupCamp Waterloo - This is just getting started | StartupNorth

David Crow — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:47:09 -0000

it was refreshing to see a gathering of interested people share their experiences and advice. It is questionable about the quality of the ideas and the advice (partially because a lot of the advice was mine ;-)

I hope others take you up on your challen to run their own events.

I think DemoCamp has it's place but it is probably as a community event with short presentations, DemoCamp probably should be renamed. It's the TorontoTechnologyThreeRingedCircus or FlamingMonkey+Candle night.

Thanks for keeping the original vision alive.

Re: » StartupCamp Toronto - December 6th | StartupNorth

David Crow — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 11:48:54 -0000

This is awesome!

First a celebration that somebody is doing this. We've had a lot of startup DNA in the TorCamp/DemoCampToronto blog. But it is fantastic that you guys are taking the lead.

Secondly, this is not DemoCamp. This is for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. AWESOME!

Thanks Jevon and Jonas.

Re: » Calgary’s first BarCamp a hit, startup focused | StartupNorth

David Crow — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:27:22 -0000

Jevon, I think it speaks to the history of the *Camp movement in Canada. I think in Toronto the DemoCamp and BarCamp scenes we're initially divided between 3 groups: entrepreneurs; developers; and designers but we did not solely focus on startups, i.e., we had a demo from Adam Goucher about an HP security product, we had SR&ED credit talks, etc. This let the community grow, however, it has left the focus a little fuzzy.

Re: » CIX - Canadian Venture Capital Meetup | StartupNorth

David Crow — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:00:33 -0000

I don't think that Ali is wrong. I'm curious what others think about the value.

http://www.polldaddy.com/s/D6FCB7A1FF6716AE/

Re: » Weekend Reading - March 23rd 2008 | StartupNorth

David Crow — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:43:49 -0000

More about the happenings in Toronto in the National Post - http://www.financialpost.com/trading_desk/finan...

Re: Sometimes face to face is good

David Crow — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 15:16:30 -0000

Dang it, no one tells me about these things. This is the problem with the Toronto community. We just need to to talk more.

You guys should be sure to check out thte next iteration of BarCampToronto aka TorCamp http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/TorCampDemoCamp3

Re: Bubbleshare finally gets acquired

David Crow — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 16:12:07 -0000

Isn't/wasn't Bubbleshare based here in Toronto, not Ottawa?

Re: Dragon Rising, by Jasper Becker

David Crow — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 10:09:40 -0000

Kristin and I just returned from China. We had a fantastic trip.

http://flickr.com/photos/davidcrow/sets/72157594386355758/

The culture is unique. Definitely 3 distinct personalities of cities and their people when comparing Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. I really wish I had read more about Chinese history before visiting. The socio-economic and socio-political changes the resulted in the People's Revolution (plus the 2 revolutions immediately before and the Cultural Revolution that followed) would have been insightful. A short history is available at http://www.asterius.com/china/

Re: cold in YYZ

David Crow — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 07:53:42 -0000

At least there's no snow (yet)!

Re: Is Dragon’s Den bad for innovation?

David Crow — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 12:11:06 -0000

Re: StartupCamp Waterloo - This is just getting started

David Crow — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:47:09 -0000

Re: StartupCamp Toronto - December 6th

David Crow — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 11:48:54 -0000

Re: Calgary’s first BarCamp a hit, startup focused

David Crow — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:27:22 -0000

Re: CIX - Canadian Venture Capital Meetup

David Crow — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:00:33 -0000

I don't think that Ali is wrong. I'm curious what others think about the value.

http://www.polldaddy.com/s/D6FCB7A1FF6716AE/

Re: Weekend Reading - March 23rd 2008

David Crow — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:43:49 -0000

More about the happenings in Toronto in the National Post - http://www.financialpost.com/trading_desk/finan...

Re: Taking Back the City: Toronto Transit Camp

David Crow — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 10:42:20 -0000

We've been applying BarCamp and Open Space principles to a variety of events in Toronto and around the world. Check out our <a href="http://upcoming.org/group/1650/" rel="nofollow">upcoming.org group for the latest happenings including:

DemoCampToronto12 Monday, Feb 5, 2007 @ 6:30pm at No Regrets

and GreenCamp Toronto Tuesday, Feb 6, 2007 at OBA Conference Centre.