I asked Mark McQueen to comment on the OMERS/ABP newly announced €200 million venture fund (with €100 million being spent in Canada) knowing full well that he was currently unable to comment. Mark responded with a little bit of the history of the OMERS efforts to create a venture fund. “This is not the first [...]
Fred Wilson has a great post about community. It captures the sentiment of DemoCamp, Founders & Funders, and StartupNorth, which shouldn’t be a surprise given the related nature of these vehicles to the communities that read Fred’s blogs. But more importantly you can see the sentiment in my posts: The community is the framework You say [...]
Following up after a great event in Ottawa on June 1, 2010, my partners in crime at Microsoft and at ChangeCamp (Omar Rashid, Julia Stowell and Mark Kuznicki) are working to extend the conversation around participatory government, citizenship, open data and other stuff under the umbrella of gov2.0. The event is a conversation. It’s talking about [...]
It’s Silicon Valley in Vancouver How can you ask for a better lineup of people? You get the opportunity to interact and connect with Lane Becker, Rob Chaplinsky, Dave McClure, Dan Martell, Jeff Clavier, Debbie Landa, Chris Albinson and others. This is a world-class list of angels, investors, entrepreneurs and technologists. It’s Canadian startup royalty Royalty [...]
I’m going to miss this years’ Make Web, Not War event in Montreal on May 27, 2010. I’ll be attending another event in Ottawa. There is a great list of presenters including: Joël Perras, Founder Core Developer, CakePHP Evan Prodromou, Founder, Identi.ca Erin Blaskie, Founder, BSETC Marc-André Lanciault, Founder, Inbox International It’s a great training event [...]
I realize that I sit on the Board of Directors for the MEIC and on the Board of Advisors for NextMedia, however, I didn’t know about this great partnership and opportunity. It’s a contest focused on taking early concepts for tablet computing and media consumption, the goal isn’t to build the technology, it’s to get [...]
HackTO registration has opened with support from Idee, FreshBooks, CanPages and PostRank. Who it turns out all have APIs to use their services: Tiney Commercial Image Search API Canpages API PostRank API FreshBooks Developer API It’s a great opportunity to bring your laptop, bring your dev environment, connect with other developers, and learn how to [...]
It sucks to have a reputation problem. But when you take over an organization that has mismanaged $1B of public money. Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter released a scathing report in the fall that found the agency had mismanaged $1 billion of taxpayers’ money, with little oversight. CBC News It probably helps explain why I”m [...]
I ran into Mark Surman this morning and he reminded me about the upcoming Mozilla Drumbeat event in Toronto on April 24, 2010. I like the Drumbeat events. Get everyday people who use the Internet and web technologies involved in new ways to understand participate and take control of their lives. At a practical level, [...]
It’s time again for DemoCamp. There are a few tickets remaining. But this is DemoCamp Ramen Edition. Why ramen? Well it’s pretty easy. The first is an homage to being ramen profitable. The last event with Gurbaksh Chahal was great, my only complaint was that by 9pm I was hungry. The great folks at Liberty [...]