Conferences

Mesh Marketing

The Mesh Conference team continually amazes me. You can read my bromance piece on the big brother Mesh Conference. But Mark, Rob, Mathew, Stuart, Mike and Sheri continue to do a fantastic job bringing together leading thinkers with the Toronto community. I have hosted my share of local events and I recognize balance of cost and accessibility, but the quality of the mesh speakers and the ticket price is fantastic. I’m always impressed with the spread of speakers from startup to agency to larger company. This event is no different. It has a great group of founders, executives and thought leaders.

The current event is happening in the middle of the fall startup event storm, but it is significantly differentiated from the regular startup event. This is an event for marketers. It is focused on content strategies, mobile tactics, social media tools and features some great folks like:

Jennifer Lum (LinkedIn, @jenniferlum)
Hicham Ritnani (LinkedIn, @HichamRitnani) of Frank And Oak
Wehuns Tan (LinkedIn, @Wishabi)
Kristina Halvorson (LinkedIn, @halvorson)

It’s a great group. I’ve personally seen the amazing work of Jennifer and Hicham (I sit on the advisory board of TribeHR where Jennifer is an investor, and I’m a semi-loyal customer of the Frank and Oak – only semi-loyal because they keep selling out of stuff to fast). It’s a great event and it would be a shame for Toronto marketers to miss the event in their own backyard.

Halifax Pop Explosion

by davidcrow

I had a great time at NxNE. It wasn’t representative of the time I’ve spent at SxSW. But this is probably a good thing. I was on a panel hosted by Dave Senior of Playground Inc. with Michael Litt (@michaellitt) of Vidyard and Raja Bhatia (@raja) of Confluence Labs. Great fun talking about startups, traction, funding, teams, marketing, etc. It’s funny, it was a great panel, I spent a lot of time heckling Mike. But I guess the reviews were positive. Because my friend Meghan Warby (@withoutayard) invited to Halifax to attend Halifax Pop Explosion.

I have a few confessions:

I have never been to Halifax.
I am going because I get to see my friends Jevon (@jevon) and Ben (@byosko)
I am putting together new material

I’m in Halifax from Tuesday, Oct 16 until Friday, Oct 19. It’s a short stay, but I am choosing to be home for dinner on Friday with the kidlets. I’m looking for food recommendations, a place to have a pint, and some sights. Any suggestions on where to eat?

A foodie’s tour of Halifax

I’m also putting together a new presentation. The program description for my talk, titled How to Start a Startup, is:

Everyday more and more web startups are getting founded by entrepreneurs tenured and new. However, most abandon basic business pillars when building a venture in the digital economy. Not every start-up requires the same advice, but there a similar threads that apply to almost every company attempting to build a new digital product. We will be discussing the 5 things every startup must have to succeed.

I need to build a new talk and slide deck. I was thinking I could do something fun, like try to only build a presentation using quotes from The Social Network. Which in looking through the IMDB quotes could be surprisingly difficult. I need to make this presentation a little more fun. Otherwise it’s going to feel like a “how to” guide for the basics of a startup. Which isn’t a bad plan, but I’m not sure I would sit through an hour long talk. Maybe I can use Paul Graham’s Want to Start a Startup:

The Idea
People
What Customers Want
Raising Money
Not Spending It

And just intersperse stories I have from Influitive, Maintenance Assistant and the startups I’ve worked with. I think coupled with Thomas Tunguz’s Your startups top 3 priorities

Distribution
Monetization
Engagement

I guess I can talk about my experiences along The Startup Curve. And since I’ve never seen the Acquisition fo Liquidity or Upside of Buyer, my experience will be limited.

Strangely I haven’t given a presentation in what feels like a long time. It’s a good time to build a new deck that is engaging and fun. Maybe I need to start with a simple hypothesis and build out the supporting materials.

Featured Image: Some rights reserved by Steve Dinn

Mesh is TO’s most important DIY conference

by davidcrow

Mesh Conference is Toronto’s most important DIY conference.

That’s right Mesh Conference is a DIY event. It’s the Do-It -Yourself endeavour of small dedicated group of individuals. And you can see each of their personalities and interests in the schedule and speakers. Rob Hyndman (@rhh), Stuart MacDonald(@stuartma), Mark Evans(@markevans), Mathew Ingram(@mathewi), and Mike McDerment (@mikemcderment) have been working very hard since 2006 to build a world-class that has attracted renown speakers, mayors, and attendees. The secret is that Mesh is an event that all of them want to attend. The reason they invest time and effort into this event is because it is really for them.

Why is Mesh Toronto’s most important DIY event?

There are great events ranging from my DemoCamp to EcommerceCamp, from MakerFaireTO to Open Toronto, TechTalksTO to HackTO. There are a great number of local events that have emerged. The thing about Mesh is that it started in 2006. Over 5 years ago, shortly after the first BarCampToronto. And since the very first Mesh, it has always had an air of professionalism that others should strive to obtain. Mesh from the very first event was an event that was world class. It was Canadian in size (about 1/10th the size of a US event). But it has always been DIY, it has never felt DIY.

Rob, Stuart, Mark, Mathew, Mike and Sheri deserve true accolades for building an event that defines the emerging technology, emerging culture, emerging policy in Canada. Thank you!

I hope to see everyone at the Allstream Centre this week.

Mesh 2011

by davidcrow

Apparently I’m late to the game with the recognizing that Mesh Conference 2011 has announced a new location and their schedule.

New Location

The conference moves to the Allstream Centre at the CNE grounds. This is a first year Mesh won’t be at MaRS. I’m hoping the new space allows for new conference experience. MaRS is a fantastic venue, but Mesh has really outgrown the space. It will be interesting to see how Sheri and the team organize lunch, social events, and other interactions to build strong connections between attendees.

Speakers

I’m excited there are a lot of my friends who are speaking at Mesh. These folks are just world class and it will be interesting to hear about their experiences.

I’m also incredibly stoked about Gabe Zichermann (LinkedIn) from GamificationCo. Gabe wrote Game-Based Marketing and hosted The Gamification Summit. Looks like another conference that covers marketing, culture/society, business, and media. It’s a great Canadian take on the web, technology, politics and culture.

I am disappointed that MeshU did not survive the fiscal constraints of running a conference. I know from our past experiences running StartupEmpire the lack of sponsorship and revenue that a smallish conference can generate. I’m hoping that there will be something for design technologists and entrepreneurial technologists in Toronto in the near future.

Top 5 Reasons to go to Grow Conference

by davidcrow

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 is the wrong word. But it’s a chance to get inspired by some of the best Internet startups in Canada. The event is sponsored by the C100 and Debbie Landa, Chris Albinson, Rob Chaplinsky, Lane Becker and Dan Martell are all Canadian. But it’s the connection to all of the others attending and speaking that is most valuable: Rick Segal, Boris Wertz, Mark MacLeod, Danny Robinson, Amar Varma, Chris Arsenault, Steve Woods, Leonard Brody, Jonathan Ehrlich and all of the others that will be involved.
Tickets are cheap
The super early bird tickets were snapped up. Regular tickets are only US$285. It’s not a lot of money for an event. When you consider that food alone is approximately $15 breakfast + $10 morning break + $25 lunch + $10 afternoon break + $30 cocktails = $90, so your ticket is only costing you $195. You might not like my pricing but I can tell you that WiFi at the MTCC is $30/connections. There are hard costs to running an event.
The food
Vancouver has some of the best food in the world. Tojo’s, Vij’s, Blue Water Cafe, ReFuel, Gotham Steakhouse, Joe Fortes, Lumiere. The list just goes on and on. If you’re creative you can do this on a budget, step one follow someone who is on an expense account or has already had atleast one successful startup.
The Vancouver peeps
There are some great entrepreneurs, technologists, designers and thinkers living in and around Vancouver. Ben Skelton, Dave Olson, Kris Krug, Meg Cole, Danielle Sipple, Avi Bryant, Andre Charland, Boris Mann, Dave Shea, David Eaves, Kate Trgovac, Alexandra Samuel, Gordon Ross, Jason Mogus, Dick Hardt, Rebecca Bollwitt, Tod Maffin and others.

And the unwritten sixth reason to attend, though many will tell you this is a reason to avoid, I’ll be there.

MEIC and NextMedia

by davidcrow

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 people to sketch and explore new opportunities enabled by mass penentration of tablets.

This is a fun contest for designers (and aren’t we all designers). All you need to submit is an outline of the value proposition, the initial design concepts including IA or prototype screens, the audience and the business model. It’s a great

goal of the application, and specifics of functionality

audience target

intentions for development

information architecture or up to five screen shots

The prize

The winner will recieve a development deal worth $25,000 in development services from Trapeze to go from concept to reality. And business development, strategic relationships and incubation with the MEIC.