I’ve been gently conspiring with Cory, of Guelph Coffee and Code fame, for a while now about a website for the Guelph technology community. The idea is straightforward, the various events and projects in Guelph should have their own web presence if they need it. It doesn’t, however, make sense for all those sites to replicate common features. We don’t need 10 event calendars, job boards, company indices, etc.

So the idea is for us to collaborate and build one presence or portal where we can work together and build the common spaces. Then the various sites like diyode and demoCampGuelph can focus on being all things democampy and diyodie.

So my first question is, do you feel we’re ready for this? I’ve always felt we’ll need this at some point, the question is are we at that point now.

Second, what related projects or codebases should we consider starting from? Ideally we can find something that we can eventually contribute back to. Ideas that come to mind are techstartup and startupindex. What others should be considered?

Third, do you want to help out?

We’re set for July 21st for DemoCampGuelph 14. Make sure you get it in your calendar before you start renting cottages. Hit up http://next.demoCampGuelph.com for details and to sign up to attend.

We continue our string of awesome invited speakers with April Dunford joining us this time around. If you’ve never heard April talk you’re in for a treat, actually I suppose you’re good in either case. April has the mind of an engineer injected with serum from the realities of running businesses and launching products. To top it all of, she can also converse with other humans in the shape of a crowd so it will be a fun night I’m sure.

Spread the word, specifically get out there and talk a friend into submitting a demo!

By the end of this week I’ll have organized and hosted 13 DemoCampGuelph events. Along the way I’ve seen some incredible demo’s. I’ve learned, I’ve been impressed but I’ve also been embarrassed and outright skeered. People often ask for tips and information related to demo’ing but to be honest I’m not the expert. While I have demo’d at other events such as DemoCampToronto, I’m only the mc. You wouldn’t ask Whoopi Goldberg how to win an Oscar would you? (Let’s pretend she only hosted the oscars and didn’t win two of them as well…)

So, now that I’ve told you not to listen to me, here’s a few quick tips if you’re thinking of demo’ing:

• DemoCamp’s are not pitch events. Don’t pitch or market to the crowd, no one’s here to be sold to.
• Don’t delude yourself. You’ve only got 5 minutes! You can’t demo the entire feature set of your CRM that’s going to save the world so don’t try. Pick an area within your product or a specific feature or workflow that will interest the crowd and demo that alone.
• Focus your message. Just because this is a demo event doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on a message we take away from your demo. What’s the sentence you’d like me as a listener to type into twitter when you’re done? Thinking this way helps focus your demo and hopefully have a consistent flow to it.
• Be prepared for technology to fail and keep presenting. If you get 5 minutes to pitch to a key investor, they aren’t going to wait 15 while you work out wifi issues. Have something prepared if the network or projector or mic etc fails. Improvise and keep moving.
• It’s cliche but take your time and have fun. This is a community event of peers who appreciate you putting the time in to show what your passionate about so chill and enjoy the experience. You can stress out on your wedding day.

Some great tips from DemoCampGuelph12’s Crowie award winner Tony Thompson:

• “First off, some kind of a presentation outline is good. I just use point form notes. Make sure you have some detail you can cut out, or insert on the fly depending on your audience interest.”
• “The eBar is a big room. The audience will not be able to see you as much as they can see your live demo — so your demo must work and look nice. When you want to make a point, you won’t be able to do it with your facial expression alone, you’ll have to do it verbally as well.”
• “Keep any graphics simple and to the point. To anybody more than halfway down the bar, the projection screen will look like a file card, and they won’t be able to make out any fine detail.”

Tony left out his secret sauce, more robots = good.

This is your friendly reminder that #13 is up this Wednesday evening  DemoCampGuelph. Sign up to attend at here.

Rob Hyndman is our invited speaker and as always we have a full slate of demo’s. Please remind people and we’ll see you all Wednesday at The eBar.

I no longer want to personally select who demo’s at our events. As well our current approach of relying on audience applause to select who receives the Crowie is flawed at best. I’m turning both of these responsibilities over to you since it’s your event.

I need three volunteers with these qualifications/requirements:

• Attended at least one, preferably more, DemoCampGuelph events so you know what we’re doing.
• You’re not demo’ing at our next event.
• You’re not a sponsor (I’m not 100% sure this matters but we’ll start here…).
• You will attend next event.
• You aren’t currently contributing to DemoCampGuelph in some other fashion.

What will this commitment entail?

• A meeting with me and this group where we review submissions and select who will demo at upcoming event.
• Watch all demo’s at the event and decide with this group who receives the Crowie.

[UPDATE: Thanks for all the volunteers, we have our board] If you’re interested in contributing to our event by taking this on, please contact me directly. We need three of you please.

I can ask for help when it involves community efforts like demoCampGuelph or our park. Historically I have a barrier, however, when it comes to efforts I make money at and that’s a line I’m not sure should exist.

A great friend of mine owns a restaurant here in Guelph called The Cornerstone. Their wood floors are crap, they won’t serve me meat and their windows are often made of wood instead of glass. Even with all those warts, it’s still the first place I think of for a coffee or a pint.

Why? Well because The Cornerstone is mine, or more importantly it’s ours. From day 1, or technically day -234, Mark has engaged his friends and his community to help design and build his restaurant. Many of my friends spent late nights painting, sanding and doing whatever it took to open the doors 8 years ago. To this day, on the few holidays they’re closed you’ll find Mark and a gaggle of locals fixing up all the things you can’t when you’re open 7 days a week.

There’s some talk in Guelph these days about tech, about business and about whether the two can build a home here. Some hope organizations like Communitech come to town, others feel we need a clubhouse like the accelerator center and others are firing up their own efforts to help. Clearly I don’t know the answer, I do know that any tech-biz success in Guelph is a success for us all. I have no idea what I’ll be doing next year but the truth is I may be working for steal the deal, well.ca or bootcampmedia so it’s only in my best interest to see them succeed.

More success = more jobs = less people commuting = more time with families and friends = more better Guelph.

We all need to start talking and sharing more if we hope to pull this off, and believe me I’m speaking mostly to myself when I say that. I’ve met and know a lot of you and the honest truth is we have the skills to pull this off and doggone it, I like me. We have more personalities and brains in this town than is required to do this. Realizing that this is less about our companies and more about our community will allow us the humility to seek out the help we need, and offer ours to others.

My Offer: If you’re willing to share what you’re up to then let’s talk. It doesn’t have to be technology related. Great ideas often come from someone who doesn’t spend their days in your sandbox. You never know, I may be able to help your landscaping or bread baking business grow this year. It may be as simple as offering ideas and feedback or I may be able to do some real work for you.

My Request: I need your help. My day job is building products at Brainpark and I want it to thrive, grow, provide jobs and ultimately be a success story for our community. If you’re willing to help with that, in anyway, please let me know.

We’re set for April 14th for lucky DemoCampGuelph 13. As always, please point your family and friends to http://next.demoCampGuelph.com for details and signing up to attend.

I’m excited to have Rob Hyndman joining us as our invited speaker. While I don’t normally recommend going to see lawyer’s speak, Rob’s the exception. He always offers a useful perspective on how much, or how little, legal lifting you may need depending on where your project’s at.

As always, talk up our event and let people know what we’re up to.

Observing the closed approach of selecting people to attend tedxWaterloo combined with having some people be surprised to learn they didn’t receive a demo spot at next week’s demoCampGuelph have lead to this post. To be clear, there’s confusion because of a lack of clear message from me. I don’t communicate so well….

First off, please understand that DemoCampGuelph is a entirely volunteer run event. No one, including myself, makes any money running this and it does take real time and energy away from our jobs, lives, families, etc. Could the messaging and process be better? Yes and please talk to me directly if you’re offering to shoulder some of that work because I’m all ears. Second, I do my best to convey that you can apply for a demo spot at DemoCampGuelph which is why the site says “Contact me directly to apply for a demo spot!!”.

Up until one or two events ago, the process consisted of me spending a significant amount of time chasing people to demo because we never had enough people willing to demo. There was never a need for a selection process as it was only a dream of mine to have that need.

Today we’re in the lovely position of having more people wanting to demo than we have time for. That’s huge and the last thing I want is for people to be discouraged at not getting a spot and stop applying. If that happens then we’re back in the above position which means more work for me.

So, the process as it stands today? Anyone can submit a pitch for a demo spot up until the week prior to the event. At that point we’re closed to new submissions. Then Ali and myself meet, review the submissions and select six demos. How do we choose? It’s not a science but I’ll do my best to convey our approach. We’re biased towards Guelph. It’s demoCamp so we prefer code and working technology over pitches and powerpoint. We love people who demo things that people in the crowd benefit from, meaning they could literally build something with it tomorrow. That means frameworks, services, tools, etc.

Beyond that, we do our best to talk to people during/after each event, hear what people like and don’t like and factor all that into the decisions. It’s very important this remains a credible event which means I’ve never personally demo’d and if you’re a close friend of mine then unfortunately you likely never get a spot either. Honestly, you should choose your friends more wisely.

Bottom line, if you don’t get a spot it’s likely not a reflection of your demo but choices need to be made. Our only intent is to deliver a relevant event and connect tech folks in Guelph. If things keep going as they have been with this event then we’ll likely strike a committee of regular attendees who will take on this selection process, ie have the community choose.

See you all next week!

We turned a particular corner with DemoCampGuelph events last year that personally makes my life a whole lot simpler, that being that we now consistently have more people applying to demo than we have spots. The plus for me is that I don’t spend the week of the event begging every human I know who owns a computer to demo something. The down side is that we don’t get to see all the demos possible and we have to say no to some people. I thought I’d take a few minutes to write up a few tips on how to increase your odds of being selected to demo.

First a brief primer on the event itself, in case you haven’t seen enough from me yet. I’ll start by deferring to seyDoggy: “At DemoCampGuelph everyone is a pony and they eat rainbows and poop butterflies…I mean DemoCampGuelph is geeks, beer and startup. It’s all good!”

Ok, I’m not sure what that means but it hits all the sweet spots, those being ponies, rainbows, butterflies, and beer. How about this? “DemoCampGuelph is for anyone in and around Guelph interested in software, the web and technology! Startup junkies, wage slaves, consultants, students, indie professionals, engineers, designers, money and marketing guys. If you want to see and talk about some interesting things, and get to know other people in the Guelph tech community, come on out! You don’t have to demo to attend.”

As you were conditioned when completing your phd, please pay particular attention to the emphasis! Tell us why your demo matters to techies in and around Guelph. This is demoCampGuelph. There, I’m done with that point.

Beyond that, shorter is better for your pitch as my brain can no longer seem to read beyond the 140 character point. As expected, our audience is up on technology and they’re connected, both within our attendees and without. Where DemoCamp‘s differ from other events is that it isn’t about you as the demo’er, it’s about us, the audience.

Yes it’s a great opportunity for you to market an upcoming, or existing product. Yes, it’s a great chance to find a funder or a job but the only reason this event exists is because we all love attending. We will always favour people who recognize that and demo things we want to see. So, picture yourself giving up a few hours of your possibly precious time on a work night to drag your butt to a bar and listen to some random stranger talk to you about computers, what would you want them to talk about? Getting a demo spot is your opportunity to give something back to us lowly wage slaves who climb out of our closets every few months so treat it precious and use it well

Oh, and from experience, puppets can only help…Looking forward to seeing you all January 27th!

Item#3 on Bob Sutton’s “Leading Innovation: 21 Things that Great Bosses Believe and Do” list almost entirely sums up why I spend some of what little spare time I have helping to organize DemoCampGuelph events:

3. Look for and build “intersections” places where people with diverse ideas gather together. And when you go there, talk to the people you don’t know, who have ideas you know nothing about, and ideas you find weird, don’t like, or useless.

It references Halloween at the Intersection by Frans Johansson.

This is only a variation on what’s been written many times but I like the idea of intersections. I’m often asked what DemoCampGuelph is or why it exists. The answer is simple, to create intersections. It’s a successful event if we’re a place where “people with diverse ideas gather together” resulting in an opportunity for intersections. The key being “opportunity”, it takes effort on your part.

On the other side, I often hear critiques about the event. They’re typically some variation of “ah, one of the demos was sort of interesting but overall not that great”. I don’t listen to those reviews and here’s why. I’ll let you in a little secret if you promise not to twitter about it, the actual demos aren’t the point of the event, they’re the gravy. If you’re attending for the demos then you’re missing a great event. To that end, here’s my simple how-to in order to get the best out of your next DemoCampGuelph event, or any related community event:

• Sign up, take some time to browse the list of attendees and what they’re up to. Chances are slim that you won’t quickly have a list of people you want to meet.
• Go out of your way to meet those people and others, ie create some intersections. Take a look around the room, pick the person in the crowd you’re least interested in meeting and go meet them. Do NOT just talk to the same people you talk to at every event.
• If the above doesn’t work because you happen to know everyone on our planet then be a connector and create intersections between people you know. Ask people who you can introduce them to.
• Arrive early, stay late, socialize.