DemoCampGuelph12 is booked for January 27, 2010 at The eBar. Moving forward, next.demoCampGuelph.com will always get you to our upcoming event.

Tara Hunt will be our invited speaker. Tara “simply has no idea what the big ideas of January 2010 will be as of yet”, ie she’ll say something but she’s not sure what yet.

The list of demo submissions is already looking great for this event as well as the 58 peeps already signed up to attend. Contact me directly if you’re interested in demo’ing at this evening. Make sure you tell me not just what you’re demo’ing but why the crowd needs to see your demo.

There’s some non-tech folks in Guelph talking about tech a little more these days, including our mayor who is signed up to join us in Jan.

My name’s Brydon and I’m addicted to email.

I have a long standing, ongoing battle with email. I’m happy to report I haven’t checked email today and intend to only check it twice today. It’s the intend part that’s difficult to hold up. At Brainpark we think a lot about productivity in the enterprise. Email feels like one of those areas we have far more freedom and control than we need. To that end, I’m going retro. I’m reconfiguring my email client back to the nineties.

In many ways email worked better in the days of dial up when I was paying per minute to be connected to the internet. In those days, email clients were offline most of the time and we had outboxes. Sending an email meant typing it entirely and then ‘sending’ it which put it into your outbox where it waited to be truly sent. A couple of times per day you would connect to the internet and send all the emails in your outbox while receiving all your new mail. You only did that a few times per day because it cost you real dollars.

Today I have more choice, more freedom and it’s all email all the time. My retro mode changes will be to only retrieve new email twice per day. As well, I’ll type new emails and save them to drafts in order to send out only twice per day. Why only send twice per day? It’s about expected behaviour. If I’m emailing you all day long yet only receiving your emails twice per day, you’ll start to think I’m ignoring your emails as it’s clear from my sending behaviour that I’m checking email.

Enforced Scarcity

If that doesn’t work, I’ll create a new user profile in my OS that I only use for email, twitter, etc. That way I have to explicitly login to that separate profile.

Now to take it up a notch. I’m going to pitch an experiment to the Brainpark team in Guelph. We all uninstall email, IM, twitter clients from our computers. We then setup an email booth in the office which is a single shared computer. We each create user profiles on that machine where we setup email etc. When you want to check email, you have to use that computer. Clearly only one of us can do that at a time. We’ve created scarcity of that resource as well as social pressure and awareness around usage. If I’m using email a lot today, someone in the office will notice and likely call me on it.

Hmmm, maybe we should have email chips as well? How are you dealing with email and other digital distractions?

Thanks to Waterloo Record for featuring Brainpark in their 2009 Tech Spotlight. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the magazine. Lot’s of great interviews and familiar faces. It’s nice to see a local paper pointing their spotlight, literally, at some up and coming local businesses. Honestly, I would have worn shoes had I known my feet would end up in the photo.

As well, a massive thanks to Communitech for their screwup in awarding me one of their 2009 Tech Impact awards:

“The awards recognize individuals and organizations who have demonstrated unparalleled leadership and support for the growth and success of the Waterloo Region technology industry.”

To be included in a group with Jim Estill and Steve McCartney could only be a clerical error. So to Brandon Gills, Ryan Gilies, or whatever the name of the person who was meant to receive this award, apologies but now that I have it, I’m keeping it.

My wife’s a photographer. That business is going through a major transition. Everything going digital was just the start of the commodification. These days, the wedding guests and photographer assistants typically have better gear than the photographers. Why? Well because those people have day jobs.

“Wow, is that the Nikon D300? I can’t afford it because I’m a photographer!!”

For me, as someone who spends too much time thinking about technology and business, it’s an interesting problem. There’s clearly been a massive shift in the entire framework that the current wedding photography business model was predicated on. That being limited access to resources in the form of camera gear and a darkroom. Yes skill etc comes into play but what’s primary is camera and darkroom. So I’ll ask you, what do you do?

For me, I start looking for the value in the new environment. What clearly has no value is having a great camera, access to darkroom, etc. Weddings are filled with great cameras today with hobbyists behind them. All that really matters is staging the shot and capturing the data. I have to manipulate the data into a pretty picture even if I’m the one who shoots it.

What has value? The staging of shots and the cat herding that’s required to get people paying for their photos to cooperate. The deft skill required to make the overall day a pleasant experience, ie bedside manner. As well, the long hours spent in photoshop after the wedding, editing the good shoots into great ones.

My photography 2.0? Hire me to shoot your wedding. I won’t bring a single camera of my own to the event. Instead I’ll coordinate the multitude of cameras and photographers at your event. I’ll have a memory download/storage device with me that I’ll download any and all camera memory to at the end of the event. Then I’ll edit and put together 200 high quality proofs for you, attributing the person who took the shot. All this for a fraction of what I’d charge to actually shoot your wedding.

Dumb idea? Likely but what would you do? This massive shift pattern is occurring more and more, as an exercise, what’s your wedding photography 2.0?

I’d write a summary of the night but luckily it’s done. The quick bits: Mathew Ingram spoke about how the Globe tries to run like a startup. Then we had demos from TribeHR, Declan Whelan, Steve Hanov, Don Walsh, Arni Mikelsons, and the audience favourite this time around Harry Scanlan.

Get your demo ready for #12 coming in December or January. Sign up to our google group linked off DCG site to stay up to date. My tip for demos? Treat them the same as pitches. I believe it was Austin Hill who summed it up best, hearts, minds, wallets.

Hearts: Tell me a story so I feel the pain you’re going to solve. Even in a technical demo you can pull this off. “So you’re up until 2am once again trying to cobble together yet another build by hand”. All you want is to get to the question “ok, I know what you’re talking about, but how are you going to solve that for me?”

Minds: Get into the techie bits of how you’re going to solve the problem you’ve now got me feeling, “my build tool will manage all your builds by…..”. The goal here is to get me to think “ok, I like that solution, how much?”

Wallets: How much, pricing model etc? Or if you’re raising money from me, how much and what are the details?

Mess up that order and you likely won’t get through it all or I’ll tune out. Most demos start with minds, then the crowd pushes them through questions to wallets and they never get to the hearts. Go for the heart first, make me cry first and then you’ll have my attention!!

I’m just realizing now, less than a week from the actual event, that I haven’t even posted here about the next DemoCampGuelph. Lucky we don’t rely on this site to drum up demo’s and attendees.

This Wednesday July 15th at the eBar in downtown Guelph, come hang out and see some tech. Jason Van Zyl is our invited speaker and will kick the night off with a short talk. We have a load of demos so it should be a fun night.

Sign up here if you’re attending. All you have to do is show up, you do NOT have to demo to attend. If you are interested in demo’ing, contact me directly asap.

If you missed DemoCampGuelph9, Blake took some appropriate notes.

As Mark writes, Brainpark has been selected to the final four for Launchpad at Enterprise 2.0. As the selections were based on community voting, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who took the time to vote.

Recently we ditched cable at home and moved to a setup where we have an old PC connected to the TV. It’s been an eye opening change for the better. While I realize we’re on the ‘bleeding edge’, it points to cable providers having some massive challenges in front of them.

One example of the positive changes, I watch way more TED talks now. I highly recommend these two talks that are focused on creativity, it’s value in our society and how we foster it.

Elizabeth Gilbert talk on nurturing creativity speaks to it from the perspective of the genius, ie the successful artist. It’s an enjoyable talk with humour from someone who recently acquired, and now lives with, the title of creative genius.

Sir Ken Robinson‘s talk is about how schools kill creativity. As with Elizabeth, the talk is actually pretty funny and both could have side careers in standup. He approaches the topic from the perspective of how we educate children and instill creativity. He makes some bold statements that demand some consideration today. He points to a school system that is failing us all. Unfortunately the people that system impacts the most aren’t tall enough to even ride the water slides little on inact real change.

Enjoy, let me know what you think or other related talks we should be watching.

Genius is We, not You!

If you haven’t seen this Ted talk with Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing genius, please watch it when you have time. In a strange way, her thoughts related to genius align well with Christopher Alexander’s concept of the unselfconscious society. The idea that with the renaissance, we created a modern of notion of individual genius. Elizabeth talks about how previous generations viewed genius as something disembodied and not tied to the individual, not unlike little elves that visited to lend a creative hand. It’s about we not you!

If you know anyone looking for a great job in Guelph, Ontario, send them me way asap! Specifically we’re looking for:

• Front End Developer, details or apply.
• Developer, details or apply.

As well, if you just have tips on how to get the word out there about our open positions, let me know?