Finding Demos

I do not want to chase people to submit demo pitches. It’s a lot of work to find people who want to demo. So let’s distribute that work. I’m looking for 5 volunteers to help me with this. All that I’m asking is that you make the commitment that you will find us two people who will submit a pitch for a demo spot. That guarantees our selection committee will have at least 10 demos to choose from. Please contact me directly if you’re willing to make this commitment and help us find great demos. I will make sure to recognize your efforts publicly at our event.

Music

Having live music after our event was an experiment. For some reason I never took it beyond ourselves. Part of the motivation of having live music was to provide a means for our local arts and music scene to collide with our tech scene. That isn’t happening as we’re doing it today. We’re basically exposing a single artist to the tech scene. So this time around, we’re going to promote the music show on it’s own. The intent being that when we wrap up, some music fans will trickle in and they’ll have no choice but to co-mingle with us techies.

Thoughts? Feedback?

If you’ve attended before, what are some sweet demo’s that you’d like to see? Write up a blog post listing them all, preferably with a link to http://next.demoCampGuelph.com so people can sign up to attend or submit demos. Or just use this tweet link to share on twitter.

Bottom line, maybe if we ask, we’ll receive. Some demos I’d personally like to see?

• Anything to do with the Hudson/Jenkins split. Compare the two etc.
• I’d love to see a 5 minute all out terminal/ssh/emacs/vi whatever shell demo that leaves me wondering what the hell just happened. Then post the script somewhere for me to figure out what went on.
• Something zombie related….just because.
• I dig plug computing so anything to do with it.
• For that matter, if anyone can get their hands on some raspberry pi, that’d be dreamy!

You may notice that we’re now sold out of ‘live music supporter’ tickets. Thanks to everyone who supported the tunes and a special thanks to Amy and the crew at Wildeboer Dellelce for snapping up the rest of those so we can enjoy Jessy Bell Smith.

Now we need your help on three fronts:

1. Attendees: Remind folks that it’s next Wednesday and get them registered.
2. Demos: The list of demo submissions could be larger so please drum us up some demo submissions as we need to announce the demo spots later this week.
3. Music: In order to fund the live music, which includes venue, sound setup, musician etc, I’ve opened up a bank of $10 ‘tickets‘. No you don’t need a ticket to get in, this is simply a way of showing your support for the live music. You’re welcome to purchase as many as you like.

While you’re here, I wanted to clarify what DemoCampGuelph is about, while making a pitch for demos. I often find myself in conversations where someone explains to me why DemoCamp doesn’t apply to them. Typically it’s because they’re in services based work, not startups or products.

I’m biased but, in my opinion, if you work anywhere near technology in the Guelph area then DemoCampGuelph has something for you. Ultimately it’s a chance to mingle with like minded folks and strengthen our connections, ie do more bidness together!

Now to the startup stuff. DemoCampGuelph is not startup focused or a pitch event. StartupCamp is startup focused. While we certainly have events where the demo’s are predominately startups, that isn’t our focus. When we select who gets to demo, the main qualification is benefit to our crowd. We want tools, frameworks, interesting applications, hacks etc. So we want to see a demo showing me why I should root this crappy android phone. We want to see why we should be writing code with emacs. We want to see that new plugin that writes our code for us in firefox.

While it’s certainly interesting to see that fancy new app you’ve built that allows me to track my golf score without even needing to golf, we love learning that we can apply tomorrow and use to work better, faster, smarter. So, as always, spread the word, let’s get lot’s of great applications for our limited demo spots at 16!

Here’s my plan. I’d like to share these tickets with the people who make our events happen by demo’ing at them. If you’ve ever demo’d at a DemoCampGuelph and want to attend this game, then contact me immediately. I’ll give the tickets out on a first come, first served basis until they’re gone.

It should be a fun night and a chance to catch a hockey game in style with some fellow DCG groupies. I wish I could be there myself.

Ok, here’s hoping I clean up my act before someone puts a mic in my hand tonight. We’re on tonight, remind people, spread the words and the loves and we’ll see you all tonight! I’m excited to have Ilya Grigorik joining us as our invited speaker this evening. Make sure to arrive on time as we open with our speaker and then get into the demos. We’ll make sure there are pints around early so show up and meet some other folks in town you may not know.

If you haven’t already, sign up so we have a feel for numbers tonight.

There’s a simple battle of the minds that needs to happen. It requires an external focus, ie focusing on what people outside of Guelph answer when you ask “What do you think of when you think of Guelph?” Until technology is mentioned in a large portion of those answers, we all still have work to do. While no one’s asked me to, I’d love to build a simple Guelph tech ambassador program to attack this. In every talk I’m able to give outside of Guelph, I make sure to promote and mention Guelph.

If you ever catch guys like David Cohen speak, you’ll find yourself thinking “hang on, is he pitching Boulder Colorado to me?” The answer’s yes! David and his crew are focused externally on marketing to the world that Boulder is the tech city to be in. That’s what it takes, it won’t happen by focusing internally.

Back to Mark Rabo, check out the Hillside video he shot this summer. I’ve been collaborating with Mark on how we could produce a similar video to promote Guelph tech. We would use a DemoCampGuelph event as a medium for the video but the message would be about Guelph tech. I noticed today that Vancouver produced a similar video. With respect, ours will be better!

Our video will be web length, two to three minutes covering three topics. If I’m a business owner considering Guelph for my company, I’m probably thinking about these three:

1. How big is the knowledge pool (will I find talent to fuel my business in Guelph? Is there a support structure of other tech businesses to work with?)

2. What is the growth trend of the tech industry in Guelph?
3. What are the afterwork activities (nightlife, culture, family-friendly)?

The video will consist mainly of interviews with people at DemoCampGuelph, ideally 5-7 people from different companies ranging from established household names (wow, they’re in Guelph!) to brand new start-ups (they’re small like us). We will likely mix interviews with DemoCampGuelph footage and shots from around town.

In order to do this, I need to raise the money required to produce this video. We will likely need in the $3000 to $4000 range. If you are interested in sponsoring this project, or help raise the funds, please let me know. Or if you know who I should be talking to, City of Guelph, let me know? Or if you think I’m wasting my time, let me know that as well.

As always, you can sign up at next.DemoCampGuelph.com

Invited speaker to be announced soon.

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