STIRR Is Coming To Canada!

Earlier this year, I attended a STIRR event in the Valley - and was thoroughly impressed. In my view, three factors made the event great:

1. The Entrepreneur-to-Service Provider Ratio: The event was free for founding teams, engineers, angels, VCs, accredited investors, and press. Service providers had to pay $40. The result: lots of ideas shared between smart & energetic people.



2. Short pitches from new companies and sponsors. How short? 60 seconds! If you can't get your point across in 60 seconds, it's probably not worth listening to anyways. All companies and sponsors did a great job, and had no problem making their products & services sound interesting and compelling.



3. Pleasant atmosphere. The event was held in a casual atmosphere, where attendees could order drinks, munch on some tasty appetizers, and mingle as they please.

I was so impressed, that I asked STIRR co-founder Sanford Barr if he was interested in bringing to STIRR to Canada. Today, I'm very pleased to announce that STIRR Canada will be launching in Calgary in 2008! A consortium consisting of CTI, UTI and SAIT has stepped up as our first partner with $30,000 in funding (press release here). Special thanks to Darren Massey and the rest of the consortium for putting their trust in us.

To complete the picture, we're looking for two additional partners to help us match the $30,000 in funding. We'll also be recruiting some of the industry's best advisors, mavens, and connectors onto our operations team. So far, interest on both fronts has been very strong, and that's no mystery - Calgary simply has a voracious appetite for world-class tech gatherings - as indicated by the flood of registrations for the Guy Kawasaki event on December 14th, and a fantastic event held by Cambrian House and Material Insight earlier this year.

Guy Kawasaki To Present at Calgary's First BarCamp

We're pretty excited about Calgary's first BarCamp, which is being held Saturday, December 15th. We're even more excited about having Guy Kawasaki attend!! If you're ready to actively participate in the event (show up with a presentation, help organize the event, or sponsor), then please sign up here!

Special Guests for DemoCamp Calgary 5 & BarCamp Calgary

We've kicked DemoCamp planning into high gear again. You see, we weren't really planning on holding a DemoCamp in November, instead focusing our efforts on our first BarCamp in December (more on that later in this entry). Then, we received an email from David Crow, one of the main guys behind Toronto's BarCamp and DemoCamp movement. He's also currently the UX evangelist for Microsoft Canada and a leader in the field of HCI. The email simply read:

Hi Guys,

Any chance of doing DemoCampCalgary when I'm in town. Plus can I buy you dinner?

So there you have it. If you're interested in meeting David, you need to attend! (and if you're looking for David's expert opinion on your site's UI, you need to demo!)

We need 2 or 3 more companies to demo at the event. If you know of any companies that are interested, please let me know!

Here are the details:
DemoCamp Calgary
Date: November 27th, 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Post event: Meet for beers at Dinnie's Den
Location: University of Calgary, Scurfield Hall (room TBA)

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We're also planning on holding Calgary's first BarCamp on December 15th, and we're starting to build a killer list of speakers & attendees. In fact, it's so good, I'm going to save it for another blog entry. I guarantee that you won't be disappointed!!

There is no fee to attend BarCamp, but attendees must actively participate. We need the community's support on this one. Help with finding a venue that can hold 50 - 80 people (we'd like to keep it somewhat intimate), finding sponsors, and additional speakers and guests would definitely be appreciated. And since we're likely to be oversubscribed, the committee will have to strictly enforce the no tourists rule (complete list of barcamp rules here). Please contact me if you'd like to help or participate!