Billions With Zero Knowledge

During my recent trip to Calgary my friends Patrick Lor, Claudia Moore & Sarah Blue from Cambrian House and Kemptom Lam helped me organize a local blogger dinner where I got to meet some great local entpreneurs, Calgary social media & tech folks.

In attendance where Patrick Lor, Sarah Blue, Claudia Moore, David Gluzman, Tom West,  Jasmine Antonick, Matthew Dorey, Nox Dineen, Matt Lonsdale, Mark Kornak, Ivan Sierralta, Fred Yee, Mark Rosenberger, and Kempton Lam.

Here is a video I shot with some of the local Calgary technology community saying hello.

Tom West has a great write up of the night.

One of the goals of the dinner was to help instigate (in the spirit of my friend & Barcamp/Democamp instigator grandaddy David Crow and Calgary native Tara Hunt) the Barcamp and Democamp movement in Calgary.

My friend Patrick Lor had these kind words and great announcement about Calgary’s Barcamp and Democamp kick off.

Well, he flies into town last week, and this week we have set a date for Calgary’s first BarCamp. Thanks to Austin Hill for instigating all of this. Also, huge thanks to Sarah at Cambrian House for organizing.

BarCamp Calgary will be Calgary’s premiere unconference, a showcase of Calgary’s technology community. Sign up now!

Date: Saturday, May 26th
Time: 9:00 to 6:00
Cost: Free, IF you promise to spread the word to attendees, presenters, and sponsors.

We’re also planning DemoCamp Calgary for April 24th, which is a 2 hour meeting with 4 or 5 company presentations that are strictly PowerPoint free! Why no PowerPoint? - check this out, and see how great a product presentation can be when there are no slides. Sign up here.

Kempton has written up a great report on our discussion about the Barcamp & Democamp ideas that we discussed.

The Barcamp/Democamp local community technology meetups hold a lot of promise for Canada’s technology community and I’m happy to help spread the word.  I saw some interesting companies while sitting as a judge at business plan presentation session that Patrick invited me to participate in. My take is that innovation in Calgary is like with other cities in Canada where there is more going on in our own backyards then most people realize.

I’m already involved as an angel investor in one startup that was born out of the Barcamp movement and have met two of the teams I’m mentoring through these meetups. 

With the great local entrepreneurs and community members I met in Calgary helping get this going I think something similar could easily occur in Calgary.

Just a reminder DemocampMontreal2 is next Thursday March 29th.  There are going to be some interesting surprises at this Democamp so make sure to sign up and come on out.

On Tue 20 Mar 2007.