Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Time: 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Location: Calgary Chamber of Commerce –  100 6th Avenue SW
Admission: Free (and bring a friend!)

We’d like to thank Adam Legge, CEO of the Chamber for supporting the startup community in Calgary.  We’ll have a fantastic room for demos and mingling, as well as a cash bar.

If you have something you’d like to present, read this and contact us here, or email us at organizers [at] democampcalgary (dot) com.

We’re going cram everyone into their offices, watch some demos, and mingle afterwards. Should we BYOB, in true startup fashion?

Date: November 17, 2011
Time: 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Location: AcceleratorYYC – 200, 1212 9th Ave SE

If you have something you’d like to present, read this and contact us here, or email us at organizers [at] democampcalgary (dot) com.

Presenting companies get 5 minutes to show off the highlights of their business, and you’ll get 5 minutes to ask questions after each presentation. We’ve got a great line up of companies, ranging from apps to hardware:

• BabyUI – Gord McDowell
• SideSeat – Tim Griffin
• iConnectivity – Demitrio Navarro
• Kent Imaging – Don Chapman
• DeliverGood – Robb Price
• Edistorm – Reg Cheramy
• Minigroup – Ben Sargent & Yuval Kordov

Also, two other companies will be showing off their products in 1:1 demos:

• Psyko Audio – James Hildebrandt
• Fotoler – Yubing Sun

If you’d like to show your product at a 1:1 table next week, contact us: democamp (at) barcampcalgary.com.

Date: Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Time: 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm

Location: Spur Gastropub – 351 4th Avenue SW. Parking after 6:00 in the parkade is $4. Parking on the street is free after 6:00.

Who: Everyone is invited to attend – bring a friend! There is no fee to attend, but bring your wallet and buy a few rounds to thank Spur for their support of DemoCamp Calgary.

Format: Standard DemoCamp rules apply. Please email us if you’d to present. Please follow these guidelines if you’re presenting.

Presenting companies will have 5 minutes to show off their product, and another 5 minutes for questions. In-between presentations, we’ll have some time to announce tech and entrepreneur community events, and job openings (email us and tell us what you’d like to talk about). Bring business cards and make some friends!

As always, DemoCamp is about connecting the local tech and entrepreneur community, and a great chance for new companies to gather feedback and support. Get involved by beta-testing the products you see, offer your feedback, give introductions and do whatever else you can to support our entrepreneurs!

Open Data Calgary: Christopher Harper and his team were looking for volunteers to join their advocacy group. They want to convince the City of Calgary to open up it’s data archives and enable developers to create apps that would benefit all Calgarians. Ideas for apps include bus schedules and garbage pick-up reminders. They even brought Alderman Councillor Brian Pincott to help talk up the cause. For more information or to join the cause, contact: christopher.harper at ideaca.com.

Yellowjacket Sting: Kevin Colton demoed his windows-based simulation software, which allows users to model everything from hockey practices to c-train movements (as shown) to ocean liners on shipping routes. He’s looking for beta testers when he releases his next version – write: kjc at yellowjacket.ca if you’re interested.

4u2c.it: Mark Voorberg and Wiebo Troost showed off 4u2c.it, a site that they say “makes your URL shortening more fun and personal”. It allows you to place a short, personalized comment and picture on top of web pages that you share with your friends.

FormLis is a wiki and database that makes it easy for businesses to migrate their forms onto the web. You’ll find a sandbox demo on the FormLis site, or contact warrenwilkinson at formlis.com if you want a custom demo/install.

Tys von Gaza showed off ProjectTopo, which is a combo of two of his passions, tech and climbing. It’s essentially a wikipedia for climbing topos – users simply upload images and add their climbing paths. You can check out the project by logging onto the ProjectTopo site with the following credentials – user: urban / pw: uprising

Hervé St-Louis showed off his ComicBookBin mobile app, available for iPhone, Android, and Palm webOS. The site publishes articles, reviews, news and interviews about the comic book industry and action figures, as well as video games, movies, books and fan films. The mobile app allows you to add comic book conventions to your personal calendar, and helps you find the closest comic book stores in your area. Geek heaven!

Feedback on the event format was overwhelmingly positive, as it allowed attendees and presenters more time to discuss details and to establish some personal connections. More than one attendee expressed interest in presenting their companies in a similar style, as they felt it would be less intimidating than presenting to the usual (much larger) DemoCamp Calgary audience. We’ll try and find a way to incorporate more of these types of demos into future events.

We also heard from a few attendees who wanted to see the traditional DemoCamp presentations . . . which leads us to the next community assignment. DemoCamp Calgary is looking for a new venue, now that Seven Restolounge is no more. Here’s the wishlist: room for 150+ attendees; A/V capabilities: large screen, and loud PA system; Central location, with parking nearby; Refreshments – food and drinks on location, or nearby; Cost – free (we’re a volunteer organization, but we’ll bring 150 of our thirstiest best friends over to an establishment on a Tuesday or Wednesday night!). If you have any suggestions or connections, please contact us: democamp at barcampcalgary.com, or comment below. Thanks!

It was probably just a simple understanding, but wouldn’t life be more exciting if we really did have a mole in the midst? However, rest assured that having lived through that experience once, we don’t ever plan on letting it happen again. We’ll be calling in to confirm our reservations from here on in!

So, apologies to everyone for a less than optimal experience. Then again, there were lots of smiles and some great discussions in the crowd – could it have anything to do with the beverages?

After a late start, the audience of 50 or so attendees saw 4 company presentations and one special project presentation. First, the companies:

• Mob4Hire: Paul Poutanen presented this crowdsourced platform for testing mobile applications. Participants from every region throughout the world are encouraged to register the model of their phone, their location, and their service provider. Developers of mobile applications can tap into the crowd and seek testing on specific phones in specific locales on specific carriers, or test their applications across the entire Mob4Hire network.

• Aviary: I presented Aviary, an outrageously cool set of online design applications. Think Photoshop, Illustrator and 14 other applications, all of them working within your browser – no downloads required. The system tracks every version that is saved, and allows sharing of source files – allowing the community to collaborate on design projects with ease. Drop me a line if you’d like a beta invite.

• Xtreme Technologies: Chris Becker presented the XLink, a cellular phone gateway that allows you to answer cellphone calls on your home phone. The device connects to your cellphone through bluetooth, and has an output jack that you plug your home phone system into. Calls to your cellphone will ring through to your home system whenever your cell is within bluetooth range of the XLink. It allows you to use all those unlimited evenings and weekends minutes while your cellphone is charging. If you’d like to try it out, go to their online store and type “barcamp” into the coupon code field for 20% off.

• Ph03nixNewMedia: Jon Lam presented “Curse of the Pharoah”, a casual game which is currently hosted on Big Fish Games. It was an instant success, and Big Fish promptly ordered up two more titles.

Matt Beck, a student from the University of Calgary presented Alberta’s entry in the Solar Decathlon. Along with students from MRC and SAIT, the team is the first-ever Western Canadian team to gain entry into this international competition. They must compete in 10 separate contests, from designing and building a solar home, to creating enough energy to power an electric vehicle for a day. The competition will be held in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2009.

There are at least two reasons why you would attend a DemoCamp – the first one is to see the latest and greatest stuff from fellow technology entrepreneurs; the second one is to meet some interesting people with common interests and goals. Last night, we succeeded in both areas for many, if not all attendees. Be sure to give us your feedback, as the organizing committee continues to work on making these events even better!

Here’s a wrap up of the companies that presented last night:

Casey Pechet of IVOXX demonstrated the ultimate iPod accessory – it was a voice-recognition device that attaches to the back of an iPod. Still in prototype form, he first gave the command “play some stones” to the device – and a Rolling Stones song played. He gave it a command to “play some Led Zeppelin”, and it did. Then, he asked it to “play more like this”, and the device played a somewhat similar song. The final production version will also be able to accept commands such as “play something higher energy” or “play something slow”. This has huge implications for those of us who aren’t organized enough to categorize our music libraries. The device is slated for an August release, and will retail at $129 as an official “made for iPod”, Apple approved product.

Lino Ramirez of Aranducorp showed us what appeared to be an early build of a predictive analytics engine for charities. The product, when released, will help charities raise more money by helping them to predict and target those most sympathetic and generous to the cause.

Lorand Szojka of JIT Resources showed a customer site developed on their video streaming platform, which delivers private training and corporate messaging videos to enterprise clients.

To round out the evening, Matt Cox and Sarath Samarasekera demoed Shopster, which was described as a fully-networked retail e-commerce solution. For companies and individuals looking for an alternative to advertising-based revenues, Shopster offers a fully-customizable e-commerce store site template, complete with over 1,000,000 items in inventory.

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Mark your calendars for the next event:

April 8th 6:30pm – April 8th 8:30pm, 2008
DemoCampCalgary 8– at Melrose Cafe & Bar – Calgary, AB

Tags: democampcalgary democamp

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