Tag Archives: startup

Still alive – Recon, MTLSEC, Next Montreal, FREE BYRON!

Posted on August 17, 2010 | 6 Comments

Hi!

Sorry.  Blog not dead.   It’s just been summertime.  In Montreal.  If you live here, you’ll understand.

The biggest event of the summer for us was throwing Recon 2010.  Preparations had me so busy that I didn’t even blog about it.  Recon is a well-known Montreal security / reverse engineering (i.e. hacking, by the original and only real definition) conference that has existed since 2005.  2010 was our biggest conference ever – an enormous success and a lot of fun.  We had six training sessions and  3 days of conference.  The conference schedule was packed with speakers from all over the world.  The Recon party, which was legendary, had guests such as monochrom and int80 from Nerdcore group Dual Core. Here’s a clip.

We also had a contest organized by Tipping Point’s ZDI that was totally new for Recon 2010.  It was like having a CTF, but without all of the setup, and much closer to the heart of what Recon is all about.  ZDI awarded 20,000$ in prize money.  Not bad.  Props to ZDI / Tipping Point for coming up with the contest idea, it was a great and  I hope we do it again next year.

We closed out Recon 2010 with a party at my place for speakers, trainers, and anyone left over who we could round up.  I had about 50-55 people from maybe 20 countries in my house on Sunday night.  No complaints or police.  Pretty amazing.

Looking forward to next year.

MTLSEC July took a break and returned in August.  We held it last week.  I’ll return to announcing them here for September’s meeting.

Also, check out Next Montreal, a blog about Montreal technology scene stuff run by people in the scene.

It’s August 17 and Byron Sonne is still in jail on bullshit charges.  Byron is one of us, a well-liked member of hacklab.to.  His ongoing detention is outrageous, even if you don’t agree with his political views.  Byron is not a terrorist.  If you are unfamiliar with this ongoing case, educate yourself.  Spread the word.

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YULBiz June – Summer special tonight

Posted on June 22, 2010 | Leave a comment

Yulbiz June is tonight.  It will be held at Le Massillia, 4543, avenue du parc.  There will be pastis, pétanque, sun and fun.  Starts at 17h30.

RSVP to the Facebook event.

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Notman House Launch @ Hôtel Opus

Posted on May 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

The launch of the Notman House, which was announced at StartupCamp 6, will be held this afternoon.  We’re going to be at the Hôtel Opus (10 Sherbrooke O, métro St-Laurent or Sherbrooke), on the terrace.  Starts in about 45 minutes, at 3pm (sorry!).

The Notman House is an exciting development.  It’s going to be a clubhouse, shared working space, incubator, and generally cool place to hang out – for startup people, independent workers doing creative things + various other squatters.  The heritage building, located on Sherbrooke, was purchased using funds privately raised by the OSMO Foundation, a comprised of well-known locals from Montreal Startup, Embrase, Station-C, and other sympathizers/collaborators.  The gazette covered it recently here.

You can’t RSVP to it anymore, but the event details are here.

Image ganked from Images Montreal (imtl.org) – merci.

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StartupCamp 6 Tonight

Posted on May 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

Tonight is StartupCamp 6, which is pretty much the Montreal startup scene event of the year.  StartupCamp is a general conference for local technology entrepreneurs, investors, experts of all kinds and other interested members of the general public.   It’s once again being held at the SAT on St-Laurent.

The attendance is approaching 500, the most ever.  It’s going to be an interesting year for startups in Montreal.  The government and its partners have injected a large amount of money (for Canada) into venture funds – and it’s all going to startups.  For Internet-ish stuff (ICT), it’s going to be managed by Montreal Startup who will probably be making mostly seed-level investments, filling what is generally considered a gap in Canada-based funding opportunities.

This is largely due to the effort put into building a grassroots startup scene and the promotion of entrepreneurship in technology by people like Austin Hill, Sylvain Carle, Raymond Luk, etc, over the past 3 or 4 years.  So the stage is set for local entrepreneurs to hustle.  Except to see a lot of activity in the next 12 months.

The event starts at about 3 with an informal “unconference”, during which attendees can hold or participate in various sessions.  Dave McClure (apparently involved in something like 1000 startups), Sylvain Carle (of Praized/aFrogInTheValley), and Dan Martell (angel, flowtown.com) are on-hand to moderate.

There’s also going to be a “free clinic” for startups, with various experts offering legal, accounting, banking and government advice.  Book fast with Tungle.  More details on the unconference here.

The major action starts at 6.  There will be five startups presenting:

  1. Shwowp (the founders include two friends of mine: Cassandra Girard and Tara Hunt)
  2. Nirvana (“getting stuff done”)
  3. SWIX (“Google analytics for social media”)
  4. Backfed – A David DuFresne joint
  5. Akoha – Austin Hill’s social/location game

Keynotes will be delivered by Just For Laugh’s founder and technology (Airborne Entertainment) entrepreneur Andy Nulman and the aforementioned Dave McClure of 1001 startups.

Register here, because it’s nearly sold out (if not already).  If you can’t get tickets, sneak in.

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Also – speaking of Montreal Startup, they’ve just invested in Recoset, a very mysterious startup headed by Daniel Haran (and Jeremy Barnes), who is half of the infamous Haran brothers.  Rumor has it they’re commercializing reverse-engineered alien technology.  Congratulations!  Now get back to work.

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Soleira Sun defeats Canadian winter

Posted on April 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

Back in March, Soleira Sun presented at MTLNewTech.  I didn’t make it, but I looked at the list of startups and this one stood out – because it was so interesting.  Simulated sunlight?  It clearly wasn’t just a tanning lamp.  Could this be for real?  I sent an e-mail to founder Eric Pflanzer and we had a chat on the phone.  That was over a month ago.  Since then, he’s been getting lots of press.

A real appreciation for natural sunlight is what probably drew my attention to this Montreal-based company.  At a past job, I used to eat lunch in this gloomy cafeteria that was dead in the center of a large, drab, industrial building in the wasteland between TMR and St-Laurent.  I hated being there during my break mostly because there was no natural light at all, not a single window, skylight or other cue about where we were with respect to the surface of the Earth.

Two years ago or so, Eric, a Montrealer who studied chemistry at Columbia University in NYC, was on a beach in Mexico thinking about new business opportunities.  Fourteen mojitos later, while flipping through a pile of trashy magazines, he found a small, business-card sized ad for an expo where sunlight-simulation technology was being demonstrated.

Skeptical, Eric cold-called the inventors of the technology, who turned out to be three guys in Sweden.  They had built it for automakers, who wanted simulated sunlight for testing.  The technology had also been adapted to create indoor beaches.  Oh yeah, it generated light that is spectro-radiometrically equivalent to sunlight (i.e it is sunlight).

Eric quickly started working with the developers of the technology to be compliant with Canadian regulations so that it could be brought here and commercialized.  His self-funded company of three employees, Soleira Sun, has already won awards: two silver prizes at the IIDEX NeoCon.  The technology has been demonstrated in the National Home Show’s “Dream Home” – for the sun deck, the final moment of the tour of the home.  Unfortunately it was just for show, the home didn’t come with the Sun installation.

The technology produces light that the brain “knows” is sunlight – a feeling that Eric described as “erotic”.  This sensation can be created over very large spaces, for a large number of people – from 5 to 500.  It can be tuned for temperature, or to simulate a specific time of day.  The UV-A and UV-B levels are reduced so that they are lower than in natural sunlight, making the experience safer as well.  And it is designed to be green – the technology recovers as much as 75% of the heat for reutilization.  The vision is that the technology will be used in nightclubs, condo projects, hotels – one of the first customers will be a retirement home.  Very cool.

Some additional pics:

Today I profiled Montreal-based Soleira Sun, the first of these kinds of posts.  I will be covering other startups, individuals, companies, groups, projects that I find interesting in the future.


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JS-Montreal Tonight

Posted on April 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

Meetup for the Montreal Javascript Usergroup tonight.  Alexis Sellier will be presenting on “Node JS”, an IO framework for Javascript v8.  Apparently you can use it for things that require event-driven IO, such as implementing a web server (what?).  Ok, that sounds kind of cool.  Too much work to do tonight.  I won’t be there, but you can RSVP here.

Event starts at 7pm and will be held at the Bloom Digital offices (481 Viger Ouest).

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This week: StartUp Square Soirée, MTLSEC, NewTech Pitching Event

Posted on April 12, 2010 | Leave a comment

Three things happening this week of interest (unfortunately I missed announcing the WhereCloud iPad meet-and-greet that was hosted this evening by my friend Fred):

1. StartUp Square is a soirée that will take place Tuesday evening.  The idea is to introduce students to startup culture.  Olivier Cabanes from Bolidea and Benjamin Yoskovitz from StandoutJobs and InstigatorBlog will be speaking.  It will be held at the Thompson House (3650 McTavish) at 6pm on Tuesday, April 13.   5$ for students, 10$ for non-students.  Get your tickets here.

2. MTLSEC April will be held on Wednesday, April 14. MTLSEC is an informal event for hackers, security professionals, hobbyists, students, etc.  Anyone who is into network or information security.  Show up around 6pm at the Old Dublin, 636 Cathcart, metro McGill.   It’s free.

3. MTLNewTech is hosting an event for pitches.  It’s being organized with the assistance of the city of Montreal.  It’s happening on Thursday, April 15, at 303 Notre-Dame Est, starting at 6pm.  It’s free, but please RSVP here.

Events lifted from Raymond Luk’s excellent StartupDigest Montreal newsletter.

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Fat Tuesday: StatusNet gets new digs, nomag isn’t a mag, Confoo has a party

Posted on March 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

I had intended to pop into five events yesterday. I only made it to three.

First stop: StatusNet.  The Montreal startup StatusNet, a company headed by WikiTravel founder Evan Prodomrou, develops and maintains an open-source microblogging platform.  They also run Identi.ca, an alternative to Twitter that allows you to use OpenID or some other federated identity rather than maintain a separate login and password.  Cool, always liked them, we’re doing open-source too.  They had a little party to warm up their new digs in the plateau and to celebrate their new cloud offering.  We’re happy about the new place, but we already miss them at 2020 University.

StatusNet Team

The StatusNet Team

Next, The Sparrow on St-Laurent.  Launch party for nomag, the e-zine that’s not an e-zine.  Started by a couple of Montrealers, covering the indie music and art scene.  They’ve got an article about animals getting hammered.  Check it out.

nomag Launch Party

nomag Launch Party at The Sparrow

Then on to the “Confoo Contiki” at Brutopia.  Confoo is a fairly high-profile conference for web-developer types that started today.  The party was hosted by Microsoft Canada and TikiWiki (another Montreal-based startup doing open source).   Met lots of interesting techies.  Had some great conversations about web application security challenges.  I learned about another upcoming event, initiated by Microsoft – “Make Web, Not War“.  It’s a general conference for web developers, to be held in Montreal on May 27, 2010.  There’s also a programming contest.

There were two events I didn’t make: IdentityCamp, which was held at Station-C.   Finally, a Montreal NewTech Demo event took place last night at McKibbon’s, near Concordia.  I didn’t make it because I just didn’t have time.  Let me know what you thought of the presentations.

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