This is really a last-minute announcement, but we’re holding a meetup at Laika, 4040 bvd-St-Laurent, today July 2nd, from 6pm to discuss about a (possible) Blitzweekend 2.
Meeting open to everybody! Bring coworkers & friends over a beer!
(and sorry again for being late - we will do another one if other people are interested into being volunteers or co-organizers)
Blitzweekend est prévu dans 3 jours au campus de Longueuil de l’Université de Sherbrooke. Le lieu a été choisi pour plusieurs raisons:
En contactant différent organisations potentiels, l’Université de Sherbrooke était le seul à remplir les 4 conditions, en nous mettant à disposition leurs locaux à Longueuil. Ils se sont montrés diligents, dynamiques et coopératifs.
Le campus de Longueuil offre 90+ programmes, et se focuse notamment sur des cours intensifs, et des cours à temps partiel pour des professionnels.
Les locaux se trouvent au 1111 rue st-charles, à 2 minutes de marche du métro de Longueuil (ligne jaune). Il faut prendre la sortie Place Charles Le Moyne, et se diriger vers les batiments en verre sur la droite. On occupera le rez-de-chaussé des bâtiments des 5 heures, le vendredi 29 février.
Yesterday, we organized a 5 to 7 informal cocktail, gathering organizers and anyone interested into in Blitzweekend. 38 people came up, mostly web entrepreneurs, but also developers and designers. There were also a handful of business consultants, investors, and experts in entrepreneurship. We also had the friendly team of intruders who interviewed a few people at the event, with their high-tech cameras.
Here we have the ever-cherry Fred Ngo, co-founder of Standoutjobs.
Standoutjobs is a new startup in town offering innovative HR solutions to companies wanting to get top talent. If you haven’t visited their website yet, give it a try, they’ve done an awesome work.
It’s surprising the amount of attention we get for blitzweekend. Above is Richard Menneveux, a web entrepreneur in France, who runs french job startup moovement.fr. He loves Montreal and also love Blitzweekend. We also had messages from entrepreneurs overseas who are looking into joining the event — which is awesome.
Now, our next job is to match-make people. If you are looking for developers, designers, entrepreneurs, please leave a message, or email us at hello@blitzweekend.com and we will find other potential members. Don’t also forget to go at the list of projects and attendees.
We received last week a lot of attention about blitzweekend, mostly from Montreal but also in Canadian and in international blogs, which adds up to the regular mentions in MontrealTechWatch and QuebecValley
Mentions in Montreal:
DIY blog, wants to participate
Gagnerericwebware is very interested, and has setup a widget to search for blitzweekend mentions on twitter.
woot.org is a developer and likes the event.
Stephane Daury announces he will be participating in the event.
jponrails is a ruby on rails developer and announces blitzweekend 3 times. Looks like he has a whole network of websites.
Mentions in Quebec:
Present Profit, a blog by a consulting firm helping entrepreneurs finding funds for their ventures. They outline what the event would bring in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship in Quebec.
Mentions in Canada:
StartupOttawa invites its reader to get a team together and come to Montreal
StartupNorth describes the event as an “ad-hoc launchpad” for startups
Ottawa web weekend wants to do the same event in Ottawa for April, and wants to setup a team for Montreal.
Mentions worldwide:
web1979 is in London and says there is now a lot of activity in Montreal
Web Addict (South Africa)
ReadWriteWeb (originally New Zealand, but readership is mostly US)
zerosumdirt, a Ruby On Rails developer who discusess the merits of constraints-driven development
Techcrunch France invite canadian entrepreneurs to participate in the event.
The most interesting blog posts were the one coming from startupnorth, which pretty nailed what we ultimately want to offer for entrepreneurs. Also, ReadWriteWeb, as usual, have done a great job in getting some perspective and what this could actually mean for developers. Time constraints is most of the time an underlooked issue, although everyone is aware how having milestones, deadlines, tight schedules can actually have huge impacts in terms of results. I have discovered it myself when doing blitzmaker, and it is a true eye-opener on what you can actually do. It was was a stressful, although ultimately, good surprise and experience for me.
Last week, I also met 30+ developers at the first MontrealPython meetup (slides below), and invited attendees directly to come up for blitzweekend and for the upcoming 5 à 7, in the case they are looking for extra team members.
We are inviting you to have a drink with us Tuesday, Feb 12th, at Blizzart Bar.
Blizzart is at 3956a bvd St-Laurent, (at Duluth interesection). This will be be a perfect opportunity if you are looking for a team, for an idea, or for extra team members.
Standoutjobs will be our sponsor; they have just launched their startup and will have a kiosk onsite.
Come and meet developers, designers, and Montreal entrepreneurs!
Blitzweekend is scheduled this spring in Montreal, Canada March 1st and March 2nd. We expect it to be one exciting and innovative event, where we would invite developers, designers and entrepreneurs to team up and build a technology in just 48 hours, in the spirit of startupweekends and rails rumble. Why should you be there?
1. For innovation
We will have gurus and entrepreneurs eager to work on latest technologies and try to come up with new software, algorithm, and designs of their own.
2. for the challenge
Do you have what it takes to design, build and deploy in 48 hours? Can you go past technical problems? What about team dynamics? This is most certainly not an easy feat, and you will need to deliver your best and bring your best tricks.
3. for the experts
Each team will have “joker cards”, allowing them to call an expert in technology, design, marketing, business plan, finance, interface design etc. Feel that the challenge and pressures are overwhelming? Just raise the joker card, and you’ll get expert advice, allowing you to go forward in no time.
4. it’s an unconference
We won’t select attendees. We won’t ask for you resumés, your past experience or diplomas.Instead, we view each attendee as a co-organizer, bringing his or her own experience and skillset on making blitzweekend a better event. Best of all, the event is free!
5. to learn
Blitzweekend will be an ideal opportunity to try out technologies and frameworks you never had time to try out previously. We will also be planning keynotes during the event, given by select experts and profesionnals.
6. to connect
Needless to say you will work, meet, and mingle with the most talented people in design, programming and in business. This, in itself, is worth the trip. If you are looking for work, if you are looking for co-founders for a projects, if you are hiring gurus for your startup, this is most certainly the event to be at!
7. a launchpad for you startup
The most promising projects built during the weekend can have access to venture capitalists, angel investors or business consultants of their choice, if they want to take their project to the next level and get a startup running.
8. because that’s the future
Do you think it’s not serious to ask people to build something in 48 hours? We don’t think so. In the past years, we have seen new rapid development frameworks like Ruby On Rails, Django, Merb emerge, allowing web developers to launch a web application in a minimal amount of time. Leaders like Facebook, Netvibes, Apple or Google have released APIs that allow third-party developers to launch an application on their platform very easily and quickly. Our bet is that it’s just the beginning, and we will see in the near future ubiquitous rapid and agile tools allowing more developers to launch applications in just a few days, if not hours.
9. for the freedom
We will provide the facilities, room, wifi and food for the event. There are no rules on the projects themselves, apart that they should be in technology and they should be innovative. You can choose to just experiment or make stuff. You can also choose to write a business plan and try to setup a startup. It’s your choice!
10. for the fun
Yes, fun is they keyword here. If you go through the official website, you will see that it’s designed like a game, where teams compete to make something in a pre-determined amount of time. Attendees will get to vote on the most promising project at the end. We will even have a fun prize for the winning team at the end.
If you can make it to Montreal, Canada March 1st and 2nd, you are unforgivable if you don’t go to blitzweekend. For those who are interested, you can go to the registration page (it’s a wiki, so you can just go edit and add your name at the end)
Nous avons déjà annoncé Guru comme étant un sponsor, et nous sommes très fiers d’annoncer aujourd’hui iNovia Capital et MSBi Valorisation comme sponsors pour blitzweekend.
iNovia Capital gère des fonds de capital risque de démarrage et aide les entrepreneurs et innovateurs en TI, sciences de la vie et technologies propres. iNovia Capital a notamment investi dans Collective Media, un réseau de publicités sur Internet avec une solution élaborée pour cibler les audiences, LegiTime Technologies, une solution anti-spam pour email, et autres protocoles de communication sur Internet et standoutjobs, une “startup” montréalaise ayant pour but de révolutionner le marché de l’emploi.
MSBi Valorisation, de son côté, a pour but de commercialiser les innovation provenant de l’Université McGill, de l’Université de Sherbrooke et de l’Université Bishop’s, ainsi que de leurs hôpitaux et centres de recheches affiliés.
Chris Arsenault et Etienne Lagacé nous ont apporté une aide inestimable, notamment en ayant recours à leur partenariat de longue date avec les universités McGill et aussi l’université de Sherbrooke.
C’est une commandite clé pour blitzweekend — il nous a permis d’offrir les installations de l’Université de Sherbrooke — et nous sommes ravis de les avoir comme sponsors.
Pour vous, futur participant à Blitzweekend, cela signifie que blitzweekend est sponsorisé par un fonds de capital risque majeur à Montréal, et donc avoir accès éventuellement à iNovia Capital, si vous pensez commercialiser vos résultats obtenus à blitzweekend.
CodeFest is happenning this weekend at La Bande Passante in Montréal. It’s very similar in essence to Blitzweekend, but with a focus on Open Source software, developers and php.
This year’s theme is microformats, and the goal is to implement the standard in existing applications and come up with new tools.
I am currently at La Bande Passante, and so far, there were lots of collaboration, new ideas thrown in, and brainstorming. Microformats is very promising in theory (”business”-wise) but needs more implementation / tools to be really useful. Marc Laporte who is organizing the event, has just made a list of potential projects, and attendees are invited to join them.
I am not sure I will be here for all the weekend, but I am sure the experience here is invaluable. It also gives me lots of new ideas for Blitzweekend, on how to get developers involved for instance. Here, people are interested in new tools, new technologies, “hacks” (even if these haven’t really any end-user usage in the first place), feats, and are most of all builders.
For everyone who is interested in Blitzweekend, we invite you to register at Blitzmaker.com Blitzmaker is a web application which was designed to match its members for their project, especially if you are an entrepreneur, a designer, or a programmer / developer. To use the service, you need to :
Of course, the application is brand-new and you’ll have the feeling of exploring a vast barren unexplored land. Hopefully though, we will get most entrepreneurs and web pros to register into the website and list their projects there, making the place much more useful.
The application is both in English and in French. However, it was not tested 100% fully, and we are fine-tuning blitzmaker as we speak.
Seen in Montréal:
We think they were inspired by us.Have a great Blitz day!
