Blitzweekend

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. 

I’ve pushed today an update for blitzmaker, by making it more obvious to ease, and smooth out rough edges, and I think it’s now time to tell and share about blitzmaker’s story. 

Blitzmaker, as most projects I started, was born from a real need, which was matching people wanting to participate in Blitzweekend, but who didn’t knew enough developers, entrepreneurs or designers in Montréal. After thinking about it, I knew it was a great idea as I had also an “angle of attack”, which was having members, projects and roles section. Blitzmaker was then done in 3 days, about 1 month ago, in one of those intense development sprints. 

I invite you to go through the homepage, see the user interface, go to the members section, go to the projects section, see how roles are presented, and try to register, and create a sample project (don’t worry, you can delete it afterwards)

Creating a web application in 3 days is no small feat, and here are essential tips I can share with you:

1 - have a sharp idea. better yet, make sure you know exactly what the final product would look like. If you are not sure of a feature, how it’s going to be presented, it’s better to cut it out and make the final product simpler (and sharper)

2 - use proven frameworks.  I used Ruby On Rails for this project, which is ideal for the job. For the user interface, I used blueprint, which is an awesome CSS framework to work with grids, layouts, typography, forms, and buttons. Now, you might know how to change colors or how to position elements with CSS, but why bother if blueprint already does a great job for you. Now, one area that I wish there was something avalaible is an user interface framework. The yui team has done efforts in this way, but it’s not yet what I am looking for, which is a framework that allows you to prototype menus, headers, footers, and most importantly user tasks.

3 - be focused which in other words means cut the Internet and other distractions. It depends on how you work, but for instance, it takes me at least 30 minutes to get into the zone and be 100% efficient and work fast. In normal circumstances, having an IM message, a Skype call, or checking your emails or RSS will reset this concentration and get your productivity drop to zero. Of course, this might seem as too much for you. But you have to ask yourself the question. Does getting this project done really matter to me? Would I like to get it accomplished? The answer is yours, and you should give yourself accordingly the means to achieve it.   

4 - do not forget the “big” picture.  this is somehow related to #1. when in development mode, it’s all too easy to add pages, to add copy, or introduce product features that you think would be a great addition. Maybe a friend who came over gave an idea and insisted that you added it. I am not even aware of it, as time flies, but soon, it hits you in the face when you realize that the website has lost its sharpness. In situations like this, get a step back, and compare the actual product with the “specs”. More importantly, you should get into the user’s shoes, forget any emotional ties, and try to see if the product is actually useful. If you don’t have an obvious answer in 30 seconds (like any other Internet user would), then you should re-design the whole thing. I hope this helps you. In the upcoming second part, I will write more technical tips.

And happy blitz year! 

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 :

1.  register and create a member account
2. if you already have an idea or a project, register one, and describe it with as much details as possible so that other users can have a better idea. 
3. you must open afterwards “positions” which are in fact invitations for other members to fill in the position
4. if you don’t have an idea, your best option is to browse through projects or go to each section dedicated to each “trade”

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! 

How many times have you thought about starting a business? I guess if you are reading this blog, you would probably answer: more than once. Now, how many times did you step forward to launch it? Now the answer is not as straightforward and is more likely to be of this kind: not that many times, or even: never, but thinking about it. There are as many reason as there are people, but in general common justification can be because you were lacking resources, experience/guidance or not having a team. Starting a business is challenging. It is even more demanding and exhausting when you decide to do it all yourself.

In technology more than in any other fields, one of the most sought after information related to starting a business relates to finding co-founders. Many questionings come out of this: Should I look in my relatives, classmates/roommates or professional contacts?

As a Meebo power user, I am used to get the daily news from their blog every time I launch the service. And not so long ago, I stumbled upon this article about forming a team. In the following, you will find the exact transcription of that article from meebo.com’s co-founder Seth Sternberg, himself. He explains the process he has gone through before fully measuring the importance of the initial team in the success of the startup as well as describe the characteristics to look for in each of the co-founders.

Over the last two days I got to talk with students at both my high school and my college. In both cases, the students were all interested in potentially starting their own business some day, and my goodness did they have a lot of questions. One of my favorite topics that usually comes up is how to put together an initial team to actually work on the project!

Those of you who’ve used meebo for a long while know that Elaine, Sandy and I got together and worked on completely different ideas before ultimately coming up with the idea of moving IM over to the web. We actually started back in 2003, but didn’t launch anything until 2005. What this means, though, is that we decided that we liked working together and that we were a really strong team, so even if we started in on one project and decided we didn’t like it, we stayed together and worked on the next one.

I tried to start a bunch of startups before meebo…and they all, more or less, failed. A common factor, I think, was that I tried to do them myself…I didn’t find other really great people to team up with. The reality, of course, is that any given person is only knowledgeable in a relatively narrow field. Sure, I can raise a round of funding, but I could never actually build meebo. That has Elaine and Sandy written all over it! And then if you look at Elaine’s and Sandy’s unique skills, you notice that they too are very complementary to each other. Elaine’s focus is what you see on the screen (front end) while Sandy’s is moving bits through servers really efficiently (back end).

The team that you work with to do a startup is incredibly important. You really want to find people who are NOT like you…who have unique skills that complement your weaknesses (me: attention to detail…not so good!). So make sure you branch out and find folks who complement you, and perhaps above all, make sure you all really love working together…you’ll be spending many sleepless nights working together!

P.S.: The original article is here.

Si vous n’êtes pas encore sûr de participer à Bltizweekend, si vous cherchez des coéquipiers ou si vous voulez participez à l’évenement, on tiendra une réunion ouverte demain à Laika, 4040 bvd St-Laurent, Montréal, à 6 heures. Tout le monde est le bienvenu. Que vous soyez développeur, designer, entrepreneur ou juste curieux du concept!

Si vous êtes déjà impatient de participer, on annoncera aussi une session prochaine de test de Blitzweekend lors de cette réunion.

We’re very proud to announce our first sponsor: Guru. They were kind enough to listen to our idea and they were hooked on the whole thing right away. They said the idea was clever, dynamic and powerful and that’s what Guru is looking for: vibrant events.

We really want to thank them especially because this is going to be a very intense weekend and their support (in drinks) will greatly be appreciated! We wanted to keep participants focused on their work and Guru is a sure way to help!

We’ll have Internet gurus, coding gurus, business gurus and what is better than Guru drinks to top it all!

Nous avons lancé le site Blitzweekend.com officiellement il y a 2 jours, avec l’objectif principal de transmettre “l’esprit blitzweekend”. En effet, s’il y a déjà eu des initiatives similaires comme startupweekend ou RailsRumble, la formule Blitzweekend est radicalement nouvelle. Comme le dit l’adage “une image vaut mille mots”, on a donc illustré le concept par une série d’images qui devraient inspirer les participants

C’est une photo provenant de Hack Day London. Matt McAlister a un billet enthousiaste sur le fait de regrouper des gens brillants, de supprimer les règles, et d’organiser une compétition entre participants:

It seems obvious now, but it amazes me all the same. I’ve never really experienced anything quite like it in the workplace.

In many ways, the experience both as a host and as a participant at the event feels similar to the intensity and even panic you get working at a startup that suddenly feels like it’s turning the corner. Everyone is operating at full speed. You know you’re on to something hot. But you have no idea what will happen next…and you’re pretty sure that you will fail if you stop running at full speed.

Image tirée du documentaire “Looking for hackers”:

Looking for Hackers is a documentary that intends to open or to “hack” our preconceived ideas about what is a Hacker, and introduce us to what the new century and the new millennium has prepared for us; the new ethical and moral standpoint that this new technological revolution has to offer and that manifests itself in our daily life from different parts of our mental geography and various places of our society.

Behind the screen we will see new faces, different from those created by the mass media where spoiled brats play to break security codes and to create corporate-unmerciful virus. These faces introduce new life style options, new job choices beyond from the big corporation, and joined together by the fight for Free software that, like every other language, does not belong to anybody. Their philosophy brings together different new and inclusive visions, where races, genders, creeds and ages melt within this medley of information without an owner.

C’est une photo provenant de TerraNova2007, un “startupcamp” en Europe, où a invité des entrepreneurs à parler des perspectives futures de l’Internet, mais aussi des problèmes actuels

Une session de “Brainstorming” avant CodeCon

Pecha Kucha Night est un “camp” pour designers et les créatifs. Il y a une version montréalaise qui regroupe entre 150 et 250 personnes à chaque fois. On adore l’innovation et les idées qu’on y trouve.