layout: post title: Getting a place in Vancouver created: 1075311540 categories:

• Vancouver

Kate and I spent most of the day yesterday looking for a place in Vancouver. It seems that rent is about $200 per month more than Ottawa (at least in the hip, downtown areas we are looking).

We had 4 appointments set up, plus I had a meeting to go to in the morning. We had done our searching online, mainly using the Vancouver classified listings. All the CanWest Global newspapers mirror their classifieds at that Canada.com address, and it’s a pretty good system, except that it is limited to the same, abbreviated “paper” concept, so you can’t see pictures, there is no links to maps, etc.

We limited our search to the areas known as Westend/Downtown (basically the main “downtown” area of Vancouver, which stretches from Stanley Park to BC Place) and VanWest (which is on the south side of the Granville/Burrard bridges, across from downtown). Actually, the VanWest part we wanted is even more limited — South Granville, which comprises the “tree streets” east and west of Granville, and from 4th to 14th north-south.

The downtown appointments we had weren’t that promising. Either the places were small and dingy, or were executive condos (miniature instead of small) and way expensive (but included all sorts of fancy stuff in the building).

South Granville was much more fruitful hunting grounds. It still seems impossible to find a 2 bedroom under $1200, so we switched to looking for a large 1 bedroom. A 10th floor corner apartment, with a view to the north-west (over Point Grey, towards the mountains and Bowen Island) was really nice — the whole building had recently been re-done, with new paint, floors, etc. The main downside was that they were putting in new carpet. Kate and I are kind of addicted to hardwood.

I finally convinced Kate that a stop for lunch was in order, so we went to the Cafe Crepe on Granville. These cafes all serve illy coffee from Italy. They are so intense, they don’t serve “regular” coffee, only espresso. An “americano” (espresso thinned with boiling water) is your only option if you want something closer to regular coffee. Very, very good.

Then we spent the next 3 and a half hours criss-crossing the avenues around Granville. Lots of places aren’t listed at all, but just have signs outside the building. It was drizzling and quite cold for Vancouver (you know, a damp cold) and I was starting to get pretty miserable. There was a very nice ground floor that was built in the 1920s with dark hardwood floors that was great, if a little small. But, ground floor attracts thieves (pronounced “thevs”).

When all seemed lost (literally, it was the last place we were going to look at), we found something really great. It’s on 10th at Birch, in an old brick building (quite uncommon in Vancouver). We rang the manager, Rose, and she came down to meet us in the lobby. It looked a bit sketchy, since everything was being torn up and refinished in the halls. We took some winding stairs and hallways to the first 1 bedroom on the second floor. Hardwood floors, big windows, a gas stove, and all these built in storage places. Why built in storage? For the Murphy beds, of course!

So, on to the 4th floor apartment. This is actually the top floor, and it was currently vacant because they were refinishing the clawfoot tub and putting in a shower head. You know, one of those ones where you attach a ring that curtains hang down from all around the tub? Very cool. This one actually had two functioning Murphy beds, one in the bedroom and one in the living room. And a pantry, with cupboards up to the high ceilings.

Kate and I kind of looked at each and casually asked to fill out an application form. I filled it out while Kate chatted with Rose. A few cell phone calls to find out some details about references and work details. So, we’ll find out in a couple of days.

Then we wandered over to Jamie and Allison’s, which is only a block away. Rebecca is only a few blocks away in the other direction. We feasted on some celebratory pizza and wine (Lindemans Bin 45) and off to the last ferry to Bowen.

layout: post title: WestWorld Computers on Broadway in Vancouver created: 1076031780 categories:

• Vancouver
• Mac

So we just moved. And we’re actually all set up at the new place. Shaw came just when they said they would (10am when they said between 8am and 12noon).

My Mac, the e-smith server, and the VoIP phone all got moved over to the new place today. And I managed to leave the iMac power cable behind. And I had work that I had to do tonight.

Luckily, WestWorld has a location just around the corner, on Broadway between Hemlock and Birch. I figured I could go borrow one until I got mine.

Read on, gentle reader, for the full tale.

So I rush into WestWorld, about 30min before closing. There were perhaps two customers browsing, and a handful of staff. The one closest to the door, looked at my wild-eyed appearance, and asked if he could help me.

I explained that I needed an iMac flat-panel power cord. He walked me over to service. I explained I only needed to borrow it until tomorrow morning, but the service tech said he could only order me one. I asked again if there wasn’t even one cord that I could borrow until morning, and the service tech instructed the salesperson to go ask the manager.

The salesperson went to ask the manager, who was on the phone. I wandered around the store, browsing. The salesperson came back up to me and said that the manager had said no. I asked him to point out the manager. He was currently with a customer, so I waited until he was done.

I again explained my need for a power cord temporarily. He proceeded to tell me that they were proprietary. “Yes, I know,” which is why I needed to borrow one until morning, when I can get the one I left behind when moving. I mentioned that they were about to close, and didn’t open again until the morning, so couldn’t I just borrow one until they opened?

The sales manager relented, and had me fill out a rental form, charged me $5 (plus GST), copied down my credit card number, and sent me on my way, again with an admonishment to be back by 9am.

I kept my cool during the whole ordeal, but I really didn’t feel like I was welcome in the store. No one was forthcoming or really gave me the feeling that they wanted to help. If this is the state of independent Mac retailing in Canada…well, let’s just say that I’ll likely be trying Simply Computing or the Apple online store when I’m shopping for my new PowerBook.

We’ll see how the return of the cord goes tomorrow morning.

Update: Well, nothing dramatic. I didn’t make a big scene or anything, I just returned the cord. But, interesting to note, it was shortly after 9am and the store wasn’t really open and ready to recieve customers.

layout: post title: "Caterina.net: Things to do in Vancouver" created: 1077584940 categories:

• Vancouver

A great, personally compiled list of of "Things to do in Vancouver".

layout: post title: ASI Exchange in Vancouver created: 1078881180 categories:

• Vancouver

I just got back from the ASI Exchange. There were perhaps 300 or so exhibitors, from companies to grad students. It was a good overview of some of the companies doing interesting technology work here in BC.

I’ve talked about the difference between Ottawa and Vancouver before: Vancouver seems to be much more heavily focused on software solutions, whereas Ottawa has had roots in telecom and manufacturing. I noticed as well a lot of wireless solutions and collaboration/groupware type solutions.

The number and quality of grad student presentations was amazing. I talked to Chris Snow (a UBC Master’s candidate) about <acronym title="Ultra Wide Band">UWB</acronym> wireless (here’s a link to his poster on UWB [PDF] ), and some other UBC students next to him about Bluetooth. Right when I walked in the door, I stopped and chatted to Vanesa Mirzaee. She had done some really interesting work on analyzing history documents and mapping them to various ontologies. This gleaned information like events, places, and people that were connected through various documents.

I immediately saw overlaps with lots of social networking concepts, and pointed out a couple of different networks for her to join (for the record: Flickr, LinkedIn, and Zerendipity).

I had fun stopping by the Nokia booth. Really good people there. I don’t think they enjoyed me mentioning the failure of the current NGage (you mean you have to take the battery out to put a new game in?). They were pretty good about it, and even let myself and Mary play with a prototype they had in the next 7600 series. It’s going to be another side talker, and it’s meant to be a rich media device, retailing for about 1000EUROs (it’s unlikely to make it to North America for a while). Bluetooth, but no WiFi, and there was talk of a 1GB MMC card.

Some BCIT students had a presentation about Asterisk, the open-source Linux PBX. They were hoping to deliver applications on top of the Asterisk platform, as part of their client-server course. This got me to thinking about the potential of having a 1- or 2-year certificate program in VoIP. The local universities (BCIT, SFU Harbour Centre, Tech UBC) are very much setup to offer these types of programs. This is again why I think that Vancouver is having a bit of a software renaissance — there are many qualified people here, and most of them don’t want to leave the west coast.

I even saw some people from UVic. Of course lots of engineering students (who I didn’t know), but Mary ran into Victor Chong, whom I vaguely remembered. He’s part of CHISEL, the Computer Human Interface Software Engineering Lab. I mentioned how the site was broken, but I was wrong — it runs on Drupal, and has since been fixed up and works really well.

Probably my most successful contact was David Brett, CEO of Knexa. Knexa is based here in Vancouver and produces knowledge management software.

David was interested when I mentioned that I’m the #1 hit for “vancouver knowledge management”. Ironically, that result actually points to the website of the Vancouver KM community of practice site, but my site ranks higher.

I’ve just briefly looked at Knexa’s site, and yes, it does violate a number of my Search Engine Voodoo tips. I hope to talk to David about these concepts, as well as the intersection of traditional KM, social networks, and personal web publishing.

Interestingly, the main function of the ASI Exchange actually seems to be about producing a directory. Only the dead-tree edition was available — it takes months to create the soft copy. They did have everyone register at computer terminals when coming in the door (I left my affiliation blank and wrote “VoIP, Social Networking, Information Architect” on my badge), which would seem to be the perfect opportunity to kick-off a social networking site. Note to SNs: have a conference to kick-start your network.

layout: post title: Innovation Commons must get built in Vancouver created: 1147647868 categories:

• Vancouver
• workspace
• innovation commons
• harold jarche
• centre for social innovation

This post was jogged by two things. One was seeing the post by Harold Jarche, who is moving ahead with putting together a Commons as well. The second was experiencing the fantastic space of the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto (thanks, Philip for getting us this space for DrupalCamp).

So, the Innovation Commons concept has to get built. Bill's Workspace shared office concept is a great solution as a business. But, the Innovation Commons needs to be a mix of businesses, non profits, and perhaps even public-private funding sources. I think the Centre for Social Innovation is a good model, but actually less of a focus on exclusively non-profit businesses. Creative, tech, non profit.

On to action items.

The SFU students that worked on an Innovation Commons business model did produce some good, lengthy documents, Excel spreadsheets, and presentations which really need to be posted in friendly non-proprietary formats and distributed under a Creative Commons license. Nik, I'm looking at you here.

As commons-type initiatives spring up around the world, we can hopefully pool our learnings and go farther faster — check Harold Jarche's "Commons" tag on Furl. My eventual hope is that we can have linkages between different commons, so traveling members can connect locally when they are on the road.

The wiki is OK, but I've come to believe that every project needs a URL. A URL is a pivot point around which concepts can form. So, back to the drawing board there — suggest some names/URLs and I'll get a wiki-fied site set up that we can centralize resources at (and move the existing stuff from the wiki).

The problem, of course, is finding another slice of time to focus on and champion this initiative. Rather than the large group we have had meeting and talking, we need a smaller handful of people that can actually commit some time. More thoughts on this over time.

(And yes, my dream location would still be buying the Sam the Record Man building on Seymour)

Update: it turns out we're building it Canada wide. I'm amazed that after talking to David Crow and Mark Kuznicki, that we've been thinking the exact same thing. Actually, it's spookier than that — the business model and actual 3 year plan are nearly identical. So, innovationcommons.ca, coming soon, David Crow nominated as benevolent Executive Director for life.

layout: post title: 2Paths, Java web app experts in Vancouver created: 1155092986 categories:

• Vancouver tags:
• Aaron Gladders
• workspace
• jabber
• innovation commons
• 2Paths
• Java

I had lunch the other day with Aaron Gladders from 2Paths. He bumped into me when we were doing a final walkthrough of our new 1 Alexander offices, and recognized me from the picture here on my blog.

2Paths is a company filled with biologists turned programmers. They started out as a PHP shop, but since they provide full ongoing 24/7 support, hosting, and ongoing maintenance to most of their customers, they found that straight PHP code had a tendency to get very spaghetti-like. They switched to doing Java development and have been building expertise. Aaron confidently says that 2Paths is likely the best lightweight Java web application developer in Vancouver.

In fact, Aaron says they started to look at Ruby on Rails as it began to gain hype — perhaps they would use it for prototyping. But they weren't happy with some aspects of it, although in favour of many of its lightweight aspects. So, they looked around for a Rails-like framework for Java. Ultimately, they rejected existing solutions for a number of architectural reasons and ended up creating their own. I'll leave it up to 2Paths to talk about its cool factor — they'll be open sourcing it and releasing it to the world sometime real soon now (there might be a presentation at BarCamp Vancouver about it).

Another interesting story about 2Paths I learned from Aaron was that they're going fully distributed. They've spend the last half-dozen years building their team centrally in Vancouver, all in one office. They did look for some larger space, but ended up going in another direction all together. I took a picture of the stack of MacBook Pros in their office: every team member is getting a laptop, and is being encouraged to work from home…or from wherever. Next, Aaron is going to go shopping for expertise wherever he can find it — Java experts who like a lightweight approach encouraged to apply from anywhere in the world.

They will be keeping their office as a central connection area and place to meet clients. Aaron is a fan of the Innovation Commons concept, and toured Bill MacEwen's Workspace, but ultimately keeping the office made more financial sense.

Aaron told me about AceTech Emerging, which is for young company executives to meet and share solutions at networking events and an annual conference in Whistler. I've gotten invitations in the past, but was put off by the email blasts and mediocre website (yeah, I'm bad like that). I'll give them a try, since Aaron says it's worthwhile.

However, recently speaking with Andre Charland from Nitobi, Robert Scales from Raincity Studios, and now Aaron, it seems that we are all facing very similar issues. Developer tools, collaboration spaces, project management, lead tracking, etc. We may be holding some informal meetings soon to share some of these tools and techniques.

Somehow in telling the tale of Bryght, I also ended up doing my usual evangelizing of Jabber. Wildfire is a great open source Java-based server from Jive Software, and it has some great enterprise deployment and management features when paired with its Spark client.

What else? Well, apparently 2Paths has some Web 2.0-ey service goodness up their sleeve which we didn't end up talking about. Since I'm writing up this giant post and Aaron reads my blog, I suspect a blog isn't too far off either :P

layout: post title: Notes from BarCamp Vancouver created: 1156653515 categories:

• barcamp
• BarCamp Earth
• barcamp vancouver
• Vancouver

• every event should make a list of "fun URLs" that get thought up at events — and then registered, like http://www.myurlistoolong.com
• there were are as many great presentations that I couldn't make it to as I did attend
• we need to find a kit to stress-test wireless networks ahead of time…or revert to wired connections
• I got to talk to many great people…and also missed spending time with others (too many to mention…but Zug is definitely in my thoughts)
• Google needs to point out who the heck is going to talk about identity issues (from technical interop to privacy); also, say things in public about your logging policy
• every time I talk about microformats I passionately argue the opposite case; they are a great solution for putting mixed, structured content into one big text blob (i.e. a blog post with an event, a location, some people, and a resume); they are not a great solution for passing structured data between systems and/or for presenting a pure feed of one type of data (events, people, etc.)
  
• OpenID does simple sign on great today — go ahead and implement it; SXIP is a better solution, since it also covers profiles and personas. Dick and company: get us a stable implementation and put all your code in one place and we will implement the h*ck out of it; while you're at it, unite the tribes, extend OpenID to v3 or whatever the hell we have to wait for until it has profile/persona support too, and make sure we have an upgrade path and/or compatibility with SAML. Thanks. 
• The Vancouver tech community is awesome. So awesome that we get fun friends from the US coming up to visit us. We should get together more often, but perhaps with a little less intensity, 'cause I'm exhausted.
  
• We need to do a Foo(d) Camp 
• Bill MacEwen's Workspace is a great space, and he's put a ton of work into it; lots of people are excited about using the space, I'll even be renting a room on Tuesday; I applaud him and his business, I still wish we could do a non-profit version 
• I'm kicking myself for not playing with/implementing VoIP sooner; why the heck am I bound by the shackles of the stupid phone system? Asterisk is awesome, thanks to George of Netvoice…I hope you will make my (telephony) life and that of other local Vancouver geeks better in the days to come 
• I like to BBQ 

layout: post title: Social Media Club Vancouver created: 1165464094 categories:

• SMC
• Social Media Club
• Social Media Club Vancouver
• Vancouver

Here's another last minute heads up about a Vancouver event you might want to attend. It's the launch of the Social Media Club in Vancouver (on upcoming).

We've been bumping into Chris Heuer, the co-founder of SMC, at conferences and un-conferences all over the place. When he asked to use our new Bryght offices for a kick off meeting in Vancouver, we said sure! this is right up our alley.

Here's the blurb on what SMC is:

Chris Heuer, co-founder of Social Media Club, will be in Seattle on December 6th and Vancouver on December 7th to officially launch the local chapters in each city. If you are in the area and interested in social media and the intersection of journalism, activism, marketing and technology - we encourage you to join us and meet your peers to share best practices, while working towards the establishment of ethics and standards and promoting media literacy.

We will discuss “The Rise of Social Media” and review the latest in tools, technologies and success stories. Chris will share accomplishments from other chapters and suggest possible next steps. The goal of Social Media Club is for each chapter to set goals, meet regularly and share opinions on the role of social media in the present and future of PR, marketing and journalism.

Chris, you should ping the people over at Dorkbot Vancouver…seems like there might be some like-minded spirits there. 

See you at 1 Alexander tomorrow night (aka Thursday, December 7th, at 6pm). 

layout: post title: OpenID MashPit in Vancouver created: 1168320317 categories:

• identity
• OpenID
• SXIP
• Lori Pike
• MashPit
• OpenID MashPit
• Vancouver
• Web 2.0

Coming up January 17th, 2007 (next Wednesday, if you're reading this in current day blogtime), SXIP is hosting the Vancouver incarnation of an OpenID MashPit event. Here's the scoop:

Want to learn more about OpenID 2.0 and spend an evening hacking on the new code? Join Sxip at the OpenID 2.0 Mash Pit evening in the New Year in Vancouver. There will be simultaneous events that night in Portland and other locations, with a live webcast amongst us. OpenID is an emerging Identity 2.0 standard for exchanging identity data on the internet. This is for people to come and hack on OpenID 2.0 and figure out how to make it work for their sites or applications.

We'll do a brief introduction on OpenID 2.0 and the new stuff you can do with it such as attribute exchange with the email verification service, followed by 5 minute lightening talks on whatever you want to demo or talk about and then break out into small groups to help people actually dig into the "doing" of OpenID enabling their site. The goal? More hacking, less talking.

The enigmatic walkah will be flying in from the east to attend, and show off some hot new OpenID 2.x code — server and client. Fingers crossed…we'll have more to show on this tomorrow already. 

Do I need to disclaim that we've been working with SXIP for 2 years, and that Lori Pike bought myself and Roland dinner tonight to help discuss and plan? There you go…disclaimed! Come join us at the MashPit, either here in Vancouver, or in Portland, San Francisco, Boston, Paris, Austin, etc. etc. Let's get identity rolling in 2007…

layout: post title: Will MailCo, Mozilla’s Thunderbird spin off to be run by David Ascher, be headquartered in Vancouver? created: 1190147149 categories:

• open source
• Mozilla
• David Ascher
• ActiveState
• Thunderbird
• Vancouver
• Open Source

OK, OK, that’s a ridiculously long title. But it’s great to hear that David Ascher will be heading MailCo and taking Thunderbird in to a brave new adventure.

Stay in Vancouver? Yes, please! We’re on a roll, here, and I’m rooting for more open source businesses to grow up here.

layout: post title: Colours of Fall in Vancouver created: 1192396189 categories:

• Vancouver
• Personal

I am feeling “behind” in my blog writing and updating…and GPS’ing…and cleaning…etc. etc. But, I did go for a fun walk through Granville Island and downtown where I got lots of nice pictures of fall in Vancouver. Lots of macro pictures at the end where I experimented with the still-new-to-me Canon S5.

And I even managed a short post up on FoodLikeThat.com about head cheese.

layout: post title: Snow in Vancouver created: 1208630445 categories:

• snow
• video
• Vancouver
• Personal

Just as spring is hitting the east coast, Mother Nature decides to play a trick on us here in Vancouver. I heard that this has been the coldest spring since sometime in the 1950s. This morning the snow is on hedges and building roofs, but has essentially all melted from the ground. But still…

To put this in perspective for how wacky the weather has been, last weekend was spent wearing short sleeved shirts, getting a sunburn on my nose, and finding a place to stop for popsicles. Check out my Pitt Lake set on Flickr to see more.

And now some quotes to think about:

James Russell Lowell - “Fate loves the fearless.”

Free Will Astrology (Pisces, April 17th, 2008) - “If you don’t articulate your conscious desires, your unconscious patterns will come true.”

I hope your spring is going well, wherever in the world you are.

layout: post title: NowPublic MostPublic Index for Vancouver created: 1222472872 categories:

• foodlikethat.com
• LiveJournal
• MostPublic
• NowPublic
• TechVibes
• Vancouver Sun
• Vancouver

NowPublic just released a MostPublic Index for Vancouver that lists 20 people … and I come in at #3. The background for how the list is calculated is here, with the rough text below:

NowPublic’s formula gauges influence and “publicness” across four categories, including:

• Online Visibility
• Presence on User-Generated Content and Social Networking Sites
• Interactivity and Accessibility
• The “R” Factor: Presence on Microblogging Platforms (Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.)

What do I think of this? Well, Darren (as the #1 spot) got interviewed for the article in the Vancouver Sun and pointed out longevity: Darren figures he’s been blogging since about 2002. I’m in that range, with my permanent presence occuring around that time, although I think I seriously started posting online about a year or so earlier, trying different systems (the very first post on this site is dated 2002-11-09).

But wait, what do I think of this?

Well, it just so happens that I still write this blog for me. Most of the topics here are about tech, or pointing at things I want to highlight or tell people about. People still come up to me in person and say “sometimes I don’t know what you’re talking about” — this is my personal scratchpad, and it’s for me. I’ve tried back and forth to be more personal here, but I tend not to be. I’m giving another kick at that can on a LiveJournal site and I write recipes and talk about cooking on my FoodLikeThat.com site.

There are comments on the Vancouver Sun and Techvibes in the vein of “these people have no lives” and so on.

No problem. I do this thing for me, and it sometimes has effects like connecting me to people that I would not otherwise have met. I’d like to do more exploratory writing and thinking here, but I’ve been finding it hard. I’ll keep writing - or not writing - as I please. I hope that some of you find it interesting at times, and I enjoy any comments and interaction that I do get.

Congrats to the other MostPublic’rs. See you online…

layout: post title: Semantic Web Community Barn Raising in Vancouver created: 1239786523 categories:

• Semantic Web
• Freebase
• Linked Data
• vanbase
• Jim Pick
• RDF
• Canada
• Vancouver
• Web 2.0

Or, how I got a tasted of Linked Data and wanted more.

I’ve been noodling about with a variety of semantic web / open data concepts for some time. Most recently, I spoke at Drupalcon DC 2009 on Practical Semantic Web (and why you should care). There’s a video of the presentation embedded in that last link, and the presentation is available on SlideShare.

I think I can explain things even more simply: we can place a simple piece of data on a web page - like an address, or marking something as a person. From those source pieces of data, we can link it to ever more pieces of information. Except, instead of just "bare links", these links carry meaning, creating a richer web of content. In my presentation, I used the phrase "RDF is food for robots" - a way to share more info about the visible, human readable information that is already there.

From my point of view, that’s already cool enough. But it’s still not very *practical*. Why should you care, today? That leads me to open data, in general. The Dev Seed guys in DC have a great example of this in their StumbleSafely site — it mashes up bars in Washington DC with crime statistics, cross-referenced with time for day, night, and evening data.

We don’t have anything like this in Vancouver. What we do have is some interesting data that is beginning to be gathered in Freebase, and more specifically in the Vancouver-specific corner of it, known as vanbase. Looking at the StumbleSafely application, and thinking about some data that I hate to see duplicated over and over again, I came up with the idea of restaurants, and extra information about them.

The concept: patios, beer, and breakfast. Wouldn’t you like to know where the best patios, beer, and breakfast restaurants are in Vancouver? So, in the morning, the site will show strips of bacon highlighting breakfast places. As it gets later in the day, umbrellas will pop open on the map, showcasing patios. Later at night, as the site goes dark, glowing beer steins appear, showcasing great beers on tap around the city. Through linked data, we can go on to surf the mass of information about brands of beer.

There are dozens of restaurant sites, in various stages of overlap. None of them share data, and they’re not really about data in any case — they succeed or fail because of SEO, or because of user features on their sites. And anyone can get the data — pay a couple of thousand and you can get all the restaurants across Canada.

Linked Open Data is all about having shared information sources and building value on top of them, through those linkages.

The concept will be to fill in vanbase with restaurant information, starting with this list of Vancouver restaurants. Then we’ll work with a Drupal (and possibly other) front end to do display of this rich semantic web data in different interesting ways. Why Drupal? It’s got a really great set of semantic web tech already implemented, and can then show how an out of the box CMS can participate in a web of linked data. But hopefully (since this is also about open data) we can get other front ends to the data, or even have some of these existing restaurant sites contribute their data sets to Freebase.

Now, all that is quite a lot to think about and do. I started the title of this post by calling it a Semantic Web Community Barn Raising - I hope to see many people locally get involved in everything from data entry, to development, to design in building out a semantic data set, and then showcasing what we can do with it.

So, I’m calling an initial brainstorming meeting this Thursday morning over breakfast, 8:30am at Deacon’s Corner. Here’s an event entry on UQ Events to help you remember. @notmatt, @dale42, and @jimpick will be there, hope to see some of you as well. For more info, check out the Google Site SemWeb Restaurants, where we’ll be posting notes and ideas as the project progresses.

layout: post title: Cloud Camp Vancouver created: 1268500361 categories:

• Events tags:
• Cloud Camp
• Cloud Camp Vancouver
• ccyvr
• Discovery Parks Vancouver
• Tropo
• RightScale
• Animoto
• Vancouver

I'm at Cloud Camp Vancouver today. It's at the Discovery Parks Vancouver venue where we had Barcamp Vancouver 2009. The Twitter hashtag is #cloudcamp #vancouver. I'll be doing updates throughout the day.

Cool, Adam Kalsey flew up from Sacramento to attend (he's with Tropo now). First time I've met him in person, been following his blog for many many years.

Questions from Troy to kick off the day: How many are business oriented? 1/3 How many are technical oriented? 2/3

Dave Nielsen, CloudCamp founder, kicking off the day, talking about unconferences, Open Space concept, etc. Only about 1/3 of people have attended an "unconference" before.

Troy kicking things off with a RightScale lightning talk. Animoto launched on Facebook using RightScale scaling: "try and run around provisioning 4700 physical servers in 2 days" - no way to do it without cloud.

Took part in an expert panel to kick off the day. I talked about the question of what companies are doing "cloud" in Vancouver. I ended up putting up a wiki page - Vancouver Cloud Projects. Please add your own links to companies.

layout: post title: Android Developers in Vancouver created: 1281057600 categories:

• Vancouver tags:
• Android
• developers
• mobile
• Vancouver

I continually get asked for recommendations for developers who can do Android development here in Vancouver.

I love the Nitobi team, who are development experts across all platforms, and also the brains behind the cross-platform Phonegap project. But, they tend to be busy with global clients.

So, if you’re an Android developer, please fill out the form below. Once I’ve got a couple of listings, I’ll put together a public directory of local Android freelancers and development shops.

<iframe frameborder=”0” height=”480” src=”https://bmannca.batchbook.com/lists/form/3620” width=”640”>

Last Thursday, Jesse Heaslip wrote ‘Two Problems with (Vancouver’s tech community) and Three Ways to Fix it’. If you don’t know Jesse, know this: he’s crazy-irrational-passionate about the Vancouver tech community. For proof, I offer the fact that he organized 40 tech events that were attended by 1600 people in 2011. Talk about impact!

Jesse lists the two problems as:

1. How do we get companies to the stage where there is interest from acquirers?

and

2. How do we get those companies to stay?

First of all, for a really great backgrounder on startups in Vancouver and the various funnels that are in place, read Greg Aasen and Danny Robinson’s post on the BCIC blog[¹](#bcicfunnel TIDDLYLINK). Money quote:

The only way to get more anchor companies is to start more companies. Some fail, some exit and some anchor. There is no shortcut.

For Problem #1, I first want to re-state the problem as "How do we get more companies to the Series A and/or acquire stage?".

I added "more" to the statement, since I think that’s what we want.

Secondly, focusing on only acquirers is probably the wrong goal. Series A (before everything turned into super seed rounds etc.) used to be the first step of going big. Large VC funds[²](#largevc TIDDLYLINK) earmark millions not only for Series A, but to support companies in their Series B, and so on. We definitely do want anchor companies that grow big right here in Vancouver.

Jesse’s answer is "build a better community", phrased as weaving the threads we have together very tightly. Allen Pike’s response focusing on homes for startups goes one step further and suggests shared spaces as the tactic to get us there.

I think the answer is simpler, and more like web traffic or a funnel as Greg and Danny wrote about: build more startups. Will a tighter community help us get there? I’m sure that is part of the puzzle.

Problem #2 is "How do we get them to stay?". Jesse’s answers here are really three problem areas with suggestions on how to work on them. Academic-industry ties, #WeAreYVR community pride, and Hack Hut (a new coworking space).

I’m not convinced on school / industry issues, other than promoting startups as a place to work for new grads. As far as I am aware, new grads are not the main creator of new startups. As a counter-example, instead of accepting offers with Google / MSFT / Facebook etc. Cristian & Mircea turned down offers with those companies to do their own thing.

However, A Thinking Ape took those offers after graduating in Canada, moved away, then did their own thing, and then ended up in Vancouver. Time will tell if they stay.

I left after graduation in 1999 because the local opportunities that I could find in Vancouver were small and sleepy. I came back in 2004 because it was my home, and it just so happened that things were looking up.

Do we need to raise the profile of startups as a career option to keep some of this great talent in the local pool? You bet!

WeAreYVR. This seems to have the same goals as #MadeInVan. As I said in my blog post in response to that effort - great idea, how about we not re-invent the wheel - AGAIN.

This has been done badly again and again and again. A non profit entity like Vancouver Is Awesome could be the long running entity that might make a good home for this effort. But focus on the brand, on telling the story of local companies, not on the directory-done-badly.

On Hack Hut. Allen’s comments on this are excellent. Allen mentions The Hive. They look like an interesting organization, and I think working with them might accelerate this initiative. Also as Allen said, WorkSpace was the first hub, and it worked. I wish it was still here. Let’s vote with our dollars and support the spaces we already HAVE before deciding we need to create a new one.

Lastly (still on problem #2), I also don’t think "getting them to stay" is an issue. We need them to COME BACK. Stewart Butterfield and Avi Bryant are coming back. A Thinking Ape came back. We need experiences (and money and connections) from elsewhere to come back. So we can close the loop and do it all over again.

OK, now that I’ve made lots of commentary on Jesse’s post, let me say … I agree with him!

I think working together to raise awareness of the community and having shared spaces are the two strongest areas where the community itself can make an impact.

Other than that, the only thing I can suggest is to build more startups in Vancouver.

Footnotes§

BCIC Funnel ¹ It looks like the original Greg Aasen & Danny Robinson blog post has been truncated / removed / edited. I am going to try and find the original, since it clearly spelled out the stages and support systems of the BC tech ecosystem.

Update Sept 2013: here’s the full length original, via the Wayback Machine.

Large VC ² I had a brief chat with someone from a large VC fund the other day. Accelerators and the collection of angels and super-angels around them are often focused on acquisition as an outcome: turning a couple of hundred thousand dollars into a couple of million dollars is a big win. For large VC funds, they NEED companies that want to go it alone, so they can put in millions that turn into 10s or 100s of millions.

I give larger VC funds a bad rap most of the time, but in this case the goals are aligned: they want companies to go big.

May 4, 2013: This was first posted in February of 2012. In the meantime, Hack Hut is now Launch Academy, which is over a year old. It is a non-profit, and so a great home for all sorts of initiatives. My Reinventing the Wheel One Directory at a Time post has also been updated and has more details.

Turns out I intend to blog some more in the Founder Notes category!

From my notes about Tam at CodeCast, I covered what #ehlist is:

EhList is a Canadian founders group, roughly organized by cities around the world, and its main interface is a shared Slack channel. In Vancouver Steve Lionais @slionais of Dr. Bill is the main coffee organizer, which meets roughly monthly, usually at Lost & Found Cafe on Hastings.

These are some rough notes about topics, links, and people that were discussed around the table. We usually invite people to talk about challenges, asks for help, or really help and feedback with anything that is on their mind.

This is roughly written up from my notes in third-person.

Ilya @ilyabrotzky, founder of VanHack, talked about working on delegating better. He’s looking for a part time finance / operations person, uses Quickbooks currently. Boris might have someone to intro.

Ilya also talked about moving to using Atlassian’s Confluence wiki from a collection of Google Docs. Everyone agrees that search in Google Drive is broken and completely mystifying.

Miranda @mirandal at Thinkific is going through this discussion about adopting something in this wiki category. There is a strong Notion vs. Confluence camp.

Lots of nods towards Notion, Confluence has better Slack integration and seems to be better for bigger / whole company usage.

Thinkific has roughly 40 open jobs, including looking for a VP of Product.

Steve @slionais mentioned using Codetree, a Kanban / project management tool on top of Github. Turns out, this is built by another EhList founder, @kareem.

Eesmyal @eesmyal, who among many other serial entrepreneur pursuits was the original founder of Vancouver’s Hive Social Impact Coworking, dropped by for the first time. He’s looking to connect and get peer feedback. He’s working on Quantified Citizen.

Boris announced that he’s going to run a peer pitch review at the end of February. Founders present their investment decks that they’re using to raise to other founders, advisors, and investors, and get broad feedback. By invitation only.

Mohsen @mossibat came to his first ehlist. He moved to Vancouver from London almost exactly a year ago. He previously worked in Venture Capital, knows Boris from attending Open Angel investment nights. Now building autonomous vehicle insurtech startup.

We ended up in the usual discussion about hire and pay and salary expectations going up in Vancouver.

Boris mentioned that he was annoyed by the Province of BC’s Chief Digital Officer Jaimie Boyd @jaimieboyd tweeting about Vancouver’s low wages:

Many of us in tech see this as a BAD sign. It may be attractive to employers, but we need to coach companies to pay competitively.

Many of our best people continue to leave and/or stay in BC and work remotely.

Government should be aligned in salaries going UP.

— Boris Mann (bmann) Jan 15, 2020

Turns out, @evanwillms knows her, and we could potentially have some local tech founders meet with her and give feedback. Early march? Stay tuned!

Souishant @soushiant is originally from Vancouver, was living/working in UAE, and moved back a year ago. He is the founder of Swae.

Back to "Hiring is hard". Steve shared that Dover was a useful tool that had seen success in top-of-funnel hiring prospects.

For customer lead gen on LinkedIn, Ilya shared Dux Soup, that could also be used for certain types of hiring.

Question: experience / feedback on working with Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)? Specifically: does taking a growth loan from them make sense?

"The easiest / cheapest / best terms on non-dilutive capital in Canada". A "regular" bank loan is the only thing with better terms, although Canadian banks haven’t done much of this.

Steve founded Dr. Bill with funding from a small group of doctors, who. General discussion that there are lots of emerging non-dilutive funding options.

Boris mentioned a good post / discussion that was kicked off on LinkedIn by Maxine @mmcunnin from Pick My Brain on alternative funding / corporate structures where users can participate in ownership of companies:

Contact any of the founders mentioned here if you are a Canadian founder and would like to be part of #ehlist — they can nominate you to join the group.

• website https://www.cltrust.ca/
• Owned by [[Co-operative Housing Federation of BC]]
• Focused on low / moderate income housing

Their office is on Commercial Drive, not far from where I live.

Co-working, shared spaces, and offices for small teams

Ported from Frontier Community, originally created end of 2018

I am looking for office space in Vancouver.

Ideally I want an enclosed office that can fit 2 - 3 people. This might be a small standalone space (eg Dominion Building or similar) or it could be inside a shared space.

The enclosed office is for 1) storing stuff — including external monitor 2) frequent calls / video conferences. 3) not being in an open plan space

Nice to have:

• kitchen access
• whiteboards / bigger meeting rooms

Open to something creative.

[[Coworking]]§

[[ShareDesk]]§

Meta search for bookable working and Conference booking:

https://www.sharedesk.net/search?city=Vancouver,%20BC,%20Canada&wsTypeGroup=all

[[Lighthouse Labs DevHub]]§

$400 / Desk

[[WeWork]]§

Multiple Vancouver locations. $425 - $450 per desk.

Monthly membership is $45USD and includes 2 credits. Conference rooms start at 1 credit per hour, roughly $25CAD / hour.

https://www.wework.com/plans/we-membership

[[SpacesWorks Gastown]]§

https://www.spacesworks.com/vancouver/gastown/

I have heard that individual desks are around $700

[[Creative Coworkers]]§

http://creativecoworkers.com/

• Flex Desks $325
• Dedicated Desk $495

10 hours of meeting room space

Coffee extra, locker extra

[[L’Atelier]]§

http://ateliervancouver.com/

• Hot desks $295 / month - 8am to late weekdays
• Dedicated desk $475 / month 3 months commitment

4 & 8 hours meeting room space

[[Launch Academy]]§

Has several 2, 4, and 6-8 person offices available.

[[Regus]]§

https://www.regus.ca/

Turns out they are also behind the Spaces brand above.

More old-school office provider, specializes in enclosed offices. Multiple locations around Vancouver, vary in price.

2 - 3 person office is around $1000 per month, month to month, with some deposits and other items required at signing.

@boris: We had a 2 person office (with three keys) at 1066 W Hastings on the 20th floor through Regus. It was easy to share the space with other people, you can have people come by, you can get packages delivered.

There was a "community space" — whiteboard, table with four chairs — that could be booked daily for up to 2 hours. You can only book it day of, so get up early and you should have no problem getting it — but isn’t ideal for booking ahead of time. We never booked a paid boardroom

After hours (eg small meetup) not really possible — as the larger spaces are not available outside of business hours.

[[Freespace]]§

https://www.thisfreespace.com/

Use restaurants that are closed during the day as work space. $99CAD / month for pretty much unlimited 9am-5pm usage, plus coffee/tea included. Other pricing available. Tell them Boris referred you.