Category: Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Toronto, the High-Tech Hub

For the past six months, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my career in high tech, where I want to take it, Toronto’s role in my high-tech career and conversely my own role in Toronto’s standing as a hub for high-tech. I said “Watch this space!” in an earlier article about ideas Toronto can borrow from Silicon Valley and Seattle, and promised to talk about what it would take to build up Toronto as a high-tech hub and a livable city. Here’s the first of my thoughts on the topic, and it’s about punk rock.

A Sex Pistols Concert

Over at the excellent blog Zen Habits, Brian “Copyblogger” Clark talks about a very important punk rock performance that took place in Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976. The band was called the Sex Pistols, who were still unknown at the time.

John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon, lead vocalist of the Sex Pistols.

Only 42 people attended, and Clark writes that “Attendees ranged from the local mailman to a few rebellious school children”. However, also among the audience were these people, luminaries of the British alt-rock scene, who along with the Sex Pistols would define the new music scene of the 1980s and whose influence can still be felt today:

• Tony Wilson, who would go on to start Factory Records (home of New Order and later, Happy Mondays) and Manchester’s Hacienda club (featured in the movie 24 Hour Party People)
• Martin Hannett, who would go on to become a legendary record producer
• Paul Morley, who would go on to become a music journalist for the Brit music magazine NME
• The Buzzcocks
• Mark E. Smith of The Fall
• Mick Hucknall, who would go on to become the lead vocalist of Simply Red
• Steven Patrick Morrissey, who would go on to become the King of Mope and lead vocalist of The Smiths
• The founding members of Joy Division

“This tiny concert,” writes Clark, “is considered on par with Woodstock and Live Aid in terms of importance, due to the influence the audience went on to have on popular music by creating the independent music scene.”

The Lesson

This concert is an object lesson in the power of gathering like-minded people and giving them a little inspiration. As Clark puts it, “that small group of people spotted the changing dynamics in music and took action, because if the Pistols could do it, so could they. By seeing the inevitable future they became important players in that future.”

That’s what I hope DemoCamp accomplishes for high-tech in Toronto. It should gather like-minded people together, show them what their peers are doing, and inspire them to go forth with their own creations, see the future and become important players in that future.

The folks at local Ruby/Rails development shop Unspace certainly understand this and have even taken up the punk rock spirit in creating their own Ruby conference, RubyFringe, which may someday be written up as the Ruby equivalent of the Sex Pistols concert. I hope to see more independent conferences like this.

The Anti-Lesson

The Sex Pistols concert was influential because it was set up by musical innovators and attended by musical innovators. Can you imagine what would’ve happened had it been organized by Manchester’s City Hall?

It probably would’ve gone like this: City Hall likely would’ve organized it as a showcase of Manchester musicians who performed in inoffensive, accessible, “safe”, commercial, “radio-friendly” styles. The guest list would’ve been organized by the chamber of commerce and would’ve included the media, representatives from major record labels and talent agencies, politicians friom all levels of government, local business owners, people from the tourism industry and of course, major media outlets.

None of the “nobodies” who attended the Sex Pistols concert would’ve been invited.

In the end, the city would have declared the event a success, but in the long run, it wouldn’t even rate as a footnote in musical history.

Is such a limp promotional event in the works? Yes — it’s called Toronto Technology Week. I’m sure the folks behind it mean well.

The Six-Letter Word That Determines Success

Clark’s article closes with these lines:

Why did I just tell you a story about punk rock and independent music? Well, lots of people can spot trends and have great ideas, but only some do anything about it.

So, what’s the six-letter word that determines success in life?

Action.

What are you getting done today?

The block of buildings on Queen Street West between Portland and Bathurst Streets — the one pretty much destroyed by the recent six-alarm fire — has been my backdrop for accordion busking since my very first day.

In its memory, here’s a panoramic shot of that block of buildings, taken by my friend and first boss Kevin Steele (click the picture to see it at full size):

Click the photo above to see it at full size.
Photo by Kevin Steele.

[This article was also posted on Global Nerdy.]

This Monday, February 25th, marks the 17th DemoCamp Toronto, the regularly-held gathering where the bright lights of Toronto’s high-tech and startup scene get together to show off their current projects and presentation and exchange information and ideas. Instigated by David Crow, Toronto’s hardest-working tech evangelist and stewarded by him, Leila Boujnane, Jay Goldman, Greg Wilson and Yours Truly.

Unfortunately, all the “tickets” to this event — most of which are free and a few of which were available for very reasonable sponsorship fees ($5, $10 and $200) — sold out in a couple of days.

For those who managed to get tickets, DemoCamp 17 will take place at the Toronto Board of Trade in First Canadian Place. Here’s the schedule:

• 5:00: Doors open
• 6:00 – 7:00pm: Demos
• 7:30 – 8:00pm: Ignite Presentations
• 9:00: Duke of Westminster for drinks!

Hope to see you there!

The Demos

SceneCaster

Presenter (and my former co-worker) Alain Chesnais says: “We will demo the SceneCaster 3D solution with our recently announced SceneWeaver technology that allows you to view inter linked 3D scenes on any XHTML ready device. If you have native 3D support available, we will take advantage of it. But you don’t need to be on a high end gaming PC to work with SceneCaster. We will show the solution working on an iPod Touch to demonstrate that we have ‘3D anywhere” technology ‘available today.”

PlanetEye

Here’s the word from presenter Mark Evans: “PlanetEye is a new online travel guide with a difference. We’re combining beautiful travel photographs, mapping technology and advice from locals and travelers to give people a real sense of destinations around the world.”

AskItOnline

Presenter Kaitlyn MacLachlan tells us: “AskItOnline is a ‘web 2.0’ online service that allows you to easily create and deploy your surveys online. Using a drag ‘n drop interface along with AJAX and other client-side code, creating a survey has never been easier!”

GigPark

Pema Hegan and Noah Godfrey will be presenting this one. They say: “GigPark is a way to find services with the help of your friends. TorCampers have already recommended their favourite web designers, blog hosting companies, startup lawyers, commercial real estate agents, office cleaners, accountants, and logo designers. We’re going to show everyone how they can use GigPark to find the service providers they need to help run their startups (and their lives).”

.NET Development on a Mac

The word from presenter Geoff Norton: “The Mono project has just released our first version of MonoDevelop running natively on the Mac (no X11). We think its a compelling (and free) alternative to booting up VMWare/Parallels and running Visual Studio.”

The Ignite Presentations

Social Services Mashup

Here’s the abstract from presenter Clara Severino:

The Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI) and Partnership Platform, which acts a catalyst between non-profits and the IT sector, have partnered to explore more intuitive and user-friendly approaches to locating services and organizations of interest in Ontario’s neighbourhoods.

The main objective for the project is to amalgamate both privately and publicly available data from various online sources, to develop a centralized database of services and organizations of interest to newcomers to Ontario’s neighbourhoods in order to provide users with an interactive visual representation of desired services mapped to a specified region. The potential for expansion of services and customization in the future is huge! A number of non-profit organizations have already expressed interest in using this application for their own audience.

Our intention is to get feedback from the tech community to improve our solution and raise awareness of the impact of technology on the non-profit sector.

This innovative initiative is a great way of getting both the non-profit sector and the tech community to come together to improve quality of life.

The Future is Simple

Presenter Geo Perdis tells us:

I would like to talk about the future of communications and my belief that it is simple. That is to say that simplicity will rule in a world where more and more media come at us faster and faster and compete for our finite attention.

This presentation would be an extension of a micromedia riff that I did back in November 2007 for a micromedia meetup. See http://micromediameetup.pbwiki.com/FrontPage and
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/11/01/answers-are-in-whats-the-future-of-communciations/.

With respect to selecting this talk, I think that I can provide a balanced perspective on some unique services possibilities and opportunities that the Toronto-area technology and media community can lead in defining, developing and deploying here and around the world.

In turn, I would hope that the community would get some additional insights as to what we can do locally that is unique and original to our circumstances, conditions and location.

Leveraging Things Wide Open

This will be a presentation by Mozilla’s Mike Beltzner.

How to Rock SXSW

Rannie “Photojunkie” Turingan will give us a taste of the presentation he’ll be giving at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. Here’s the abstract:

Where should you go? What parties are cool? How can I meet those people that are *gasp* Internet FAMOUS! Learn this and more at this welcome panel for SXSW Noobs. This panel will provide useful tips for SXSW virgins and veterans from a diverse panel of SXSW Interactive attendees, speakers, and personalities. Come for the laughs, anecdotes, and useful tools that will equip you to “Rawk Out” during SXSW Interactive. I mean, why should Music and Film attendees have all the fun?

The State of Wireless in Canada Sucks

Even war-ravaged Rwanda has better mobile rates than we in Canada do! Presenter Tom Purves explains this sad state of wireless affairs.

Photo by Colin McConnell, Toronto Star.
Click the photo to see it on its original page.

The six-alarm fire at Queen and Bathurst has caused massive disruptions to the Queen and Bathurst streetcar lines all morning, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the TTC’s service disruption web page:

Wendy and I went to Mirabelle Wine Bar (2112 Yonge Street, a couple of blocks south of Eglinton) for Valentine’s Day dinner, and it was excellent. For that night, they cancelled their regular menu and presented a special menu with three appetizers, three main courses and three desserts. We both opted for the prawn cocktail, featuring prawns arranged into heart shapes. They were decent, although more prawns would’ve been nice. We then had a very good medium rare beef tenderloin with seared foie gras and root vegetables au gratin. For dessert, she had chocolate mousse with cherry sauce, while I opted for tiramisu. Yes, it’s cliched, but I love the stuff (I’m hip enough, so my dessert doesn’t have to be).

Photo taken from dine.to.
Click the photo to see its original page.

In case you’re curious, here’s Mirabelle’s regular menu. Here’s the menu for red wines and here’s the menu for white wines. They’ve done a nice job with arranging the wine menus by flavour category — whites are arranged in groups named “Fresh and Crisp”, “Juicy and Aromatic”, “Dry and Fruit-Driven” and “Fuller Flavours”, while reds are listed in groups titled “Lively and Fruity”, “Medium Supple”, “Round and Smooth”, “Spicy”, “Fully Firm”, “Bordeaux” and “Burgundy”.

The service was friendly and very attentive, and they made for a very lovely Valentine’s evening. It’s a cozy, comfortable place with very reasonable prices — it’ll work nicely whether you want to get together with friends or go on a first date. We’ll definitely return to try out their regular menu.