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

Geez, it’s been a dog’s age since I last saw my friend Meryle. You may remember her from the photos from my 36th birtday hot tub party.

(You know, I’ve never written about what happened at that party when the cops came in. It’s not truly a party until The Man gets involved. I need to write about that sometime.)

Back to Meryle: among other things, she’s a burlesque dancer and part of Toronto’s very interesting burlesque scene. I’ve had the good fortune to do some vaudeville accordion bits at these shows, but the real stars are people like Meryle and Mysterion the Mind Reader, who work hard at keeping the scene alive and entertaining.

(Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Mysterion in a dog’s age, either.)

Tomorrow, Wednesday September 27th, Meryle will be performing a burlesque number at the Cadillac Lounge (1296 Queen Street West) for the “A.J. Pack Superhero Fundraiser”. This event will raise money for the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People (formerly the Young People’s Theatre). It gives inner city youth a chance to attend classes at this theatre that they otherwise wouldn’t have.

(It’s also a refreshing alternative to the usual inner city youth programs, which often are hip-hop classes, basketball or some mix of the two. Not that they in and of themselves are bad, but they shouldn’t be the only options presented to inner city kids.)

This should be a good show. The burlesque dancers and their vaudeville supporting acts take what they do seriously. Although their work is often contemporary, they’ve done their homework and are aware of the history of burlesque and vaudeville, and they know what makes a good live show. You’ll be entertained, and your money will go to a great cause.

Also on the bill are musician/songwriter/accordion player Kevin Quain (who’s got a great Tom Waits-esque sound), comedian Nick Flanagan and Mysterion, who’ll do some of his mentalist and magic tricks.

Cover is $25.00. The doors open at 8 p.m. and the show starts very soon afterwards. If you want to catch Meryle, get there early!

There’s lots to love about Accordion City, and it’s nice to see that someone singing its praises got onto Craigslist’s “Best Of” section.

Tonight marks the return of DemoCamp — Toronto’s monthly show-and-tell for the software and web development crowd — to its regular schedule. Tonight’s DemoCamp will start 6:30 at No Regrets restaurant and lounge, located at 42 Mowat Avenue, near King and Dufferin. Since No Regrets is a restaurant — and one that makes very good food, at that — you’ll be able to enjoy dinner while seeing what the local tech community is up to.

Tonight’s demos are:

• DictaBrain – A “rapid voice-to-text-to-blog transcription system”, which will be demonstrated by former Tucowser James Woods. (No, not the actor.)
• InfoQ.com – Floyd Marinescu, creator of TheServerSide.com, will demonstrate InfoQueue, “independent online community focused on change and innovation in enterprise software development”.
• ConceptShare – A new way to share and manage visual design concepts
• The eMail company – “Build online webforms, webpolls, surveys, refer a friend forms, subscriber profile centres on the fly…and sooooo much more”
• Pursudo – This one’s a creation of the fine people at Unspace. The motto for this application is “Put yourself out there”.

The DemoCamp rules remain in effect: each presenter has 15 minutes total for demonstration and Q&A, and no slideware is allowed. We don’t want to see the marketing presentation, we want to see your application in action!

In addition to performing a demonstration and fielding questions from the audience, each demonstrator should be prepared to answer the following 4 questions at the start:

• Who are you?
• What are you demoing?
• What do you hope to get from the community?
• What will the community/audience get out of your demo?

The demonstrations will run until around 8:30 or shortly afterwards, after which there’ll be the tradiitonal post-DemoCamp general social free-for-all. See you there!

(Photo courtesy of Leandro.)

Don’t forget: DemoCamp 9 takes place on Monday, September 25th, starting at 6:30 p.m. at No Regrets restaurant and lounge (42 Mowat Avenue, near King and Dufferin).

For those who don’t know what DemoCamp is: think of it as a Toronto-and-area “show and tell” session for people working in the technology industry. Once a month, the bright lights of Toronto’s software, web development and internet industries gather together in a rather informal setting and to see what their peers are working on. Each session has five presentations, each one showing off one of their current projects. Each presenter has 15 minutes in which to make a presentation and answer questions from the audience. There’s a catch: no PowerPoint (or any other slideware) is allowed. We don’t want to see slide shows, we want to see your project in action! Real live working demos! That’s what the “Demo” in “DemoCamp” is all about!

DemoCamp is an important part of the Toronto technology ecosystem, as it lets all sorts of people — programmers, business people, creatives, academics, interested laypeople and so on — meet, get to know each other, find out what’s going on in the local software and internet industries and exchange ideas. Come, and you’ll see just how active the local high-tech scene is and maybe even get some inspiration.

For more about the upcoming DemoCamp session, see the DemoCamp 9 page.

More often than not, my reaction after reading the editorial pieces on Accordion City local alt-weekly rag NOW Magazine is to respond with one of my favourite retorts: “Wow. I’ve seen better paper after wiping my ass.”

I have to react that way again after Doug sent me the link to NOW’s editorial piece on Kimveer Gill, the gunman in the recent school shooting at Montreal’s Dawson College. In the faux-intellectual it’s-someone-else’s-fault posturing that passes for cognition at NOW, news hack Carolyn Bennett perpetuates stereotypes about Montreal and Toronto, waxes nostaglic about vandalism and worst of all, pins the blame not on poor lil’ Kimveer Gill, but TEH INTARWEB:

Too bad this seething, hateful young man couldn’t experience the academic society he despised. Too bad he targeted an institution that might have brought him inspiration. Too bad he preferred the false intimacy of the Internet.

Too bad one of the other Vampire Freaks on the Web didn’t stir from his or her tortured swamp of self, have the objectivity to read Gill’s blog and reply with an “Are you okay? Wanna go for tea and talk about it?”

Too bad.

No one really posts blogs to share. People post blogs because they hope for an audience. Kimveer Gill posed for the camera. Posed. Too bad he didn’t have a good friend instead of an online “community.” Too bad he didn’t have a teacher to steer him in a constructive direction.

My experience has shown that you can build healthy, supportive communities and friendships online, and that you can build screwed-in-the-head, dysfunctional rabbles in face-to-face meetings (the NOW editorial board comes to mind), which is the way it’s been done for the millennia preceding the ‘net. Blaming the internet for the homicidal spree of a young maladroit is a facile writer’s crutch; it’s sloppy thinking.

As Doug said to me via IM: “Man, why didn’t anyone tell me that NOW pays good money for disjointed ramblings on topics I know nothing about?”