Work and life have been keeping me busy, so I haven’t found the time to finish the next part of my “How to be Silicon Valley” series. Luckily for me, David Janes has taken the topic and run with it on his blog, Ranting and Roaring. Go check it out; I’ll most likely incorporate some of it into my next blog entry on the topic.
Category: Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)
Last night’s DemoCamp was a battle against Murphy’s Law and a stubborn projector which refused to cooperate with the demonstrators’ laptops. It made for some waits between presentations, but at least it wasn’t as bad as Microsoft Live! demo of last November.
I was busy presenting Skydasher and Feedcache and helping host the event with Jay Goldman, so I didn’t get a chance to take any notes. Luckily these people did, so go check out their reports:
Ethan Discovers Silicon Valley’s Secret
In the comments to an entry from earlier today, Ethan tells me that he has discovered the secret of Silicon Valley: there’s a software engineers’ Fight Club. He points to a Globe and Mail article, Superheroes for a Night.
I wrote about it in Tucows Farm a couple of months back and pointed to a news report complete with hilarious video clips (I always crack up during the fight where they use “Hello Kitty” toilet seats as weapons). Here’s an excerpt:
Never mind blowing off steam with videogames or going to the gym: a group made largely of software engineers in Silicon Valley have started The Gentlemen’s Fighting Club, a group whose activities are similar to those depicted in Fight Club. Unlike Fight Club, which is all about unarmed and unprotected combat, fighters in this club wear fencing masks, gloves and jockstraps and fight with all sorts of improvised weapons, from rolled-up Oprah magazines bound with duct tape to cookie sheets to “Hello Kitty” toilet seats.
Apparently it’s stress relief for these guys, and none of them seem to mind the injuries that come with the territory. If I were a member, I’d dress up exactly like the guy in the “Spongebob Squarepants” t-shirt.
Beat-Downs vs. Boredom
Those of you who haven’t been reading this blog for too long may be unaware that I used to busk a lot more, back when I lived right by the club district. On weekends, I’d bring my accordion along and go clubbing with friends like everyone else. After last call, I’d go to the Amato’s Pizza where everyone grabbed a late-night bite and start playing. On a good night, I could easily get a hundred bucks — going out often ended up being a net gain, money wise — and if I played my cards (and accordion) right, I could get a phone number or two.
Most people who buy a late-night slice at Amato’s usually hang out on the sidewalk outside, which became my busking “stage”. Depending on the night, anywhere from 50 to 150 people would hang out, eat their pizza, chat with their friends, look for another party and sometimes, look for a fight. Sooner or later, in a crowd that’s come from a bar or club, someone will be itching for a fight. In all but one case, the fight involved two guys, and after the fight broke up, they’d be hustled into a car by their friends before the cops came. In every case I’ve seen this happen, the car had a dealership stciker that clearly marked them as from “The 905” — the area code for the ‘burbs.
In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote that the way suburbs are designed and laid out results in boredom, and boredom leads to trouble. In the case of the guys fighting outside Amato’s, I’d say that boredom was part of the problem (the other part being that downtown was merely a playground to them); in the case of the Silicon Valley Fight Club, I’d say that their problem was a toxic combination of boredom and some other kind of emptiness in their lives.
That boredom and emptiness is why Dinesh Prasad, a member of the club, skipped meeting his wife for their first-year anniversary and went to the club instead (he’ll be divorced in a couple of years at this rate). Gints Klimanis, the organizer of the fight club, explains the club’s appeal:
“We have to go to work every day. We’re constantly told to buy things we don’t need, and just for a couple hours we have the freedom to do what we want to do.”
This is a complete seat-of-the-pants supposition, but I’d be willing to bet that the guys in the Silicon Valley fight club didn;t work at start-ups, but at large, established tech companies that once were start-ups but now have hundreds, if not thousands of employees and a very well-defined org chart. They’re not in the garage, they’re in the Dilbert Zone: cubicle-bound cogs in a large machine, not living the dream, but the nightmare described in the blog Mini-Microsoft.
Next: The first act of nerd violence I ever witnessed, and how it affected my choice of university.
Your Reading Assignment
Paul Graham, whose essay How to be Silicon Valley was the inspiration for this blog entry, has written a follow-up titled Why Startups Condense in America. I’ll write up more on it later.
How to be Milan?
One of the more interesting responses to my posting on Silicon Valley came from Danielle Meder, who comes from a completely different industry: fashion. In her blog, final fashion, she writes:
One of my favourite local characters, Accordion Guy, offers on his blog a recipe for Toronto to become Silicon Valley. It seems that fashion is not the only industry where Toronto struggles to define itself. Despite the fact that it is a city that is liberal, creative and economically strong, Toronto constantly deals with identity issues. Too often we define ourselves by what we are not or measure ourselves against inappropriate benchmarks (we are not New York and never will be) rather than positively asserting what we are.
Danielle points out something that some people from the tech field have pointed out in previous comments: that the Canadian aversion to self-promotion is a problem. Come to think of it, I can’t think of much in the way of my wardrobe that could be described as “Canadian”, save for a couple of dress shirts from Tip Top (who’ve improved a bit over the past few years) a couple of vests from local guys Hoax Couture and some stuff from Mexx Everything else was designed by Americans, Germans or Italians and stitched (or possibly glued) by Indonesians.
Although the stereotype is for geeks to actively eschew fashion, it does matter to a number of us. I’m sure I’ve written at least one decent fashion blog entry, and I’ll be the first to admit that the accordion is a thirty-pound fashion accessory (albeit one that makes nouse and can convert music into free beer).
Consider the DemoCamp “brain trust”: I don’t think I’ve seen David Crow without a blazer or Sutha Kamal or Thomas Purves without a good dress shirt on. I sometimes tend towards the raffish — check out my ties and shoes or the Pants of Power — but I’ll go back to the classics when the occasion demands it.
I’m not up on the state of the fashion industry in Toronto, so I doubt if I can contribute anything useful to the “How can we promote Toronto’s fashion industry?” conversation. (Hey, I haven’t even caught up with this French-cuffs-and-cufflinks trend; I don’t have a single French cuff shirt and one of my three sets of cufflinks are black with silver Playboy bunnies on them — they might come in handy if ever someone throws a Dean Martin theme party). If you’ve got any ideas, drop by this entry in Danielle’s blog and leave a comment!
Don’t forget: DemoCamp 6.0 takes place tomorrow! For more details, see this entry in Tucows Farm. Ross and I will be among the presenters — we’ll be presenting Skydasher and Feedcache.
While wandering around downtown Accordion City on Sunday afternoon, Wendy and I looked for a place to grab a quick lunch and ended up at Journo on King Street West and Widmer Street. It’s part-magazine store, part cafe and although I can’t quite put my finger on exactly why it seemed that way, it felt more like a Montreal establishment than a Toronto one (the big signs for their Van Houtte coffee certainly made it seem more Montreal-ish.)
It was a warm day, so went opted for a light lunch: a chicken salad sandwich and a pasta salad. The sandwich was merely okay, but the pasta salad was pretty good. In addition to salads and sandwiches, the coffee bar half of the store also has a large selection of cookies and pastries as well as Van Houtte coffees, both brewed and espresso machine-based.
The magazine section of Journo is devoted to what you’d expect to find in a decent magazine store: racks of magazines covering all sorts of interests, a selection of local, national and international newspapers and a small but interesting selection of bestselling paperbacks. It seems like a funkier version of stores like Great Canadian News and its sister in Francophone regions, Maison de la Presse. There’s a reason for this, which I’ll cover later on.
Journo also has some offerings that remind you that we’re living in the 21st century. There’s a section devoted to prepaid phone cards, but more interesting is the kiosk where you can download ringtones for your mobile phone and MP3s for your iPod. You can print photos from your camera’s memory chip, too. If you have a Rogers WiFi account (or sign up for one), you can access their hotspot.
The front section of Journo has about six or eight tables. Most of these tables were located indoors, but a couple were on its small street-facing patio, on the other side of a retractable wall. I didn’t check for power outlets near the tables, so I can’t report on their availability.
I did a little Googling and found that Journo is one of three stores being given a trial run by their owner, HDS Retail North America, a branch of Hachette Distribution Services which in turn is owned by the French media and high-tech group Lagardere. HDS Retail owns the Great Canadian News and Maison de la Presse magazine store chains. (Call me a business nerd if you must, but I sometimes find playing the “who owns whom” game interesting.)
According to this Globe and Mail article, Journo is an experiment. If these gene-splices of HDS’ core magazine store business with a cafe and a download kiosk prove to be successful, the plan is to open 100 Journos in Canada and expand into the United States.
Of note is the fact that the anti-smoking movement and smoking bans played a role in Journo’s creation. The article states that tobacco sales used to be the bread and butter of newsstands and that these merchants are now looking for “alternative revenue streams”, which is bafflegab used by suits that simply means “something else to sell”. In this case, it’s a switch of addictions: from tobacco to coffee.
If managed right, these guys could have a winning formula. In my opinion, the coffee they serve at Journo — Van Houtte — can easily go toe-to-toe against the brewed coffees at Starbucks or The Second Cup. Journo’s food selection has is at least as extensive as Starbucks or Second Cup’s, if not more so, and neither of those chains has a pop fridge for those who don’t want coffee, tea or overpriced designer juice. Books, magazines and newspapers are a natural match for cafes, and like its sister stores Great Canadian News and Maison de la Presse, Journo’s selection is pretty eclectic, especially considering that it’s a chain. On weekdays, Journo closes at 10 (which is comparable with most Starbucks and Second Cups), but on weekends it closes at midnight, well after most other coffee shops and magazine stores have turned out the lights.
They could probably do away with the download kiosk. Phones and MP3 players are too different and change too rapidly for it to be compatible with more than just a handful of models. I think they’d get a bigger bang for the buck by switching to free WiFi and capitalizing off the people who like taking their laptops to cafes; the maintenance costs would be cheaper, and when’s the last time you went to a cafe when there wasn’t at least one person with their laptop pulled out?
They might also do well to get rid of the flat-screen TVs hanging from the ceiling, which show the Pulse24 channel constantly (although with the sound turned down). They detract from the atmosphere, do nothing to lure in customers and are a waste of money.
Next: More thoughts on Journo, Starbucks and its malcontents, “third places” and “cafe coding”.
It’s that time of the year again: Doors Open Toronto takes place this weekend. 140 buildings of architectural, historic or cultural significance will open their doors to the public for free so that you can explore! It’s a great way to get to know the city and you’ll be surprised at the treasures we’ve got. For more details, see the Doors Open Toronto site and this Torontoist article. Maria’s got a plan, too.
The first of this summer’s car-free “Pedestrian Sundays” in Kensington Market takes place this weekend.
If the weather forecast is correct, Saturday and Sunday should give us some sun and warmth (Sunday’s high is supposed to be 27 degrees C), so you might want to head to the Annex and get some ice cream from Sweet Fantasies, which carries regular, dairy-free, low-fat and now organic ice cream.