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I’m extremely pleased to announce that Jonathan Snook (@snookca) will be speaking at TeamCamp on Thursday, July 15th.

Jonathan creates striking web designs, impeccable markup and code, and forward-thinking ideas and applications. From front-end work to hardcore server-side challenges, Jonathon shares tips, tricks and bookmarks on snook.ca, along with other publications online and offline. He’s also coauthored two acclaimed books: Accelerated DOM Scripting with Ajax, APIs, and Libraries, and the approachable, widely-read The Art and Science of CSS.

For this talk, Jonathan will be speak about HTML5 and CSS3 and what we’re seeing in browsers.

Everyone is welcome.

Please RSVP via Twegather or better yet reply directly via Twitter: Tweet Yes, Tweet Maybe, Tweet No

Where: The Code Factory, 246 Queen St., Ottawa (Ring the buzzer to take the elevator up to the 2nd floor)
When: Thursday, July 15th, 2010

See you there!

@chrisjschmitt

There will be no meeting on June 3rd

As we enter the summer months folks start getting really busy with vacations, long weekends and just generally enjoying our short summers. Therefore, we’ll be moving to 1 TeamCamp meeting per month, generally the 3rd Thursday of each month.

Our next meeting will be on June 17th. I’m hoping to line up a great speaker. Stay tuned!

Where: The Code Factory, 246 Queen Street, 2nd floor (ring the buzzer)

When: Thursday, June17th at 5:45pm

If you’re new to TeamCamp please review and accept the TeamCamp Participation Agreement

While we never charge for a TeamCamp event it would be great if you could contribute something to The Code Factory “cookie jar”.

I’m very pleased to announce that Ian Capstick will be speaking at TeamCamp on April 29th.

Ian will be talking about how communications and message creation can help start ups drive business objectives. Ian would like to keep most of the session to a Q&A; he would love to hear questions from people on branding, marketing, media or content creation.

Ian Capstick is the owner and principal of MediaStyle. Ian is a progressive media consultant based in Canada’s capital. Ian founded MediaStyle in January 2009 after a decade of working in politics supporting some of Canada’s most influential and charismatic leaders. Ian sees media opportunities where others don’t.

MediaStyle is primarily a content and strategy creation business. MediaStyle helps people clearly communicate their products and ideas. They would love to do the same for TeamCamp.

Time: 5:45pm to 8pm
Where: @ TheCodeFactory (246 Queen Street, Ottawa, Canada)
Ring the buzzer to come up to the 2nd floor

Register for this event on the Twegather page, or by Tweeting Yes, Maybe or No

If you’re new to TeamCamp please review and accept the TeamCamp Participation Agreement

While we never charge for a TeamCamp event it would be great if you could contribute something to The Code Factory “cookie jar”.

Hey folks, there will be no TeamCamp this Thursday. DemoCamp 13 is on the same night and since I have a very special guest lined up for the next TeamCamp I didn’t want to force people to make a choice. So my recommendation is signup for DemoCamp 13.

Here are the details:

On April 15th, we will be hosting DemoCamp 13 at the Clock Tower.

If you’d like to attend the event, you can register here.

If you’d like to demo, you can sign up here.

So far the following people have put their names in the hat to demo.

1. www.DailyDinner.tv – Peter Childs
2. www.severa.com – Zaki Usman
3. www.blogwhyz.com – Shahzad Khan
4. www.ucreatemedia.com -  Jason Daley

This should be another great night of startups and beer drinking at the ClockTower.

Date: April 15, 2010 – 6pm to 9pm
Location: ClockTower Brew Pub (Bank St. and 417, downstairs)
Format: 5 demos: 2 minute introduction, 8 minute demo, 5 minutes for Q&A and discussion

TeamCampers, head on out to DemoCamp and support local Ottawa entrepreneurs. See you there!

- Chris

After years of personal “scientific” research I am pleased to announce that I’ve finally discovered the cure for the startup insomniac – you know, people that wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea they can’t get out of their head. Here’s how it works:

1. Count from 99 down to 1 as quickly as you can
2. If you lose concentration (I usually lose concentration at around 85), start all over again
3. If you get all the way down to 1, congratulations! Start all over again
4. If you still haven’t fallen asleep after 3 times counting down from 99 to 1 …

WAKE UP AND CREATE SOMETHING BRILLIANT!

Trust me – this really works!

Author’s note:

I’m half joking about my “cure” for insomnia. It does work but there are many root causes for insomnia from pain to stress to anxiety and you should try to determine what the root cause is. If you still can’t deal with it you should see your doctor.

So what’s PitchFest?

Do you have a great idea for a web application? Do your ideas keep you awake at night? Then come on down to TeamCamp for an idea “Pitch Fest”. Pitch your idea to a friendly group of people just like you. Together, we’ll explore and build on your idea. You’ll meet new friends and who knows, maybe you’ll meet a co-founder?

The Format

The format is simple: you talk, we listen and contribute. The output is better ideas. You don’t need a fancy PowerPoint presentation, or a working prototype for that matter (although that would be really cool). However, if you want people to understand your idea make sure you’re clear and concise and in particular explain what value your idea brings to your target customer.

If your not sure where to start I highly recommend reading So What? Who Cares? Why You? by Wendy Kennedy (an Ottawa native) which is hands-down the best resource I’ve read on how to turn an idea into an opportunity. Wendy recommends a simple 4 step process to translate tech-speak into the language of value:

1. Describe the pressing need or pain that the customer feels right now
2. Explain the value of your solution to your intended customer
3. Talk about the attributes of your technology
4. Back up your idea with proof (i.e. sort of evidence that your solution could solve the problem – like a customer).

Using this methodology to express your idea should be as simple as stating “Our customer’s _______ (problem) will be solved by our ______ (solution) because of our _____________ (technology attributes) that are backed up by ___________ (proof)” (fill in the blanks).

Prerequisites

I hate fine print just as much as anyone else; If you have a job, be mindful of  your employer’s Intellectual Property rights. TeamCamp does not exist to steel other peoples’ or companies ideas. Make sure your ideas are original. By the same token, no one at TeamCamp is going to sign your non-disclosure agreement; If you’re unwilling to share your idea then a) you’re likely going to fail anyway, and b) you’ll never find anyone to work on it with you. Best of luck to you.

For these reasons, if you plan on pitching or attending a pitchfest I ask is that you review and accept the TeamCamp Participation Agreement.

In addition, it would be great if you contribute something to The Code Factory’s Cookie Jar after the meeting.

What Comes Next

Inspire, lead, execute is TeamCamp’s mantra. Pitchnight is the first part. You’ll find TeamCampers are a friendly bunch eager to hear your ideas. But don’t expect everyone to jump and and down and scream “OMG, your idea is brilliant – let’s work on it!”. It doesn’t happen that way. Give people a chance to ask questions, understand, and absorb your idea. You’ll also likely need to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) before people will really start to “get it”.

Inspiring people to work on your idea takes leadership; it’s the hard part. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of people pitch their idea and walk away feeling disappointed. Being an entrepreneur takes a lot of tenacity, perseverance and hard work. A good idea is just the tip of the iceberg. Take what you hear, continue to develop your idea, and then come on back.

Resources

Since we started TeamCamp we’ve built a pretty good set of resources on this Blog. Take the time to look at some of the posts. There’s good information there and links to plenty of external resources. The best thing is that these ideas are generally from entrepreneurs in Ottawa. They’re always willing to help. Ottawa has an awesome startup community.

TweetReach has introduced TweetReach Pro for tracking Twitter-based campaigns.

Plans range from $84 for 5 reports to $899 per month (!) for unlimited reports. If you need just one report you can run a free report for the last 50 tweets on any topic anytime. If your topic has more than 50 tweets, you can purchase a full report for $20 from the results page.

There’s money to be made out there folks. There’s no rocket science behind the algorithms that Tweetreach uses to gather the data. The only “rocket scientist” involved is the one that decided to make money from Twitter.

- Chris

Update: This meeting was so interesting and much fun that we’ve decided to hold another on March 18th.

Sign up here

—

Tonight is TeamCamp Pitchfest. Lot’s of people have been asking “what is that?”, which is a darn good question. Although we’ve done many pitchfests before we’ve also had a lot of new people joining the group. So here’s a description:

Do you have a great idea for a web application? Do your ideas keep you awake at night? Then come on down to TeamCamp tonight for an idea “Pitch Fest”. Pitch your idea to a friendly group of people just like you. Together, we’ll explore and build on your idea. You’ll meet new friends and who knows, maybe you’ll meet a co-founder?

We generally spend about 20 mins per pitch. Format is not important, just be convincing

When: Thursday Mar 4th 18th, 2010 at 5:45PM to 8:00PM

Where: The Code Factory, 246 Queen St. Ottawa (ring the buzzer to come up to the 2nd floor)

While it’s not necessary to register for the event, it would be great if you could let us know if your coming via Twegather.

Hope to see you there!

- TeamCamper Chris

PS – please review and acknowledge the TeamCamp Participation Agreement beforehand

PPS – don’t forget the “cookie jar”

Interested in observing the dynamics of a start-up in the making? What to have your say in setting the direction for the Twegather service?  Are there some features you’d love to see (and maybe some you’d love to see go)?   Still haven’t piqued your interest? Well, how about free pizza? Ok, then…

Twegather was born from team collaboration. Last June, 15 of us got together to develop an idea – a Twitter-centric event management system.  A short couple of months later we had a prototype, and today we have the beginnings of a great service, homegrown here in Ottawa by people that love the net, love to code and love to party.

Well, it’s time for another Project Night. Come one, come all – we’d love to hear what you think, even if you’ve never used Twegather. More than that we’re going to put you to work helping us to blaze a path for this new and innovative service.

I’ll provide the pizza, you bring the ideas.

Where: The Code Factory, 246 Queen St., Ottawa, 2nd floor (ring the buzzer after 5pm)

When: Thursday, Feb 4th, ’10
Time: 6pm to late
RSVP via Twegather:
Tweet Yes ›
Tweet Maybe ›
Tweet No ›

Not on Twitter? Then Sign up… or I suppose you can email me at chrisjschmitt[at]gmail[dot]com.

Tweet this event

It easy to compare yourself to your closest competitor and say “I can do it better” or “I can do it for less”. But what makes you think you can do it better or cheaper then the incumbent who’s been at this game far longer than you have? You better have some “secret sauce” at your disposal that your biggest competitor doesn’t have and can’t easily replicate.

Don’t settle for the same but cheaper or better. Instead, change the rules of the game. For example:

• If your competitors’ software is overkill and complex offer a simple “no frills” version, e.g. Basecamp vs. Microsoft Project
• If your competitors’ offer a usage-based service, offer a flat rate instead, e.g. old long distance plans vs. new long distance plans
• If your competitors’ offer a low entry fee and but then over-charge for add-ons, charge a higher base rate and then offer the add-ons for free, e.g. TELUS, Bell and Rogers vs. Globealive wireless
• If you competitor makes money from advertising, offer an ad-free service and charge for the service instead

Don’t simply settle for offering the same thing your competitor offers – change the rules of the game.