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The first annual TeamCamp Christmas was a smashing success last night. We had a great discussion about what will be big in 2010. Here are our predictions:

Eric – Google Web Toolkit will take off making it easier to develop web apps.

Mike – 1. Oracle will have a challenging time trying absorb the Sun (and mysql) 2. Mashups.

Bryan – 1. HTML5 – Flash and Silverlight applications will start moving to HTML5. 2. ChromeOS

Fred – Real time video will start to appear on wireless devices. Other countries already have it, why not Canada?

Ian -1. The economy will “double dip”. 2. Twitter will figure out how to monetize its service – or suffer a steady decline in valuation.

Jean-Claude – Content on video sharing sites will get better because more users will have access to tools used by the professionals.

Cory – 1. There will be more angel and VC money and as a result more startups will stay in Ottawa rather then relocate to Silicon Valley. 2. The web will leverage people-power to to greatly improve recommendation engines. 3. Google’s biggest threat will be the US Justice Dept.

Len – Social networks will dramatically change the way people search for and find work.

Chris – Hyperlocal web ecosystems will take off.

Ok, now everyone is on record. Let’s check back to see who was right next Christmas!

- Chris

Update: Here are the slides from John’s presentation Raising Capital in 2010

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Bootstrapper or not, at some point in time you’re going to be interested in finding some external funding for your startup. There are a number of government programs that you can tap into and despite what you hear in the news there are angel investors willing to invest in your company if you’ve got what it takes. But learning the ins and outs of funding can be a bewildering process.

TeamCamp very pleased to have John Shannon (@me_now) as a speaker at our next meeting.  John is a well-known personality in the Ottawa startup community and will be sharing his insights into some of the “tricks and traps” of funding.

John Shannon is one of Ottawa’s quintessential entrepreneurs. Early in his career he worked in Canada and Europe developing low-level software, systems and mobile networks with Bell Northern Research and then Nortel. In 2000 he left Nortel to be CTO and co-founder of the company that became Bill Me Later, ultimately acquired by eBay in 2008. John has also been a co-founder and early contributor to at least half a dozen other Ottawa startups and one of Ottawa’s active Angel investors. Besides helping raise significant venture capital for several companies, he’s orchestrated millions of dollars of angel investment and government programs. In addition to his experience applying technology to business opportunities, John is an expert at early stage financing and business development (from http://www.theottawanetwork.com/).

We’ll be starting a little early for this meeting because John will be racing off to a Founders and Funders event immediately following his talk.

When: Thursday Dec 3rd 2009 at 5:30PM 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 Twegather “bot” know that your coming:
Reply Yes › or
Reply Maybe ›

Hope to see you there!

- TeamCamper Chris

PS – don’t forget about the “cookie jar”

Do you have a great idea for a web application? Do your ideas keep you awake at night? Then come on down to TeamCamp this Thursday 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?

When: Thursday Nov 19th, 2009 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 (a TeamCamp spawned service by the way

Hope to see you there!

- TeamCamper Chris

PS – please review and acknowledge the TeamCamp Participation Agreement beforehand

On Tuesday night, after months of hard work, we demonstrated the Twegather service at DemoCamp Ottawa 12. Three members of the team walked a crowd of over 80 through the process of creating a “twegathering”. We received a very positive response and great feedback. Afterwards I talked to many people who shared my view of how lucky we are to live in a city which such a supportive start-up community.

It’s hard to believe that only 1-year ago I was sitting beside Ian at The Code Factory giving him a demo of a wish list application I’d built. Before I knew it, on Ian’s prompting,  I was giving a nervous demo to the crowd at DemoCamp Ottawa 10.

Out of that night TeamCamp was born:  a series of events aimed at forming like-minded individuals into teams for the purpose of turning smart ideas into startups.

Twegather is the first project born completely out of TeamCamp: from concept, to prototype to a fully functioning application. It’s been a wild ride but one I wouldn’t give up for anything. You can read more about it here.

If you would like to pitch your idea at TeamCamp then come on out to one of our TeamCamp twegatherings.  Maybe it’ll be you and your team giving a demo at the next DemoCamp!

What is Twegather?

Twegather is a Twitter-based event creation and management tool for people in a hurry – it literally takes 3 mouse clicks to create and start promoting your gathering. You create a “twegathering” by sending tweet to @whowantstogo specifying a description of the event, the time and location.
In seconds the mysterious “Twegather-bot” lets you know it’s ready and you can tweet the details to your followers.

It’s just as easy for people to let you know whether they can make it to your gathering: send a reply to @twegather with the hashcode and short url provided in the event tweet and a confirmation (yes, no or maybe).  Twegather does the rest – keeping track of who’s coming, who can’t make it and who’s thinking about it.

If you’re interested in being one of our early testers you can sign up for Twegather here. Twegather is a new concept in event planning and we’d love to see how people use it.

How many times have you had an idea to pitch and you don’t really quite know how to get it across in a way that will “make it stick” and maybe get your first customer?

This Thursday, learn from one of the best:  Allan Isfan. Allan will focus on ideas during the early stages of connecting with customers: validate what you are building and possibly getting an early customer. He will use real example from his own experience.

1. How to deliver a message that sticks so your customers “get it”

• this will focus on two key areas
• story boarding
• SUCCESs (simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, story)
• slide design

2. Focus on things you can do to connect with potential customer in the validation phase ….

• prototypes
• getting advisors
• collateral
• looking at things like a partnerships

Allan is CEO of FaveQuest, a Social Media Platform company based in Ottawa.  He’s also out to change the world! Allan’s presentation Change the World One Child at a Time has been viewed over 12,000 times. Allan’s latest endeavor is Zoogeez, an online playground for kids to safely play, create, watch with the mission being kids from around the world working together and getting to know each other.

Please join us for this very special presentation from a very special person.

Location:

The Code Factory
2nd floor
246 Queen St. West
Ottawa

Time: 5:45-8:00PM

Note: you need to ring the buzzer to use the elevator after 5PM

While there is no need to register it would be great to let us know if you are coming by using Twegather to send your reply over Twitter: Reply: Yes › or Reply: Maybe ›

And don’t forget to contribute to The Code Factory’s “cookie jar” at the end of the night.

-Chris

As the title suggests there will be no formal TeamCamp meetings in August.  Summer vacations and weekends at the cottage have rightfully taken a front seat in this all-too-short summer.   But don’t let that stop you – this is a great time to work on developing and implementing a MVP for your favourite idea and we can all look forward to kicking off September with renewed energy and a batch of brilliant ideas just waited to be executed!

Enjoy your August and we’ll see you on September 3rd for the next TeamCamp meeting.

- Chris

• Keep doing the MVP over and over again until you’ve hit the nail on the head (or fail quickly) – afterall pesistance is key to being an entrepreneur
• MVP is exactly one cycle through the feedback loop of  Build => Measure => Learn

Some techniques:

• Smoke testing – Put up a landing page to find out if anyone wants the product, even at no cost
• SEM on $5 a day
• In-product split testing to try out new features, changes
• Paper prototypes
• Customer discovery/validation
• Removing features

• False negatives –  Getting feeback that the MVP product sucked because it was too limited but users would have liked the full product
• Visionary complex – believing that customers don’t know what they want and then ignoring their feedback
• Too busy to learn – feeling that measuring distracts from delighting customers – “how can you afford to do MVP?”

Eric also talks about customer feedback of an MVP: any feedback is good, even if people don’t like it.  It’s when you get no feedback that you need to be worried.

We still have a lot to learn about MVP. We need to be a lot more diligent on the Measuring and Learning part of the build cycle and I think we need to get the MVP out in front of more “customers” so that we know we’re working on the right things. But the key here is we’re learning a lot and enjoying ourselves.

Our next (special) TeamCamp meeting is this Thursday and the theme will be Twegather Project Night. We managed to complete our first iteration of the Twegather application on-time (woot!) and on-budget (ha, ha). Now it’s time to review what we’ve completed and plan for the next 2 weeks. Following the project review we’ll break into two tracks, business development and application development, to continue working on the project.

As you can see there is something for everyone, whether you prefer the technology or the business side of things. In particular, if you’d like to see agile project management principles and a self-organizing, self-managing, cross-functional team of people in action, come on down.

Location:

The Code Factory
2nd floor
246 Queen St. West
Ottawa

Note: you need to ring the buzzer to use the elevator after 5PM

Time: 5:45-8:00PM

RSVP at http://bit.ly/La796 or on Twitter: Reply Yes › or Reply Maybe ›

Note: to participate on this session you will need to review and accept the TeamCamp Participation Agreement.

And don’t forget to contribute to the “cookie jar” at the end of the night.

-Chris

If you build it, they will come?  Is there a market for your application, product or service? Who are your customers?  Who are your competitors?  What are they offering?  How do you differentiate yourself in the marketplace?

These are just a few of the questions that should be considered when starting a technology company.

Come join Asif Rehman  as he focuses on the first P (Product/Application/Service) of marketing (the other three being Price, Place, Promotion) to help you focus your efforts to ensure a viable product/application/service as you start your company.   Asif will cover topics such as market assessment, competitive assessment and differentiation, and value proposition.

Asif Rehman is the President and principal consultant at Real Product Marketing with over 20 years experience at the forefront of the high technology industry.  A polished speaker, he has spoken at numerous trade shows and events, to the media and industry analysts.  An exhibited photographer, Asif has twice traveled around the world expanding his personal understanding of the interconnectedness of all people and has exhibited his photography based on this theme.

Location: The Code Factory, 246 Queen St., Ottawa

Date: July 16th, 2009

Time: 5:45pm – 8:00PM

Ring the buzzer to take the elevator to the 2nd floor