The coolest startup in Toronto has been recognized by the finacial post. They deserve all the attention and praise that they get because the company, it’s people, the technology, the setup, the scary lathe in the basement are all awesome.

THE TORONTO CATASTROPHE SLAM
"a day of dialogue over Toronto disaster
scenarios".

Be part of this unique day of dialogue and challenge for academics, students, professionals, not-for-profit and the public. The purpose of this event is to exchange knowledge and ideas with others on the topic of catastrophe, disaster and emergency. This is a rare multidisciplinary engagement that will include informative keynotes and participatory challenges that will be designed to examine scenarios including a Natural Disaster scenario, a Health Epidemic and a Security Crisis. For more info on the Catastrophe Slam check out http://digifest2008.wik.is/

WHAT IS A DESIGN SLAM
A Design Slam is where we have a fictitious group of stakeholders present a problem to groups "consultants". We will form these groups randomly at the beginning of the event. These ingenious and innovative people will have a set block of time to design and pitch their idea to the stakeholders.

We have 30 slots that we are opening up for free public registration to the Catastrophe Slam but I encourage you to check out the entire 3 day Digifest event for $25.
You can register for digifest here: http://www.dx.org/digifest/register.html

BUT if you want to sign up for the Catastrophe Slam only head over to
http://digifest2008.wik.is/

1. Create an Account on the Wiki.
2. Sign Up for the event on the signup page. No Charge

It should be a really great day we have some great people coming out to this event and it is a unique space to play in.

If you didn’t see the videos from FacebookCampToronto1 you can get those here.

Top Applications and Why They Work (Jesse Hirsh)

Introduction & Update from the last FacebookCamp (Roy Pereira/Colin Smillie/Andrew Cherwenka)

High level presentation on platform and best-practices (Ami Vora – Facebook Inc.)

How Many ways can you Market your Application Inside Facebook? (Roy Pereira)

Monetizing your Facebook Application (Greg Thomson)

Got to hang out at the first Toronto SharePointCamp and have a bunch of developer friends ask me, “What are you doing here, you’re not a developer”

Anatomy of a Facebook Application (JayGoldman, Radiant Core)

Download the Quicktime or Download the MP4

FBML Overview (Sunil Boodram, Trapeze Media)

Download the Quicktime or Download the MP4

FQL Overview (Craig Saila)

Download the Quicktime or Download the MP4

As part of the event Meagan Marks from Facebook.com presented “Best Practices around Product Design and Viral Marketing”. It was an excellent presentation that had a lot of great information. The Facebook people asked however that we do not broadcast the presentation. So I won’t but I’ll SHARE it. (at least for now – MP4 98megs)

The MP4 files are on my server and may be sluggish

There were more presentations including:

• Updating the Facebook Profile (Colin Smillie, Refresh Partners) Presentation
• Demo: .Net Sample Application (Ricardo Covo, Web Nodes)
• Demo: Carpool by Zimride (Rajat Suri)
• Demo: My Aquarium by Greg Thomson

I’ll try to get them up soon.

Switching back to YouTube for this one.

Alec Saunders recently highlighted our little blog in a Tagging exercise and I am going to keep it going. Here are some blogs you should check out:

• Startup North
• Between Us – Audrey Carr
• Found in Translation
• Agency Time – Sam Ladner
• nForm

[tags]facebookcamp, BlogDay2007[/tags]

Our good buddy Sandy Kemsley was recently interviewed by Maggie K. Fox. of the Social Media Group. It is a great listen and I encourage you to check it out.

If you don’t have Silverlight, Get it. If you want to see the Flash Video it is here.

Open Cities was a great event and I hope that we can get alot of material up on the wiki. I’d like to try to put up new topic of conversation that we could continue on the wiki shortly.

So be sure to check out the flickr photos and blog posts.

For now I have 3 recordings from the sessions yesterday that you can download below.

Open Source Chamber of Commerce hosted by Mark Surman

Download the MP3 of Open Source Chamber of Commerce ( 22 megs )

Open and Weak vs Closed and Strong hosted by Luigi Ferrara

Download the MP3 of Open and Weak vs Closed and Strong ( 30 megs )

Collaborative Municipalities hosted by Mike Smith

Download the MP3 of Collaborative Municipalities ( 37 megs )

Video Embed Code
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://agappdom.net/g/silverlight.js"></script><script type="text/javascript">function CreateSilverlight(){Sys.Silverlight.createHostedObjectEx({source: "streaming:/7325/OpenCities2007",parentElement: OpenCities2007Wrapper});}</script><div id="OpenCities2007Wrapper" style="width:480px; height:400px; overflow:hidden;"></div><script type="text/javascript">var OpenCities2007Wrapper = document.getElementById("OpenCities2007Wrapper");CreateSilverlight();</script>

[tags]opencities, opencitiestoronto2007[/tags]

If you don’t have Silverlight, Get it. If you want to see the Flash Video it is here.

Microsoft put on a great event this weekend. 2007′s EnergizeIT was a good day.

Thanks to everybody who encouraged me to go from Microsoft – Mark, John, David, Jean-Luc, Barnaby, Paul, Daniel, Qixing, Bristowe

If you want to play this on your site try this code
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://agappdom.net/g/silverlight.js"></script><script type="text/javascript">function CreateSilverlight(){Sys.Silverlight.createHostedObjectEx({source: "streaming:/7325/EnergizeIT",parentElement: EnergizeITWrapper});}</script><div id="EnergizeITWrapper" style="width:500px; height:400px; overflow:hidden;"></div><script type="text/javascript">var EnergizeITWrapper = document.getElementById("EnergizeITWrapper");CreateSilverlight();</script>

[tags]EnergizeIT, Microsoft, Democamp[/tags]

Get the Quicktime version here.

Jeff Parks puts out a great Podcast called the IA podcast and last week he was at Mesh. So he did a session with a bunch of great people on UX & Community and I wasn’t in it. WHATS UP WITH THAT. Bryce is in it but not me. Well you should go check it out anyway.

[tags]userexperience, ux, jeffparks, torcamp, mesh07, barcamptoronto, thechickentest[/tags]

My co-organizers Audrey, Kaleem and Lindsay worked very hard to put the event together. I hope they got as much out of the event as I did.

Session notes and slides from the event.

• Jon Lax – The Experience Divide
• Sam Ladner – TimeandIxD
• James McNab – Values-based IxD
• Audrey Carr – Designing Sustainable Conversations Through Social Media
• Lee Dale – Brand Communities

I encourage people to keep adding material to the wiki.

Our great sponsors

We had great sponsors for the event and I’d really like to thank them for their support.

• Microsoft
• Critical Mass
• Techsmith
• Usability Matters
• Canux 2007 by nForm

Keep the community going

I urge people to check out more events by Barcamp Toronto (TorCamp) and the UXIrregulars like the upcoming CaseCamp, VisThink , Energize IT and Open Cities events.

Another event people should really check out is this years CanUX. CanUX2007 – The Canadian User Experience Workshop. I have attended these for the past two years and it is the best kept conference secret going.

[tags]InteractionCamp, BarCampToronto, TorCamp, EnergizeIT, OpenCities, Visthink, CaseCamp, Canux, Cannu2007[/tags]

To get it in Quicktime

There is a silly trend by business people to call web 2.0 web2 and that is wrong and lazy. Keep social media about geeks and community. Semantics are important
Call it Web Two Point Oh.
Web Two has got to go.

I’m going to start using silverlight & silverlight hosting soon but I want to update my whole blog.

[tags]mesh07, barcampttw, enterprisecampttw, torcamp[/tags]

There are a couple of posts about the event:

• Ben Vinegar
• Colin Henderson
• Deb Hartmann took some great notes on Mark Kuznicki’s discussion on the idea of whether or not Mozilla should invest more in promoting itself as a platform.

The organizers Ryan Coleman, willpate, Dan Kurtz and I would like to thank our sponsors:

• Idée Inc.
• Microsoft
• Faculty of Information Studies – University of Toronto
• Tucows
• Hyndman Law (Rob Hyndman)

EnterpriseCamp was today and it went really well. Sandy has some great posts about it.

So have a good tech week people of hogtown.

http://barcamp.org/BarCampTorontoTechWeek

Grab the quicktime version from the Revver page.

[tags]barcampottawa3, olpc, onelaptopperchild, 100dollarlaptop[/tags]

The Opening circle was very cool, Tim asked us two questions that he wanted us to write out three answers for: What did I bring with me today to MindCamp? and What I want to take with me when I leave?

Here is what I wrote down. Some of these answers make me feel like a bit of a BarCamp Wonk but whatever.

What did I bring with me today to MindCamp

• An open mind
• A willingness to participate
• A lack of shame

What I want to take with me when I leave

• Unlock hidden creativity
• Hone my facilitation skills
• Make Friends

Brain Gym

Brain Gym is kinda cool. The concept is that people develop and shape their neural pathways through the movement of their bodies. So our leader Elizabeth “Buffi” Huggins took us through a number of exercises in a process called PACE.

Getting in PACE will help you to focus your mind in order to comprehend new learning material, center the mind-body system for easily organizing new information, and integrate the right and left hemispheres of your brain for greater communication ability.

The one thing I noticed while we were doing the exercises is that my “enhanced” brain activity made me curious about what else was going on; so as an experienced Open Spacer I left and went to check out other stuff. So I wandered around Verity (WARNING Flashtastrophe – Thanks Jay), an awesome facility, and eventually made my way back into the “gym”… the brain gym. So some people kinda looked at me like I was a bit rude and one nice guy tried to catch me up like I was going to be tested on this or I would get kicked out of school for non-participation.

I was just into the ideas and I was moving and doing the exercises I just was enjoying the thinking time and riffing of the energy in the room. I learned that was ok when my friend Liesa and took this class at OCAD and she didn’t participate in an exercise. She just went off into a corner to work on her jewelry design project and feed off the energy in the room. At the time I remember thinking she was rude but now I get it you don’t always have to follow the herd.

How to turn a braindrizzle into a brainstorm

Tim ran this session and I found it really helpful. He showed us how to structure a brainstorming session, encourage the participants and block the haters and gave use a framework for refining ideas call POWER.

• Positives
• Objections
• What Else
• Enhancements
• Remedies

POWER is seems to be a much better framework then SWOT. I hope that I can put it to good use someday.

So at the end of the day we had a closing circle and Tim asked us to see if what we are taking with us when we leave is what we wrote down from the opening circle.

I think that what I found most interesting about the day was how quiet i was. I really didn’t participate that actively (don’t get me wrong I’m never a wallflower or tourist) but I did get a lot from the workshops. I learned that I value participation but I value my individuality more when the mood strikes me. It’s not like they are exclusive but it’s nice to know that I don’t need to be “ON” all the time and can riff on my own ideas being quiet in a corner and be cool with that.

[tags]MindCamp, facilitation, brainstorming, braingym[/tags]

YouTube video quality is too low for this stuff and Revver didn’t want to get in © trouble. So I have to host it myself, JayZ please don’t sue me.

Download this video in High Quality Windows Media or in High Quality MP4

[tags]TorontoTransitCamp, TransitCamp[/tags]

Download this video in High Quality Windows Media or in High Quality MOV

TransitCamp Wiki

What is TransitCamp

An ad-hoc gathering at the Gladstone Hotel of designers, transit geeks, bloggers, visual artists, tech geeks and cultural creators passionate about transit in Toronto and the TTC. It is a platform for Toronto’s talented design community and enthusiastic transit users and fans to demonstrate their creativity and contribute to a better way for Toronto’s transit system. The content and ideas generated in this open unconference will be delivered to the TTC for their consideration in their work.

TransitCamp Wiki

[tags]TransitCamp, TTC[/tags]