Urban Vancouver

Start: Jun 14 2008 - 9:00am End: Jun 14 2008 - 5:30pm Timezone: Etc/GMT-7

We would like to invite you to join us for Canada’s largest Joomla event: Joomla! Day Vancouver. It will be hosted at the Vancouver Public Library located in downtown Vancouver, beautiful British Columbia. This whole day event is held on Saturday June 14th 2008 from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM.

Vancouver Joomla Day 2008

Facebook Link:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=16442266469

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STIRR Canada ran its first Founders’ Table event last night in Calgary and it was great to be able to attend and join in.  The goal of the Founders’ Table events is to bring founders of newer tech startups together in an intimate social setting with people who have gone through the startup process before, and are potentially looking to advise and invest.  The hope is that newer founders, and pre-startup innovators, will be able to connect with and learn from the more seasoned entrepreneurs and investors.

The event was kept fairly small and was invite-only.  This was done so that quality “up and coming” founders would be able to get the most benefit. The seating at the tables was pre-arranged so that people would interact with others that they might not have met before.  Most of the attendees came from Calgary, however there were about five or six people from Edmonton who were invited down.

The first part of the evening featured Garrett Camp, the co-founder of one of Calgary’s most successful startups, StumbleUpon.  The first few minutes of Garrett’s talk was about how StumbleUpon came about and grew.  One of the most interesting things that came out of that talk was that his first angel connection actually contacted him because he was a frequent user and loved the idea.

After Garrett’s brief talk, he opened the floor to questions from the attendees.  Perhaps the question that most people wanted to have answered was: “Would he have been able to take StumbleUpon to where it was had he not moved to the Valley?”  Garrett figured he would have been able to but “it would have been much harder, and required more travel back and forth from the Valley.”  Ultimately he felt as though the connections and mentoring that he was able to get from Silicon Valley were vital to the success that StumbleUpon has had.  This is one of the biggest reasons that Pat Lor, Claudia Moore and the STIRR Team have worked so hard to bring STIRR to Canada.  They hope that the connections, mentoring and startup experiences that exist in Canada will be able to be shared with the next flock of startups.

After the talk, dinner was served and it gave a chance for everyone to interact.  It was great to be able to hear some of the people who had run successful startups talk about what had taken them there.  Also for those who would potentially become investors they were able to learn more about both the founder and their idea, and it gave the newer founders a chance to find out what investors were really looking for.  Each table had a STIRR organizer facilitating the conversation so that everyone was able to discuss some of the topics that they were interested in.

Overall the event was great.  STIRR has done a fantastic job in the Valley and it is great to see it here in Canada.  Hopefully the event will continue to grow and the format will be expanded to other cities.  It was really awesome to see the conversations that were being had, and the relationships that were being developed.  STIRR Canada will be running more Founders’ Table events, as well as larger Tech Mixers. If you think that you should be invited, contact them and let them know why; likely you will find yourself at a future STIRR event.

If you haven't already, make sure you carve out some time for LPV4.  We have a good line up in store for you. The following companies have been selected to demo their start-ups on the 21st:   

• Fitbrains -Meet Michael Cole and learn more about brain fitness
• FundFindr -Ask Bret Conkin about speed dating for entrepreneurs
• CellMap - Aaron Hilton wants to show you his latest CellMap of Stanley Park
• Inhabit Street - Dan Flippance created this community site to help apartment, townhouse and condo owners manage their strata and meet their neighbors.
• Scrnshots - Greg Bell will show you how to upload, tag and share your screenshots with the world.
• HelloTree - John Goodall will show you how to build your own family tree and share their angle on the amily networking.
• Strutta - Jordan Behan and Danny Robinson will try and ingnite your inner competitor as they demo their site's new gaming platform. 

Many thanks to our sponsors Peer 1, Sun Microsystems, Scott Dunlop from Davis & Co, Strutta, Layer 7 and TechVibes Media for helping us pull together another great event.  We will see you on Wednesday night. 

Sitemasher is a start-up company focused on making it easier for companies to manage their online presence. Sitemasher created a new patent pending online tool that will drastically reduce the time and cost associated with Building, Managing and Optimizing sophisticated websites.

What does this mean? It means that we’ve eliminated the current obstacles that exist in creating powerful websites like the requirement for programming and the need for bloated expensive technology to run a website. Businesses can now change and update their website easily and focus on their business. Sitemasher is also a browser based tool that is completely collaborative and includes all the latest Analytics and SEO features.

Sitemasher is in search for a Senior Software Engineer (aka Widget Master) to join our organization on a Permanent Full-time basis. This individual will help drive the design and implementation of our web application. This individual of course has a passion for development and may be known to his or her peers as the Widget Master!

The company’s culture is an invigorating and stimulating environment with smart colleagues and challenging/flexible work, giving all of us the opportunity to do some of the best work of our careers. Located in the fabulous and trendy Kitsilano area, we also strive to take on an environmental and socially responsible mentality. Our ideal candidate is an individual that embraces these ideals, is a creative, multi-dimensional person who just wants to get to business and would jump at the chance to join a “Work Hard, Play Hard” team.

Learn more about the responsibilities and requirements of this position here. If this is an ideal position for you, please send your resume and cover letter to Courtney at Jobs@sitemasher.com.

This store has been a major pet peeve of ours. We moved to North Vancouver about a year and a half ago, and thought very little of the Sleepers store on 3rd & Lonsdale and it’s Store Closing signs. Sucks, but stores close all the time.

But that was a year and a half ago. And the signs are still there. Since they are not nice signs, even, and they are this glaring yellow, it’s beyond annoying. I would never will a store to close, but if they are not going to close, could they please take down those damn signs?

This incident is just about as bad as the store where we bought our sofa. It had a "sale" sign so big that it was one letter per window. And their "sale" was on for at least a year.

Some basic business lessons to learn from this:

• You are not on sale if the sale is on every day for more than a year
• You are not closing if you stay open for at least a year and a half past since when you put up the signs

Both practices are misleading and dishonest. And really really annoying.

Tags: sleepers, marketing, misleading marketing, business, business practices, sale, sales

Vectorama is a monthly design/illustration competition on MostlyLisa.com. Last month, the penguin themed illustration competition was so chill, it was ace! Ninja vs Penguin pwnd the other competitors with her uber stealth penguins.

This month’s theme is Canadian Things! Things like: Hockey, maple syrup, Mounties, mountains, moose, beavers, snow plows, ice, and famous Canadian people, like Avril Lavigne. Feel free to exploit any Canadian stereotype you like. I welcome your ridicule.

Here are the rules:

1. Your illustrator must be vector i.e. Adobe Illustrator
2. Your design must include something Canadian i.e. Hockey, maple leaf, bears, snow, igloos, furry seals, unfurrry seals etc.

What you win:

1. Vector Sized Glory!!!
2. A coveted adspace on my sidebar which will display your winning design and link to your website for one month.
3. A whole lotta link l0v3 and straight up repekt!

**Send your 500×300 entries to mostlylisa *at* gmail *dot* com. You have until Friday, May 30th to get your entries to me.**

Judging:
Blog fans and general internet peeps will vote for the top 3 Vectoramas. Then, the winner will be picked by two master illustrators: Me, obviously; and Pasquale, some Australian animator that knows nothing about about Canada.

Sharpen your vector tools, because you are going to need them, eh?

ShareThis

{NOTE: This wrap-up post was emailed to the Drupal Camp Vancouver attendees and cross-posted here for posterity and community sharing - daveo}

THANKS MUCHO

We're a few days past Drupal Camp Vancouver and we, Dave, Dale and Ariane your earnest organizers, want to say "Thanks!" to everyone who sponsored, volunteered, presented, and otherwise helped out to make DCV08 a enjoyable and beneficial event. The vibe and the knowledge sharing resulted in some outstanding collaboration and compelling networking for sure.

As for me, I wanted three things for DCV08: 1) eco-friendly t-shirts; 2) a party with free beer; and 3) to fly up Dmitri the 12-year old Drupalist for the event. While the special guest didn't happen, the success of the Fearless City code sprint (http://www.drupalcampvancouver.org/node/81) made up for it. I feel leaving a legacy of volunteer-ism and activism using open source software is an important precedent to set. So as Meatloaf is wont to sing, "Two outta three ain't bad."

WHAT'D YA THINK?

I briefly considered sending out an "exit survey" to gauge opinions and help plan for next year, however the reality of other job tasks got in the way. Instead, please blog about what worked for you. What didn't fly? Highlights? Disappointments? Suggestions? Motivations? Don't keep 'em inside! Share your opinion on any related topic (venues, food, talks, etc.) for the collective benefit. Tag your posts "dcv08" or "drupalcampvancouver" to maximum handiness.

SHARING

Presenters, please share your session notes, slides, and examples from your (awesome) presentation at: http://www.drupalcampvancouver.org/presenters_notes

Pictures are still coming in! Spot yourself in the Flickr photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/dcv08/
Lend a hand and tag 'em up!

Photographers, please add your shots to the Drupal Camp Vancouver Flickr pool: http://www.flickr.com/groups/drupal-camp-vancouver-08/

Micro-bloggers use the #dcv08 hash tag to spread your messages to the DCV alumni via Twitter and Twemes.

SPONSORS

Many folks asked how we managed to put on a conference with tasty drinks, mighty sandwiches, and bamboo t-shirts for $20. The answer is the sponsors. Links and mentions in blog posts are a great way to say thanks for their support and encourage ongoing involvement.

For your linking convenience, sponsors are listed at: http://www.drupalcampvancouver.org/drupal-camp-vancouver-sponsors

MORE DRUPAL

Visit your new friends across the border! Sign-up for the Seattle Drupal Camp coming up next month at Youngstown Arts Center June 27 and 28 - For sponsor and attendee info visit: http://groups.drupal.org/node/11296

For you metro Vancouver locals, consider attending (or even helping out) the local user group to keep your Drupal buzz going:
http://groups.drupal.org/vancouver

PS We are hereby starting rumours about Drupal Camp Victoria sometime in the Fall. Who's stepping up to organize?

OUT OF TOWNERS

For those who came from out-of-town. Wow ~ we're honoured you made the effort to attend our humble gathering by plane, bus, and ferry. When you're back in town, tell us at Vancouver Drupal Group page as there are often meet-ups and events in the area. And if there's anything we can do to help out with Drupal community building in your area, let us know.

T-SHIRTS

Were you registered but didn't make it on Saturday? Email dave (at) raincitystudios (dot) com to arrange to pick your bamboo and organic cotton t-shirt from the Raincity Studios office (1 Alexander, Suite 420, Vancouver).

Thanks to you for your participation! We look forward to seeing you all again.

DaveO (for Dale and Ariane - collectively, the "DCV08 Tugboats")

PS LOST - Missing black hemp hoodie - last seen at the Flux Party

Vancouver

It's been a very busy past couple of weeks. I finished up a co-op report, helped present at DrupalCamp Vancouver, and started my next co-op job at Raincity Studios.

DrupalCamp was really great and I was glad to have presented on the first day; the stress of presenting and submitting a co-op report gave way to some great talks. Highlights included:

• 'In bed with Rob and Alex' by Social Signal
• 'Themers Guide to jQuery' by Steve Krueger
• 'Module Developers Guid to jQuery' by Katherine Bailey
• 'Strategies for Drupal between servers' by Greg Dunlap

My new job at Raincity Studios is pretty exciting. We're building on the SMS Framework module to provide some better Drupal interaction with SMS. There's a public code repository here. Looking forward to building on this and it seems like there are already a lot of people interested in what we're doing. Expect a post on the Raincity Studios blog about this sometime soon.

Big news out of Techvibes’ Yaletown neighborhood - Electronic Arts (EA) is coming to the ‘hood. Apparently EA’s lack of a Yaletown address has been hurting their recruiting efforts in the gaming space.

They couldn’t find any suitable location close to the Yaletown epicenter (read Blenz), so they’re building on it. Two floors are being surgically attached to the roof of the heritage building that houses Yaletown Brewing Company (map) and Blenz. Great location choice with the new Yaletown Skytrain station one block away and a flagship Earls going in the old Mavi Jeans location across the street. Yaletown will now have the highest density of cookie-cutter restaurants in Vancouver - Earls, Cactus Club, Milestone’s and Browns all within a one-block radius.

Last night we got together with Rebecca and Duane to listen to some of the New Music West bands. We decided to go to the Red Room ad got there in time for Jessie Farrell and Aaron Pritchett. I’m not really a fan of country music and in general try to avoid it, but it’s always fun to listen to live music and we had a pretty good time.

However, the venue left us very disappointed. Since I was driving, I was not drinking any alcohol; so when I got thirsty, I went to the bar and asked for a glass of water. The conversation went something like:

- Hi! Can I get a glass of water please?
- It’s $4.25
- (The music was loud so I thought she couldn’t hear me well) Oh, no, I just want water.
- You have to pay for it?
- For tap water?
- Yes, we only serve water to people who are buying drinks.
- What? But I’m the designated driver and all my friends are drinking. Why can’t I just get some tap water?
- Our manager tells us that is the rule.
- So now I have to go drink water from the bathroom sink?

I have to say I was very surprised and a little pissed off. I kept trying to reason with her and then a bouncer showed up and we argued a little more. I didn’t want to get kicked out just because I wanted to drink water so I went back to my table. Although it would’ve been a lot more interesting to be kicked out of a club that reason.

This no free water rule is extremely stupid. I’m being a responsible person driving my friends to a club so that they can drink to their hearts content (and if you know Duane, you know he has a BIG heart ;) ). I’m enabling them to drink and spend money, but The Red Room is too cheap to give me some tap water, which costs them nothing. Instead they want to charge me $4.25 for a 500ml bottle of water, which is probably tap water to begin with. Contrast this to what Raul says bars do in Mexico.

Any other bar I’ve been they will give you water and some still even give you a free pop, but the Red Room managers want to milk their customers for all they are worth. Someone else wrote about a similar experience they had there, which includes an actual conversation with a very rude manager who doesn’t think his customers have the right to drink water unless they pay for it. He even asked them to leave the bar.

So, I probably wont be heading back anytime soon.

Anyway, here are some photos from last night:

In this week’s Business in Vancouver, Curt Cherewayko reports that tech entrepreneur Dick Hardt has been named as a defendant in a statement of claim that alleges he made misrepresentations during a pitch to investors who eventually invested US$370,000 into Hardt’s Sxip Identity Corp.

According to the claim, plaintiffs Caliber Management Ltd., Polygon Financial 05 LLC, Ron Stevens and Danny Robinson advanced money to Sxip Identity (in the form of convertible bridge notes) after Hardt approached them last Summer to fund the sale of some Sxip assets. The claim alleges that Hardt told the plaintiffs that he was in negotiations to sell Sxip Identity to Google, Microsoft or another notable tech company.

When Hardt’s attempts to sell Sxip Identity failed, he told the plaintiffs that Sxip Identity was insolvent and that their notes has little or no value. This is where things get messy. The plaintiffs allege that Hardt failed to disclose that there were two separate Sxip entities (Sxip Identity and Sxip Network - he is CEO and President of both) and that only Sxip Identity would be a party to the notes.

Sxip Identity is indeed insolvent with a March 2008 balance sheet indicating that they owed Sxip Networks $4.7 Million and Hardt personally $275K. Sxip Identity’s total assets at the time were just under $1 Million.

The Plaintiffs allege that because of this “related creditor” debt, Hardt and the company has already redirected to themselves any value that Sxip Identity had. The plaintiffs claim an order for restitution and rescission for the money they advance to Hardt, as well as damages. According to BIV, Hardt is examining his options.

Vancouver’s tech entrepreneur community is small and everyone knows each other, so it should be interesting to see how this story unfolds.

Before we get going with the link list, I want to announce the replay of our paid search webinar with Ryan Gibson of the Rimm-Kaufman Group is now available. You can also catch up with all of our webinars (we’ve got a full year’s worth!) in our ecommerce webinar archive.

I also want to remind you of a few upcoming webinars so pull out your calendars:

Tuesday, May 20: How to Use Blogging and Email to Create Leads and Delight Customers with Compendium Blogware, the Email Experience Council and Habeas.

Thursday, May 29: Web Personalization: Putting the “Cha-Ching” Before and After the Check-Out presented by Sitebrand and ZAAZ.

Thursday, June 19: 9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now & What’s Next presented by our own VP of Innovation, Jason Billingsley who will be sharing some “ridiculously cool stuff” on the ecommerce horizon.

We’ll kick off this week’s roundup with “I’m Gonna Git You Spamma!” Via eROI Interactive.

Shut yo’ mouth!

• We touched upon keyword research and its importance in yesterday’s webinar. Christine Churchill shares Eight Keyword Research Mistakes that Are Costing You Money if you’re hungry for more keyword research wisdom>.

• Can blogs help your SEO? And how do you make sure you’re getting the most SEO value out of your blog? Rand Fishkin explains in video-form with Blogging for Higher Rankings.

  In related news, 57% of women believe blogs influence their purchase decisions. Wow, I’m such a stereotype - I read a post on Search Engine People last night and immediately bought a laptop cooling pad. PS, neither of us are affiliates. It’s just a great product idea and costs about $20.

• If I say “duplicate content!” and you say “huh?”, this is a great introduction to what duplicate content is, courtesy of Eric Enge.

• Pop quiz: What’s the difference between exit rate and bounce rate? Mae Allam from the Invesp blog gives a good explanation.

• The title says it all: 8 Best Kept Secrets to Fine Tuning Your E-mail Marketing Campaigns from Invesp conversion expert Khalid Hajsaleh.

• We love catching Google in the act of testing its visuals. Someone at iCrossing noticed Google testing green in its search results, and Search Engine Land also posted screenshots of Google’s green.

• Curious on what the payoff of “Digg-baiting” is? SocialAlerter shares the results of its own little study on how many links Digg can get you. By tracking Yahoo backlinks for over 1000 stories that “went hot” on Digg for 30 days, the average number of links was 1167! Granted, many of these links will come from low-quality scrapers and splogs but that’s still an impressive number.

• The Top 25 Facebook Pages include the usual supsects - Barack, Hillary, Justin Timberlake… but there are some brands mixed with the bands. Kudos to Victoria’s Secret Pink, Apple Students and Nutella for attracting a Facebook following.

9 Ecommerce Innovations: What's Now & What's Next
Free webinar: June 19th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend

In partnership with Launch Party Vancouver, Techvibes is hosting a Start-Up Career Fair dedicated to the unique opportunities available at technology Start-Ups in Vancouver. The event will merge the ‘unconference’ format of DemoCamp with a traditional Career Fair. Representatives from Strutta, Carrie & Danielle, Tagga, Live Current, MovieSet, Vibrant Software, 6S Marketing, FCV, Layer 7 and GO Recruitment will have 5 minutes each to pitch you on working for them and highlight some of the cool opportunities at their companies.

If you’re a student, a recent graduate, or just part of the regular-old-workforce and curious about what its like to work for a Start-Up - this FREE event is for you. The Career Fair will take place on Wednesday, May 21st at 3:00pm at Republic at 958 Granville Street.

BONUS: Everyone is invited to stick around for a complimentary beverage and networking at Launch Party starting at 5:30pm. You can register for both events on Facebook - LPV4 here and the Start-Up Career Fair here.

t-dot-s-dot posted a photo:

Steve Krueger in his jQuery talk.

t-dot-s-dot posted a photo:

Steve Krueger in his jQuery talk.

t-dot-s-dot posted a photo:

Second day warm up coffee at Workspace.

t-dot-s-dot posted a photo:

The 'Bedtime with Rob and Alex' talk was a lot of fun.

t-dot-s-dot posted a photo:

The 'Bedtime with Rob and Alex' talk was a lot of fun.

t-dot-s-dot posted a photo:

The 'Bedtime with Rob and Alex' talk was a lot of fun.

t-dot-s-dot posted a photo:

The 'Bedtime with Rob and Alex' talk was a lot of fun.