Fade to Play

At Launch Party Vancouver 3, I decided to take my digital camera and attempt some videos as I’d seen done at other tech social events. These are the people that I interviewed:

Frank Lee, Kinzin

Karen Fung, 2008 Tech Woman to Watch

Jesse Silver of Sun on Open Solaris

Mike Tan, Team Pages

Mike Rian Bowden of Daily Splice

There are a number of blogs that provided great coverage of the event:

• Miss 604
• Duane Storey
• Launch Party Vancouver
• Raincity Studios
• Sexy in Vancity

[update: See my previous LPV3 post with text and pictures]

Relevance: First time shot video at a tech meetup to upload on youtube after editing in iMovie ’06. I would like to do this more in 2008.

This is a great time to be involved in the emerging technology and social media scene in Vancouver. As I engage myself more within this space, I am finding alot of hard-working, interesting and creative personalities at various geek meetups and social events. On Friday I was fortunate to attend Launch Party Vancouver 3.

I had attended Launch Party and Launch Party with a Twiist and knew that I would once again meet new people while at the same time be able to catch up on cool projects that my friends were engaged in. It was my first time at the Lamplighter, it is a great location for events, and I found the staff to be friendly and outgoing. I am really looking forward to the next Launch Party. So join the Facebook group so you are in the know next time.

Tech Women of Vancouver to Watch

In attendance were 9 of the 11 Vancouver Tech Women to Watch in 2008.

Photograph by Duane Storey

The Event

I arrived early so that I could talk with some of the sponsors and demos.

Juan Carlos of Sun Microsystems

The featured sponsor was Sun Microsystems, Juan Carlos came up from Santa Clara, CA to launch Sun’s national Start-up Essentials program:

The Sun Startup Essentials program is designed specifically to help startups get off the ground rapidly and at lower cost. The program consists of discounted or free products and services designed with startups in mind.

The first person I actually met that night was Lori Braget. Segment Marketing Manager for Sun Microsystems. She told me that there was actually an office outside Vancouver and we chatted about Sun Solaris computers as well as about what Sun’s relationship with the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Lori Braget and Ted

Featured companies as noted on the Launch Party blog:

Kinzin demo’d These are my Kids facebook app
DailySplice dished on their new version of morning radio made up of a customized selection of podcasts.
EQO launched their Vibrator Facebook app
Bean Services showed us they could ease our accounting frustrations with their new site.
Techvibes live blogged the event and was on hand talking about their Vancouver start-up index.
Layer 7 announced their products will deployed under OpenSolaris
Sun Microsystems announced their national Start-up Essentials Program
Super secret, Team Strutta took over the corner section of the stage with some bright lights and a MacBook giving away tees and a few clues for those of you, who were paying attention.

update: TeamPages is a social networking site for amateur sports, see the video of this featured company.

Maura Rodgers & Danny Robinson of Strutta; Dimitri Sirota of Layer 7

Team Kinzin

[Update: The photos are available on Flickr and Facebook]

[Update 2: See my videos clips of LPV3 here].

Relevance: Social events are great opportunities to network.

Team Kinzin at Launch Party Vancouver 3
Kinzin will be on CBC Vancouver tonight according to Megan Cole.

Big day across the airwaves for Kinzin. Tonight, the CBC is airing a story about online privacy and security in the wake of the MySpace breach. Michael Fergusson is featured in the story with his take on social networking and the privacy issue, and speaks in reference to Kinzin’s latest application These Are My Kids. Catch the story airing on CBC local Vancouver news tonight at 6pm. (Thanks to Tod for sending them this way!)

I have seen two demos of Kinzin’s These Are My Kids application at the Facebook Developer’s Garage last Monday and at Launch Party Vancouver 3 last Friday. Michael does a great job promoting Kinzin and I wish Kinzin success with their endeavors.  Tune in if you can.

Michael Fergusson @ Vancouver Facebook Developer’s Garage 2

Relevance: A local success story as their previous Facebook app has over 1 000 000 downloads.

As a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada [map], I have been fortunate to attend a university where WiFi is available across campus. What this does is help students become more productive as the Internet can be accessed anywhere as needed (e.g. in the Student Union Building, in front of Koerner Library, or while studying in the pool). However, whenever I travelled across the street to the UBC village, it was like I was in a deadzone. The only WiFi available was through Starbucks which wasn’t free.

I was surprised when I went on Sunday to the UBC Village to meet a friend and while attempting to access the Internet, a screen appeared by WiCity offering free WiFi. I had no idea what it was because I hadn’t heard anything about free WiFi in the village and really wondered if it was legit. However, I felt reassured as I recognised the company name: Photo Violation Technologies because I had blogged about their trial Parking Meter system last May. I cautiously registered with a username and password and I immediately able to get online. I didn’t notice any problems with accessing webpages and the quality of the service seemed to be on par with what I am used to on campus.

Being the inquisitive person I am, I emailed the contact email address which led to a phone conversation on Monday with Priya Chand, Client Relations Manager for Photo Violation Technologies to answer questions I had and provide information about what they were doing in Vancouver.

She stated that they had been offering free WiFi in the UBC Village since August as part of an ongoing trial. There are 3 access points: one at the old Helley Hansen store (Western Parkway), one at Starbucks (Dalhousie Rd), and one at the Pita Pit store (Allison Rd) which is across from a park. The 3 access points are mounted on the UEL owned light poles that are located in front of Starbucks (Dalhousie Rd), The Dollar store (Dalhousie Rd) and one in front of the Pita Pit (Allison Rd). The benefit of the trial is to be able to calculate different statistics regarding usage in a controlled environment. So far about 30-40 unique MAC IDs are logged on at any one time. Each access point has a 300 foot radius meaning that the park is within range and the objective of the trial is to show the benefits of WiFi. This site is to be a test model for future rollouts in the rest of North America. At present, the other trials are in Niagara Falls, NY and San Francisco. There aren’t any other test sites in Canada.

I’m excited that there is free WiFi in the UBC Village and as students become more aware of this service (perhaps through prominent signage/stickers), it should become quite popular.

Experiencing free WiFi courtesy of WiCity

Relevance: This is a great opportunity to use my laptop in the UBC Village as I need to access the Internet while doing grad research. Free WiFi rocks!!!

Canadian Games Studies Association Conference 2006

I attended the first annual CGSA conference and it was a great experience. If you are into games, you should submit a paper. Plus Vancouver, a beautiful city in early Summer.

—-

2nd Annual Conference 2008

Canadian Game Studies Association

University of British Columbia

DATE: 31 May 2008

Paper and panel proposals are invited for our second annual conference
to be held in conjunction with the Congress of Humanities and Social
Sciences (http://www.fedcan.ca/english/congress/about/). This year’s theme is “Thinking Beyond Borders | Global Ideas: Global Values”. Not all presentations need be related to this theme. Submissions are invited on all topics related to digital games and digital games research, especially those that can show an interdisciplinary or international perspective. A selected number of presenters will be invited to submit a full paper for publication in an edited collection.

General guidelines

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent no later than Feb.
28, 2008 to Dr. Jennifer Jenson (jjenson@edu.yorku.ca) or Dr. Suzanne de
Castell (decaste@sfu.ca).

Panel presentations will also be considered in limited numbers. Panel presentations should include an overview of no more than 250 words, in addition to a brief summary of papers/presentations to be included of no more than 100 words each. A discussant and/or chair for the panel should also be specified. Authors submitting papers should also join CGSA (see http://contagion.edu.yorku.ca/cgsa for details). Papers selected for presentation (blind review by a minimum of two reviewers) will be grouped by conference organizers by subject and/or topic area.

Individual paper presentations will be given 20 minute time slots in
multi-paper sessions.
—————————————————————————-

Jordan Behan and Maura Rodgers of Strutta

So, if you don’t have plans Friday night, I recommend you come to Launch Party 3. Launch Party and Launch Party with a Twiist were both fun, successful events and it is a great opportunity to socialise with members of the tech community.

So RSVP on the Facebook event page and you should also join the Facebook group so you know about upcoming Launch Parties. More info about the organisers called Strutta here.

Details:
Date: February 25, 2008
Place: Lamplighter, 92 Water Street (map)
Time: @ 5:30pm until late

See you there.

Danny Robinson and Maura Rodgers, the co-founders of Strutta

Later today, my friend Rebecca Bollwitt (aka Miss 604) will be on the CBC show Test the Nation at 8pm which is a trivia quiz show in Toronto. There will be 6 teams of 36 teammates each.

Test The Nation is back to examine your knowledge of the 21st century– a century that is already re-shaping our world faster than any other before it.

Hosts Wendy Mesley and Brent Bambury will challenge you on the past seven years of politics, trends, scandals, and, of course, everyone’s guilty pleasure – celebrity.

We’ll also see if you’re more in the loop than our hand-picked teams in the studio audience.

Cab Drivers, Chefs, Flight Crew, Bloggers, Backpackers and Celebrity Look-alikes will all battle it out for century supremacy.

The list of Bloggers are here.

Rebecca will be part of the Blogger team. Check it out if you can. Good luck Rebecca!!! I’ll be cheering on the Bloggers. Best wishes to blogger Amber Mac who is also part of the team