Horseshoe Canyon

Horseshoe Canyon was an excellent stop, and I think we saw it at a great time of the year. The grass was still fresh and green and hadn’t browned from the heat of the summer.

Horseshoe Valley, 2008

Hoodoos

Can’t got to the Badlands and not check out the Hoodoos. To be honest before this trip I really didn’t know what a hoodoo was or how they got their name. Essentially it’s two layers of rock, the lower being a softer sedimentary rock and the top cap being a harder rock. Over time the softer rock is eroded creating an interesting totem shape. Here is an interesting link on the origins of the word hoodoo.

Hoodoos, 2008

The following are a few others photos taken around the Hoodoos site.

untitled, 2008

I don’t know about you but this harder rock formation in the foreground looks like a head to me.

untitled, 2008

I stopped in at the open house yesterday to congratulate Ian Graham and partake in the festivities. The event had an excellent turnout and was a great opportunity to see how the space has been transformed from just a few weeks earlier when I attended the OttawaWebWeekend at the CodeFactory.

Opening speakers Scott lake from Jaded Pixel and StartupOttawa, Mike Milinkovich from Eclipse Foundation and Denzil Doyle from Doyletech represented some excellent examples of those who have been there done that and are doing it. Their words were very encouraging to the entrepreneurs in the room focusing in on great Ottawa success stories, our strong grass roots community and the importance places like the CodeFactory will play in our future.

I too am a strong believer that co-working spaces like the CodeFactory will become great catalysts as well as starting points for many good ideas and startups to come. I’ve see first hand the success that BarCamp and DemoCamp has had over the last couple years and if a place like CodeFactory can have that same electricity on a daily vs monthly basis, look out.

Here are a few pictures I took at the opening.

The CodeFactory is located on the second floor of 246 Queen Street between Bank and Kent, right above the Green Papaya. You can find out more at the CodeFactory Web site.

The demos are going to be from Stockify, SIMtone, picsphere, SCAN and OurAirports. The MC will be Alec Saunders.

I’m not very familiar with any of these companies except for the National Capitol SCAN which has given the OttawaCamp movement great coverage, so unfortunately I can’t put my finger on how the demos will go. One thing I know for sure is that the discussions before and after will be lively and worth the trip.

Something to take note of is the location change, the Velvet Room instead of the ClockTower. I love the ClockTower, it’s right near my work and the food and beer is always good. The only problem is capacity and DemoCampOttawa8 hit that and had to resort to a waiting list. Waiting lists are no fun. I haven’t been in the Velvet Room but I hear it’s a good space with more capacity and it’s not in the basement, thanks to Sonny for hooking up DemoCamp with this space.
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I’ll be working the door again checking names off the list. It’s important to track numbers for the sake of legal capacity but it’s also nice to have a list of those who made the trip. The thought of using EventBrite in the future for sign up has come up, any strong views either way?

See you there.

Some sneak peak postcards have been spotted at Mesh Conference, did you get one? Just in case you didn’t here is the link to the sneak peak sign-up http://beta.devshop.com/sneakpeak

I attended Mesh last year and really enjoyed it. I took in a range of keynotes and sessions and spent a lot of time chatting in between sessions. A year later I think it was keynotes from Mike Arrington, Jim Buckmaster of Craig’s List and Austin Hill’s discussion on philanthropy that have been most memorable.

We had a large contingent up from Ottawa last year and it looks like more this year, and this year we won’t be completely preoccupied with the Ottawa Senators. I know many Ottawa folks are coming back to Mesh for the second or third time time but also some new faces making the trip. A mental quick list includes several from Ramius, RealDecoy (3 including me), Mark Blevis, Craig Fitzpatick from Devshop, Jay West, Jeff Parks, Shawn Simister , John Wiseman, Joseph Thornley and I’m sure a bunch more.

For some reason I feel like I’m going to take more away from mesh this year than last. Last year I walked away with positive messages, good connections and boat loads of inspiration. This influenced my work and extracurricular projects with friends and now I feel better prepared to interact and absorb more of what Mesh has to offer.

What a weekend. It was intense, fun and time flew by so fast.

It amazes me that a group of over thirty people can get together for the first time, triage through 20+ concepts, decide on one (that alone is amazing), rally behind it, refine it and get down to business. And a the end of two days plus an evening have accomplished so much and had so much fun in the process. Thank you Marc-Andre Plouffe for putting this together and also a big thank you to Ian Graham and theCodeFactoy for generously putting up the space for this to happen.

We had teams in Design, Development, Marking, Business and Legal. Not to mention a couple folks who could really bridge the gab between all the different groups. Overall a real professional crew.

So what did we make? well we’ve called it reBookMe, you can find a splash sign up page at www.reBookMe.com. reBookMe is a solution that aims to turn cancellations into reservations, take that empty chair, room, service, tool what ever it is that just became available through a cancellation (or just plain available) and let interested clients who know about it. Your clients can then shift to an earlier appointment or possibly be enticed by a special off you’ve put forward to fill the opening.

We’re pretty excited about the idea and are continuing to work on it.

If you get the chance to attend one of these weekends I highly recommend it, I had a blast.

I’m not going to release the concept quite yet, expect tidbits of information over the weekend.

Out of the the 35 participants I’ve only ever worked with one participant before, Franc Epton and that was at at DVS Communications back in the early days of interactive media. I feel some reminiscing coming on. I’m excited to work with the rest of the crew, some of whom I’ve wanted to work with for a while; Jay West, Mark Blevis and Marquis Cote just to name a few.

I sense that my major contributions are going to come on the design side but I also figure my experience with a lot of projects will help me play a role in segmenting tasks amongst the participants. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Want to find out more about the Ottawa Web Weekend, check out http://www.ottawaw.com/