I moved back to Ottawa from Halifax in the summer of 2005 and I was instantly captivated by how vibrant Ottawa’s grass roots tech community is. While living in Halifax I was always on the lookout out for the new media design and tech scene but it just wasn’t there yet, awesome art scene though. Since my move back to Ottawa I’ve seen the community grow, smaller more specialized groups form from larger ones and co-working facilities like the CodeFactory come about. Ottawa continues to become a more and more exciting place to work and play, my struggle now, what events to attend.

Here is a list of some of the events I’ve had the pleasure to attend in Ottawa , I’m sure there are a lot more and I’ll update the list as I discover them.

Web Development and User Experience

Agile Ottawa Group
Web site: http://agileottawa.wordpress.com
Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=86747383253&ref=nf
Linked in group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1981258&trk=hb_side_g

Agile Ottawa group meets every 4th Tuesday of the month at The Code Factory, with the exception of July & August, to discuss agile process, software and product development.

BarCamp Ottawa
Web site: http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/OttawaCamps and http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/BarCampOttawa

A BarCamp is an unconference where interested developers come together to spend a day participating in discussions, teaching and sharing. Ottawa has had 4 BarCamps as of the time of this posting each more popular than the last, the latest being BarCampOttawa4. Each and every barCamp has been a treat, the community ralleys together to put together a great event, that has something for everyone. I always learn a lot and have a great time in the process. Aproximatly 80-100 people come out to these events of varying levels of skills and backgrounds.

CAPCHI – Computer-Human Interaction in the Ottawa Area
Web site: http://www.capchi.org/

Capchi is an chapter of SIGCHI and is agreat place for designers, developers, engineers and anyone passionate about how people interact with computers to come together and share throughts and experiences. Speakers area regular part of the meetings. Very friendly group that is open to all.

DemoCamp Ottawa
Web site: http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/OttawaCamps

DemoCamp is an evening event that involves several participants presenting a functional product demo (no powerpoint slides!) to an audience of piers. The demos typically involve a two minute intro, eight minute demo and five muniutes for questions and answers. DemoCamp is a great opportunity to come out and see what is being developed in our community, provide some feedback and lend some support. If your a presenter it’s also a great opportunity to recruit some talent and get some local PR. DemoCamps typically get somewhere between 60-70 people in attendance.

Drupal Group
Group site: http://groups.drupal.org/ottawa

The Drupal group is focused on the open source Drupal CMS. This group has been meeting for a year or so and is a growing community of experienced and junior developers. Great group to learn more and explore Drupal with.

Flex User Group
Group site:http://groups.google.com/group/ottawa-adobe-flex-user-group

A group of Flash, Flex and Air developers sponsored by Adobe. This group has had some good presentations and speakers in the past and event put on Ottawa’s first FlexCamp earlier this year. Mix of seasoned professionals and newcomers.

JQuery Group
Web site: http://www.teggnology.com/

jQuery group is devoted to the awesome jQuery JavaScript library, plugins and techniques. This group has recently had it’s first meeting and I’m looking forward to the next meetup. Group has a mix of developers that are familiar and just getting stated with jQuery.

OGRE – Ottawa Group of Ruby Enthusiasts
Google group: http://groups.google.com/group/ogre-list

When I moved back from Halifax to Ottawa this was the first group I connected with. It’s a friendly passionate group of developers who like to work and play with Ruby and Rails. This group is great for the experienced developers as well as newcomers.

Ottawa PHP Community
Web site: http://ottawaphp.com/

Local Ottawa PHP User Group. Meetings are typically  the last friday of each month.

Ottawa Web Weekend
Web site: http://www.ottawaw.com/

A mix of professionals and amateurs from many disciplines gather together with the goal of forming a new company and developing a product over the course of a weekend. It’s a tall order but a lot of fun. Great opportunity to meet and work with new piers and show your stuff.

Ottawa WordPress Developers Group (OWDG)
Web site: http://ottawadevelopers.wordpress.com

Ottawa .Net Community
Web site: http://www.ottawacommunity.net/

If your into .net development this is your group.

Refresh Ottawa
Web site: http://refreshottawa.org/

Refresh is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of New Media endeavors in their areas. Promoting design, technology, usability, and standards.

The Ottawa LAMP (Perl and PHP) Meetup Group
Web site: http://www.meetup.com/The-Ottawa-LAMP-Perl-and-PHP-Meetup-Group/

Get your open source on with this great LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP) group that attracts some talented developers. Event is often hosted at TravelPod‘s sweet office.

The Ottawa Podcast and New Media Meetup Group
Web site: http://podcasting.meetup.com/79/

A good group to meet other local podcasters. Members range from very experienced to the novices, something for everyone.

Marketing, Social Media and PR

CaseCamp Ottawa
Web site: http://www.casecamp.org
Status: inactive until someone gets this going again

CaseCamp is an evening of local marketing case studies where the slide deck is quite welcome. CaseCamp involves a short introduction then a presentation followed by questions and answers. It’s been quite a while since we had a CaseCamp in Ottawa, perhaps we’re overdue.

Digital Ottawa
Web site: http://digitalottawa.ca/
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/digitalOttawa/

The Digital Ottawa as a group has gone through a transformation from a local group of web design and development professionals getting together for socials to become a consulting group with a focus on eGovernment. Digital Ottawa still hosts some good events so keep a look out.

SNTT – Social Network Theory Think Tank
Web site: http://www.founderfab.com/
Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=5953251231

Social Network Theory Think Tank events often involve a presentation by either a member or guest followed by a healthy question and answer period afterward. Subject matter is generally around building, maintaining and learning about social networks both offline and online.

Social Media Bookclub
Web site: http://www.meetup.com/Ottawa-Social-Media-Book-Club/

Social Media Breakfast
Web site: http://www.socialmediabreakfast.com/
Sixent Group: http://smbottawa.sixent.com/
Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=19832554895

Social media breakfast gets out a mixture of PR professionals, developers, entrepreneurs and other professionals interested in social media web scene. The event consists of networking, coffee and a presentation or panel by invited guests and members. This is a great event to meet new people and an inspiring way to start the day. This event fills up quickly so make sure your in the know so you can sign up as soon as the event is announced.

ThirdTuesday Meetup
Web site: http://www.meetup.com/third-tuesday-ottawa/

ThirdTuesday is one of my favorite events. I find I always walk away with some knew knowledge that I can put to practice. The event if focused on PR in the social media space and has a slight government slant, hard to get away from that in Ottawa. Event involves a speaker or panel and the quality is always high. The audience includes pr professionals, marketers and other professionals interested in social media.

Startup

Lebarge Wienstien Start-Up Drop In
The Venture Creations Group and LaBarge Weinstein are proud to host, ‘Start Up, Drop-In”, a pub night and constructive networking session hosted at the offices of LaBarge Weinstein the second last Wednesday of every month, for purposes of encouraging the development of management teams, assisting with the start up networking, and making available service provider, sales, marketing and investor resources to local high-tech entrepreneurs.

Additional Sources:

• Startup Ottawa
• Meetup
• CodeFactory
• The Ottawa Network
• OttawaCamps
• OCRI