DemoCamp 3.0

It past midnight, and I just got back from DemoCamp 3.0 after-party/dinner.

Actually, a big part of the night was spent in a car talking to David Crow for an hour in the freezing cold... hah! Why am I blogging past midnight? I dunno... just feeling the grove I guess.

When we first started DemoCamp 1.0, as a spin-off of TorCamp (which was of course a spin off of BarCamp, which is a sorta/kinda spinoff of FooCamp), we had 25-30 people show up and we have 4 fun demos.

DemoCamp 2.0 which happened within 2 months of 1.0, had something in the order of 60 people, now at 3.0 just within about a month of 2.0, we had upwards of what might have been 100 attendees!

The great thing about DemoCamp for me, is that its all volunteer run. David Crow has done a great job of getting things rolling, and keeping the grass roots "participants only"/community driven elements great.

Joey and Elliot at Tucows was kind enough to offered to host the event -- and was also quite surprised at the turn out it seems -- having had to change venues three times inside the office to accommodate so many people. If DemoCamp keeps growing, I'm not sure if we're going to find a viable venue. I also talked to someone and brainstormed about the idea of breaking things into two tracks. But then I thought, that would be a bit "heavy" and would start to resemble something more like TorCamp (2.0)

Anyways, its great to see so much vibrancy in the Toronto software developer community. Its been a long time since I've seen so many of us gather together. Having spent a good deal of time in the valley, I have noticed that there is still a real difference between what we see in Toronto/Canada and the Bay Area. The software developers in Toronto all seem to lack the level of marketing/market savyness that I see in valley based companies/ventures/projects.

I met and found a TON of interesting project in Toronto tonight, that I thought, if it were given just the slightest tweaks, and refinements -- and perhaps some strategic help and financing, they would be a magnitude more compelling as companies/ventures. I wonder if its a disconnect thing where the marketers aren't talking to the technology people, or if its because the developer folk in the Bay Area tend to be naturally trained or by osmosis, to be more market driven (vs. tech driven) and market savvy.

Maybe its just an illusion. Perhaps its just that the Bay Area has more critical mass, so there tends to be more success stories, or innovative market driven tech stories that come out from the area.

Anyhow, it was very refreshing to get this feeling of resurgence in new ideas and products that are coming on to the market. Perhaps the thing we need is to facilitate and help connect the more market savvy founders in the area to more tech savvy founders to help each other out. In fact, I think facilitated two transactions/introductions today that may have a positive impact for two different organizations just tonight. But perhaps we need more structures/focus events around this issue. I'll make another posting about a rough idea I've had in my next blog.