- Toronto AWS Start-Up Tour
Last week we gave you a heads up about the upcoming AWS Start-Up Tour. Here are a few more details about the Toronto stop.The team from Amazon will be in town on September 15th (that’s been changed from the 16th) and our CEO and CTO will be speaking at the half-day meet and learn event showcasing companies and technologies that use AWS services.
Last year’s AWS Start-Up Tour featured AideRSS, Geezeo, Renkoo, SmugMug, Slideshare, Animoto, Ooyala and more. You can check out a number of their presentations from the 2007 tour over on slideshare.
If you are interested in attending this year’s event here in Toronto, head on over to the Start-Up Tour site to learn a bit more or register today.
Where: MaRS Discovery Centre
Who: Local CEOs, CTOs, founders of start-ups and investors
When: 2pm-5pm, followed by a networking reception
Event Schedule:
2:00-2:20 Opening Statements by Adam Selipsky, VP, Amazon Web Services
2:20-3:00 AWS Presentation by Mike Culver, Evangelist, Amazon Web Services
3:15-4:05 Presentations:
Carlos Barrettara, Co-Founder, Polar Mobile
Ilya Grigorik, Co-Founder, AideRSS
Chris Thiessen, Founder, Zoomii
Leila Boujnane, Chief Executive Officer, Idee Inc. (that’s us!)
Farhan Thawar, Chief Software Architect, I Love Rewards4:05-4:35 Q&A
4:35-5:00 Closing Statements by Adam Selipsky, VP, Amazon Web Services
5:00-7:00 Cocktail/Networking Reception
If that doesn’t sound like a slam-dunk of an event for start-ups in the early stages of a project that might benefit from the AWS offerings, I don’t know what would. See you there!
- Cloud computing
Jinesh (AWS) has a great white paper about cloud computing out. The white paper is broken into two main sections:
Building GrepTheWeb in the Cloud, Part 1: Cloud Architectures
Building GrepTheWeb in the Cloud, Part 2: Best Practices and Lessons LearnedThe first section of the paper will help you understand the benefits of building applications in-the-cloud; but if you are already a cloud user, the second section will help you more effectively utilize some of the best practices.
- Help A Reporter Out (and help yourself out too)
Peter Shankman has a good thing going.
His recently launched Help A Reporter Out is a service that connects reporters with sources. HARO started out as a small facebook group with fewer than a thousand members; now it has grown to a very loyal following of more than 16,000.
HARO’s strength is in its simplicity. Each day I receive three emails. Even if Shankman is jet-setting around the world for an interview, rocking out at the George Michael concert, running a marathon or skydiving, the emails still make it to my “things you must read” folder.
Each email has queries from reporters looking for sources on a wide variety of subjects. From the serious (looking for cloud computing users) to the wacky (pet-friendly haunted hotels) the HARO query lists certainly offer something for everyone and folks are getting pretty excited about what Shankman is up to.
There are usually anywhere between 10 and 30 queries per email, organized so you can read all of them in about five seconds. If any work for you, simply scroll down to learn a bit more then email the reporter with your details and why you’re an expert. Done.
Shankman’s tag-line for HARO is “everyone is an expert on something” and he’s right. If you see a query you can answer, you go for it.
It’s that incredibly simple. Like most brilliant things are.
Oh yeah - and it’s all free.
Sources can sign up here or if you’re a journalist and want to submit a query you can submit it here.
- The fail whale
The S3 outages over the weekend reminded me Sarah’s Fail Whale Story on ReadWriteWeb and Avatar’s story a few weeks earlier. How an unknown artist becomes a superstar pretty much sums it up!
- Email: a blessing and a curse
Seth Godin has a great email check list that everyone should read. It is not new. His recommendations are common sense ones, but they are the ones we tend to forget about since we now all live out of our inbox! “the asymmetrical nature of email–free to send, expensive investment of time to read or delete” should makes us all pay more attention to emails before we hit that send button.
- Top 10 startups to watch in Canada
Top 10 startups to watch in Canada from StartupNorth. We are in great company!
- Leila Boujnane to Keynote StartupCamp II in Toronto!
I will be keynoting StartupCamp II in Toronto next week. If you are not familiar with StartupCamp, the setup is simple: 5 start ups get to present to an (eager) audience. Their respective pitches are 5 minutes. The audience gets 10 minutes to pepper them with questions. StartupCamp is organized by StartupNorth and the event has been so popular that tickets sold out weeks ago! So if you are not holding your StartupCamp ticket you will be looking forward to StartupCamp III. I am looking forward to a great evening and now off to thinking about my keynote!
Startup Camp II Toronto
When: Tuesday April 29th, 2008
Where: Canadian Innovation Exchange - The Carlu at 444 Yonge Street
Time: 7PM - 10 PM
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