On Wednesday and Thursday of this week I am attending the Ottawa Venture & Technology Summit at the Lac-Leamy Casino in the Nation’s Capital. Ottawa is a great town and I do enjoy visiting here when I can. Ottawa is home to what might be the hotest startup technology community in Canada. As part of my role at Microsoft, I work with Canada’s Venture community. I have to say that I have not spent enough time in this community. We have very good relationships with the startup community in Toronto and Vancouver, but Ottawa (along with Waterloo) are areas that we really need to spend more time supporting. The impact of having Nortel, Newbridge and the various research arms of the Federal Government in the area has really propelled the economy here. Last night I was at dinner with a group of VCs from Canada and the US. We spent a great deal of time discussing the “Nortel Effect”. Waterloo has the same kind of scenario – in their case it is U of W and RIM that are propelling innovation.
I have two goals at this event. First, I am a speaker - http://www.ottawavts.com/program.html. Second, I am here to build the connections that we will need to ensure that we are able to support emerging software companies in the greater Ottawa area.
As I type this entry, Tony Perkins from the Always On Network, is doing the keynote. He is spending most of his time talking about the “underhype” of the Internet. Skype is the example of the day (for good reasons).
Just as I finished typing that sentence he started talking about the “future formats” of the web… nice phrases like “The Near Web”, “The Far Web” and the “Weird Web”. The best is the “B2B Web” – which he asserts is a fertile green field because Microsoft isn’t there. I can’t believe that comment really… with all the work we have done on web server development, RSS, WS-* standards, Indigo, etc. I don’t anyone will ever “own” this space, but I have to say to Tony that he needs to do some deeper research. We are definitely there.
I’ll blog a bit while I am here and if I can I will record my session as an audiocast.
This year I had the pleasure to be a part of the judging for the 2005 Impact Awards. This is the 3rd Annual Impact Awards, which recognizes excellence across the large and diverse community of resellers and solution providers across Canada
Partners are the lifeblood of our success and having a healthy ecosystem of systems integrators, ISVs, VARs and OEMs is critical to our future. (Especially with all of the amazing innovations that are coming in the next 2 years)
Canada is home to so many awesome partners, many of whom I get to work with on a regular basis.
Thanks to everyone who applied (heck, thanks to every Microsoft partner out there!!). Congratulations to the finalists and good luck at the awards!
http://www.microsoft.com/canada/awards/default.mspx
Check this out: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050921-5337.html
"Players of Blizzard's incredibly popular World of Warcraft are reporting the outbreak of a virtual plague that is spreading across major cities in the virtual land of Azeroth, infecting player characters at an alarming rate.
The trouble started when Blizzard programmers added a new instance, which is a separate area connected to the outside world that players can enter and attempt unique quests. One of these instances, Zul'Grub, contained the god of blood, Hakkar. Hakkar was a powerful foe that could cast spells of his own, including a spell called Corrupted Blood. This spell did a large amount of damage to any player within the vicinity of the casting, and the effects lingered on after the spell was over."
An interesting impact of "connected systems" ;-)
http://blogs.msdn.com/canadian_launch_tour_2005/archive/2005/09/22/472821.aspx
Visit the main event page to register - www.microsoft.com/canada/launch2005
PDC was just awesome, but it’s good to be home. The team is now preparing for our next major event – the launch of Visual Studio, SQL and Biztalk. This is going to be one of the largest launches of the year (perhaps 2nd only to the Xbox 360 launch) for Microsoft.
Check out the event page @ www.microsoft.com/canada/launch2005
(Hint: registration will open in the next few hours, so be sure to go and save your spot!!!)
The team is working round the clock to make the launch tour the best it can be. Here are the highlights:
We have created a “master” blog page for the event @ http://blogs.msdn.com/canadian%5Flaunch%5Ftour%5F2005/ (or you can subscribe to the RSS using http://feeds.feedburner.com/ReadyCanadianLaunchTour2005
Several members of the MSDN and Technet teams will also be blogging about the content, the tour and the behind-the-scenes action:
Launch Bloggers
And finally, we plan to run some very special contests exclusively through our blogs, so subscribe to the RSS feeds and stay tuned for more information.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/MarkRelphsWeblog
Thanks! This will let me get some better statistics on the traffic coming to my blog!
My good friend Rick Segal provides an interesting perspective on the PDC (as only Rick can).
http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2005/09/pdc05_round_up.html
Hmmm… I say “dude” a lot as well. (Read the link…)
To clarify - breakfast @ the convention centre in the meal hall. We will find a table and put up the flag...
Canadian? At PDC?
We are trying to arrange a time for us to meet with any fellow Cannucks that are here for PDC. We are going to arrange 2 times, in fact!!!
BREAKFAST Thursday @ 7:45-8:30 - Convention Centre Meal Hall. We will have a big Canadian flag out so you can find us. (You never know where they will force you to sit during the meals...)
DRINKS on Thursday @ 6:30pm - 7:30pm @ the Millennium Biltmore Hotel. It's on Route 4. We will meet in the sports bar. But check back here for confirmation of the place.
Let us know if you can make it by leaving a comment.
Check out what my friend Rick (a Toronto based VC) has to say about the Skype / eBay deal - http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThePostMoneyValue?m=161
PDC is now in full swing and I have been here for about 24 hours so far. Of course, by now you may have heard about the huge power failure that occurred around lunchtime yesterday. Needless to say, the Sept 12th power outage was a little unnerving, but as it turns out it was just a construction crew that cut the wrong cable. LA’s power grid is very “brittle” and the spike of the power returning blew out the grid.
As for the show – well, it’s BIG. The biggest PDC ever. Lots of people, lots of amazing sessions and lots of exhibitors (good ones too!).
The highlights so far:
The lowlights –
More to come as the days go on. Watch for lots more pictures as well J
Yes, I know it's a Yahoo service now. But, hey - others are using it at the PDC, so I will just follow the crowd :-)
Check out the RSS for the PDC05 tag:
http://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=pdc05&format=rss_200
I will be heading to LA in the morning to attend the Professional Developers Conference with a few of the other Microsoft folks. Ryan Storgaard and I are planning on some good blogging and audiocasting from the show.
It's interesting - this week is the Toronto International Film Festival. There are movie stars everywhere! (more than any festival in the past). I wonder if there will be any famous-types left in LA for when we are there? ;-)
I'll post again from the West Coast.
Our events folks have posted the official dates for the VS, SQL, Biztalk Launch Tour. This is a cross-Canada tour featuring speakers from our group. Please do sign up!
http://blogs.msdn.com/canadian_launch_tour_2005/archive/2005/09/11/463701.aspx
The official tour site is here: www.microsoft.ca/launch2005
The RSS feed for news and other information is here: http://www.microsoft.com/canada/launch2005/rss/default.aspx
I thought I would share some of my favorite OneNote tricks for you OneNote lovers out there –
OneNote Printer Driver – adds a printer to your system that dumps the print image directly into OneNote, create for capturing files / notes / handouts from meetings, etc - www.analogreality.com/onenotepowertoys/OneNoteImageWriter.htm
Send To OneNote From Outlook - This PowerToy adds a Send selected item to OneNote button to the Standard toolbar in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003. Click this button to copy one or more selected e-mail messages from Outlook to new pages in OneNote. - http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/assistance/HA011408961033.aspx
Send To OneNote From IE - This PowerToy adds a Send to OneNote button to the Standard Buttons toolbar in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later. http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/assistance/HA011408961033.aspx
There is also a 3rd Party tool for IE – WebPageToOneNote - www.analogreality.com/onenotepowertoys
PowerPoint To OneNote - http://www.borlik.net/blog/archives/000097.html
Stay tuned for details.