Upcoming ENTERPRISE TORONTO EVENTS

FEATURE EVENTS
Innovation Camp 2011 “Growing Green”
North York Civic Centre, Council Chamber
9 am – 4:30 pm
Tues., May 17
Learn how simple green strategies can attract more customers, increase sales and reduce your business costs!
Hear from and speak to successful business founders and CEOs. Learn about sustainable business strategies and practices and meet leading experts in financing, marketing and management. Find out how the government can help your business. Make valuable
business contacts.
View full program at http://bit.ly/eTk1EW. Admission is FREE but registration is required at www.enterprisetoronto.com or telephone at (416) 395-7416.

LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
ENTERPRISE TORONTO SEMINARS
MORNING SEMINAR SERIES (MAY)
10 – 11:30 a.m.
Topics include: The Power of Email and Social Media; How to Get the Attention of a Buyer in a BIG Company; Managing
Your Cash Flow; How to Market Your Business in the Changing World of Media.
Learn the tools and resources you will need to forge ahead in your business various locations. Admission is FREE but registration is required at www.enterprisetoronto.com or telephone at (416) 395-7416.

Summer Company Program
Up to $3,000 for Student Entrepreneurs
Do you have a viable business idea? Would you like to pursue it, earn some extra cash and gain invaluable business experience during the summer? If so, the Summer Company is for you!
Enterprise Toronto in partnership with Ministry of Economic Development and Trade offers the Summer Company Program.
It is an excellent initiative for enterprising students aged 15-29 to start up and operate their own business. Awards up to $3,000 will be available to selected students. Deadline for application is May 9, 2011. For more information, please see www.ontario.ca/summercompany.

Ontario Society of Professional Engineers
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Estates of Sunnybrook
8 am – 11:30 am
May 4
Whether you are looking to start a business, identify funding opportunities or turn innovative ideas into opportunities, you’ll definitely benefit from this unique learning opportunity. Keynote Address: Reza Moridi, M.P.P., Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Research and Innovation.
Enterprise Toronto members will receive their ticket for $45 + HST. A light breakfast will be served. More info @
http://bit.ly/dOsnfg, register @ http://bit.ly/elcDqL

Startup Weekend Toronto 2.0 is here!
Burroughes Building
June 3 at 6 pm – June 5 at 8 pm
Startup Weekend is one of the leading catalysts for startup creation and entrepreneur education in the world. The program educates and inspires entrepreneurs and gives them the motiviation and networking they need to take the next step in creating a successful startup company. More info @ http://bit.ly/h5ZtB8, registration @ http://bit.ly/frD5ML.

Net Change
MaRS Discovery District
June 6-10
Net Change Week (NCW) is Canada’s premier event on social tech for social change. The weeklong series of events features training workshops, evening programming with guest speakers, lab sessions and plenty of opportunity for networking. Oh ya, and every year, we throw in an art show to boot. More info @ http://netchangeweek.ca/

JVS Toronto Centre for the Advancement of Business Literacy and Entrepreneurship
How to Start your Own Business – Building an Idea into a Success Enterprise
May 20, 27, June 3, 10
These Seminars will guide aspiring entrepreneurs through the process of starting a business from a basic idea and transforming it into a viable enterprise.
The fee also includes a personal financial assessment with a Financial Planner. The total cost for the 5 part program is $100.
To register for this program please call Allen Stern, 416-636-2481 ext. 217 or astern@jvstoronto.org.org

How to Start a Food Business
North York Civic Centre
5100 Yonge Street
(various dates)
If you are a chef or foodie, these valuable workshops are for you! Hosted by The City of Toronto’s Economic Development & Culture Division and delivered in partnership with the Enterprise Toronto.
Learn how to develop your products, develop your business plan, financing, branding your identity and utilizing the Web to source information. Admission is FREE but registration is mandatory. For registration please see, http://bit.ly/9MrSBT

BUSINESS NEWS & OPPORTUNITIES
Are you 18 – 34?
Need money to start your own business?
The Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF) is the ‘go to’ place for youth entrepreneurship. As a national charity, they are dedicated to growing our nation’s economy one young entrepreneur at a time. They look at character not collateral, when providing youth, age 18-34, with pre-launch coaching, business resources, start-up financing and mentoring, to help them launch and sustain a
successful business. Enterprise Toronto is pleased to join the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF) in becoming a new Community Partner aimed at encouraging local young entrepreneurs within the Scarborough community to start and build their own business by providing support and resources available to them. Contact Vikas Jain, Tel: 416-396-5243 or E-mail: jain@toronto.ca for
more information.

Entrepreneurship 101 – free courses by CIBC and MaRS

Interested in learning more about entrepreneurship? Looking to start a new venture? Look no further! Entrepreneurship 101 is a free, non-credit introductory course about entrepreneurship offered by MaRS. Over 29 weeks, Entrepreneurship 101 takes you through all the steps of building a successful business.

In this lecture, get a sense of the scope of the course and how it applies to your start-up. Future lecture topics include financing, business modelling, defining markets, hiring teams, protecting intellectual property and raising capital.

Part of CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101

Register on MaRS webpage

My article for Blog Idol contest: Resources for technology-related startups in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

This article contains some useful information that I inevitably accumulated over the past few years, as a SR&ED consultant and as someone who has recently started a business. It might save you some time that took me to figure out all this. Good luck with your startup!

Various camps, startup drinks, green drinks

Startup entrepreneurs and people who has been there and done that regularly meet to have a drink, exchange battle stories, get a sound advice and find a potential business partner or even an angel investor. Startup Drinks is a simple concept: a grassroots effort to make sure startup folks get in touch and stay in touch.

The same refers to Green Drinks which is a casual, monthly forum for environmentally-oriented individuals to have a few drinks, mingle and toss around ideas.

By the way, the next Green Drinks together with Startup Drinks will happen on May 26 at Grace O’Malleys – 14 Duncan Street, Toronto, from 5:45 to 9:00.

Various camps are also held in Toronto every month. See the description of some in this article. The admission to them is affordable or free. (Some impose a nominal fee to ensure that people who register do indeed show up, and your admission pays for your first drink.) Among other nice get-togethers, I should mention Product Camp and Girl Geeks Dinner.

Democamps

Democamps are such an important feature in the life of Toronto technology scene that it is worth a separate mention. An evening of beer, cocktails and tech demos for designers, developers & marketers, Democamp became quite an institution. It was conceived in Toronto, but now there are democamps in other cities and towns, too.

http://democamp.com/

Creative spaces for independent entrepreneurs

When you work from home, it is very difficult to concentrate! Independent business owners know that better than anyone. Besides, sitting between the four walls tends to get lonely. Because of that, several creative spaces opened in Toronto. Their founders, entrepreneurs themselves, formed a community of like-minded people and opened spaces downtown, offering reasonable monthly rates in a comfortable space. Born from the feeling of collaboration and connection found at events such as BarCamp and tech conferences, coworking is the social interaction of independent entrepreneurs, consultants, freelancers, developers, and writers out of their homes and cafes and into a creative space. A coworking facility is the shared office space for these individuals, where they can work independently in a social way. Rachel Young and Wayne Lee cofounded Camaraderie. Tonya Surman founded Centre for Social Innovation at 215 Spadina, and CSI recently acquired another building in the Annex to expand their space.

(Read more at BlogIdol website…)

Product Camp Toronto: the schedule is now available

Tentative agenda for Product Camp Toronto – Sunday May 30, 2010 has been determined. Each session will consist of 3 or 4 individual talks or presentations.

9:00am Registration, continental breakfast
10:00am Welcome
10:15am – 11:00 am Session 1
11:15am – 12:00pm Session 2
12:00pm – 1:00pm Box lunch & networking, sponsor tables
1:15pm – 2:00 pm Session 3
2:15pm – 3:00pm Session 4
3:15pm – 4:00pm Session 5
4:00pm – 5:00pm Wrap up, feedback, networking, giveaways etc.

You can still vote for sessions here.

Based on the final online voting results, morning sessions will be selected and posted 2 days prior to the event.  Sessions for the afternoon will be picked by attendee voting at the event.

More details here

My article for Blog Idol contest: Cloudcamp 1. The unpanel

A Cloudcamp was held in Toronto on April 6, 2010. For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of a camp, it is usually an unconference: there is little or no traditional presentations (one active presenter vs. a more or less passive audience). Instead of that, most camps are unconferences where people just come face-to-face and share their knowledge. These notes are a somewhat shortened record of what was being said that day. (See the links for the sound files in the end of this article.)

In Toronto, we have camps for everything. There is a BarCamp, a BookCamp, a PodCamp, a ProductCamp and even a CupcakeCamp (I am not kidding! Definitely worth a visit if you have a sweet tooth). So, the CloudCamp was about cloud computing. (Wikipedia defines cloud computing as “Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like a public utility”.)

For the unpanel, the facilitator (Dave Nielsen) asked the crowd who they thought were cloud experts and then invited these experts to sit in front of everybody as the panelists.  People came up with the list of questions and the panelists got to choose a question and had one minute to answer it.

Now, most people just aren’t very far along the cloud deployment route. People are still trying to figure out things like security, lifecycle management, ROI, types of cloud, vendor lock-in, future of cloud, etc. The camp attendees varied from seasoned “clouders” like Reuven Cohen of Enomaly to complete newbies. Those are the questions that were offered by the audience:

1. How do I do App Monitoring?
2. How should I change how I design my app?
3. How does Cloud affect the performance of my app?
4. How do we bring Cloud to the mainstream?
5. How do I address management concerns about security?
6. How do I do automated provisioning?
7. What are the key ROI measurements?
8. How is software licensing different and is it possible to be non-compliant
9. Are there standards for cloud?
10. How do I start to take advantage?
11. What is the future of Cloud Computing

Not all of them got answered but some certainly did, and the answers given were very interesting.

(Read more at BlogIdol website…)

Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit – Tom Rand’s book and talk

Tom Rand of MaRS just published a book: Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit, 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World.

It’s 240 pages (hard-cover) of accessible text and stunning photography. Great to flip through, but with solid, fleshed-out analysis. Out now in Canada (in Chapters on April 15th), in about a month in the US.

There’s also a short video “trailer”, both funny and hard-hitting. Designed to go viral!

This project is advocacy, pure and simple. It’s timely, important – and something Tom is very passionate about. His goal is to educate the public about our options and why it’s important to consider them carefully.

If you’re in the Toronto region on April 15th, Tom will be giving a “book launch” talk at MaRS at 6 pm in the main auditorium. It’s free, but space is limited and registration is required.

It would be wonderful if you could support this effort by:

• buying a copy of the book: (online here http://tinyurl.com/ykxudqp – or at your local bookstore)
• watch the video and pass/post the link to your friends and network:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92MtzfepgX
• come to Tom’s talk at MaRS, register here: http://kickthefossilfuelhabit.eventbrite.com/
  

Tom is also looking for corporate sponsors to distribute the book internally, or to sponsor a print run for schools/libraries. Got any suggestions or contacts?

You’ll find everything you need at www.kickthefossilfuelhabit.org (video, link to buy the book, publisher info, etc.).

ProductCamp Toronto Spring 2010

The time and date for the next ProductCamp Toronto  has been set.

The Date: Sunday May 30, 2010

The Location: Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management in downtown Toronto.

For those using Twitter, keep watching the  #pct3 hashtag.

The Culture Congress 2010

Get ready for The Culture Congress 2010, which will rage through various Toronto locales from March 24 through March 28. Harbourfront Centre, the Theatre Centre’s FREE FALL ’10, Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage 2009-10 and Calgary’s Theatre Junction Grand are joining forces to put on a variety of roundtables, lectures and discussions on the Canadian arts community, mentorship and performance. The events are all open to the public, and the best part is, they’re free!

This year’s focus is on how the arts community comes together: artist to artist, artist to presenter and artist to audience. In exploring this issue, some of the events you can look forward to include presentations from Irish delegates who will discuss the arts communities in their country, comparing and contrasting with Canada; discussions about creating artistically challenging and sustainable work and senior artists interviewing their very own mentees. For more information and the schedule, read the Culture Congress blog:

http://culturecongress.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/the-culture-congress-2010/

Free admission to SR&ED seminars and trade show at IT360

Attend the IT360 Trade Show, on April 7th in Toronto, along with the feature presentations and keynote compliments of CATAAlliance. IT360 is the premier event in Canada providing IT professionals with in-depth practical guidance and an array of solution-providing products and services – under one roof.

USE CODE: TS1
Your Complimentary Admission Pass (value $50) includes:

— Keynote Address @ 9:30am – 10:20am

Gary Warner, Director of Research in Computer Forensics at University of Alabama
Topic: Universal Threat Awareness
Desc: The Internet has never been more dangerous than today; eCrime in business and government continues to rise and Warner is the leading expert in Anti-Phishing and web attacks. He will discuss national and regional eCrime trends and individual case studies about resolving specific electronic crime cases. He will present best practices businesses need to know.
For more details, click here.

— Featured Presentation @ 10:50am – 11:20am

Lead by MEUK Corporation
Title: Demystifying SR&ED Tax Credits, part 1
Desc: Three steps to simplifying the SR&ED process to earn tax credits. It is very likely that your business qualifies for SR&ED (Scientific Research & Experimental Development) tax credits. The application process does not need to be onerous. This presentation will simplify the process and ease the way to earning the tax credits available to you.
More details, click here.

— Featured Presentation @ 12:50pm – 1:20pm

Lead by MEUK Corporation
Title: Demystifying SR&ED Tax Credits, part 2
Desc: Advanced presentation; Analyzing what is black vs. white vs. grey using real life case studies. This presentation will take you one step further in the process by illustrating how technological and financial issues benefit from the use of professional judgment.
More details, click here (scroll down).

— Trade show floor!

Explore, evaluate and compare solution provider products and services from key companies in security, data centres, unified communications, telephony, cloud computing, open source, and more. Learn strategic approaches to streamline infrastructure, introduce new and innovative strategies while building around current infrastructure.
See exhibitor list.

REGISTER ONLINE TODAY!
http://www.it360.ca/

City of Toronto Small Business Arts Forum 2010

Small Business Arts Forum 2010
March 22, 2010
8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
North York Civic Centre
5100 Yonge St.
Council Chamber, Members Lounge
www.enterprisetoronto.com

Established entrepreneurs and business owners in the arts, as well as artists exploring entrepreneurship and business opportunities are invited to attend the third annual Small Business Arts Forum, hosted by Enterprise Toronto.