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

Get government funding for your technology-related business – SR&ED seminar

SRED Unlimited and RBC Steeles && Dufferin branch are hosting a SR&ED seminar on October 13, 2010. The event starts at 6pm. Admission is free.

Come learn about SR&ED (Scientific Research & Experimental Development), an incentive program by the Canadian government that refunds companies involved in Research and Development (R&D).

If your company is dealing with technology, or at least has production environment, there is a good probability that you are entitled to some refund of your R&D expenses. Come to our seminar to find out.

Keywords: Government funding, technology, startups, small and medium business, tax refund, software, hardware, telecom, printing, mechanical engineering, food technology, biotech, free, event

Intended For: Companies that spend money on creating or modifying products or processes through experimenting. Any company that deals with technology (software and hardware development, machinery, printing etc., even food technology and biotech) may qualify for SRED.

Register on LinkedIn or Facebook.

New Toronto self employment program

The name of the program is SED but, as far as I can see, it is very much like the late SEB program

http://www.toronto.ca/socialservices/pdf/Self-Employment.pdf

There is also Ontario Works program that may help you financially while you are looking for a job.

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…)

My article for Blog Idol contest: Cloudcamp 2. Cloud Computing: Return on Investment

This is another session from Cloudcamp that was held in Toronto on April 6, 2010. (Find the article about the first session, with links to the CloudCamp sound files and some presentations, here.) The session was facilitated by Dave Nielsen and discussed the ROI of cloud computing. The following questions were raised:

What is cloud computing anyway?

How do we measure the ROI of migration to the cloud?

What’s the cost of intangible benefits?

When does it make sense for a startup to use the cloud?

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

(Note: I did not catch the names of all the people who answered questions, so if one of them is you, please let me know so I can acknowledge it properly! – Tania)

Dave Nielsen: I’ve been saying, “Here’s what I think cloud computing is,” over and over and over again and it’s changed a little bit every time, but actually hasn’t changed much at all in the last like 10 times I’ve done it. But it still could. I’m hoping to get to the 80/20 rule where I come up with 20 percent of what is the main thing of cloud computing and 80 percent of the people agree. But basically, here it is: so you know, you guys know the triangle, the pyramid, cloud computing, Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, Software as a Service, right? Right here. This is a very, very simple, like over-simplified definition of cloud computing, types of cloud computing.

So Infrastructure as a Service is really providing a service to IT folks. And Platform as a Service is really providing a service to developers where they can put their code. And then Software as a Service is providing a service to business users who don’t want to have to set up anything, don’t want to have to install software on their desktop, right? That was basically the three types of cloud computing but if you don’t know who you’re talking to and they ask you what cloud computing is and you don’t know what type of person they are, or you simply ask yourself, what do all these things have in common, it turns out they really have, in my opinion, three +1 things in common. And the first one is super obvious. What do you think that is?

(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…)

My article for Blog Idol contest: Review of Tom Rand’s Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit

Both in the YouTube clip for the book and in his TED talk, Tom speaks about possible replacement to fossil fuels we are hooked on. His confidence that we can kick the habit is contagious. Just a few solar farms in Sahara can produce enough electricity for the entire world! Instead of burning coal to heat water, use geoexchange technology that can reduce energy use and carbon emissions by up to 70%, and lowers peak electrical load in the summer months. Tom is currently implementing this technology by converting a derelict building at 357 College St., Toronto, into a green hotel.

Sounds great. However I am a pessimist, or an extremely cautious person (call it what you like), and I have been taught by experience that, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. As some of you may know, it is actually possible to make a gravity-powered clock, for example. The only catch is that manufacturing this clock will be a lot more expensive than a regular alarm clock and a lifetime supply of batteries.

I will be happy if someone explains to me that I am mistaken and the obstacles to Tom’s suggestions that I see are no obstacles at all.

(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.).