Startup Edmonton

We’re thrilled to bring HackLab to K-Days! From July 17 - 26 kids of all ages can join us for experimentation with littleBits, Sphero and Lego as they explore opportunities in science, technology and engineering.

We’re looking for a Volunteer Liaison to assist at HackLab powered by Startup Edmonton at K-Days.

Pay and Work Schedule:  

• $18.00/hour

• 10 hours per day, Total Hours - 40 hours

• Saturday, July 18 – Noon to 10pm

• Sunday, July 19 - Noon to 10pm

• Saturday, July 25 - Noon to 10pm

• Saturday, July 16 - Noon to 10pm

The Volunteer Liaison is responsible for co-ordinating and overseeing the activities of volunteers as needed during HackLab at K-Days. The role involves liaising with the volunteers onsite to insure they know what they are responsible for and the role they play.

The Volunteer Liaison is responsible for all onsite communication with potential volunteers, and for making arrangements as necessary and dealing with any problems which may occur. The Volunteer Liason is also responsible, as far as possible, for ensuring that the needs of the volunteers themselves are met and that they all have a good time!

Qualifications:

• Good organizational skills

• Able to set and honour commitments

• Well-developed communication skills 

• Able to follow-up in a timely manner when information is needed/missing

• Basic computer skills 

Training:

• Liaison will be provided with training, materials and ongoing support from a designated Startup Edmonton Volunteer Coordinator.

Responsibilities: 

• Onsite HackLab at K-Days contact and coordinator for volunteers

• Provide support and information to volunteers and HackLab attendees 

• Assist in problem-solving, if and when the need arises 

• Learn and use the HackLab objectives 

• Identify potential problems early when they can be solved more easily before they become deep misunderstandings which are more difficult to resolve 

• Keep Startup Edmonton Volunteer Coordinator informed about issues affecting the volunteers and event activities. 

To apply, please send a resume to [email protected] with the subject line: Application - HackLab at K-Days Volunteer Liaison by 10PM on Sunday, July 12. Startup Edmonton is open to a single candidate to fill all available shifts or multiple candidates to take single shifts/weekends. 

The Ladies Learning Code - Edmonton Chapter is one of the most active meetups in our startup community. Their dedicated team of volunteer instructors and mentors create welcoming workshops dedicated to technical skill development, from HTML to Python and beyond. 

We had a chance to chat with Bree Emmerson, Co-Chapter Lead, Ladies Learning Code Edmonton, about the meetup. Their next worksop on June 20th is sold out, but they’re on the search for more awesome volunteer mentors with expertise in WordPress. If you’re interested in volunteering, sign-up today!

Q: What is Ladies Learning Code? 

A: Ladies Learning Code is a national not-for-profit organization that works to promote digital literacy by teaching technical skills in a hands-on, collaborative way. Don’t let the name fool you because men are certainly welcome to join us (we even had couples join us on Valentine’s Day which was amazing!) We really want to create a social and welcoming atmosphere for everyone to learn. Our workshops are all project-based so learners receive some introduction information before completing various exercises throughout the day, which lead up to a final project to go home with. In addition to our instructors who lead the classes, we try to have 1 mentor for every 4 learners so that someone is always available for some extra support if anyone gets stuck or has a question. All of our instructors and mentors are volunteers, who come in on a Saturday to support our community and are quite excited to promote the programming languages they use on a regular basis either at their job or in their spare time   

Alyson Connolly joined us at Startup Edmonton a few weeks ago to lead a session on painless public speaking with our members. We sat down with her to ask a few questions about confident delivery and how to calm your nerves before public speaking. 

If you’re interested in learning more, Alyson has an upcoming workshop on June 14. 

Q: Do you have to be born a great public speaker & why does public speaking terrify so many people?

A; No, it is like any other skill. It can be learned and you have to practice. Some people may have more of a flair for it but it is the person who works the hardest who will improve the most. 

We are actually hard wired to react quickly to negative stimuli. Scientific studies have shown that because of the “Fight, Flight or Freeze” response our brain reacts more quickly to negative stimuli than positive. At one time this was essential to our survival but in modern society it often gets in the way. The fear that you feel in front of an audience is natural, but you can train yourself, (and your brain), to overcome it.

Edmonton is host to RLDM2015, the multi-disciplinary conference on reinforcement learning and decision making, June 7 - 10 at the University of Alberta.  

Over the last few decades, reinforcement learning and decision making have been the focus of an incredible wealth of research spanning a wide variety of fields including psychology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, operations research, control theory, animal and human neuroscience, economics and ethology. Key to many developments in the field has been interdisciplinary sharing of ideas and findings, yet there has been no single conference that brings all these communities together. The idea of RLDM is to become that conference. - RLDM.org

Patrick M. Pilarski, PhD, Assistant Professor, Division of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Department of Medicine, shares a few thoughts on reinforcement learning & how it impacts our daily lives: 

Decision making is at the root of most social, industry, and scientific pursuits. As such, RLDM 2015 has broad appeal to anyone interested in understanding or controlling a process that involves decisions. 

Specifically, reinforcement learning and decision making (RLDM) is inherently an "online" or ongoing pursuit; this makes it well suited to those interested in how humans makes choices - psychology, neuroscience, economics, marketing, and the understanding of the rational or irrational processes that underpin how people make purchases and economic decisions). RLDM also explores the health or functioning of the brain, and can also provide insight into automation, industrial optimization, and the incremental improvement of a process based on known goals.

Similarly, RLDM impacts those interested in thinking machines - how machines make choices, thought, learning, robots, and artificial intelligence. 

From the perspective of enabling business, RLDM is used by technology companies to optimize advertising revenue, make choices about serving content, or personalize themselves to users. One of the speakers I am particularly keen to talk with again is Andrea Thomaz, who looks at the field of socially intelligent machines.

This conference is a opportunity for representatives from top academic centres in North America and beyond to connect with their international community, and with local excellence here in Edmonton. RLDM ideas are perfect tools to help make Alberta businesses more competitive on the global stage. 

The Mercer Summer Super Party 2015 is an all-floor, close-the-street extravaganza featuring live music, art showcase, dance party and more! 

The Mercer Warehouse community opens its doors for special programming, social spaces and art installations.

The Culture Collective, NextFest and Northern Sessions bring live music and entertainment to both the 3rd floor of the warehouse and 104th street stage.

Head into the warehouse for additional fun with lego, littleBits, Ping-Pong and activations from community partners, like Edmonton’s NextGen. 

We’ll be announcing more details in the coming days. Open to all ages; please leave pets at home. 

Register for free tickets at mercersuperparty.com.

The Open Hardware Meetup, hosted by Neil Lamoureux and Graham Nelson, meets the second Thursday of each month at 6:30 PM. 

The Open Hardware Meetup is a place where all kinds of people can share an interest in the intersection of hardware, software, connectivity, and user experience. When combined, these elements create a new art which blends the lines of beauty and technology.

Open Hardware is hosting Arduino for Makers on May 2, a hands-on workshop for beginners. 

We had a chance to chat with Neil about the meetup and his passion for Open Hardware. 

Q: What is Open Hardware?

A: Open hardware is electronics hardware for which designs are open and freely available. You can freely download and use these designs, but most people don't do that because they don't want to actually build computers or electronic devices from scratch. But because the designs are royalty-free, manufacturers can build and sell this hardware cheaply, making it attractive to hobbyists. The emphasis tends to be on adding sensors, radios, motors or other mechanical devices to have the hardware interact with its environment. 

For example, many robots are built upon open hardware.  Large and active communities can exist around the hardware, offering projects and open source software for others to duplicate and extend from.  Some examples of open hardware are the Arduino boards and Raspberry Pi computers.

Edmonton's 28th DemoCamp took place last night at the Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences (CCIS) on the University of Alberta campus. We had six demos, including two from Computer Engineering students at the U of A. You can read my recap of our last DemoCamp here. 

 In order of appearance, last night's demos included:Super Time Warp Battle Force, OMx, Drivewyze, LinkMetrics, Burgess Wireless System, and BarTinder.

DemoCamp brings together developers, creatives, entrepreneurs and investors to share what they’ve been working on and to find others in the community interested in similar topics. For presenters, it’s a great way to get feedback on what you’re building from peers and the community, all in an informal setting.

The rules for DemoCamp are simple: 7 minutes to demo real, working products, followed by a few minutes for questions, and no slides allowed.

Join us for DemoCamp 28 - Tuesday, April 7 at 6:30 PM. Drinks to follow.

CCIS 1-160, University of Alberta

The Student Summer Accelerator is a full-time 14-week intensive program that enables teams to work alongside other startups and entrepreneurs in the community while building their own company.  

“The summer is a chance to learn and acquire the important skills in running a successful startup; grow, network and surround yourself around other entrepreneurs; gain a better understanding your customer’s core problem to build a wanted product; and create a scalable startup.” - Tiffany Linke-Boyko, COO - Startup Edmonton. 

The Student Summer Accelerator has two tracks for participation: Early Stage Startup - for companies that are newly formed, and Flightpath - for companies ready for investment. Each track has specific areas of focus to best support these two areas of development, both with the end goal of advancing a teams idea/company to the next level.

Early Stage Startup

Who is this track for? 

This is for newly formed teams that have completed a lean canvas model or Preflight Beta, done some customer validation and started to consider what their MVP will look like.

Benefits:

Education through customized programming and mentorship from experienced local experts

Shared membership at Startup Edmonton

Weekly lunch provided

$5,000 stipend per person

Maximum team size of 2

Flightpath Track

Who is this track for? This track is for teams that have a functional prototype/demo (minimum viable product) ready to test with initial customers to validate solution/benefit.

Benefits:

Education through customized programming and mentorship from experienced local experts

Resident membership at Startup Edmonton

Weekly mentorship and lunch session

Up to $25,000 team investment from Flightpath Ventures

Maximum team of 2

Key Dates

Applications Close: April 3, 2015

Interviews: April 10 & April 13

Program Starts: May 12

Demo Day: August 18

Download Student Summer Accelerator Information. 

Apply today!

For our next meetup profile, we connected with Mark Bennett - host of Exchange:js: Edmonton’s JavaScript Meetup. 

Exchange:js is a welcoming environment, especially for first-time developers. Join Mark for the next meetup on Thursday, April 2 at 6:30 PM. The group also maintains excellent notes on past meetups at exchangejs.com.

Q: Why did you start Exchange.js: Edmonton's JavaScript meetup?

A: Credit for starting the JavaScript meetup has to go to Sean Ouimet. At the time it began I was very involved with running the Ruby meetup, but when Sean moved away last year I felt I had a responsibility to step up and join the exec.

Together with Jeff Marvin, Sean Healy, and Abram Hindle we work each month to connect the local JavaScript community together by sharing stories, personalities, and successes in a fun and accessible meetup.

Q: What is JavaScript?

A: JavaScript is the programming language of the web. It's what allows websites from Facebook to Google Maps to create engaging experiences in our web browsers. Increasingly it's also used on web servers and apps on mobile and desktop. If you own a computing device of any sort, then chances are you use JavaScript everyday.

Q: What are the benefits of having an active JavaScript Community?

A: Edmonton is a great place to make things, and if you want to make things for the web then you need to know JavaScript. Right there that should be reason enough to come out.

What I really enjoy about JavaScript is the way it connects developers, designers, and creative people of all backgrounds together through the web. It doesn't matter what programming language or direction you come from, everyone is making things for the web right now and using JavaScript to do it. It makes for an exciting community with lots of new ideas and perspectives, and I like to think that's reflected in our events.

Q: Who would you encourage to come to future events?

A: We'd love to see more women and first time developers come out to the meetup. We've already got a great group, but there's always room for more!

We host more than 200 community events at the Startup Edmonton campus each year. Many of these events are organized by community leaders that volunteer their time to bring people together around a specific tech or startup topic, from Ruby to robotics. 

Lunchalytics is one of the most active meetups groups. Hosted by Dark Horse Analytics, the group explores the use of data and analysis to improve the performance of an individual, organization or industry.  

We asked Daniel Haight, Co-founder Dark Horse Analytics, a few questions about their involvement in the startup community: 

Q: Why did you start the Lunchalytics meetup? 

A: We were involved in a group called the Canadian Operations Research Society that was looking to connect practitioners and academics on the topic of analytics. Lunchalytics seemed like a reasonable vehicle to do so and it has succeeded beyond our expectations. We typically have about 60 people attending, but have had to resort to waiting lists from time to time.

Photo: Edmonton Startup Week 2014 - Mega Meetup Night. 

Q: What are some of the uses, trends or concerns around analytics explored at past meetups?

A: We've had very interesting talks about photo radar and commuter safety, the causes of the current energy royalty crunch, how AGLC manages access to gambling, and how water quality varies across the province. Our events are typically "themed" - predictive analytics, data visualization, energy sector analytics, education analytics, transportation analytics, etc..

Kit Chen will be a keynote speaker at HackLab Student Developer Conference, March 21 at the Shaw Conference Centre. She is a great example of putting your skills into practice while still pursing formal education. She embodies our "don't wait, start now" mindset. Alieo Games launched at Edmonton Startup Week 2014 and supports creative learning through play. 

Q: What do you do & how did you get here?

A: I'm a PhD candidate in Computing Science at the University of Alberta and my research is in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning. Originally, I'm from the U.S. and my masters advisor told me about the AICML and how great the UofA was for Machine Learning research. My supervisor here, Mike Bowling, was a big draw and frankly so was a chance to live in Canada. I moved to Edmonton in 2009 and I've never looked back since.

Describing a typical work week is difficult. Since we're such a new company, none of us are working full-time yet on Alieo (though that will change soon). Each of us spends at least a couple days a week working on other projects -- I'm a teaching assistant for a first year computing course at the UofA. Joel is a professional photographer. Chris is a children's book author. Neesha is about to defend her thesis.

Last week we launched Open Lab, in partnership with the City of Edmonton. Working towards building better, citizen-focused products by bringing city cohorts to Startup Edmonton, immersing them in lean startup culture, customer/product development process, design sprints, and collision days with the startup/tech community.

This project was years in the making, thank you to Mayor Don Iveson and team for the leadership to take it to the next level. 

Read more about the project:

http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2015/03/06/edmonton-wants-to-tap-into-local-creativity-with-labs/ 

http://metronews.ca/news/edmonton/1305104/open-labs-project-to-bring-city-staff-to-startup-edmonton/

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/03/05/city-joins-startup-edmonton

The Computer Engineering Club at the University of Alberta hosted its second annual HACKed student hackathon at Startup Edmonton on January 31 & February 1, 2015. Teams competed in two streams, Hack Software and Hack Hardware, for more than $2,000 in prizes with a simple premise: 24 hours - build something incredible.

We chatted with Brittany Lamorie, VP Internal - University of Alberta Computer Engineering Club, about this year's event. 

Q: How does a hackathon inspire students differently than school projects?

A: Most school projects will give you set guidelines and you don't get the opportunity to be creative with your projects. Even with the broad range of courses that students take, there are few opportunities to freely apply skills in different areas. A hackathon allows students to build whatever they want and gives them the opportunity to combine hardware and software as they see fit.

As two longstanding Startup Edmonton member companies grow into new spaces, Ken reflects on the entrepreneurial journey and the role of founders.  

Last week, we celebrated as four founders and two longstanding companies left the nest to grow in their new offices. 

The best part of my job is watching first-time founders grow and develop as entrepreneurial leaders during their time with us. I get to see them go through the range of emotions that come with the highs and lows of first customers, sluggish sales, building a team, raising capital, and the crushing stress watching the cash run out. Through it all, I get to join their journey as mentor, peer, pitch coach, hard-ass, and friend. 

Level up your software development skills with this full-day intensive

We're thrilled to announce our first HackLab Student Developer Conference, March 21, 2015 at the Shaw Conference Centre. $35 - includes coffee/snacks, lunch and an all-ages evening social. studentdevcon.com

Join us for talks, workshops and hands-on projects. Developers from some of the top tech-enabled companies in the world will share how they build software and encourage participants to level up their programming abilities in the fields of mobile development, machine learning and building at scale.

Workshops:  

Design for Developers

Machine Learning 

Building Web Systems

Confirmed Speakers: 

Andrew Vilcsak: AirBnB, AirBnB Mobile Lead

Timo Ewalds: Google.org, Founder of nexopia.com, now engineering at Google.org

Kit Chen: Alieo Games, Founder of Alieo Games, PhD Candidate AICML

Mike Deering: Mitre Media, CTO of MitreMedia

Randy Marsden: Apple, Creator of Swype and Dryft (acquired by Apple) 

HackLab Student Developer Conference is for university-level developers, including high school students* with a prerequisite of Comp Sci 20 or equivalent. 

studentdevcon.com

Teachers, educators & parents: please contact Startup Edmonton if you have any questions or requests regarding high school student participation. We look forward to hearing from you! [email protected]  

Preflight helps founders, developers, and designers experiment and validate a scalable product/startup idea. We take a hands-on approach to helping you make that first real commitment to building a high growth tech startup. Preflight - Customer Validation, a 5 week workshop exploring customer discovery, starts January 28. (Deadline to apply is January 25th.) 

Cam Linke, Startup Edmonton Co-Founder, shares some insight on the role customer validation plays in launching a successful product. In addition to his role at Startup Edmonton, Cam is CEO of Touch Metric, makers of business-to-business surveying software. Touch Metric serves hundreds of industries and thousands of clients world-wide. 

Q: Why is customer validation such an important step for a startup idea/company? 

A: Customer validation is super important because entrepreneurs can end up spending a ton of time early on going after the wrong idea, or the right idea in the wrong way. The problem is that until you start talking to customers you don’t know if you’re right or wrong. Customer validation helps you get answers and a better understanding so that you are building the right product, the right way, with the right business model around it.