MoMoVan: Mobile Voting Panel

From the MoMoVan E-Zine description of the Oct. 6, 2008 meeting...

John Boxall of Handi Mobility and John Lyotier of Direct Voter carried a lively discussion of how the new technologies are being deployed; how politicians are doing a lousy job of embracing the new tools at their disposal and how secure mobile technologies are going to transform not only search marketing for election campaigns but also the way we vote.

What's up with the hats? Watch this.

Edie Hats and MoMoVan

From the MoMoVan E-Zine description of the Oct. 6, 2008 meeting...

In addition to the informative sessions and discussions, we also selected the new face of MoMoVan for the year (a unique tradition) for the official face on the "Smile, it's Monday!" button.

Edie, owner of Edie Hats, once again provided the props (sexy, crazy, trendy hats). There was some modesty at first, but Natalie (store manager) was relentless and no one was spared from the fashion show or the ensuing photo shoot. A top 5 was chosen from the room and after much deliberation, Igor Faletski passed the mantle to Amielle Lake.

Tagga Makes Instant Mobile Sites

Amielle Lake, CEO of Tagga, describes how this new company lets you create instant SMS and mobile sites. From the lightning pitches at MoMoVan, October 6, 2008.

Video: Apple Store Opening, Vancouver

Just for fun: a mashup of YouTube videos of the opening of the Apple Store in Vancouver on May 24, 2008. The videos from several attendees were synchronized and then edited in Final Cut Pro. The video runs in real time. Yes, the yelling and screaming did go on and on and on...


Picture credit: Retrocactus (who has many other fine pictures of the event)
The original YouTube videos are here: kockgunner, jeffreykao, RunningKelton, GregEhTV, PalluxoMediaOnline, bo5is, azisman

Video: CellMap Presentation

Aaron Hilton, president and CTO of CellMap, talks about how his company is bringing a new kind of map to your cell phone. He explains why it isn't Google Maps and gives a detailed business case example.
From MoMoVan, May 5, 2008.

Click the image below to view the video (length: 12:32).

Video: Mobile Social Networking

Join the panel at MoMoVan May 2008 for a discussion of social networking in the mobile space. Moderated by the always effervescent Roland Tanglao, panel members Jim Udall, Jeff LaPorte and David Vogt mix it up with the audience on topics of the next big thing, what will do for mobile what Google did for search, and is Vancouver a good place to nurture wireless companies?

Video: CTIA Wireless 2008 Quickie

Here is a very short (about 1 minute) overview of a panel discussion reviewing highlights of the recent CTIA conference in Las Vegas.

The panelists are:

Christina Lees, Product Manager, Wavefront
Luni Lebes, Chief Architect, Medio Systems
Razmig Sarkissian, Integration Manager, Mobile Distillery

Moderator is Michael Bidu, Executive Director, WINBC

Click the image below to view. If it sounds interesting to you, you can listen to the complete audio (length 20:40) of the discussion here (Right click to download.).

Video: Wireless Survey in 60 Seconds

Here's a 60 second version of a video that can be seen in full here.
Editing it down to one minute is obviously a bit of an experiment. Let me know what you think!
Michael Bidu, Executive Director of WINBC, gives a quick overview of the results of a 2007 survey of the wireless industry in British Columbia. The sector is healthy with over $1B in revenue and 6,000 employees. It has now reached a level of maturity where substantial investment is needed to fund the sales and marketing needed for the next stage of growth.

From MoMoVan, Mobile Monday in Vancouver, March 3, 2008.

Tags: momovan, wireless, funding, bc, survey

Podcast: Where Will BC's Wireless Companies Find $133M?

By now you've heard that our 2007 BC Wireless Industry Survey uncovered the need of BC's mobile companies to find $133M in financing over the next two years to fund growth and expand their markets. Where will that money come from? That was the main subject of the WINBC MoMoVan at the downtown offices of Fasken Martineau, March 3, 2008 .

The panelists were:

Steve Hnatiuk, from Yaletown Venture Partners. Yaletown is backed by major institutional investors in Canada and the US and invests the majority of its capital in early-stage technology companies in BC. They typically invest up to $2 million in the first round in any start-up they back and up to $6M in a company across multiple rounds. Every year Yaletown sees about 300 new companies seeking funding and invests in 3 or 4.

Jenny Yang, from the Business Development Bank of Canada, a crown corporation with $500 million to invest in early stage companies, especially ones in life sciences, advanced technology, telecommunications and IT.

Earl Hong Tai, from Telefilm Canada's New Media Fund for early stage start-ups.

Riz Kheraj, from NRC/IRAP, which helps small and medium tech companies by providing financial and other support. They have $13 million in R&D funds available to BC technology companies.

Michael Bidu, Executive Director of WINBC, moderator

Listen to the audio here (Right click to download).

Northern Voice 2008: Mobile Video Blogging

Chris Heuer and Roland Tanglao show how to stream video live from a phone, and discuss how it is changing the landscape for blogging. Lots of good interatction with the audience.
The session itself was (of course!) broadcast live from Roland's phone. This video is a mashup of Roland's stream, a GO-HD camera I had in the audience, and audio from a portable recorder stuck near the front of the room.
From MooseCamp at Northern Voice 2008.


Tags: nv08, northernvoice, northernvoice2008, mobile, live, video, blogging

Video: BC Wireless Industry Survey

Michael Bidu, Executive Director of WINBC, gives a quick overview of the results of a 2007 survey of the wireless industry in British Columbia. The sector is healthy with over $1B in revenue and 6,000 employees. It has now reached a level of maturity where substantial investment is needed to fund the sales and marketing needed for the next stage of growth.
From MoMoVan, Mobile Monday in Vancouver, March 3, 2008.

Tags: momovan, wireless, funding, bc, survey

Northern Voice 2008: Achieving a Personal Style

Some pithy comments by Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, renowned photographer, writer and artist, on the role that lighting plays in achieving a personal style in your pictures. Starting with the lament that "right now we are going through the opposite of a renaissance of lighting," and that the world is becoming "Flickr'ed", he identifies both the biggest enemy and the holy grail of photography.
From the PhotoCamp session at Northern Voice 2008.

(A somewhat bigger version of the video is here.)

Piano Phantom

Just for fun, here's a short video I made to test some video sync software I am working on. It may not be obvious at first that there are several media streams being synchronized, but keep watching.

Northern Voice 2008: Best Compact Cameras

Tim Bray gives a quick survey of the state-of-the-art in compact digital still cameras in the PhotoCamp session at MooseCamp, Northern Voice 2008. Tim's talk itself is quite compact, as he cuts to the chase about why you would want to use a pocket camera versus an SLR, what the dream camera would be and how close you can get to that today. The links to the topics and cameras are gathered here.

(A somewhat better quality version of the video is here.)

Experiments in user-generated music videos

R.E.M. has done something innovative with their latest single, Supernatural Superserious. They posted 11 videos of the group performing the song and invited fans to mash them up into their own music videos. The results are here.

Some of the videos are pretty good. My favorite is actually only slightly connected with the concept, but especially after seeing some of the others it really grabs you (or me at least).

My own effort was just a technical exercise in synchronization. Still, it has some charm IMHO.

This is just the latest in band-encouraged fan videos, following on from a 200 contributor effort for a Shins video which was written up in Wired (which gets bonus points for a great headline).

Ultra-budget film-making

Kirk Mastin, a professional photographer, had a great idea on how to compare the quality of a cheap Flip Video camcorder with that of my beloved Canon XH A1, which costs about 20 times as much. He literally taped a Flip onto the side of an A1 and then shot a documentary with both of them simultaneously.

The results are fascinating. They are best viewed in the original Blip.tv form because they get cropped on Kirk's blog.

The Flip version looks not bad at all, even though it was cropped to get a 16:9 aspect ratio. Just shows that technique wins over equipment.

Northern Voice 2008: DOF and Gallery Hack

Derek Miller, with some help from Kris Krug, gives a quick intro to the concept of depth of field and how to control it. He then presents a neat hack to get photo galleries on your blog that look suspiciously Flickr-like. From the PhotoCamp session at MooseCamp, Northern Voice 2008.

Technical note: The image is a little dark because the lights were off in the room! Given that fact, the GO-HD did a pretty good job.

Northern Voice 2008: Modified Light Photography

Reilly Lievers of Blue Olive Photography gives a great tutorial on photographing people using flash and modified light. From the PhotoCamp session at MooseCamp, Northern Voice 2008.

Northern Voice 2008: Natural Light Photography

Miranda Lievers from Blue Olive Photography gives a great instructive presentation on making natural and found light portraits - what to look for when placing your subject(s), and how to get great natural portraits when you find the light. Well-illustrated with several excellent photos illustrating the concepts.

From the PhotoCamp session of Northern Voice 2008. A somewhat bigger and higher-quality version is here.

Northern Voice 2008: Enterprise Social

A well-attended session from Northern Voice 2008. David Orchard leads a discussion on the use of social software (especially wikis) within the enterprise. More notes here.

Technical Notes The first 45 seconds or so is audio-only, because I started the camera late. The video was recorded with an Aiptek GO-HD and the audio was recorded with a Zoom H4. This was literally the first time I had ever used the GO-HD and my camera work is pretty wonky in places as I was playing around with it!