10 things I liked about DemoCamp Edmonton 6

1. Having our activity with the hashtag #democampyeg reach as high as #7 on the Twitter trends list for all of Twitter tonight.
2. Seeing all the new faces out was great. In fact, there were people from the business community out who are new to the Democamp and maybe even the tech scene itself. This growth is important and shows how our culture and efforts are starting to permeate into new areas – very cool. A couple people admitted to not knowing precisely why they where there and in one case, a gentleman mentioned this puzzled state was due to the “purposely vague website” – to which much of the crowd laughed…
3. I enjoyed all the demos tonight, starting with Mack Male’s (@mastermaq) shareedmonton.ca which I believe will pick up a fair amount of steam for something that was a last minute build and demo add-on due to a couple demo cancellations.
4. Other demos tonight included Ryan Leland’s (@ryanleland) you-vs-me.com, which I think got the most laughs tonight. Not because Ryan’s build was poorly executed, quite the opposite, rather because of the fun subject comparisons people have been coming up with.
5. Mark Matichuk’s Clinitrust brought back some good memories from nearly 8 years ago due to having some experience with Electronic Medical Records – EMR/EHR software commercialization, …very practical, effective and looks to be well-executed.
6. Nothing to see here Peter Urban (@peterurban), move along.
7. Certainly all the demos were cool in their own right but I think the stand out for me as something that would be immediately adoptable would have to be Graham Batty’s bittablog. A project (he confided in me while at the DemoCamp Edmonton afterparty at RATT) was his first real Ruby on Rails project (learning Rails over three weeks while he built this app – that’s cool). What I like about bittablog is how clean and simple the interface is, Batty has borrowed from Twitter in terms of the 140 character limit to each “bitta,” which in bittablog’s case is how you preserve an idea to then blog about later. I also believe that many will enjoy the collaborative blogging feature which allows others to borrow your bitta and then compose a blog post based on that idea. The platform has been designed with the user who likes to create short posts via a mobile device, similar to tumblr in that way I suppose, but the unique sharing feature for me makes bittablog a real winner.
8. Topping out at #7, the Twitter feed turned cold quickly, and by that I mean that the idea of a “cold beer” suddenly took over the conversation. So I’m glad the walk to RATT at the Student’s Union Building (SUB) on the U of A campus was fairly quick and not as cold as it has been of late.
9. Once at RATT, I enjoyed the conversation I had with @ChrisLabossiere @britl @davecournoyer @zoomjer @mastermaq @stormbrew @AllieW @Stellal and several others who’s Twitter handles I don’t know…(mine’s @fusedlogic and follows are always welcome)
10. The satisfaction of seeing this element of our local tech business community grow and in fact flourish. Further, how it is really showing leadership in terms of innovation, creativity and dedication. That’s how large business wins are achieved and the Greater Edmonton Region is over-flowing with potential in this regard, what’s more, mainstream is beginning to notice.

That was a lot of fun everyone, that said, I’m tired and now going radio silent.

Walter