Are Canadian politics influenced by blogs? Will we follow the path of the US? Here is a synopsis of the discussion:

This afternoon Warren Kinsella lawyer/consultant talks with Paul Wells of Maclean's, Andrew Coyne of the National Post and Brad Davis, National Director of Policy and Internet Strategy, of the Michael Ignatieff Leadership Campaign.

Andrew Coyne of the National Post - and an economist - is leading off the panel. The power of the blogosphere is its ability to break down issues into small pieces that can be studied and reconnected. He calls this phenomenon "Horizontal Editing." The benefit is how it breaks up the group-think of the main-stream media. Now, because of blogging, issues are less predictable.

Brad Davis says that he is inspired by blogs. During the recent election, he had twenty people across Canada following the various political blogs. This continues with the leadership campaigns. They are managing the relationship with bloggers as though they are as influential as MSM. Blogs to the Ignatieff team is a way to inform their campaign.

Paul Wells of Macleans says he doubts that blogs will have an influence. He talks about the Dean campaign in the US. There is a boom and bust cycle related to blogs - too much attention leads to a pull back of support. Wells is waiting to see blogs influence the leadership campaign. But his blog seems to have influence, at least with the Ignatieff campaign. He has not seen evidence that it drive votes. Next month that might change.

WK: There is an MIT study from '04 that says 65% are male, 80% are white, etc. Will bloggers ever include other demographics?

Panel: The "recombinant loops" are changing the way politics is communicated. It is accelerating the way the message gets out. Messages get out (...read more...)

Using the popular TorCamp technique of giving presenters five minutes to tell their stories, MESH is letting Canadian Web 2.0 companies give their pitch.

PixPo is a Victoria based Web 2.0 that allows you to access your media from anywhere. They just closed $6.5 Million financing last week. They don't have a Mac version though.

areyoufrank.com wants more people to be frank about transparency. They want to collapse the distance between the CEO and customer. Take the quiz ...

Devshop is a project management tool. It is launching this fall. It watches tyour project and spots risks. It serves the 15 Million worldwide developer market.

Michael Geist is a leading policy thinker about where the Web 2.0 intersects with the law. He is a law professor who writes the popular http://www.michaelgeist.ca blog. Rob Hyndman, a lawyer and one of the MESH organizers, is interviewing him.

Geist has an encyclopedic grasp of Web 2.0. His question to the audience is: What is the legal policy that will support the growing Web 2.0 trend? Geist's position is that there is a market force playing out that the government must let evolve. Arbitrary legislation that favours the recording industry, for example, might slow it down.

Here is a synopsis of the interview.

RH: Where do we go from here? What role will policy makers play?

MG: Canadian policy makers are not getting it right - as we will see in the coming months. There are content producers driving the Web 2.0 market who might lose their ability to produce. The policy reforms being studied are about controlling markets.

RH: The political reality of where we are now suggests we will see more restrictions.

MG: The lobby group (CRIA) behind the changes is one of the most effective there is. But when Canadian musicians speak out against it they received considerable attention. When Steven Page and Avril Levigne speak out against the reforms politicians listen.

Audience: There is a cultural clash coming with the restrictions of copyright. Will this cause young people to get political?

MG: An increasing number of people see this as their issue.

Audience: Where are "Mashups" of available data going in terms of violation of copyright?

MG: People will want to be paid. Some revenue streams will evolve and while we are smart we don't know what the market will look like in three to five years. Ottawa must get out of the way.

Audience: A (...read more...)

Om Malik is a respected blogger and Web 2.0 analyst with Business 2.0. Mark Evans of the National Post is interviewing him on "The Future of Media." Here are some paraphrased excerpts:

OM: This is a flux point in media.

There is a need for traditional "Brand" media outlets like the New York Times and the National Post.

ME: Traditional media cannot figure out the value proposition.

OM: This is Darwinian - they have to figure it out to survive. Forbes.com is doing well, for example.

ME: Jeff Cole of Annenberg Univ. says that newspapers will be gone.

OM: Each newspaper will have to find its own niche. He'll be happy to see a lot of papers go.... People don't listen to what the market wants.

ME: Three Cs - Credibility , Content, and Cash are the drivers of an effective blog.

OM: There is no difference between the old and new worlds relative to credibility. People read and make judgement calls. They decide if you are the real thing. It is harder to be found now. The world needs the editorial leader right now. Rating services help.... Local blogs like "Gothamist" are growing rapidly. it is a new kind of local news. there is an opportunity here. the economics of doing this are low. (Note: as editor of local news service, http://www.readingtoronto.com, I know that his remarks here are accurate).

Update

Audience: Opinion is important.

OM: With so much info available what becomes important is context - why does it matter to me? You can build a brand around bringing context which is the biggest thing missing in the media right now.

Audience: Ads are the lifeblood of blogs - what is the value proposition for blogging?

OM: Advertising is seriously lagging in the blog space. It is 1.0 approach (...read more...)

The MESH Conference kicks off today and Toronto, the centre of Canada's commodity and Income Trust based financial markets, may never be the same. MESH is the brainchild of five local innovators who looked around the entrepreneurial landscape and decided that there is an emerging Web 2.0 movement here with the momentum of a runaway tornado. They write:

Canada needs a conference like mesh. Web 2.0 is happening all around us, as the Internet becomes the place to communicate, collaborate and entertain. mesh is brought to you by people who want to inspire enthusiasm, creativity and opportunity; by people who believe that for Canada to remain vibrant and competitive, we have to connect with each other and share our ideas about what the Web should be.

The people bringing us MESH are:

Mark Evans - senior technology reporter, The National Post
Mathew Ingram - technology and business writer, Globe & Mail
Mike McDerment - CEO, 2ndSite Online Invoicing
Rob Hyndman - business lawyer, Hyndman | Law
Stuart MacDonald - entrepreneur, marketer, founder Expedia.ca

Gagglescape is covering the conference today and tomorrow. We will take a look at the people, technology, and capital behind Web 2.0.

Let us know if there is something you would like to see covered.

What's on today?

Keynote Conversation: The Future of Media

Keynote Conversation: The Web and Society, Rob Hyndman talks with U of Ottawa law professor and blogger Dr. Michael Geist

Panel Conversation: Are Bloggers Journalists? Mathew Ingram talks with Om Malik, Michael Tippett of NowPublic.com and journalist/blogger Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0;

Panel Conversation: Can Blogs Influence Politics? Warren Kinsella lawyer/consultant talks with Paul Wells of Maclean's, Andrew Coyne of the National Post and Brad

Davis, National Director of Policy and Internet Strategy, of the Michael Ignatieff Leadership Campaign

Barnaby Marshall talks with podcaster (...read more...)

We're here at BarCamp Toronto today after an informative two day stint at the Canadian Venture Forum. Take a look at the videos from both to appreciate the difference in style between the two events. To say that BarCamp Toronto is rough and ready doesn't do the experience justice. It's just different.



Update

What is Bar Camp anyway?

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. This event is part of the TorCamp phenomenon started last November. It's grown from about 50 attendees at TorCamp 1 to over 140 at the last TorCamp DemoCamp.

All attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one. All presentions are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall. Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

NO SPECTATORS, ONLY PARTICIPANTS!

When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers. When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world. You can learn more about BarCamp here:

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,68610,00.html
BarCampPaloAlto2005

Hosts
TaraHunt
ChrisMessina
JayGoldman
DavidCrow
DeborahHartmann

Early Stage Angel and Seed Investment Category

The finalists are Savvica, Virtual Reach, and Demand Cast.

The winner is DemandCast.



Venture Capital Category

The finalists are EQO, iSequent, and Truition.

The winner is Truition.



Public Venture Capital Category

The finalists are Official Community, Access Anywhere, and Pyxis.

The winner is Official Community.

Virtual Expert Clinics - Cynthia Howroyd CEO

If ever there was a company that deserves to do well it is Virtual Expert Clinics. VEC offers online expert resources to service any number of health related needs. Their first project targets the growing phenomenon of autistic children. There are 1.2 million autistic children in the world. An additional 15% more kids are diagnosed with autism every year. Take ten minutes and listen to Cynthia's presentation.

This compilation video is from the afternoon's group 3 presentations. These entrepreneurs know their companies and products.



This group proved to be exceptionally strong so we are going to include a video compilation of their presentation. That will be posted in an about an hour. Here is a quick text summary of their presentations:

The session's presenters are Software Innovation, Zeligsoft, Softchaos, and Quazal Technologies.

Reza Farhad, CEO & Founder - Softchaos of Montreal

Their product, Webstractor (Radar), allows users to capture web pages as they browse: Gather-manage-use web information. The product is used in education and research. Webstractor won a MacWorld Eddie. They have already received favourable press and awards.

How does it work? The Webstractor tool allow web users to save web pages they have collected. More than that, once saved, the pages become editable. The tool allows users to extract web data from existing pages and reuse it. it works in tandem with Microsoft Word.

Softchaos anticipates $45 Million in sales by 2009. Markets include education, consumers, and institutions and they expect to sell three-million units. The unit cost of Webstractor is $99 CAD.

The people at gagglescape - and many people in the media business - have always wanted a tool like this. Congratulations to Softchaos for this product.

Coreworx Project Collaboration - Randal Howard - Former Software Innovation CEO.

Coreworx is a project collaboration platform servicing the trillion - yes trillion - dollar megaproject industry. it is scalable, web-based enterprise solution. It now has 25,000 users. They sell to large projects only. There are 1200 companies in that market. Think Bechtel size here. The average sale is anywhere from $2 - 8 Million for a full enterprise rollout. They have generated about $5 Mil so far. The sell is to "C" level management.

What does it (...read more...)

Linda Hohol, President of the TSX Venture Exchange gave the keynote speech this morning. In this clip she answers questions from the audience. Please note that the quality is low - this was shot on a cell phone then transferred via Bluetooth to the net.



Here are some highlights from Hohol's talk:

What does the TSX Venture Exchange offer to the venture market? Their CPC program is a unique investment vehicle that is becoming more popular. CPC allows the financing group to invest money AND operational experience in a company. This allows new ways to get early stage investment into the market. 35% of graduates to the TVX have come through the program. Limit on the pool is $2 Million.

See Kangaroo Technologies as an example. Founded in 2001.

TSX VG is unique - they are accessing the "nanocap space." Their regulatory standards are lighter than the TSX or even AIM's. See web site TSX.com for listing requirements. The TSX Venture Group is attracting strong institutional interest.

What was Hohol's key message? Canada needs to produce more entrepreneurs because the more churn there is in the market the more experience the entrepreneurship community will obtain. The result will be a stronger technology base for the country.

This morning's first presenters include Virtual Reach Inc., Alltigo, Mercuri Teleconferencing, and Diginiche.

The two we will focus on is this group are Alltigo and Virtual Reach.

Jay Steel -CTO-Virtual Reach

Co-founders of Plazmic in Mississauga, a company with success in China. Former employee of RIM.

They have launched a new product that offers a newsclip service for mobile devices like the BlackBerry. The back-end technology uses RSS feeds. It is an easier platform for companies to develop on than WAP and JAVA.

Why RSS? RSS is popular, simple, and functional. Industry leaders have embraced and validated the RSS technology. They sell into wholesale and retail channels. First customer which launched this week is Rogers Wireless.

Their market is very large because of the number of mobile devices that are communications ready. For example, there are 40,000 BlackBerry Enterprise Servers now serving 5 Million RIM devices.

They are looking for $2.5 million in capital to continue to expand their product line.


Company 2 - Alltigo - Nenad Lazovic, Director of Engineering - Mobile Tracking Devices

Alltigo builds automotive telematics and personal telematics technologies. It is a big market: $5.6 Billion and rapidly growing.

What are the applications? Their products can be used to prevent vehicle theft, reduce transportation costs, aid personal security, and in law enforcement.

The existing technology that drives this market needs to be replaced. Alltigo's technology is low-cost and powerful. It is comprised of mobile positioning hardware, a software platform, and integration services. The mobile device that would be placed on a truck, for example, resembles a small cell phone. It is very compact.

The tech works on Adaptive Assisted GPS. It is TCP/IP device.

The company's revenue streams are: Device sales, Tech licenses, systems integration, and maintenance.

R&D is complete. Order of 500 in the works. 45 (...read more...)

Day 2 of the Canadian Venture Forum begins. We will have some video highlights today so stay tuned. This afternoon at 3:30 the winners of this year's Victor Awards will be announced. Someone also promised a Single Malt tasting - we look forward to the day's events.

The keynote speaker this morning is Linda Hohol, President of the TSX Venture Exchange.

Come back for ongoing reports as the day unfolds.

Photo by Stephanie Lake.

The second session in today's early stage Angel and Seed group includes Clay Tablet, Savvica, Medshare, and Accuvision.

The two companies we will follow this afternoon are Clay Tablet and Savvica.

Clay Tablet's Federated Translation Platform - CEO Robinson Kelly

From the earliest days of recorded history we've used translation services to reduce the barriers between people and cultures. That is Clay Tablet's strength. The company provides efficient tools to manage the flow of text from a client to translation services and back again. They are seeking $2 to 3 Million in first round investment.

The five fastest growing languages requiring translation services are: Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, French, and English. Manually managing the text translation process is difficult and time consuming. Although Kelly does not specify how much it costs a Fortune 1000 company to manage its translation activities, the costs are laden with inefficiencies and man-hours that are not tracked. Even in-house translation services can benefit from the technology.

Their work flow analysis illustrates how effective the Clay Tablet solution is (was it done by x-plane?).

While not sexy from a Web 2.0 perspective, Clay Tablet provides a strong solution that services a real market need. Their market projections are good if not somewhat modest in that Canadian start-up kind of way.



Savvica - CEO Mark Sterling - e-learning product is "nuvvo."

One of the great benefits of the Internet is in its ability to facilitate learning. There are a number of enterprise level e-learning systems on the market but how do small businesses and individuals access e-learning technology? The answer is Savvica's "nuvvo." It, according to CEO Mark Sterling, does to e-learning what blogs have done to publishing by making the tools easy to use.

With nuvvo an instructor can almost instantaneously get a learning solution online. Payment is (...read more...)

The companies presenting in this morning's group are Trustifi, Sprylogics, D2V Technologies, and Intelletto. We'll look at two of them: Trustifi and Sprylogics.

Peter Bennesty - CEO of Trustifi - client centric identity solution - Anti-Identity Theft specialists. Peter was a victim of identity theft in 2001 and that convinced him to enter the business.

They are a "Specialized Identity Provider." It gives people control over who gets access to critical identity information.

The market is huge. $1.2 Billion on 005 to $8.5 in 2010. Trustifi's market is 120 mil by 2010.

Because Internet relationships are inherently based on trust - I believe you are who you tell me you are - there is room for fraud. Trustifi's service gives, say, dating services, the ability to build trust relationships based on accurate info. Controlling user credentials is a key success factor.

Their revenue model is that each end-user pays $18-40 - per year for the services. If a dating service has one-million users and ten to fifteen percent choose to use the verification service then, well, you do the math.

Trustifi is looking for $2 million in "A" round funding.

SpyLogics - CEO Avi Shachar - Former Senior Intel Analyst, Ontario Securities Commission.

Their product lets the financial services industries do risk analysis on potential partners, etc., to prevent scams, securities fraud.

Board of Advisors includes Ben Soave, the former Commisioner of the RCMP's white-collar crime division.

Great list of current and future partners.

Their technology is predictive with a "unique social network analysis capability."

Presenters are serious players in the market integrity and risk mitigation marketplace. The founders are ex-Israeli intelligence officers. The market for their services is significant. World-wide more than 100 Billion dollars as regulatory groups try more and more to prevent investor fraud.

Both these companies are (...read more...)