Today, we’re excited to unveil a new initiative called The Edmonton Champions Project.

Generations of leaders have built this city into what it is today – home to world class educational institutions, a thriving arts and culture scene, successful businesses, and a community spirit like no other. But this is about more than civic pride.

The world is changing. In the economy of the future, over 80% of the world’s innovation will come from 20% of its population. That 20% will be fueled by cities that have invested in knowledge-based sectors who can attract the best and most connected young creators, scientists, engineers, artists, and entrepreneurs. Call this the entrepreneur economy.

This is the reason why Edmonton needs entrepreneurs. Creative entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurs. Tech entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs bring vision, create solutions to problems, and transform new ideas into bold new companies, new approaches in established organizations, new products, and new jobs in every industry, in every sector, profit and non-profit.

If Edmonton is going to make its mark in this new global economy, the time to act is now. This is why we’re asking you as young leaders to stand with us.

Making up over 30% of the population in the Greater Edmonton region, our generation has the purchasing power, the intellectual power and the social influence to make things happen as a connected collective today.

We created artsScene Edmonton and Startup Edmonton to connect our peers on the pillars of arts, technology and business. In only our first year, over 3,000 of you came out to connect and experience what our community had to offer. We think that’s a great success. But this was part of a bigger vision.

The Edmonton Champions Project is a new network dedicated to continually identifying and celebrating the work of visionary individuals wherever they are, in our city and around the world. It’s part of our plan to transform Edmonton into a creative and entrepreneurial hub that connects us with each other and the world.

The goal of the project is to identify, unite and support an active network of 500 “Edmonton Champions” in the next 5 years. Starting in 2011, we’ll start profiling these Edmonton Champions, sharing their passions and their projects.

Because together, we will shape Edmonton as a formidable community of champions, built to connect, do, and win in the entrepreneur economy of the future.

We invite you find out more about this exciting initiative here!

Tonight we held the second Launch Party here in Edmonton at the old Art Gallery space in Enterprise Square (you can read my recap of Launch Party 1 here). With over 200 people in attendance, awesome startups, and that signature Startup Edmonton vibe, I’d say the event was a big success!

If you haven’t already done so, I strongly recommend you check out Doug’s preview of the companies at Launch Party tonight. It’s a great rundown of what everyone is working on. Each company had a table tonight to demo their products and to chat with attendees. They also had the opportunity to make a short elevator pitch in front of the whole crowd (though due to the space configuration, I know some people couldn’t hear, sorry about that).

Here are the companies that participated tonight:

• Parade – instant online portfolios
• Fluik – iPhone game developer
• Tooq – online invoicing
• Appboy – social discovery for mobile apps
• Visimonde – virtual worlds
• Robot Rhythm – jukebox 2.0
• Smibs.tv – online television

Some of these companies you may have already heard about, such as Fluik or Smibs.tv, both of which were recently written up in the Edmonton Journal. Others, such as Robot Rhythm, have been flying under the radar but are on to something really interesting. Either way, Launch Party is a great way for these companies to showcase some of the really innovative work that is happening right here in Edmonton.

Launch Party is also a great opportunity for the companies to practice their elevator pitches. The space was a little tighter than it was at Launch Party 1, which made saying hello a necessity!

Drinks, music, and great company made the evening an enjoyable one for everybody who braved the first onslaught of winter to attend. Thanks to everyone who came out tonight to support Edmonton’s thriving tech scene.

For more on Startup Edmonton and to find out about future events, check out the website. You can also follow us on Twitter and on Facebook.

You can see the rest of my photos from the evening here.

This post originally appeared at MasterMaq’s Blog.

Tickets – http://launchparty2.eventbrite.com/
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=165957523423993&index=1
Email – info@startupedmonton.com

Startup Edmonton is holding its’ second Launch Party at the Enterprise Square Art Gallery (10230 Jasper Avenue) next Wednesday, November 17. We had the opportunity to get a sneak peak at the companies that will be launching next week at the event. We asked each company to give their “elevator pitch”. Here is what they had to say.

Parade

Photography and visual art are amazing mediums. They immediately communicate stories, share emotions and inspire ideas. But sometimes it’s hard to get your work out to an audience, especially online. The internet is a big place, and building a website can be a daunting task.

That’s where Parade comes in. We wanted to help spread the great stories and inspiring ideas, so we created an affordable product with great designs that allows you to instantly get your work online and easily manage your website, anytime anywhere… so your can spend your time doing what you do best: creating more for us to see.

Fluik

Fluik Entertainment is an Edmonton-based game developer focused on iPad and iPhone projects with broad appeal. Fluik’s games have been downloaded more than 750,000 times in the iTunes App Store in the past six months, and its recent title, Will it Fly?, reached the top 5 games in the UK, Canada, Germany and Taiwan. The company is gearing up for the launch of Airport Madness Challenge Free and has several other development projects in the pipeline.

Tooq

myTooq.com offers online invoicing that helps the zero to ten employee business track their income while issuing professional looking invoices using a no-contract monthly subscription, removing the hassles and complications of using installed DIY accounting packages.

TestFlight

TestFlight helps app developers run a better beta campaign. Developers upload their betas, testers are notified, they install the app on the fly with out connecting to iTunes. Developers can track their testers feedback and activity. Developers can spend less time helping their testers and more time building great apps.

Appboy

Appboy is a social discovery platform for mobile applications. With over 350,000 apps available for mobile devices, finding the next one you’ll use is becoming increasingly difficult. Appboy provides a platform for discovery new applications through connections with other mobile users in the community.

Visimonde

Visimonde is a virtual world designer, developer, and service provider. We specialize in the creation of online games and virtual worlds for the purposes of engaging, entertaining, and educating our players and delivering value to our partners. Our mandate is to leverage the power of online communities to connect people with people, companies with customers, teams with players, and organizations with members.

Robot Rythmn

Robot Rhythm targets restaurants/bars/shops with the aim of providing them a better selection of music and allows the customer to interact with their music. It could be thought of as a Jukebox 2.0 allowing customers to vote on music they would like to hear. We provide this information to the locations so they can better tailor their musical brand to fit the demands of their customers and staff. Music also has a heavy influence on the way a brand is perceived. With experience in both music and the hospitality industry we can help clients realize this potential.

About Launch Party:

Founded by local entrepreneurs, Launch Party Edmonton 2 isn’t your typical networking or tech event. No formal presentations, no panels. It’s all about giving you the opportunity to meet our city’s brightest entrepreneurs and developers, demo their products, and celebrate everything that our startup community has to offer. And do it in a way that’s creative and interesting, celebrating with drinks, demos, and DJs to set the mood. Creatives, entrepreneurs, investors, bloggers, consumers – all are welcome to Launch Party Edmonton!

This post originally appeared on TechVibes.

We’re excited to announce Launch Party Edmonton 2 and it’s happening on November 17, 2010 at the Enterprise Square Art Gallery!

Founded by local entrepreneurs, Launch Party Edmonton isn’t your typical networking or tech event. No formal presentations, no panels. It’s all about giving you the opportunity to meet our city’s brightest entrepreneurs and developers, demo their products, and celebrate everything that our startup community has to offer. And do it in a way that’s creative and interesting, celebrating with drinks, demos, and DJs to set the mood. Creatives, entrepreneurs, investors, bloggers, consumers – all are welcome to Launch Party Edmonton! Find out more about the event and buy your tickets here.

At the end of September we held our twelfth DemoCamp in Edmonton. We changed up the venue this time but decided to stay on the University of Alberta campus, so instead of the familiar ETLC we found ourselves at the Telus Centre. To me the vibe in the room felt different, like there was less energy, and it actually seemed like there were less people because it was a bigger room. It’s amazing how the layout of the room can have such an impact.

We had four short demos tonight, from some of the winners of the Apps4Edmonton competition:

• Eugene showed us Statistics Edmonton, which lets you easily look at demographics and other information on a map.
• Ben showed us Alertzy, which can send you a text or email notification when it is time for garbage pickup where you live!
• Mitch showed us Diner Inspect, which lets you look at health inspects for restaurants in your neighbourhood.
• Chris showed us YEG Live, which aggregates music events in Edmonton and does e-ticketing as well.

We also had five regular demos:

• Chad Smith from Hybrid Forge kicked things off by demoing TRACpac for iPhone, an iPhone application that lets users search the combined catalogue of more than 150 libraries. He also demoed an iPad app that offers the same functionality but with a different interface. The apps looked great, and I love that they use a variety of 3rd party APIs to pull in data.
• Jas Panesar showed us an app he had built for clients to deal with managing warranties. We didn’t get to see too much of it, but it seemed to have some solid workflow behind it. And certainly as a customer, making my interactions with warranties better is a good thing.
• Next up was David Nedohin and Kieron Quigley from Statusfirm. They demoed Core Catalyst, a CMS tool targeted at government, enterprise, and other large organizations. It’s actually the platform that is powering the City of Edmonton’s election webcasts.
• Fourth tonight was Joel Adria and Yuri Delanghe, university students who built Bearbook which is a Facebook app that makes it easy for students to share their timetables with other students, and to find common breaks. Joel said they were inspired by Bearscat and currently have 3700 students using the app (half of which have uploaded their schedules).
• Last but not least was Trystan Kosmynka and Colin Humber. They showed TestFlight, a beta testing management platform for developers targeting the iOS platform. It fills a big gap that Apple developers face, and does it without iTunes, cables, or jailbreaking.

You can see all the presenters on Twitter here.

Overall, I’d say my favorite demo was probably Bearbook (though I also really liked the TRACpac app that Chad showed). I think a lot of other people in the room enjoyed Bearbook as well, feeling that Joel and Yuri brought some of the old-school-DemoCamp back. And I love that Joel was more than happy to respond to questions about new features with “we wanted to keep it simple.”

I think the most popular demo was without a doubt TestFlight. I’m not an iOS developer, but a lot of people in the room were, and they seemed to be salivating at the solution that Trystan and Colin showed. I also love that they tackled a real problem, and solved a major pain point. TestFlight isn’t just cool tech, it will actually have a really positive impact on the lives of iOS app developers and their testers.

We definitely had some issues tonight. Internet connectivity was a problem, due in part to us being on the U of A campus I think. We need to get that figured out. A lot of our demos tonight used iPhones or iPads, so we made use of the camera display. It worked well enough but the constant switching of video cables did get somewhat annoying.

The after-party tonight was awesome! The entire top floor of Original Joes was packed. I’m sure some people skipped or couldn’t make the demos and just came for beer, which is fine! It was a good time.

There were a few announcements tonight:

• The next BarCamp is tentatively scheduled for October 23.
• The next Launch Party is tentatively scheduled for November 17.
• There are a bunch of other tech events coming up! I’ve got them listed at ShareEdmonton.

Stay tuned to Startup Edmonton for updates. You can see a few more photos from the evening here.

Thanks to everyone who came out tonight. See you at DemoCampEdmonton13!

This post originally appeared at MasterMaq’s Blog.

This past weekend was the first Startup Weekend in Canada, held right here in Edmonton! About 30 local developers, designers, and idea people got together at Enterprise Square for the event. As I mentioned last week, Startup Weekend’s mission is to teach entrepreneurship in a fun, interactive way. It’s also a great way to see first-hand the talent that exists in the local tech community.

The weekend got started on Friday evening with the pitches. Anyone with an idea for an application or product was invited to write it down on a flip chart. After all the ideas were collected, each one was given 60 seconds to make an elevator pitch, trying to attract people to the team. When that was done, everyone spread out and slowly but surely teams formed. In the end, six teams came together for the weekend.

For all of Saturday and most of Sunday the teams were hard at work on their ideas. There is no required deliverable at the end of Startup Weekend, but each team was working as quickly as possible to get as much done as they could in time for a demo. Startup Weekend forces teams to focus on bringing an idea to life quickly, which is an important skill to have. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but being able to execute on them is much more difficult. Starting with just the seed of an idea and less than two days later having something workable to show to others is incredibly valuable. Another great thing about Startup Weekend is that it provides an opportunity for individuals to work together, even if they had never met before. It’s amazing what can happen when two or more creative people get talking.

As the teams put the final touches on their prototypes on Sunday evening, members of the local tech community started to arrive. The final part of Startup Weekend was the demo, giving teams a chance to show off what they had worked on for the last two days.

Here’s what was built at Startup Weekend Edmonton:

• HomeCricket, an iPhone application that utilizes Open Data from the City of Edmonton to help you find a house. It shows you assessment information, as well as the nearest police stations, schools, parks, and more.
• Life Radar, a to-do application for the iPad that uses a points system to motivate you to get things done. Neat app, especially when you consider that no one on the team had ever built an iPad app before!
• RightPath, a web-based Q & A style app that connects high school students with mentors from the business world. Students ask questions about careers, mentors answer.
• PaxImperium, a social real-time strategy game for Facebook. With no developers on the team, they focused on a detailed product pitch instead, complete with financial projections.
• GameGigs, a web-based app that connects game developers, designers, and players. It uses the Twitter API for authentication, which made for an interesting (and challenging) demo!
• Green Planet, a Facebook-based app (with an iPhone app too) that builds awareness around environmental sustainability. As you complete real-life missions (like replacing light bulbs in your house with energy efficient ones) your virtual planet benefits.

I’m really amazed at what was created in such a short amount of time! The apps were all polished and well-thought out, and while there were some bugs in the demos as expected, every team completed enough to clearly convey their idea. Many of the ideas changed quite a bit from the original pitch on Friday, and it would be interesting to see how they’d change even more if the teams continued working on them. With the Apps4Edmonton competition now underway, I suspect some of the teams may do just that.

There are loose plans for another Startup Weekend in Edmonton, tentatively scheduled for the fall. Stay tuned here and on Twitter for updates. You can see the rest of my photos from Startup Weekend here.

Congratulations to all the participants for a very fun and successful weekend!

This post originally appeared at MasterMaq’s Blog.