Hosted in partnership with the C100, A100, Startup Calgary, Startup Edmonton, TEC Edmonton and Calgary Technologies, the conference will be held on Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at the Roderick Mah Centre for Continuous Learning at Mount Royal University.

Right now, you can apply for the invite-only Entrepreneur Roundtable Sessions; a forum for selected Alberta entrepreneurs to participate in an unparalleled mentoring experience, with hands-on advice and coaching from A100 and C100 members, and invited guests. Companies will be selected by an independent panel including VCs and A100 members. Apply before Friday, May 27th. Not sure if you qualify? Application criteria are as follows:

• Alberta-based technology companies in all sectors (including cleantech, IT, life sciences). * All sectors are invited to apply, however final selections will be based on the number of available mentors for each sector. For this reason, the group will be weighted more towards IT which represents the majority of current deal flow in Alberta.
• Companies founded within 3-5 years.* Companies which have undergone a significant “restart” within that timeframe will be considered.
• Companies must have a product-based business model, and should have moved past the prototype stage.* Service based models including consulting companies are not eligible, unless they are actively transitioning to a product model.
• Private or public companies are eligible.
• Companies with high market potential and the vision of becoming a global business.
• The founder works in the startup company full-time.
• Companies which fall outside of these criteria may also be considered however the selection committee will be seeking the “wow factor”. This may include passionate management, a killer idea (but early stage), or a glowing recommendation from an advisor.

AccelerateAB will feature keynote speeches and panel discussions from top entrepreneurs, investors and thought leaders from Silicon Valley and throughout Canada. Ticket information and speakers will be announced later this month.

Edmonton’s first Startup Weekend took place last June. About 30 local developers, designers, and other creative people got together and formed six teams that built some really interesting projects. You can read my recap of our last event to get a sense of how the weekend went, but here in a nutshell is the process:

• Friday Night: Everyone shows up, we have some brief introductions, and if you have an idea you pitch it. It’s messy and fun but we then form teams out of all the ideas, and each team begins to plan and prepare for the rest of the weekend.
• Saturday: Teams dive into building their project. Breaking it up into tasks and time management are key. Throughout the day there are lunch and dinner breaks with speakers talking about startup-related topics.
• Sunday: It’s crunch time! Teams finish up their projects so that they can demo it in the evening. Around 6pm, all the work stops and the wider community gets to see what each team accomplished over the weekend.

Cam is going to cover all of that in more detail on the Friday evening as well. It’s a short amount of time, which is part of why it is so exciting!

One of the questions that people ask a lot is if Startup Weekend is only for programmers. The answer is no! In fact, teams need individuals with all kinds of skills to be successful. Anyone can have an idea and help flesh that out into a project. Artists and designers can help with the look and feel. Business people can help with the pitch or maybe even work on a business plan. Storytellers can help make the project compelling to customers. Of course someone needs to test the project out. I’m sure you can think of dozens of others skills that could be brought to the table. The most successful companies need more than just programmers!

There are Startup Weekend events happening all over the world. In fact, there are going to be 150 this year alone! If you’re unsure about the event, check out the Startup Weekend blog and read through some of the stories from other places. It’s really amazing what has been created, not to mention all of the relationships and other great things that have been formed as a result. Innovative ideas like Planely, which aims to make it possible to use the “lost” time we spend on airplanes to network and make friends. Also be sure to check out My Edmonton which was created at Edmonton’s first Startup Weekend has since grown and evolved into a really useful app!

Edmonton’s second Startup Weekend is taking place at the Computing Sciences Centre on the University of Alberta campus. Tickets are $99, but if you purchase yours today or tomorrow, it’s just $65. That includes food for the weekend and a Startup Weekend t-shirt. It’s a heck of a deal. You can see the event listing and other information on ShareEdmonton.

Stay tuned to Startup Edmonton (and on Twitter) for updates. We’ll be using the hashtag #SWEdmonton if you’d like to follow along on Twitter.

I hope to see you there!

Date: Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Time: 6:30pm (and drinks/networking afterward)
Location: Telus Centre 150, University of Alberta (map)
Cost: Free – sign up
See the event on ShareEdmonton or on Facebook.

The rules for DemoCamp are simple: ten minutes to demo real, working software, followed by a few minutes for questions. No slides allowed. You can read my recap of our last DemoCamp here (the archive of recaps is here).

If you can’t make it on Wednesday, follow along online using the #democampyeg hashtag. Stay tuned to Startup Edmonton for more technology and startup events.

See you Wednesday evening!

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!

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

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.

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.