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.

Earlier this week we held the very first Launch Party Edmonton at the Matrix Hotel. It was a huge success, with over 250 entrepreneurs, investors, developers, designers, and interested people from around the city came out to celebrate our tech startup community! It was way beyond our expectations and everyone we talked to was pretty pumped to see an event like this happen in Edmonton.

It was a great time and our featured startups got plenty of love and attention during and after the event (and the kudos continue to pour in). We can’t wait to get going on the next Launch Party!

Edmonton Journal: Tech startup umbrella group shines spotlight on Edmonton (front page of the Business section!)
Global TV: News Hour Final
Edmonton Sun: The Kids Are Smart
TechVibes: Launch Party Edmonton A Huge Success
Chris LaBossiere: Edmonton’s Rockstar Tech Community
FotoJournal: Launch Party Recap
Mack Male: Recap Launch Party Edmonton
Twitter activity at #startupyeg

Some pics from the party:

Rob & Lauren from FotoJournal also put this awesome time lapse video of the evening:

A huge thanks to our event partners who generously supported this first event including Microsoft BizSpark, Venture Alberta, Cardinal Venture Partners, Robots and Pencils, Yardstick Software, Mailout Interactive, Digital Alberta and artsScene Edmonton.

Check out more photos of the event here!

Launch Party Edmonton is only one week away!

We’re proud to announce the first set of companies who’ll be featured at our inaugural event.

We sought out ten of the hottest startups in town for the first Launch Party Edmonton. Some you know, some you don’t, but all up to some exciting things in our city. Next week, you’ll get a chance to meet the founders, demo the products, and celebrate our startup community and entrepreneurs! Startups featured at Launch Party Edmonton I:

We’ll have full bios and profiles available at the event and video features on our site after Launch Party. We’re also excited to announce our lineup of event partners who have generously supported this first event including Microsoft BizSpark, Venture Alberta, Cardinal Venture Partners, Robots and Pencils, Yardstick Software, Mailout Interactive, Digital Alberta and artsScene Edmonton.

Buy your tickets today!

We’re excited to announce the next big event from Startup Edmonton. It’s called Launch Party Edmonton and it’s happening on March 3, 2010 at the Matrix Hotel!

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. Find out more about the event and buy your tickets here.

Thanks to everyone who came to our first Startup Drinks event at The Hat on December 16, presented by Startup Edmonton and Digital Alberta. We had a great turnout with about 50 or so people who came to network, eat, drink and socialize with fellow entrepreneurs and developers in the community. Good turnout too considering the weather and proximity to the holidays! Startup Drinks will become a regular event, so stay tuned for details over the coming months.