54 hour build marathon, here we come! Startup Hackathon + Global Game Jam 2012 is this weekend! Rest up, because it’s going to be a fun and busy weekend of designing, brainstorming, drawing, animating, coding, building and testing! Here’s details for the weekend:

The location:

University of Alberta, Computing Science Centre, Room CSC B-02 (located in the basement of the building)

Schedule of activities:

Friday, January 27, 2012
6:30pm – Doors Open/Registration (CSC B-02)
7:00pm – Session #1: Welcome, How to have a Successful Weekend, Pitches, Creation of Teams
8:30pm – Planning your weekend
10:00pm – Wrap-up (CSC B-02)

Saturday, January 28, 2012
9:00am – Doors Open – Start Building! Bring your own coffee and we’ll provide the snacks.
12:00pm – Lunch (CSC B-02)
5:00pm – Session & Supper (CSC B-02)
6:00pm – Keep building…
9:00pm – Wrap-up (CSC B-02), head to evening excursion

Sunday, January 29, 2012
9:00am – Doors Open – Keep Building! Bring your own coffee and we’ll provide the snacks.
12:00pm – Lunch (CSC B-02)
4:00 pm – Begin to wrap up and get ready for Demo Night!
5:00pm – Supper (CSC B-02)
6:00pm – Head to Demo Night (location TBD)

Best place to park on campus:

Stadium Car Park, 116 Street & 89 Avenue

Some information to help you get ready for the weekend:

How to get the most out of Startup Hackathon + Global Game Jam
Why should I come to Startup Hackathon + Global Game Jam
A recap of the first Startup Weekend Edmonton

What you should bring:

• A laptop or tablet with wi-fi (internet will be available via the campus wi-fi network)
• Something to write on and with (notebooks, sketchbooks, pens and pencils)
• Energy drinks (for those of you not stimulated enough by Coca Cola or juice)
• Toothpicks to keep your eyes open
• Headphones if you need to focus on work
• An app or game idea (or two) to share and pitch with others

What’s new this year?

• We’re going to cap team sizes this year at 5 people (to avoid someone’s job being “content guy or girl”)
• Structured opportunities for teams/projects to keep going after the weekend
• No sleeping (just kidding, okay maybe just a couple of hours)

Special thanks to our sponsors:

Event sponsors – TEK Systems
Student sponsors – XEA Services, Quercus Solutions and Digital Alberta
Prize sponsors – BioWare, Garage Games, Unity, and Guru Digital Arts

The twitter hashtag for the weekend is #hackjamyeg and #ggj12 (for you Global Game Jammers)

If you need something, you can email us anytime over the weekend at info@startupedmonton.com.

Looking forward to seeing you this weekend!

Startup Edmonton and GameCamp Edmonton

P.S. We have a few spots left if any one you know wants to join in the fun!

Why should you come to Startup Hackathon + Global Game Jam?

Startup Hackathon + Global Game Jam isn’t just for developers and programmers, it’s for everyone that wants to turn ideas into something real. Not only is it a great way to meet other people in the community, you’ll also learn a thing or two as you make something real – in 54 hours. So, if you’re a designer, marketer, educator, or just interested in what it takes to build an app or make a game, this event is for you.

3 reasons why you should come:

1. Learn by making something
Ever had an idea for an app or game, but didn’t know how to turn it into reality? Here’s your chance to discover new skills by working alongside other creative, technical and entrepreneurial people in the community. For coders, learn a bit about design and user experience. For designers, learn about code and programming. For business types, learn about product development and what it takes turn ideas into real products.

2. Meet someone new
There’s plenty of talent throughout our community whether it’s students or seasoned industry pros. Startup Hackathon + Global Game Jam brings all those people together and creates a massive brain trust in our community from which new prototypes, products, and ultimately, startups, will come from.

3. Take the first step towards a startup
We all have ideas for the next great app, game and startup. Maybe you have a job, maybe you’re in school, and if you only had time, money, and a certain skill, you would start working on something. Here’s your chance to at least get started and take that first step towards building something great. It’s amazing what happens when you have a little bit of a constraint (like 54 hours) to make something happen.

So what are you waiting for? Get inspired and make something this weekend at Startup Hackathon + Global Game Jam!

Click here to register today!

Guest post from Collin Moody, VP & CIO at the Alberta Motor Association discussing why an enterprise organization like the AMA, is excited to partner with Startup Edmonton on the Skunkworks Program.

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A company like AMA has a unique set of challenges. Our organization has a number of large lines of business; including Insurance, Travel, Registries, Banking and of course membership & roadside assistance. Providing appropriate IT support for all of our lines of business, 900,000 members and 2200 staff is a challenge, but it is one that we have been mastering over time.

Register to participate in the Skunkworks + AMA Kick Off on Saturday, October 29th at 9am.  Check out the specific details of the Skunkworks + AMA Program.

meshwest: Edmonton is a one-day event taking place on Tuesday, October 4 focused on providing insight and stimulating conversations about media, society, marketing and business — and a place where to connect, share and be inspired. Hear from opinion leaders, entrepreneurs and experts about how the Web is impacting media, marketing, business and society. This year, meshwest features a terrific line-up of speakers including: Ali Asaria (founder and CEO, Well.ca), Ashley Casovan (City of Edmonton), Jevon MacDonald (GoInstant), Maura Rodgers (Strutta), Dups Wijayawardhana (Empire Avenue), Scott Walker (HootSuite) and Allyson Simpson (Osum Oil Sands). Check out the speakers page to get the complete line-up.

Use the code STARTUP to get a $40 discount on early bird and regular tickets today! 

For more information: http://meshwest.ca/edmonton

Grow has extended the deadline until June 30,2011 to launch at Grow.

Launch Party and Grow are a great way to get a ton of exposure for your Startup so make sure to get your applications in tomorrow for this great opportunity to launch at a Canadian Launch Party at the Grow Conference.

Launch Party is teaming up with Dealmaker Media and influencers across Canada to host Launch @ GROW(#lpgrow) on August 17th, 2011. And we are looking for 15 of the hottest Canadian tech startups from BC to NL to SHOWOFF at the opening reception. That night, FOUR startups will win the chance to pitch live on stage at the full day GROW conference on August 18, 2011.

In order to be considered, you must:

• Have launched within the past 12-18 months or plan to launch at GROW
• Be a Canadian company
• Have a demo or live site for voters and judges to view
• Startups that have previously demoed at Launch Party events can still enter Launch @ GROW
• The 4 finalists must be registered to attend GROW Conference on August 18th in order to be eligible to pitch live on stage.
• Nominate Your Startup
• Startups must upload a video, two-minutes or less with a description of their company no later than June 17. Be sure to select the Region closest to you for voting purposes.

For more information, and to apply to Launch, go to the Launch at Grow site:http://launchatgrow.strutta.com/

The Grow Conference takes place in Vancouver, BC and will provide inspiration for turning today’s entrepreneurs into tomorrow’s leaders.  Speakers will include founders of fast growing companies, leading investors and influencers that will share lessons learned.

AccelerateAB is a conference designed to bring together Alberta’s tech community and to provide an educational forum for next generation entrepreneurs to meet and interact with leading industry executives.

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.

Tonight was Edmonton’s fourteenth DemoCamp, held at the Telus Centre on the University of Alberta campus. We’re still going strong, with another excellent turnout tonight to see what local developers have been up to. And of course, the after party at Original Joes Varsity was absolutely packed. The general consensus tonight seemed to be that all of the demos were good, though a few definitely stood out.

We had five demos:

The first demo was from David Ackerman, who showed us a Mac app he has been working on for writers. You can think of the app as a word processor on steroids. The idea is that as you type, relevant photos, Wikipedia articles, and other information appear alongside your text. In the demo, David typed “Developers, Developers, Developers!” and up popped an image of Steve Ballmer. It had the ability to adjust the amount of “stuff” that was surfaced as well.

Our second demo of the evening was iRecipeBook.net. Darcy Sabatino showed us the app he has been working on that lets you store and categorize your recipes via a simple, easy-to-use web interface. He noted that the interface looks great on an iPad, so it’s ready for you to use in the kitchen. Darcy had a bunch of ideas for future improvements too, such as sharing recipes with other users.

Ryan Ramage was up next to show us Ecko-It, a liferecording platform and audio wiki with the tagline “keep what you hear”. I think it is probably safe to say that Ecko-It was the most talked about demo of the evening. Ryan got off to a bit of a slow start, with lots of explanation, but the stuff he demoed was pretty impressive. Basically you use a Liferecorder, which is a little audio recording device, to capture an audio stream of your life. At the end of the day, you’d sync that audio with the Ecko-It software for tagging and categorization. Let’s say you tagged something “DemoCamp” – you could then with a single click see all of the other audio tagged DemoCamp. I can definitely see potential in the app, but personally I think there would be too much effort required for management of the audio. All of the software, including the hardware firmware, is open source.
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