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.

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.

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.