Social Intranet Summit Vancouver

One of my favorite startups in the last few years has been ThoughtFarmer. Every few weeks I check in on them and think “Microsoft hasn’t bought them yet?”. ThoughtFarmer’s social intranet is easily the most polished out-of-the-box experiences in the Social Business Software world right now. They have decided to put on a conference in Vancouver, which is coming up very soon. There are a few spots left and we were able to get a discount code that will give you $100 off, even this close to the event.

Conference speakers include Dion Hinchcliffe, Enterprise 2.0 blogger for ZDNet and Senior Vice President for my old company Dachis Group; Stewart Mader, noted wiki expert ; Andy Jankowski, Director of Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF) North America; Bert Sandie, Director of Technical Excellence at EA; and Dan Pontefract, Senior Director and Head of Learning at TELUS.

You can see the full speaker list on the conference website.

**Receive a $100 discount using STARTUPNORTH as the promo code**

Oh, and check out this hilarious video to promote their newest addons for ThoughtFarmer. It is an example of low cost but effective product education and marketing by a bootstrapped startup. Steve Ballmer makes an appearance as well.

Open House at Bootup Labs

Jevon, Jonas and I are all heading to Vancouver for Grow Conference happening Aug 19-21, 2010. But I’m hear in Vancouver hanging out at Bootup Labs.

Bootup Labs is holding open office hours this week. Basically if you’re a startup and you’re in Vancouver and you want need some touchdown space, you should visit Bootup Labs.

Bootup Labs
163 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC

Hanging out in the middle of Bootup Labs

This is a fantastic place. There is a fantastic vibe. There seems to be real evolution and growth of Bootup Labs since the dark days. I’ve been hanging out the past day or so with:

There are a lot of companies, entrepreneurs and things to like happening at Bootup. I am really impressed with a few things.

The space – it is gorgeous. It’s the right mix of location and finish. The offices are safe, comfortable, and interactive. There’s a great mix of open working areas, private meeting rooms, a kitchen and private offices with sliding doors. The natural light. And it’s nice but not posh. As companies demonstrate traction, there is incentive to find different space, for example Dimerocker has moved out. Having Mozilla and Strutta as “anchor tenants” also reduces the risk to Bootup Labs. It also means that there’s a lot of fun interesting people flowing through.
The location – it is right on the edge of Gastown. There is a great mix of restaurants and other things going on. I had breakfast at the Medina Cafe just around the corner from the office (best breakfast I’ve ever had). There’s the Fluevog store. It’s a great neighbourhood that has come a long way since I first visited Bryght in 2005.
The companies – all of these companies and the entrepreneurs working there are pushing really hard and demonstrating traction. There are exits, see Layerboom acquired by Joyent. And there are a lot of good things happening.

My recommendation is that if you’re in Vancouver you come hang out at Bootup Labs with us. Ping me @davidcrow or @startupnorth or just drop by 163 West Hastings St in Vancouver. I’ll be here until August 20.

Twitter acquires Smallthought (the dabbleDB people)

Twitter announced today that they are acquiring Smallthought, the company behind DabbleDB and Trendly.

About 4 years ago, Avi Bryant landed at Democamp 5 and blew us all away. Not only did he show off one of the sexiest apps we had seen yet, his demo set the bar for everyone that came after.

This does not seem to be a large acquisition by any stretch, and neither side is playing it up as such, but it is a well deserved kudos to Avi and the team for what they have built.

It is hard to argue: For Canada: it sucks. More of our top talent going south and disappearing from the Canadian scene.

Those days are over however, with the C100 and an increasingly healthy startup community here in Canada, there will be many opportunities for the Avi’s of our community to contribute back, and perhaps return some day better than ever.