Win a Ticket to GrowConf 2012

We at StartupNorth are huge Grow Conference fans. We’ve been lucky to be involved since it’s inception in 2010. There are great industry events around the globe (think Mesh in Toronto, ad:tech in SF and NYC, OSCON in Portland, Dreamforce in SF, SxSW in Austin, etc.) there are only a few events aimed at enabling Canadian emerging technology companies (Grow, StartupFest, CIX). It’s not to say there aren’t events focused on emerging technology entrepreneurs: Under the Radar, Launch, Disrupt, Demo. It is the focus on empowering and enabling Canadian entrepreneurs that make Grow special.

As part of this we’re working with Debbie, Clare and the Dealmaker team to give away a ticket to Grow Conference and a Nokia 800 phone.

If you want a shot at winning the phone and a free ticket to GROW2012 on August 23rd, all you have to do is the following:

Follow @startupnorth on Twitter
Follow @GROWConf on Twitter
Tweet #GrowNokia this post (including the hashtag #GROWNokia)

This contest starts now and ends August 13th at 3pm PT.

Winners will be notified via Twitter on August 13th at 5pm PT. Your ticket and Nokia 800 will be waiting for you when you arrive at the registration table at GROW 2012. Good luck! (*You must be in attendance to get the phone, will not ship).

The GROW Conference is one of North America’s leading technology conferences and is the place to meet your future business partners, investors, and mentors. This year’s speakers include Cheezburger Network, Box.net, Modcloth, Zendesk, and more speaking about how they’re keeping up and staying relevant in a new era.

If you don’t win, we have a $100 discount using the promo code: SN when registering for Grow.

Atoms are the new bits

Today seems to be an Upverter kind of day, don’t believe me. Check out Zak’s post on the Toronto startup ecosystem.

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Hardware startups are back with a vengeance. Thomas Tunguz (LinkedIn, @ttunguz) of Redpoint Ventures talks about his investments in hardware startups Sonos and Electric Imp. There are new set top boxes, watches, game controllers and entire communities around making and sharing. The rise of the Internet of things, sensors, and open hardware platforms like Raspberry Pi, Arduino and BugLabs are making it easier for activists, hackers and organizations to design, build, distribute and monetize hardware projects.

We are lucky in Toronto to have HackLab.TO, Upverter, Media Lab Toronto, Site3 and others working on cool hardware based projects. Are you interested in learning about building hardware projects? Curious at designing, testing and building a hardware project?

The Upverter team and a bunch of other from around the GTA are hosting a hardware hackathon August 10-12, 2012 at the Mozilla Opensource Space. All you need is an interest in physical prototyping and a laptop (go crazy if you want to try to do circuit board layout on a mobile phone or tablet).

Should be an awesome time.

Founder Fuel Jam Session in TO

Nothing like the last minute planning around here. Ian Jeffrey (LinkedIn, @ianmtl) from FounderFuel is planning on being in Toronto today (June 27, 2011) and tomorrow (June 28, 2011). He is planning on meeting with startups and founders to share his experiences launching FounderFuel, the mentorship and incubation/acceleration plan for participating startups and to talk about tech startups generally. If you are interested in talking with one of the emerging technology company incubators/accelerators you should come and talk to Ian and learn about what is being offered in Montreal. There is a lot of choice in the marketplace for entrepreneurs, and the best way to see the differences are to connect with the people behind the scenes like Ian and the FounderFuel team. This is a great way to evaluate the program, get introduced to the people, and connect.

FounderFuel Jam Session

Date:

June 28, 2011

Time:

7 PM EDT – Presentation & Overview
8 PM EDT – Startup 1-on-1s and discussion

Location:

Camaraderie Coworking, 102 Adelaide Street East, Toronto, ON, Canada [map]

Register to attend:

From the looks of Alexa Clark’s (@alexaclark) photo exposition at Camaraderie, it is a great space to host a startup. I know that Matt (@mattskilly) and Aron (@defrex) at Hipsell have their startup offices there. It is a great space for startups requiring a great work space, a central location, and the benefits of an enabled coworking culture.