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imackon Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)

The 'distinct lack of technical people' is what worries me the most. But I like to think a lot are just tied up in the video game industry. There are a lot of post-secondary institutions around with solid CS programs and it isn't hard to convince someone to move here. (worked on me)

As for the hoards of MBA's, I've seen a couple startups run by muggles who just contract out the initial coding (Bootup labs sponsored included) then look for a tech lead much later, if at all. There are also odd things like local democamps where the "no powerpoint" rule is cast aside and few of the speakers actually have software to demo. To their credit, a thinking ape was at the last democamp with a demo, unlike the act that went up after them: guys pitching a TV show about iPhone apps.

imackon Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)

I think you might as well be asking about favourite hockey teams. I moved from the Greater Toronto Area to Vancouver for a startup and find the areas comparable, and I know a handful of my classmates out here. I found Toronto had a lot of small 10 year old companies masquerading as startups. "Startup Atmosphere!!!!"

imackon Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)

I really want to attend this but why does it have to happen on the thanksgiving long weekend? Or is that intentional since there will be a buffer day between this and the normal work week?

imackon Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)

Hootsuite is becoming a bit of a success story. Bootup Labs will have another intake in the new year, so we'll see what happens with that.

"Plug and Play Tech Center" is opening an incubator here, and the Grow Conference happened over the summer at the new conference centre which housed the media during the Olympics.

Still plenty of dopey heavily-government-subsidized green tech, but I have hope for the future.

imackon My coffeehouse nightmare

I use the library a lot, but in a weird way I actually find it quieter in a coffee shop. Libraries are mostly quiet, but the one group of gossiping people pretending to study becomes that much more annoying since you can make out every word. Background noise in a coffee shop is more ambient and generally constant. I also don't get outraged when I hear someone speaking since they aren't breaking a rule or making me think they never saw the episode of sesame street where kids learn to be quiet in the library.

imackon Wakemate: Nearly Final Update

http://mdlabs.se/sleepcycle/

Similar idea, except uses the accelerometer in the iPhone itself.

imackon Chris Dixon: Things I'd do if I ran a big VC firm

I find the tips relating to "VC as Staffing Agency" the most interesting. I wonder if this stems more from the NYC startup issue of competing with wall street for talent. If the focus is working for a portfolio company of [X], rather than startup [Y], it gives some brand cover for recruiting. It also allows startups to pool resources for recruiting by sending one recruiter to schools for the portfolio rather than each startup having to spare an employee for a few days to give a canned talk.

imackon Four Minutes in the Morning

When I was in my last year of school and attending a bunch of recruiting events there was one CEO from a mid-sized consultancy who impressed us all by taking a call from his wife in the middle of his presentation in front of couple hundred students. He'd get the whole group to say hi to her and then said he'd phone her back, hang up, and continue with his presentation. Gave a good sense for the work/life balance.

Of course, we then heard that every term he gives that recruiting talk and every time his wife calls right in the middle...

I kind of became enamoured with his evil genius ways.

imackon PG Got Twitter So I Made Hacker News For Tweets

The idea of counting favourites or retweets is actually the idea I was working against. I've always figured that makes it easy to find already easy to find tweets. To say nothing of "retweeted alot" != "funny", even if its from a comedian feed.

I would assume tweetmeme flag comedian feeds and counts retweet links.

I believe there are list sites, but the focus is on the feed rather than the tweet.

imackon PG Got Twitter So I Made Hacker News For Tweets

I'm trying the "digg for tweets" thing (http://laughlitm.us), its hard to gain traction because its hard to get a viral loop going without needlessly injecting the site into retweets. I am happy with how people can submit though.

imackon Canadian Startups kick ass

I have to say that I also have never encountered this (aside from my mom who prefers I work for companies she's heard of so she can tell her friends, but that's not common).

I've seen people treat founders the way you would a 12 year-old with a science fair project, but never in a negative way.

imackon Canadian Startups kick ass

"Government grants and funds prop up a large percentage of Canadian startups for the 5 years or so that they manage to survive."

I used to work for one of these. Being greentech is a great way to have a the government be your VC. I remember one of the "signs to leave" was when the CEO popped a champagne cork when we got a couple million in funding from the feds.

The best part was that the CEO used to be senior aide to an environment minister. He popped a champagne cork because he best navigated the bureaucracy he helped setup.

Any company that can get those funds can usually also get some kind of private funding, but why bother when the feds won't ask for equity? It really distorts things though, as VCs care about your company making money, whereas the government cares about you hiring as many people as possible.

imackon Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea

A slight addendum to this, show this list to someone you know who isn't a techie. I mailed this list to my parents and was amazed at what their problems were in many of these fields.

I've always figured that people outside the 18-35 male geek demographic have itches that need scratching that we can't even imagine.

imackon The student loan crisis will dwarf the housing market crash.

I doubt the banks would give a loan to someone with no assets who could discharge the loan with little trouble 4 years later. In all likelihood, banks would require co-signing of loans with parents.

While this would definitely limit access to post secondary education, it might also have the benefit of causing people to a more honest evaluation of their education options.

imackon The Web is Like Canada

I read the first couple of paragraphs thinking that this was an op-ed by the former Prime Minister. It wasn't until I came across the word "apeshit" that I began to wonder.

imackon Remember the movie Startup.com? WSJ interviews the co-stars a decade later

At the last startup I worked at we had a movie night where we watched this. A non-programmer PM was, at the time, pressuring us to hire more developers by loosening our standards to get more bodies working on features. There's a great line in the movie where one of the managers basically says the product isn't coming along because it's not like they have a bunch of genius programmers to work with. I shot over a smirk to the PM after this line and I didn't hear too many more about hiring low skill in bulk.

imackon Layerboom acquired by Joyent

I have concerns (as a Vancouverite) about the ability to attract talent, and the general way business has been handled in general. Vancouver salaries are notoriously low given the very high cost of living. I've also brushed up against a "Hire people from BC first" attitude from several people in the tech sector. I don't think it's a show stopper, but it doesn't help.

imackon Just Do It: Move to Silicon Valley

The smallish town was/is Waterloo. The RIM HQ is close enough to the University of Waterloo campus that the two entities have sold buildings to one another. In a speech he gave once I heard him draw the analogy about putting the refinery right next to the well. He also had this interesting bit about how it was more important that the "RIM" logo on the building be more visible from the campus than the street.

Most places have to convince talent to stay whereas the Valley has it come to them, I can see it being an easier battle.

imackon This is my Twitter algorithm. What's yours?

I also go by the followers/follow > 1, but for N>500. If a friend of mine follows 100 people but only has 50 followers, I give them a pass. I'll flat out block someone if it's clearly a "social media expert" with follows close to followers over 1000. It's pretty clear that they aren't really following anyone and will unfollow me in 48 hours if I don't help pad their stats.

imackon Ask HN: What should I learn?

I'd suggest find something you want to make before the specific technology to use it. Think of something you want to make (web app, something for iphone, whatever) then figure out the best tools to make it. It will make the scope of "what to learn" to be a lot narrower and allows you to do some analysis about what to use that's tethered to something real. It would be nice if your project was "something people want", but the key thing is that you find it interesting enough that you have a lot of intrinsic motivation to work on it.

In my case, I didn't make my latest side-project (http://laughlitm.us) because I wanted to learn Rails and the Twitter API, I wanted to make something for my friends and I to share funny tweets. From there, questions weren't "what should I learn?", they were more "what framework can I use to get this up and running the fastest?" and "what DB or cache should I use to store this specific data type?". I learned a lot doing it and it never once felt like work. I also had a lot more to show for it than doing a bunch of examples from a "learning rails" book.

imackon Show HN: Funny Tweet Ranking Site, laughlitm.us

Thanks a lot for the feedback, I definitely get the sense that the forced comparison wasn't as great. I thought it was novel and had two big advantages: first, that it really mean you couldn't spam the voting mechanism to get your favorite up there, and second, I could just store the rating in the DB rather than a list of who has voted for what; it was a lot simpler.

However, I've heard from enough people that the experience wasn't great and the stats back it up. Up or down it is.

imackon SAP to Buy Sybase for $5.25 Billion

This makes sense given that MySQL is a property of Oracle now. SAP likely wants their own database in order to not be dependent.

imackon Twitter bug: Make anyone follow you on Twitter

I've often wondered how much influence one really gains doing the follow/unfollow method. I mean, I suspect most of these types are just "social media coaches" following other "social media coaches". I suspect most accounts that have roughly the same number of followers and following above 500 are like this. I'd be interested in seeing a CTR for links published like this (though, not so interested that I'd do this scummy thing). Really if you're following over a thousand people, are you really paying attention to any?

imackon Academia and the decline of wealth in America

When I was wrapping up my Master's and various professors were trying to convince me to stay for a PhD (CS), I definitely sensed them having this point of view.

I don't necessarily think that profs will see someone going to industry as a failure, but it is a loss. If someone a prof supervises goes on to a tenure track position, they become a long-term colleague and demonstrates the influence they have on Academia. A portfolio of grad students who went on to be captains of industry isn't as academically sexy as ones who all have long publication lists.

imackon Half the people in human history who reached the age of 65 are alive now.

You would see political gridlock over pension/social security programs cutting back on anything, health care becoming an entitlement program, a casual disregard for running up debts that future generations have to pay, and education costs drastically out-pacing inflation.

imackon Ask HN: From what countries do people use HN beside USA?

Ditto Canada. In Vancouver after spending undergrad and master's at Waterloo.

imackon Would You Pay a Girl to Play Halo With You?

I'd like to think that there isn't much overlap between hackers and pimps.

Although this seems to be more akin to one of those "hot caddy" services than a sex-chat line.

imackon Canadian Credit Bubble In Pictures

For "c", I think it would be interesting to compare it against housing prices.

imackon Visas for Foreign Entrepreneurs

I don't think Vancouver is worse than Seattle in terms of "druggies and street crime", it's just more concentrated and visible. Given the warm climate and concentration of social services, it's a bit of a magnet for transients from all over Canada.

Aside from that, I think you can attribute a lot of the differences to the simple fact that Vancouver doesn't have any highways going through it or anywhere near the downtown core.

I prefer it to San Fran, but given the 4 degree(C) weather with rain today, I can appreciate someone taking the opposing view.

imackon Visas for Foreign Entrepreneurs

As a Canadian citizen, part of me wants the "founders visa" to fail because it passing would remove a small advantage we have in a sea of disadvantages. RIM, for example, was not founded by someone born in Canada. I'm not exactly sure what makes it easier to immigrate here, it just seems easier if you have certain education.

In a similar thread, Microsoft opened a development office in Vancouver (well, outside of it) more/less because it was easier to bring offshore talent here than to Redmond. Given that it's only a 2 hour drive away, it seemed like a good example of more liberal immigration laws helping out. Although, the net effect of this seems to be that the Canadian office is really just a holding pattern for top talent who can't get an H1-B yet.