Roland Tanglao's Weblog

Another howler from the Globe and Mail (please hire more technology writers like Matthew Ingram who are clued in and listening rather than people like the author of this article).

The prognostication that "Web 2.0 companies cost too much to be profitable in Canada" will turn out to be just as laughable as the 1990s predictions of Apple's demise. The whole point of Web 2.0 (the read write web or whatever you want to call it) especially with affordable infrastructure like Amazon S3 and EC2 is that anybody with a great idea and great implementation skills can build a web service anywhere in the world (not just in Silicon Valley) that is useful and scalable. Not convinced? Some Canadian examples: flickr (which was reportedly profitable before being acquired by Yahoo), dabble db, bubbleshare just to name a few.

FROM globeandmail.com : Quick out of the gate, with best days still ahead:

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"You'll notice that there are no Web 2.0 companies on the list -- they just cost too much to be profitable in this country," Mr. Behr said. "We're not looking for something you'll see on the Internet, instead we're looking for applications that make what you see work better."

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Traditional doesn't mean bad though (and props to Mark Evans, Matthew Ingram, Michael McDerment, and Stuart MacDonald for taking the time to organize this; I know how hard this is to do in 12 months like we do for Northern Voice let alone 3 months like they are doing). I really enjoyed the "traditional" part of the Northern Voice blogging conference (why? just two of many reasons: Nancy White and Julie Leung) in Vancouver both in 2005 and in 2006. But I gotta admit, after helping organize unconferences like Northern Voice Moosecamp 2006 and BarCamp Amsterdam, as well as more traditional conferences like Northern Voice and the Open Source Content Management System and Blog Tool Summit, my sympathies are with the unconferences.

A plea for somebody in Toronto: organize a Bar Camp Toronto (should be easy given the success of TorCamp and DemoCamp4, maybe call it CanadaCamp and encourage people from Vancouver and the East Coast to converge in Toronto; I wish I had time to help organize this but other than throwing out crazy ideas I don't!) before or after the Toronto Web 2.0 conference at a place with lots of rooms, central location and good WiFi and convince some West Coast people like the following to lead sessions (the following short list off the top of my head shows omits many cool folks apologies in advance):

• Boris Mann - one my Bryght partners - could lead sessions on starting and running an open source company, open source product development and evangelism since he is Drupal evangelist #1 in my book. Boris could also be a session leader on Jabber, VoIP and web application platforms.
• Avi Bryant and Andrew Catton of Dabble DB could lead a session on Smalltalk and why it's relevant to Web 2.0 as well as why doing things differently makes sense
• Dave Sifry (not a Vancouverite person yay!) could do a leadership "hack" session - the one at Moosecamp was fantastic from what I could tell
• Paul Kedrosky (a sometime Vancouverite) could talk about On why you may not need Venture Capital for your startup, just do it with your own money!
• Alexandra Samuel on what tech companies can learn from non profits and activist organizations.
• Dick Hardt or one of his sxip folks could lead a session on Identity 2.0 what it is, why we need it. Dick also knows a tonne about running an open source startup!

From Stuart MacDonald | eBusiness and Marketing Geek.:

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Our Web 2.0 Toronto Conference date and location are set. Mark May 8 and 9, 2006 at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto in your calendar. The keynotes and panels are shaping up nicely, and we will have a site up by mid-March with all the details.

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