Archive for the ‘YulNews’ Category
BarCamp Montreal #3 - It rocked!
November 5th, 2007
Well, BarCamp Montreal is now over. I must say that is was a complete success. The organization was flawless thanks to everyone who participated. A special thank you goes to Simon Law, who went to bed at 5am because he had to print out the name tags. Another special thank you to Evan who woke up at 5am to make sure everyone got coffee! Great job! 
It made the registration process a lot smoother. Although it was a Montreal-based event, some people from Ottawa and Toronto joined.
Here are my thoughts on what I really liked in no particular order.
CakeMail - This thing rocks. Having tried it in the past, it’s definitively ready for prime time. I haven’t seen the Google maps / Web statistic part of it but I think it’s pure madness (in an genius way of speaking). The only thing missing is the linking of geographical data to a user. This might be a bit hard - I admit - but will be worth gold to some people, especially if users don’t enter their location in their profile (like most traditional mailing lists).
Keiki - Awesome. I’m a parent myself and although I’ve never paid for parenting books (who does?) having a centralized place for such information is great. A great plus would be to have “certified profiles” who can write special articles (i.e. doctors, pediatricians, etc.) As a parent, I often hear about many weird things and unless it comes from a doctor, I take it with a grain of salt. So something to keep an eye on!
TimmyOnTime - Too bad their demo, their backup and their rescue boat (the videos) didn’t work. The product looks very promising especially for freelancers and consultants. I suggested them to find a solution for larger companies who already use an internal system (i.e. make a plugin to put the data in Oracle). I’m not sure if they want to focus on large companies in the short term so let’s see. Guys, BarCampCanada is coming soon (March, May?) so how about a final release demo?
RefactorMyCode - This is really cool. Marc-André did a nice presentation but I thought it was a bit too short. I agree that it was a “lighting talk” but going a bit deeper would’ve been nice (especially for the geek crowd). Standout Jobs sponsors the project so this means it’s good stuff!
Sylvain Carle - I stopped counting his presentations. Was it 3 or maybe 4? Great speaker. He knows his stuff very well and he mentioned that he had to pitch 40 times in order to receive financing for Praized. Great lessons for everyone. It shows what dedication can do…! I also love his “paradox”: No competition: stupid idea, no competition: amazing idea! How about when there’s a little bit of competition? Or event a lot? Google wouldn’t be here otherwise…! Regarding Google’s mega API: I guess they had no choice. We often say: if you can’t beat them, join them. Well Google said: if you can’t beat them, control them! Sort of…
BlitzWeekend - Heri did a quick talk and managed to gain some interest from some people. Let’s hope lots of people will participate as similar events in the past (mainly Startup Weekends) were very successful. This is a must attend event! (shameless plug as I’m helping Heri organize it)
Austin Hill - No slides but what a presentation! I was very amazed to see his level of knowledge regarding Angel investing. He knows his stuff! Everone was listening. It proves that people are interested in the financial part of any business (hint to VC/angels - why don’t you come for a presentation?)
Finally, yours truly made a presentation about my own project (YulNews.com) and I’d like to take the opportunity to announce you that YulNews now has its own blog. The URL is: www.yulnews.com/blog. The purpose of the blog is to talk about the project’s progress and any social news issues. So you are officially invited to visit and participate!
Heri from MontrealTechWatch has an amazing article about the latest camp. Lots of pictures too!
All in all, BCM3 was very fun and if you haven’t showed up, you must attend the very first Canadian BarCamp. I heard some exciting rumors!
Posted in BarCampMontreal, Montreal, YulNews, barcamp, internet | Comments (4)
YulNews looking for journalists!
October 20th, 2007
YulNews.com is looking for “urban journalists” wishing to write news headlines for the community. It is also a great opportunity to try out this social news platform and provide feedback. There are some rather unique features “in the cooker” and I’d like to get feedback from urban journalists as well (yes, that means YOU!)
If you are interested, please email us (info AT yulnews.com) and we’ll get you started right away! As a reminder, YulNews will be presented during the upcoming (and very first!) Canada BarCamp on November 3rd In Montreal.
Posted in Press release, Social News, Social media, Startups, YulNews | Comments (0)
How journalists can save journalism
October 12th, 2007
Excellent article by Howard Owens regarding journalism and how the journalists can save it. I couldn’t agree more on most of his points and I think my project is right on track with his comments.
Posted in Social media, YulNews, media | Comments (0)
My BarCamp Canada presentation
October 11th, 2007
Well well… So I decided to present something at the very first BarCamp Canada. Not sure exactly what I will talk about but probably a mixture of the current state of social news and my upcoming project (YulNews).
I don’t feel quite ready to demo my project but I think this is an opportunity that simply can’t be missed… More on that when I have time to make up my mind!
Posted in Social media, Startups, YulNews, barcamp | Comments (0)
To copyright or not to copyright?
September 28th, 2007
Sylvain Carle woke me up yesterday (not literally) about copyright issues. During a discussion regarding the startup listing initiative, he brought an interesting point that my blog had a copyright on it. To be honest, I haven’t really paid any attention about this when I installed the template, which funny enough, was an open source template. I guess we could argue about why the designer used a copyright instead of a Creative Commons license but that’s not the point.
This made me think seriously about the implications of having a copyright on my site. My vision when I started this blog was to help people like me who basically had no where to turn to and to help the community grow. Sounds good and fair, no?
Quick parenthesis, I’m a fervent defender of free information. Information wants to be free. Information IS free. I’m also totally against software patents, which is basically information processed in a particular way. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t know the implications of having a copyright while some of the information on my blog is “crowdsourced”. What about comments left by users? Can I claim these as “mine”? I don’t think so. I don’t want to anyway. Is this even enforceable if I wanted to?
Copyright issue is hard and I was actually looking into different licenses for my social news startup (for obvious reasons). However, for reasons that I cannot discuss now, I couldn’t find a license that protected the users the way I wanted to while being inline with the business model that I had in mind. What I need is a mixture of Copyright, Creative Commons and a license between two entities. Information wants to be free but no one likes it when it’s stolen away from you.
Back to my blog, I decided to remove the copyright and to use the Creative Commons “Attribution Share Alike” license. It gives flexibility to the community by allowing everyone to re-use information on this blog.
So if you haven’t really thought about it, I suggest you think about it for a second and rethink the way you control your information. Thanks Sylvain for noticing this!
Posted in Blogs, QuebecValley, Social media, YulNews | Comments (0)
Are journalist blogs pointless?
September 28th, 2007
There were a couple of posts regarding whether blogs as being pointless or not. Mainly that blogs become too personal and have little value added once the journalist has done his work.
Personally, I think that blogs (not in the current form though) will take over newspapers so I think blogs are useful. I don’t even see the point of having big newspapers or media companies other than to allow journalists to receive a salary. With a decent blog business model, good journalists will flea their workplace and go digital. Good people get noticed. Some (most?) bloggers are not journalists yet they manage to attract a lot of people. Bad journalists will have to look for other jobs.
Me? I don’t have time to read the newspaper or watch the news. That being said, I think that the current “blog platform” is not efficient for news coverage. I want focused, localised content. I can’t have this right now but that’s something I’m working on slowly (shameless plug).
We’ve seen it with YouTube and Joost: big companies are starting to be nervous and updating your front page is simply not enough to survive… I know I will be telling my grand kids that “in the old days” we used to be reading our news on a piece of paper that they printed during the night which was then delivered by a paperboy. Wow, I get excited. I will have so many neat things to tell my grand kids after all!
Posted in Blogs, YulNews, media | Comments (2)
