OCE Discovery + Special DemoCamp + One Day Pass

Editor’s Note: This post is written by Paul Vice. Paul works the OCE team to enable special projects. This includes community outreach with groups like StartupNorth and DemoCamp. OCE has been a proud sponsor of DemoCamp and other StartupNorth events for the last 4 years. We’ve written about OCE Discovery in the past and the support that OCE has offered local startups like Bumptop, Verold, and others is unparalleled. We are excited to be able to offer StartupNorth readers access to OCE Discovery 11 » see below for details about ticketing. – David

The Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) has teamed up with the StartupNorth team to present a special DemoCamp on May 19th at 3:30pm at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre as part of the Discovery 11 conference. It is a chance to put DemoCamp in front of a different audience, drawing all the Discovery attendees. In 2010 we had a standing room only crowd. We have space for 300+ this year.

Discovery is the annual showcase of the best of innovations in Ontario hosted by OCE. Recently named Canada’s Best Trade Show 2010, Discovery has become the premier innovation and commercialization showcase in Canada with over 2500 attendees & over 300 exhibitors.

Some of the highlights of Discovery this year:

Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and author of Sketching User Experiences is the keynote speaker on the morning of May 19
A hot panel on the direction of mobile app development in Canada, moderated by Kunal Gupta, CEO and Founder of Polar Mobile.
A full track on Stereoscopic 3D technology including S3D gaming development
Indra Laksono from Toronto’s own ViXS Systems on the future of digital technology in the home. (btw, ViXS is a very cool company, check them out.)
The return of the Elevator Pitch competition – Dejero Labs and Gridcentric were past award winners.

Check out the full agenda.

DemoCamp at Discovery

Moderated by David Crow (@davidcrow), with guest speaker Anand Agarwala from Bumptop (now at Google) kicks things off with a unique “Art of the Hustle” (Street Smarts for the Startup World) presentation, followed by a showcase of 5 unique selected startups to pitch in front of an audience of over 300 participants, including panel members:

Scott Pelton (@spelton) from GrowthWorks,
April Dunford, (@aprildunford) Founder and Principal Consultant, Rocket Launch Marketing
Leila Boujnane (@leilaboujnane), Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Idee
Anand Agarawala (@anandx), Product Manager, Android System UI, Google

Discovery is not the usual DemoCamp venue. But, we are looking to accomplish 2 goals:

Put some interesting, exciting new DemoCamp start-ups in front of an new audience; and,
Put DemoCamp in front of that new audience and inspire some of them to join future DemoCamps

Want to demo?

We are looking for up to 5 startups or entrepreneurs to demo a new technology. Selected presenters get 5 minutes to show us the best of their application and then ask the audience for feedback, coaching, and insight from a highly connected, if occasionally cynical, crowd. You get market advice, technology advice, and pitch advice and the opportunity to deal with the hecklers.

Apply to Demo

Want join the audience, offer advice, heckle and get to explore the full conference floor?

Discovery is a full conference and trade show at the MTCC with all the typical costs and overheads. We run it on a cost recovery basis with a lot of very generous help from sponsors, but costs are a lot more than your typical Democamp.

But, we want you there. You can join us at DemoCamp and visit Discovery with a one day pass May 19 for $250 if you use the promotion code DC250 when you register. (The full price for the 2 days is $895, $75 for students with ID.)

Meet The Woz

Ontario Centres of Excellence are hosting their innovation-to-commercialization conference again in Toronto. The OCE Discovery 10 conference is happening May 17-18, 2010 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. They have a history of bringing great keynote speakers including Clayton Christiansen, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Sir Terry Matthews. 2010 is no different, the OCE team is bringing Steve Wozniak to Toronto.

Sure we know Steve from the Apple I and Apple II computers. You might even know him from Dancing with the Stars. You probably didn’t know that the Gipper awarded him the National Medal of Technology, the highest honor bestowed America’s leading innovators, in 1986. And Steve Wozniak is still working on new technology. He’s a the chief scientist at Fusion-io working flash-based memory architectures for storage. He’s on a member of the board for member of the board of directors for Jacent, a developer of cost-effective telephony solutions, Danger, Inc., developer of an end-to-end wireless Internet platform, Ripcord Networks and others.

He’s an engineers engineer and knows a thing or two about tech startups. He’ll be at OCE Discovery from 2:00pm – 3:30pm and this includes a book signing opportunity (Mac nerds rejoice, even more impressive if you have an Apple I or Apple II to get signed).

“Every engineer—and certainly every engineering student—should read this book. It is about the thrill of invention, the process of making the world a better place, and the purity of entrepreneurship. I, Woz is the personal computer generation’s version of The Soul of a New Machine. It is, in a nutshell, the engineer’s manifesto. I hope that the so-called “innovation experts” and MBAs choke when they read it.” – Guy Kawasaki

The rest of the OCE Discovery 10 schedule is packed full of startups, policy makers, innovators, academics. We’ll be hosting a DemoCamp, while not currently as cool as the “Ontario’s Next Top Young Entrepreneur Start-up Pitch” happening on Monday, May 17 which will give grant the winning startup a “non-recourse micro-loan of up to $18,000 ($6,000 per team member) to launch a new start up, have access to advisory services and have the opportunity to network with key mentors and private investors”. It is a great opportunity for local startups to demo their wares and do demand generation with local investors, government agencies and businesses.

We’ll be doing a bunch of work to clarify what type of startups can maximize the value from presenting and start accepting nominations for demos in the next couple of weeks. What DemoCamp for details.

Discovery DemoCamp
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 3:15pm-4:15pm EDT
Inspired by Toronto’s Tech community, see showcase technologies presented in 5-minute demos by some of the communities hottest inspiring web, mobile and social media startups.

OCE Elevator Pitch contest at Discovery 09

The Ontario Centres for Excellence is hosting an Elevator Pitch contest on May 12, 2009 at Discovery 09 event. First place prize is Cdn$5000 and second place is Cdn$2000. Not shabby for a 700 word entry.

Step into OCE’s Elevator Pitch contest – 12 May 2009
Metro Convention Centre, Toronto

Venture capitalists and angel investors can spot a good business pitch in roughly the time it takes to ride an elevator. Test your pitch by getting in on the Elevator Pitch at Discovery 09. Go one-on-one, face-to-face with leading VCs and angel investors and deliver a compelling overview of your tech-based business idea in five minutes or less. Capture their attention, advice, and a chance to win cash prizes for best pitch.

To enter, visit www.ocediscovery.com/elevatorpitch2009.aspx.

Startups need to submit a 700 word maximum submission that covers the following:

Describe the product or service and its underlying technology
What is the market need – what is the value proposition to your intended customers?
What is the sustainable competitive advantage of your product or service?
Describe the market and market size.
What is your market entry strategy?

Submissions are due by April 16, 2009.