Jerry King just posted a polemic essay disguised as a blog comment setting out his thoughts on Toronto’s most recent DemoCamp. Snippet:

Here are two propositions. The first is that Tuesday evening’s presenters at BarCamp reflect a breadth of fresh air, the ushering in of a more democratic and a more cost effective way (e.g. Open Source) to explore their pet projects. And in exploring their pet projects, the presenters self-actualize and that’s good enough for society at large.

The second proposition is that the presenters were symptomatic of something more troubling–a Canadian tertiary educational system which, with the noticeable exception of the U. of Waterloo, continues to pump “technologists” into the workforce.

Yow! His post is unstintingly provocative and deserves further discussion, which is why I’m calling attention to it here.

As a gross simplification I’d say Jerry likes DemoCamp as a “place to start”, but he wants the local tech community to get much more hardcore about grooming our future entrepreneurs. Give it a read and add your own comments to the original post — this one needs more angles.And Jerry, get your blog set up already!

I attended TorCampDemoCamp 4.0 last night. Nice crowd… well over 100 people in the room, lots of energy, fun demos and some smart constructive questions asked. I enjoyed reconnecting with a few familiar faces and meeting new people. Thanks David Crow and the demoers for putting together a valuable evening.

Continue reading →

Mark Evans writes in “Web 2.0: Post-Newsweek Thoughts”,

Me: “So what’s Kijiji’s business model? How does it make money?”
Them: “We don’t have a business model. Everything on the site is free.”
Me: “Oh, then I guess Kijiji is a real Web 2.0 company.”
For months, I’ve been ranting about how the lack of viable business models within all these cool Web 2.0 services/applications is a huge and troubling problem. How can you create a business if the service is given away free?

It is odd, but it makes more sense when you look at the company ownership. eBay owns 25% of Craigslist, and wholly owns Kijiji. eBay is not in the same class as the so-called Web 2.0 companies. Very different motivations and much deeper pockets. Continue reading →