University Of Waterloo – Page 2

September 20, 2010October 31, 2020

Marshmallow-centred design

Last week I had the good fortune to facilitate not one, but two Marshmallow Challenge events. Briefly, the Marshmallow Challenge has the deceptively simple goal of building a tower using spaghetti, masking tape, and string, that will hold a marshmallow highest above a table top. Of course the lessons learned and the experience of building the tower, rather than just reading about it, are revealing and meaningful. The two big ones are to question your assumptions and to prototype early and often to learn as much as possible.

The first event, on Thursday, was the September meeting of uxWaterloo. The competition was close, and the teams all had a great time. After declaring a winner, we watched a video of a TED talk about the Marshmallow Challenge. That was really just a starting point for some enlightening discussion about the experience of building towers and about the ideas explored in the video. My favourite moment of the night was the realization that when designing for user experience, the user isn’t a marshmallow that can be plopped on at the end. Tower-builders that take that approach rarely succeed, and a user interface that doesn’t involve users early in the design process will often fail as well.

The second event, on Friday, was at VeloCity residence at the University of Waterloo. Having experienced the uxWaterloo event, I knew that VeloCity should go well, but I was still taken aback by the large number of students and by the enthusiasm and positive energy in the room. The event structure was the same as for the previous night, and the students dived in and seemed to have a great time with the challenge. Needless to say, I had a fine time as well, and enjoyed the conversations immensely. A major bonus for me was that Dan and PJ from tinyHippos were their as well, their young family in tow, to talk about what’s important in building software products at a startup.

Thanks for the invitation, Jesse.

January 18, 2010November 1, 2020

Primal Fusion a hit at EpCon

In my earlier post about January events, I forgot to mention EpCon, organized by and for students from the University of Waterloo and which ran this past Friday and Saturday. Primal Fusion was one of the companies that participated, and I was lucky enough to spend some time at the conference.

I started off late Friday afternoon when I joined three of my colleagues at a booth where we evangelized Primal Fusion to interested visitors. And there were a large number of interested visitors. In a room that featured representation from giants like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, it was gratifying to see how many folks were interested in what we’re doing. Many of them were also interested in joining us for a co-op work term.

On Saturday morning, Primal Fusion founder Peter Sweeney gave a talk in a session that was, again, well-attended. The engaged and enthusiastic audience seemed genuinely interested in hearing Peter’s ideas about the industrialization of the Web. At the end, he gave a demonstration of a Website Generator, which is currently in Primal Labs (and which I had shown in an earlier form at StartupCampWaterloo last fall). The demonstration was well-received and, despite having a time slot right before lunch, many folks from the audience wanted to chat with Peter after his talk. It was, by any measure, a fine morning.

EpCon looks like it was a great success. Congratulations to the organizers for a job well done. EpCon was certainly well worth the visit for Primal Fusion.

December 3, 2009November 1, 2020

VeloCity, Ignite, and StartupDrinks

Yesterday was pretty busy for me outside the office. I started with a visit to the Student Life Centre at the University of Waterloo with my Primal Fusion colleague Tom Levesque, where we checked out VeloCity Start Up Day. There was quite a crowd perusing the project displays and talking with the students about their projects. I was only able to speak with a couple of students myself, as there were many others trying to do the same, but I was impressed with the turnout and interest by both the participants and the visitors.

Next up was a lunch meeting over sushi with a few of the folks who put together Ignite Wateroo. We talked about what went right (a great deal) and wrong (very little) with our first event last week. It looks like we’ll do the next event in March of next year, and we’re already looking for speaker suggestions. We don’t anticipate changing much in what turned out to be a successful approach to the event. Having said that, though, we’re curious about what others think. Let us know.

Finally, I attended the third edition of StartupDrinksWaterloo. There had to be 30 people in attendance, and the conversations were a real treat. I met a few new people as well as seeing familiar faces, and I continue to marvel at the engaged and interested people who come out to events like this. I feel like a pretty committed attendee at this point, and I’m looking forward to the next edition in January. Congratulations and thanks to Dan Silivestru for initiating the Waterloo version of this event.

July 28, 2009November 1, 2020

Six demos and a BBQ

I went to an end-of-term Demo Night at the University of Waterloo’s VeloCity Residence last night. The evening started with a nice barbecue and an opportunity to mingle and talk with students and other visitors. There was then a program of six presentations by student teams that included two complete and functioning products as well as some product concept presentations, and even a great overview on the subtleties of creating applications for the iPhone. The discussions after each presentation were engaging and instructive. At the end of the night the crowd favourites were the guys from giftah.com, who I had previously seen at StartupCampWaterloo, and who seem to have found a winning proposition in their business.

The folks who run VeloCity are building something special here.

July 22, 2009November 1, 2020

How fast can VeloCity students demo?

I’ve written previously about a presentation that I made at the University of Waterloo’s VeloCity Residence (which, by the way, led to my Ten Thoughts series of posts). VeloCity is a great idea that seems to be thriving.

For the end of their third term VeloCity is holding a Demo Night on Monday July 27. Here’s what they have planned:

As the end of our third term approaches, we’ve decided to try something a little different to showcase the projects that our VeloCity students have been working on.

We would like to invite you to join us for Demo Night at the VeloCity Residence. Drop by to listen to pitches from 6 of our teams, view demos of their projects, and interact with and provide feedback to the students. Afterwards, join us for refreshments and a BBQ to celebrate the end of the Spring term at VeloCity.

We hope that you’re able to join us in this casual celebration of the accomplishments of our Spring-term students.

Have a look here for all the details.

May 9, 2009October 31, 2020

A visit to VeloCity

Today I had the opportunity to make a presentation to students at the VeloCity residence at the University of Waterloo. If you don’t know about VeloCity, it’s worth checking out. In their words:

VeloCity is no ordinary student residence.

It’s a place where some of UW’s most talented, entrepreneurial, creative and technologically savvy students will be united under one roof to work on the future of mobile communications, web and new media.

It’s a place where students, faculty and corporate partners will be active collaborators and beneficiaries of the talent, ideas and innovations that evolve.

It’s a place where the ‘next big thing’ could happen.

My presentation was a pretty simple one – Ten Thoughts on what matters at a startup. It certainly wasn’t meant to be definitive, but it did cover the kinds of things that, in my experience, matter on a daily basis. Some of it was informed by my recent experiences at Primal Fusion. Anyway, it seemed to go over well, and I had some good conversations with a few of the students after I finished.

In the near future I’ll start a little series of posts inspired by that presentation.