March 2nd, 2010 Community, Meetings | No Comments »
March 10th marks the club’s first anniversary. It’s been a year of learning and growth and we’ve attracted almost 15 people to meetings over the period.
There are Startup-minded people in Victoria. Between our meetings and the spontaneously scheduled Web Developer Lunch, I’d guess there are probably several dozen people working on their startup ideas around town. (Yes, there are the monthly Viatec breakfasts in Sidney also, but it draws people from more mature organizations).
Many people have expressed a desire to join us, but haven’t made it out due to family obligations, job obligations or just the early meeting time. This has me thinking that perhaps a move to a monthly “OpenBeer” meeting might be more appropriate for our town? Or, maybe we organize a regular monthly lunch somewhere?
Victoria OpenCoffee Club has a new Facebook group, please consider joining and adding your voice.
December 3rd, 2009 Meetings | No Comments »
Serious Coffee at 1280 Broad Street is back open, under new management. The back room has even returned to the great layout from last winter, with the sofas around the fire place. We’ll be there at 8am until 9:30am Tuesday December 8th.
November 8th, 2009 Meetings | No Comments »
Due to the closure of Broad Street’s Serious Coffee, we are forced to locate a new place to meet next Tuesday. I asked for feedback on Twitter for a good place to meet and absent any good/bad feelings against Blenz Coffee, we’re going to meet there, at our normal time.
The address is 1001 Douglas St., at Broughton. See you there.
August 31st, 2009 Community | No Comments »
All members of the Victoria Open Coffee Club are encouraged to create an account on this site (there should be a sign-up link to the lower right of the main home page). These accounts will be enabled with the permission to create and edit posts to the site. There are always thoughts or questions that originate at the meeting and could be explored in further detail by the attendees and community members at-large — and everyone is probably getting tired of hearing from only one voice on this site.
My thoughts are that having our own site is preferable to maintaining a community or discussion forum on Linkedin or Facebook, but I could be wrong. Should we own our community or bring it to where people hang out?
June 23rd, 2009 Meetings | 2 Comments »
This morning was our first VICOCC meeting downtown at Serious Coffee (1280 Broad Street). Piers suggests that this location used to be a restaurant named “Eugene’s” and thusly might best be referred to as “Eugene’s on Broad Street” for some of the longer residents of Victoria rather than chance someone arriving at the old, and boarded up ex-location of Serious Coffee.
As you can see from the photos, we met in the very spacious and comfortable side room. It reminds me of the back room in The Cup, where Boulder OpenCoffee Club meets — only, this room has much more comfortable furniture (yes, that is a fireplace in the corner). 
With the Iran election drama happening, we talked about twitter — specifically, how support for causes is manifested, communications philosophies, IRC vs IM user approaches, learning curves and how community can be formed and expressed.
We discussed electronic publishing — Michael noted that Amazon.com has a rather impenetrable barrier preventing non-US authors from accessing the Kindle market. The lack of access to the Kindle marketplace appears to be entirely paperwork and financial services based, and may be related to the lack of any Kindle-related attention directed outside of the US. There does seem to be an opportunity for a US-based international Kindle publishing cooperative if there isn’t already one somewhere (is there?).
Janis is one of the champions behind the local Victoria Tweetup scene, and gave us a little information on the inspiration #yyj and #victoriatweetup have found from the Edmonton tweetup groups.
We also discussed the Start-up landscape in Victoria in comparison to cities like Boulder, CO or Vancouver, BC. Technology is the number one economic development source now in Victoria. Software and Internet-related start-ups are eventually drawn towards the larger urban start-up communities of Seattle and Vancouver. There were a number of successful technology exits in recent years, and there are a lot of well known start-ups in town, but it seems exceedingly difficult to identify a formal start-up “community.”
We had two new members today:
- Sean Kane (@MrSeanKane) – an artist and illustrator who designs for product licensing, publishing, advertising and corporate clients
- Janis La Couvée (@lacouvee) – a financial services professional, maven, catalyst, vision caster and capacity builder
See you at Serious Coffee at 1280 Broad Street in two weeks, Tuesday July 7th between 8:00 and 9:30 am.
June 18th, 2009 Meetings | No Comments »
The first meeting of the Summer is next week and we’re moving downtown.
Ogden Point Cafe was kind to allow us to get our feet wet — sometimes literally — and begin our local OpenCoffee Club. As we enter Summer, the tourist season is well underway and we need to move to make room for the visitors to our city to have a coffee and pastry and gaze upon the scenery we all get to enjoy year-round.
Relocating our meetings downtown will hopefully provide new members with an added enticement to join us as some people have suggested the Ogden Point location, while nice, was a little off the beaten path.
Our next meeting is Tuesday June 23rd, 8:00 until 9:30am at Serious Coffee located at 1280 Broad Street and Yates. Thanks to Alnoor, the manager we will have a few reserved a few tables for us.
Are you in Victoria or the surrounding area and consider yourself a tech entrepreneur, developer, designer, hacker, funder, banker, angel investor or venture capitalist? Please come out and join us for some laid back discussion about projects, companies, experiences, goals and ideas. If you know anyone who you consider a good person for us to meet over morning coffee or tea, please let them know about our group — we’re recruiting.
Victoria joins over 100 other cities around the world in creating an informal space for entrepreneurs, designers, developers, founders, investors and supporters to meet and discuss their projects and companies. If you’re interested in learning more about the OpenCoffee Club concept, the OpenCoffee Club website is a great resource — or, you may email Jennifer Ross at jenn@jenn.com.
March 31st, 2009 Meetings | No Comments »
March 31, 2009 Victoria OpenCoffee Club meeting
Six seems to be our magic number for the first couple of meetings. Six of us met this morning for the second Victoria OpenCoffee Club, including two new members:
Annalea is seeking a CTO for her company, Sustainable Pursuits. The ideal candidate has a post-secondary education and is under 30 years old. She’s found funding for this hire through a NRC IRAP youth employment grant. She is also going to be entering the 2009 New Ventures BC Competition. The New Ventures BC Competion registration deadline is April 20, 2009.
Catherine reminded us that the first meeting of the Social Media Club Victoria is happening tonight at 6:40pm in room C122 of the David Strong Building on the UVic Campus (map).
We discussed what makes a region more supportive to startups compared to others, what the components a start-up ecocystem requires to become successful, supportive and grow — and how we could work together to help make Victoria a more supportive region. I think this will become a long term discussion topic for the group.
The next meeting is in two weeks, on Tuesday April 14 between 8:00-9:30am at the Ogden Point Cafe – map.
Victoria joins over 100 other cities around the world in creating an informal space for entrepreneurs, designers, developers, founders, investors and supporters to meet and discuss their projects and companies. If you’re interested in learning more about the OpenCoffee Club concept, the OpenCoffee Club website is a great resource — or, you may email Jennifer Ross at jenn@jenn.com.
March 17th, 2009 Meetings | 4 Comments »
This morning, six of us braved the freezing rain to meet at the Ogden Point Cafe.
In attendance:
The next meeting is in two weeks, on Tuesday March 31 between 8:00-9:30am at the Ogden Point Cafe – map.
Victoria joins over 100 other cities around the world in creating an informal space for entrepreneurs, designers, developers, founders, investors and supporters to meet and discuss their projects and companies. If you’re interested in learning more about the OpenCoffee Club concept, the OpenCoffee Club website is a great resource — or, you may email Jennifer Ross at victoriaopencoffee@yahoo.com.
