Cover via Amazon

Last night, I attended DemoCamp Toronto 24, my first ever DemoCamp event. Shocking, I know, that it took so long for me to attend one. The night started off with an interview of Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.tv about his experiences, as part of the tour for his new book, Crush It! (which, by the way, was being given for free to attendees.) After Gary's interview, we had a break for pizza and networking, after which there were six demos, spanning from GridCentric through to Cadmus.

I'll put down my notes from Gary's interview later on, but let's start off with the demos.

Image via Wikipedia

Something I wanted to do last year was get a Coffee and Code group up and running in Oshawa. Nothing much came of it, unfortunately, thanks to a lack of viable venues. However, a lot can change in eight months, and I'm again evaluating places which could host such an event.

Image by kungfootv via Flickr

Last night, at Energize IT (hosted by Microsoft Canada at their Mississauga headquarters), I got to talk with Joey deVilla about a few different things. One of those topics, which I'm pleased to share with you now, is an upcoming Coffee and Code for Durham Region!

Cartoon by Rob Cottingham via ReadWriteWeb

If you're American, as most of my blog audience appears to be, you've probably never heard of North By Northeast, the Toronto counterpart to the well known South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. Well, counterpart as far as music, film and art go. When it comes to tech, NXNE is totally lacking, whereas SXSW is strong and hearty.

Image by coldacid via Flickr

The Twitter meetup I planned, #APtweetup, went absolutely nowhere. Little buzz, and no attendees. Little surprise there, and a reminder that I shouldn't be allowed to organize things on my own. (It's been a while since I gave up on TIGC, after the other organizers all abandoned the effort.) I got some good ideas on why it was such a flop, though.

Image by Sacha Chua

Yesterday, I attended Lifecamp Toronto, a lifehacking event organized and hosted by Sacha Chua, over at a neat little place called Linuxcaffe. The idea behind Lifecamp Toronto (a.k.a. #lifecampTO for those of you on Twitter) was that people could have the opportunity to share what they can provide for others, what help they'd like from others, and network based on those sets of traits.

Image via Wikipedia

I've been thinking for a while how neat it would be to get to meet other Twitter users out here in the east end of the Greater Toronto Area — the Ajax-Pickering area, in particular. I've not organized a tweetup before, however, nor do I know too many people in the area with Twitter. So this'll be a new experience.

Another year, another Anime North. Thanks to the convention, I had only eight hours of sleep (total) between Wednesday morning and last night when I got home. When I got back, I slept for 13 solid hours.

As usual, the con was a lot of fun! The final numbers aren't out yet, but as Friday felt as busy as a Saturday this year, there were a lot more people attending again. Like last year, I ran the DDR room, this time with the addition of BeatMania IIDX.

Next Saturday (that is, May 3) I'll be at GameCamp Toronto 2, to give a presentation on the IGDA Indie SIG. The next week will be spent working on the presentation so that when I'm on the stage at GameCamp, I'll wow everyone so much that they'll all join the IGDA. You can find more information on GameCamp Toronto at <http://www.gamecamptoronto.com/> or just go straight to registration.

As a big thank-you for attending the Toronto launch of Visual Studio 2008, I got in the mail today a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate as well as a CD containing a bunch of Live products (including a 90-day subscription for OneCare).

Now, I just need to get a new computer, one which can run a version of Windows newer than 2000.