Based on the BarCamp and Open Spaces concepts, the first DemoCamp was held in Toronto and inspires events of the same name in many Canadian cities and other locations around the world. Victoria organizer Mark Lise was inspired by attending DemoCamp Vancouver.

The following demos are currently proposed:

• Why DemoCampVictoria was created (Mark Lise)
• Fortuno (Jesse and Jason)
• Genetify (Andrew)
• BountyUp – Social Commerce (Joshua McKenty and Todd Khozein)
• DailySplice (Rian)
• Flock – the social web browser (Clayton Stark and other Flockers)
• Songbird (Steven Bengtson and Peter Van Hardenberg)

The format usually has the audience (participants) vote on what demos they want to see. What doesn’t get voted in at one event, often gets voted in at the next.

As BabyCamp could start any day within the next month, I hope to make it for the first hour tomorrow night.

Hat’s off to Mark and crew for putting this together. I’m sure it will be an awesome event.

Update: I did make it to the first half of the event, and took some photos. It was an awesome event! Dave Chard and team were incredible hosts! Dave is the founder of the real estate development company Chard Development and behind the Juliet condominiums being developed in downtown Victoria. Urbanist Yule Heibel made the introductions that resulted in this venue, and it seems this relationship will continue to grew and be a great benefit for entrepreneurs and technologists in Victoria– Dave welcomes other opportunities to host similar events!

I had a very interesting conversation with Yule about urbanization of downtown Victoria, got to catch up a little with Boris Mann, and have a little face time with the incredible — and recently relocated to Victoria — Darren Barefoot. I saw some people I haven’t seen in a while and met quite a few wonderful people. The demos were great!

Looking forward to the next one.

Yesterday, I found out that Victoria, BC, Canada software consultant development company Mercurial Communications is no more, though you wouldn’t know it looking at their web site.

I only worked there a short time, but it was a great time, full of learning, laughing and creating great software, as wrote in my article “No longer a Merc“.

Writing this article, I am reminded of the informational interview I had with Mercurial CEO Chris Coldwell, which Chris Campbell helped me arrange, prior to me graduating from university. Although it seemed that there was an opportunity to be further explored with his company, his insights helped me solidify my decision to join IBM. Although Mercurial was not the company then in 2000 that it later became, the generosity of Chris Coldwell stuck with me — and I have been told numerous similar stories.

Chris Coldwell greatly cares about his people, and I imagine thse events are very hard for him (and also on his right hand person Leon Carl who also cares enormously about the people he works with).

The good news is that the technology industry in Victoria is very healthy, and I am certain that all the wonderful ex-Mercs will be back on top soon.

Mercurial itself was on the very top mid-year 2005, a few months before I left. This was reflected in Mercurial winning numerous awards that year and continuing to be among Profit Magazine’s Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies.

Since I left Mercurial, it has been on a spiralling fall, and many mercs had left before this end.

As I have written before, I do know some of these wonderful people well, and quite a few of them joined the Flock: Raj Paul (no longer), Joshua McKenty, Richard Phan, Steve Bengston, Chris Campbell , Jacky Zhang , Ishika Paul, Clayton Stark, Rick Tessner (was contract), Brij Charan, Mark Lise, Marcus Redivo, Bryan Hudson, Ryan Tomaselli, Len Kirby, Justin Louie, and now Leon Carl! That is one fantastic team!

I look forward to seeing the great things ahead for Chris Coldwell and all us ex-Mercs.