Category: Kelowna
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Okanagan Bitcoin
Photo by @scdaustin Yesterday at #LeanCoffeeKL 96 we gathered to discuss cryptocurrencies. The meetup was really successful with a lot of new people coming out early in the morning to discuss and learn about bitcoin and other related topics. The spread of experience was pretty vast with long-time miners and evangelists to people who had…
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Growth
So far this has been an explosive year for the Kelowna startup community. For the past few years the community has been germinating inside the Kelowna Innovation Center, which served as the single hub for all startup activity. Now we are seeing more and more happening beyond those walls — a positive development and a…
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BC votes
In just over two weeks BC goes to the polls. Political franchise is one of those hard-won privileges that Canadians take for granted, choosing mere words over actions. This is the first time I have been an eligible voter in BC and I am taking my civic duty (and civic right) seriously. Voting is multidimensional.…
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Startup Weekend Okanagan AAR
It has been a week, and I think I have finally recovered from Startup Weekend Okanagan. I had a total of 7 hours sleep over the three days of taking a product from concept to pitch. The team was a powerhouse with 5 devs, a designer, 2 biz/cust devs, and me (a product dev). Throughout…
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The untapped talent well in Kelowna
In a constrained startup environment pushing for change it is important to identify and connect the “capable” members of a community. What I mean by “capable” is a bit nuanced, but effectively they are the “DO-ers” of society. If given the proper opportunity, these people could do great things, whether that means community engagement, creating…
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Startup Genome
https://startupgenome.co/kelowna-britishcolumbia-can/?embed=1&hide_filters=true&hide_right_side=true&global_search=false Are you on this map? A strong startup network will have a high density of links between a variety of different nodes. Through our startup events we can reach out to all our audiences and try to connect up all the nodes we can. But, not every node will be attracted to the events…
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Startup Kelowna: Events
There are a number of technology events that have a pretty decent following in Kelowna. The Okanagan Tech Sector Community Events Meetup group has 133 members. Digital Okanagan and OKDG each have almost 900 followers on Twitter. Startup Weekend Okanagan was by all accounts a great success. Last week, after our discussion of Startup Communities…
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Startup Kelowna: Audiences
Having an inclusive startup community not only means being accepting of new members or changes in the the network, it means pro-actively creating a variety of opportunities to allow new members to connect to the network in a manner most comfortable to them. When planning events we should obviously consider the entire entrepreneurial stack (first…
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Startup Kelowna: Network
When building the startup community here in Kelowna, I think it is important to remember that we are trying to build a network rather than a hierarchy. Networks are loose and informal, can be very inclusive, and most important are resilient. If a node or a few nodes on the network disappear, the network as…
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LeanCoffeeKL 60: Startup Communities
This morning’s #LeanCoffeeKL discussion about Brad Feld’s book Startup Communities (my review here) had a great turnout. We had 20 people representing the local startup and tech communities come out at 8am to discuss this book. Pretty amazing considering only two of us had read it. It was particularly encouraging to have the CEO of…