MoMoVan Season Opener

Oct 17th, 2008 | By admin | Category: MoMoVan Headline

We kicked off the 2008-2009 season with an event in Gastown’s WorkSpace on October 6, 2008.

It was a great evening and really demonstrated the unique momovan spirit of combining serious and useful with fun and relaxed.  You will all agree that we have a really unique community, one that is not only energetic and dynamic, but one that is really able to relax, have a good time and be open.  There exists a willingness to work together to achieve success; it is rare to have both innovative people and the ability to look outside and work cooperatively.  It is a community in the truest sense of the word.  This was all proven by your desire to be there.  It was a long night and you were interacting until the very end.  Free beer and pizza is no doubt is a good incentive, but you were all there because you enjoyed being there; that is something rare and is to be celebrated.

Thank you for coming out and making the evening such a success.  And thank you to all the panelists and speakers who shared their insights and expertise and to our generous sponsors (BDC, Wavefront, Vancouver Economic Development Commission, and Workspace).

We also want to thank Bruce Sharpe from Singular Software for taping the event, Natalie from Edie’s Hats and our community volnteers Carmen Bidu and Fepideh Ghafoori.

In addition to the informative sessions and discussions, we also selected the new face of MoMoVan for the year (a unique tradition) for the official face on the “Smile. It’s Monday!” button.

Edie, owner of Edie’s Hats once again provided the props (sexy, crazy, trendy hats).  There was some modesty at first, but Natalie (store manager) was relentless and no one was spared from the fashion show or the ensuing photo shoot.  A top 5 was chosen from the room and after much deliberation, Igor Faletski passed the mantle to Amielle Lake.  A big thank you to Igor for loaning us his smiling mug for the year.  Congrats and a big welcome to Amielle.  Her face will adorn the website and our newsletters for the rest of the season.

1) Smart, fast pitches. Four members of the momovan community were asked to give 3-minute pitches; the elevator pitch where you give enough info to hook your listener and guarantee a second meeting.  You can view some of the presentations for each of the presenters:

2) Woodrow Wilson once said, “If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if an hour, I am ready now.”  Ron Klopfer, no stranger to the technology industry or raising capital described the art of the perfect pitch . Ron spoke to the difficulty of being clear and concise and how to master being efficient at pitching.

3) Panel on Entrepreneurship, Wireless Startups and New Media

  • Igor Faletski - Co-Founder of Handi Mobility
  • Danny Robinson - Founder & CEO of Bootup Labs
  • Ron Klopfer - Serial entrepreneur and angel investor
  • Amielle Lake, CEO of Tagga
  • Michael Bidu, WINBC (moderator)

Discussed the how their companies organize and promote themselves as well as the challenges of competing in a global market.  Throughout the discussion themes emerged; take home messages included:

  • Canada has to be global because its economy is too small to support companies solely internally. For the most part this is already true for most companies and we are good at embracing this idea, not getting to comfortable and thinking outside of our borders
  • It is expensive to be global and financing and the ability to raise capital is a big component of a company’s success
  • Good management teams are key to success and Strategic Partnerships are critical to scalability

4) Panel on Mobile Voting

John Boxall of Handi Mobility and John Lyotier of Direct Voter carried a lively discussion how the new technologies are being deployed; how politicians are doing a lousy job of embracing the new tools at their disposal and how secure mobile technologies are going to transform not only search marketing for election campaigns but also the way we vote.

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