David Crow scores big for future TorCamp TorDemoCamps.

This morning Mark Kuznicki and I met with Allen Gelberg, Director of the Collaboration Centre at MaRS. Allen has offered to sponsor future DemoCamps. The MaRS sponsorship would be for space and facilities for 10 events throughout the year. Allen and MaRS donated the space for DemoCamp4 and they were impressed by the openness, the energy and the people that attended (see I told you it was about the attendees ;-). This sponsorship would include the facility rental for the MaRS Auditorium which is roughly $2,500/night, that’s a $25,000 donation of in-kind services (Kristin might argue my not working would count as an equivalent or larger donation). There are a few conditions of the donation of space, including:

1. Guarrantee that the space is used by BarCamp/DemoCamp for the purpose outlined (an open space for people to share, learn and get excited about technology and what is going on online)
2. We may be bumped by a paying customer
3. We use preferred MaRS services including catering

BarCamp is inline with the MaRS mission of “accelerating the commercialization of new ideas and new technologies by fostering the coming together of capital, science and business.” Part of the discussion is that not all of the topics at BarCamp are commercialize-able and there is no reason that they should be, BarCamp is a place for people to share, learn and get excited about technology and what is going on online.

I was at MaRS for the iSummit conference and it’s a very nice facility, with great access to transit and nearby socialization nexii (i.e. bars)

I’ll be demoing the BlogMatrix Platform at the next DemoCamp on the 25th of April. This will be significantly different than what you see here even though the underlying software’s the same (well, with four more months of development). We’ll be showing structured blogging/CMS, mapping, calendaring and microformats all rolled together and if you’re lucky we’ll be showing some projects we’re doing for paying clients (along the lines of this in terms of navigation).

It’ll be sad though, IMHO, if MaRS is the only venue used for TorDemoCamp. We’ll have to see if the crowds (150+ at TDC4) keep growing.

Tagged: microformats, Toronto, DemoCamp, TorDemoCamp.