Recap: DemoCampEdmonton10

Last night was our tenth DemoCamp here in Edmonton if you can believe it, and we’re still going strong! Our last DemoCamp was a little over two months ago, so it was definitely time for the community to once again get together. Cam asked the audience for a show of hands to find out who was new to DemoCamp, and a surprising number had never attended before. It’s fantastic that more and more people are finding out about the event, and are coming to support local entrepreneurs. Thanks everyone – keep it up!

Before and after tonight’s demos.

We had five demos last night:

• Dave Bodnarchuk from EventIQ started things off by showing us InviteRight. He spent most of the demo showing the slick table organization features of the tool. Event organizers or venue managers can arrange registrations by table visually, using a simple drag & drop interface, kind of like seat selection on the airlines. They’re currently working with McNally and Spruce Grove high schools to test.
• Our next presenter was Kent Tong from eQube. He started by explaining that eQube plays in the gaming sector – gambling, bingo, etc., not video games! Kent focused on something called Lil’ Gecko, which is a mobile gaming device rented to casinos and other customers, but they also offer a complete end-to-end solution. They’re trying to come up with games (casual things like Bejeweled) that get the average person visiting casinos again.
• Next up was Brian MacKay from Tooq, a tool focused on the contractor and small business sector. Currently a few weeks away from beta, Tooq right now helps you create and manage invoices. Eventually Brian and his team hope to create a job market based around the people using Tooq for invoices, estimates, and other tasks.
• Fourth tonight was Dave Chan from pureLIGHT. He demonstrated preLIGHT and pureLIGHT, applications his team has written to help designers light scenes. The key difference is efficiency – pureLIGHT produces the same kind of quality as similar solutions, but with significantly improved workflow and on-the-fly tweaking (not to mention a far lower cost). I wrote about the other side of the company, 3DI, back in December.
• Our final presenter of the evening was David Quail, who showed us Attassa. Reminiscent of Xobni, Attassa is focused on improving organization and context in email. You can view messages by conversation, and can see a list of related people for any given thread. You can also find attachments really easily. Attassa works with Outlook and the iPhone, and was developed in just two months!

All of the demos were quite well done last night, with only minor hiccups along the way. Having said that, I’m not sure that people were buzzing as much about the demos at RATT as at past events. I think my demo of the night goes to Dave Bodnarchuk. Though he ran out of time, the app looks good and he’s already got customers signed up, so that’s always a positive! I also really liked Attassa, and I think it has great potential.

Here are some upcoming tech events to watch for:

• Social Web Meetup on February 1
• Lightning Thoughts on February 2
• MediaCamp Meeting on February 3
• Pecha Kucha Night 6 on February 4

Stay tuned to Startup Edmonton and GameCamp Edmonton for updates on their events too! You can always see the latest tech events at ShareEdmonton.

Thanks to everyone who came out last night. See you at DemoCampEdmonton11!