January 2012 Newsletter

For those of you who are regular followers of the Silicon Halton Newsletter, you are no doubt asking yourselves, 'what happened to last months issue?' The answer to that question is simple, "we were on vacation". But to be fair, there were a lot of activities and events that happened while we are away so we thought we'de jam both months into on issue. It'll make for a long read but it'll be worth it.

Recap of Meetup 25, November, 2011

Happy 2nd Anniversary......

Can you believe it? It’s been 2 years since the first Silicon Halton Meet-up. Unlike it’s humble beginnings where 20 people showed up at an impromptu meeting at William’s Coffee Pub in Oakville, the 25th Meet-up was packed with standing room only at Ned Devine’s in Milton. And unlike the first meeting, where everything was pretty loose and open for input by anyone and everyone, the November 8th meeting was extremely professional and very slick.

Andy Solty’s keynote presentation, “Leverage LinkedIn to Recruit Top Talent for Your Business”, really resonated with the majority of the audience. Although most admitted that they have not and were not planning on hiring any time soon, the advice given by Solty provided everyone with insight into how LinkedIn works and how this amazing tool can be exploited to find business, people and jobs.

We’ve all experienced it at one time or another. The task of looking for a job is difficult to say the least. In good times and bad, finding work is only half the battle. The other half is finding something that fits well and feels good. It’s the intangibles that make employee/employer successful relationships rare and precious. As Andy points out, there is no silver bullet and LinkedIn doesn’t provide all the answers. But for those people who are willing to use it diligently, it can reduce the risk and increase success better than any other online tool out there. “It’s all about reaching candidates with precision”, Solty hammered home on more than one occasion. LinkedIn provides the mechanisms for both parties to narrow down the selection process while at the same time providing a platform that in its very nature allows access to a much larger audience. Andy went on to provide LinkedIn’s top 10 tips for finding people and to be found:

1. Build your profile – this not only means you as an individual but your company’s profile as well.
2. Leverage employee’s profiles – Encourage each of them to become corporate ambassadors
3. Use Groups – Participate in these groups to be seen and encourage interactions with other like-minded individuals
4. Leverage “LinkedIn Today” – To learn from the latest news that specifically relates to you and your interests
5. Update your “Status” – keep your status up to date and as frequently as possible.
6. “Follow” companies – As companies change, so do their employees and employment opportunities.
7. Go Mobile – Most of us have smart phones. By downloading the online apps for LinkedIn, we can be connected 24/7.
8. Search Skills – i.e. Use skills to profile a job or expertise and find individuals or companies that have or want that skill respectively.
9. Own employment brand – You are the best ambassador to your profile or business. Ensure that what you say and what others say about you, or your company, falls within the brand that you have established.
10. Build your network with purpose – Too often we agree to link with people we don’t know, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, actively building your profile with a specific purpose in mind will lead to much cleaner and more rewarding results.
    
    

Mike Branch, CEO of Inovex, a software development house on Speers Road, also took the opportunity to promote a play he was producing called “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)”. As part of the promotion, Mike offered all members a chance to buy tickets for the following Thursday night’s performance at a reduced rate. Those people who took advantage of the offer were rewarded with a complementary pre-curtain cocktail and an amazing night of laughter and jocularity. Three main characters walk through their peculiar versions of all, well sort of all, Shakespeare’s plays. The evening was highly entertaining and the entire audience got right into the act… some more than others. Chris Herbert’s daughter was selected by the cast to add her vocals to one of the acts. Unlike her father, her performance was very memorable.

Recap of Meetup 26, December, 2011

Why your startup isn't getting funded and how you can change it

Silicon Halton wrapped up 2011 with an outstanding panel discussion. This was a full-on, no-holds-barred panel dialogue moderated by Selina Jane Eckersall, CMO | Mobile Warrior Princess, Appficient, at Wendel Clark's/Dueling Pianos in Oakville.

One of the largest audiences Silicon Halton has seen to-date was kept informed and entertained as the challenges and rewards of venture capital funding was debated and discussed.

The 5-person panel consisted of :

• Dean McCall - CEO of Appficient Inc, an advisor for DFJ Mercury.
• Laurence Hewick - President of the Golden Horseshoe Venture Forum.
• Karen Grant - Executive Director at Angel One Investor Network Inc.
• Robin Hopper - Entrepreneur-in-Residence at The Innovation Factory.
• Andrew Holden, Chief Experience Officer at Weever Apps Inc.
  
  

In place of the usual Powerpoint presentation, the large screen behind the panel featured a live twitter feed using hashtag #shstartuppanel. We learned that every startup needs a hustler and a hacker. And that a venture needs to be "spectacular" with credible plans to scale to $100M in revenue to capture the interest of the top VC's.

The night also saw the introduction of an Offer/Give board where members posted what they had to offer to the community as well as what they were looking for from Silicon Halton. The board filled up quickly on both sides

Solopreneur P2P Tribe November Meeting

Thanks to Val Sanna for providing the bulk of the subject matter expertise.

Branding was the topic du jour. We quickly discovered that branding is not just a logo but rather an integrated conscious effort to effectively present a personality that represents you as an individual and/or company. It’s important to identify all key attributes and align these characteristics in a way that presents you and the business in a unique way that differentiates you from your competition. This doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, some of the most solid brands are very simple. All one needs to do is look at Apple to find an extremely successful, yet simple brand.

As part of any branding exercise, the logo is the fist thing that people see. It’s the 1000 words you can say with one picture. It therefore has to be unique, simple, usable anywhere and stand the test of time. Logo’s may look “cool” but if your target audience doesn’t “get it”, relate to it or worse yet hates it, it won’t do your company any justice. e.g. GAP recently failed to launch new logo due to customer backlash. Because logos should be simple in nature, many of us may think we can design one ourselves. Resist temptation and look for a professional designer, like Val, with specific experience in this field. The cost isn’t that much when it’s done properly and can be very costly if poorly executed.

Agile/Lean P2P Tribe December Meeting

During the Dec 6 meetup Chris Gow and Yehoram Shenhar showed us an overview of Specification by Example along with some stories about how they use it at Guidewire. The main benefit of Specification by Example over traditional business requirement documents is to provide, well, examples about the requirements being built in a language that business people, programmers and testers can all understand. These specs can then be made executable with software like Cucumber and RSpec and you end up with a "living requirements documents" instead of a big bloated document that is usually out of date and not valuable to anybody. For more information,check out Gojko Adzic's book titled "Specification by Example". If you're interested in future meetups, check out our schedule at www.getagile.ca.

Founders Soapbox

As we reflect on 2011, we're proud of our accomplishments of the year. Here's a list of just some of our achievements:

• We relaunched our web site
• Relaunched our Newsletter,
• Launched Peep-to-Peer groups (now totaling five),
• Membership grew over 50% to over 600,
• We were featured in the Toronto Star and Burlington Post and covered twice in the Oakville Beaver, included in the Burlington & Oakville Economic Development Department newsletters,
• Formed a partnership with GHVF.ORG,
• Launched a Silicon Halton App, and
• Have seen our meetups continue to get larger and larger, yet remaining intimate and engaging - the best of both worlds.  

At the December CEO P2P group, all the CEO's were optimistic about 2012, as are we.  Silicon Halton enters into 2012 with 600+ members poised to make things happen.  2012 should prove to be a transformational year for Silicon Halton. We have lots of big ideas in our heads, a number of which we intend to turn into realities. Hang on tight and get involved!  All the best for a 2012.  

Rick & Chris.

G2KYM Spotlight

Patrick McGuire, President of Vana Workforce, provided an overview of his company's offering. Vana Workforce is a provider of cloud-based, human capital software and service solutions for small and medium enterprises delivered on-demand. Patrick outlined how leading companies are switching to the "cloud" for their talent management needs. They want to managing their people, not their paperwork. Vana delivers one complete integrated solution to manage an entire workforce from recruitment and hiring to employee tracking, absence & leave, benefits, compensation, to performance reviews and talent management

View his presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/SiliconHalton/presentations

Patrick has also provided all Silicon Halton members with a special offer. This offer includes

1 – A 30-Day Free Trial ...and

2 – 50% off the Configuration. SH members get the Vana HCM Rapid Deployment Package ($999 value) for the Get Started Package Price ($499).

Members can contact Partrick at

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

(his Linkedin profile is http://ca.linkedin.com/in/mcguirep )

Editor's Rant

Chris Yardley

For those of you who follow this newsletter each and every month… except for that one time when Brett and I got distracted by a bottle of single malt and couldn’t finish the edition on time to meet our own self-imposed deadline, you will no doubt remember my first contribution to the newsletter as co-editor. I wrote an article about my love affair with Apple. In that article I wrote about my infatuation with the MAC, through good times and bad. Even after Microsoft “borrowed” windows technology from the MAC OS, I still maintained my loyalties. In this article, I will continue my filibuster but with a slightly different slant. I’d like to turn my attention to the man behind the company, Steve Jobs.

 Depending on who you talk to, Jobs was a genius, a social moron, a visionary, a dictator, a savior or a power hungry control freak. And this is just the abbreviated version of the abridged list. But one thing everyone agrees with is Steve Jobs made Apple what it is today. Without him, Apple faced certain death in 1996. When Jobs took over the company, the stock was trading below $30 and market capitalization was under $3B. The company lost focus under the steerage of Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio who both tried in vain to mop up the mess left by John Sculley, who ironically was lured to the position by Jobs while he was still at Apple. With his leadership, whether you like his style or not, Jobs has raised the company out of the ashes to become the largest company in the world, pushing Exxon off the pedestal earlier this year.

 Any one of us can debate whether or not one man can singlehandedly contribute that much to a company without the contributions of a team of people. All one needs to do however, to see the real impact Jobs had on Apple and the other companies he came in contact with, is to look at the history of those companies and the man himself and see what happened when they commingle. After founding and making Apple successful, despite being in the shadows of Microsoft, Job left the company. Steady decline in sales, customer loyalty and innovation led to Apple’s near collapse over the 10 years following his departure. Meanwhile, Jobs starts up NeXT, a highly successful new operating system development company, which was later bought for almost half a billion dollars by Apple for both the technology they developed, (the predecessor to the now MAC OS/X), and Jobs himself. During his time away, Jobs also acquired the digital animation arm of Lucas Films and was instrumental in making it the blockbuster mega superstar Pixar Films that it is today.

Just 15 years after taking over Apple, Steve jobs and his out-of-the-box thinking has driven the company to new heights. In less than a dozen years, Job has led apple into a brand new world. They are no longer strictly a computer company but rather a conglomerate engaged in technology and entertainment. Apple introduced technologies like iTunes, the iPod, the iPad, the iPhone, the iMac and iLife and several other iNnovations that have contributed to a stock market price of $376 and a market capitalization of over $300 Billion.

All these successes may be pure coincidence but I choose to think the guy was a genius. On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs died of complications due to pancreatic cancer. I didn’t “know” him, so I can’t say I’ll miss him. I can tell you however, I will miss learning from him and I’ll miss what he would have brought to the table had he been able to stick around just a little bit longer.