Democamp 25 in pictures

Facebook, Facebook, Facebook

Democamp moved from one Rogers building to another — tonight’s event was hosted in the relatively brand new Rogers School of Management at Ryerson.

This month’s theme: Facebook.

To kick things off, serial entrepreneur Gurbaksh Chahal — whose tagline seems to be “became a multimillionaire at 18” — gave a pep talk. He just launched gWallet, a virtual currency platform which aims to bring some ethics and legitimacy to the industry.

But the talk steered clear of his current plans in favour of tips on how to succeed in life.

Why’s he qualified to give motivational speeches (other than his obvious financial success)? Watch the Oprah version of his life story:

The demos

I’ve never played a single game on Facebook; I have almost no attention span for them. I also refuse to use ugly software (which is why I don’t use Tweetdeck) and most Facebook apps are hideous.

BUT people seem to making boatloads of money with Facebook apps — sometimes in shady ways — which makes them at least interesting to check out.

Toronto’s serial entrepreneur, Albert Lai, talked about his latest project, Kontagent, which aims to bring social analytics to Facebook. He also passed around a bucket taking donations for Haiti and promised to match whatever was donated. The result: $1400.

Other demos tonight:

• Oz Solomon, Social Gaming Studios
• Greg Thomson, Tall Tree Games
• Joel Auge, HitGrab
• Mark Zohar, Scenecaster
• Roy Pereira, ShinyAds.com

(Also worth noting: there wasn’t a single Mac at the podium. I don’t want to sound all fanboy about this but it’s interesting to see how an event like Democa evolves.)

With the demos out of the way, it was time to move to the much-grungier Imperial Pub — ironically, the venue for a few previous Democamps.