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.

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Hohoto 3.0: The one year anniversary edition

One year ago, Toronto’s Twitter crowd came together to raise money for the Daily Bread Food Bank. In the summer, it happened again. Yesterday: a third edition of Hohoto!

For a lot of us, this was an anniversary of sorts. Sure, this community didn’t come out of nowhere but Hohoto was where so many of us met for the first time.

For example, compare and contrast the old Jaime Woo:

As a relative Twitter neophyte—illiTwitterate, if you will—we were slightly overwhelmed: it was like sneezing with your eyes open. The party felt like a high-school reunion. You know a few people, sorta recognize a few other faces, and there’s a sea of faces that do not compute at all.

…with the new Jaime Woo.

It was also the event that helped show Twitter is a Big Deal: a group of near-strangers organized a huge event in only three weeks.

In the last year, we’ve met a lot of people, had a lot of events, and sometimes made a difference — and at least some of this has been thanks to the community that formed around last year’s event. So to Toronto, cheers to a good year.

But enough with this sentimentalism.

Keeping it oldschool

Like last year, Hohoto was held at the Mod Club.

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A foggy night in Toronto

I was sitting at home reading fascinating tales about the Yakuza in preparation for my trip to Japan (exciting news, dear readers. The next blog post will be coming at you from Japan. I’m leaving Thursday) when I saw an update from my friend Emery:

Awesome night for a fogwalk.

Fog? My ears perked up. I’m a sucker for the stuff

I looked outside and sure enough, it was gorgeous. I grabbed my camera and jumped on my bike.

Was it worth going outside at 2am for?

(Oh wait, I’m jumbling the order. Forgive me — I’m just extremely proud of this shot.)

I stepped outside into an eerie version of the Annex.

I sped south on my bike. Read the rest of this entry »

StackOverflow DevDays, in Pictures

The travelling tech conference arrived in Toronto last Friday.

A full day of inspiration and learning for developers, brought to you by the team behind StackOverflow.com and FogBugz. Lunch is provided so you’ll have plenty of time to hang out and meet other developers. Hope you can join us!

Here’s the guy who organized it. Contrary to appearances, I don’t think Joel Spolsky is tweeting: Update: he says:

I was checking the time, I think… we had so much on the agenda we timed everything down to the minute.

Unfortunately, I only arrived midway through the conference so I only have photos from the last two talks. It also means the only front-row seat left was behind a TV monitor on the stage - lots of awkward shots.

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Treasures from the Trinity College Book Sale

(Excuse the awful photos. You’re not allowed to bring bags inside and I didn’t feel like carrying around my big camera.)

Aren’t fundraising book sales supposed to be folksy affairs with too many tattered copies of The Late, Great Planet Earth? Not Trinity College’s:

It is this country’s - and possibly this continent’s - greatest celebration of the allegedly dead medium known as the printed word. There are some 50,000 books being hawked, ranging from a rare 1884 world atlas selling for $100 to vintage literary paperbacks - Eliot, Hemingway, Richler - selling for pocket change. Nowhere else will you find a table of secondhand theology books assembled by an actual theologian.

How many other book sales get written up by the Globe and Mail? For those who want first crack at the offerings on the first day, they’ll have to stand in line for hours behind veteran collectors and fork over $5 for admission. It’s that hardcore.

To get an idea of how large this event is, last year’s book sale had 100,000 books and raised over $136,000. (Seeing these two stats together should also give you an idea of how good the deals are.) The listing on BookSaleFinder.com (a lovely gem — worth a poke around) gives it the coveted “BIG SALE” label.

When I first came to UofT, this and the other similar book sales on campus were Nirvana. I’d stumble home with piles of books, busting open more than a few backpacks in the process. But when I moved downtown, I became tired of dealing with “stuff” and implemented a zero-input policy for my apartment. This means absolutely no book buying (thankfully the internet is a big place). It’s surprisingly zen.

So why do I keep tempting myself by going to these book sales?

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