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Updates

Questions to ask yourself before doing a startup

I recently participated in Round 1 of the Lead To Win program. This was an amazing experience and I got approved for Round 2 starting in end of June. This is a step towards the major league of Startups and Ecosystems. On the last day we had we had David Lisk (Industrial Technology Advisor) present. He asked us 4 questions that are supposed to test your readiness and commitment to being an entrepreneur. I found great benefit in answering them while reflecting on the session.

Are you sure you’re an entrepreneur? (There are a lot of “entrepreneurs” out there that haven’t even begun doing any market research or talked to customers, but work on one idea that they’ve had in the pipeline for years. If it’s not your full-time gig, you ain’t one.)
Have you had the money/time talk with your significant other? (Definitely a must if you cherish your relationships. Tough times are ahead and either their on the train or they get off it. Simple.)
Have you looked at sources of funding? (Are you self funding, raising money, SRED, IRAP, etc.)
How much money do you really need to start your company? (This is a tough one, but the sooner you place a dollar value to your effort the quicker you can evaluate the feasibility)

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13
May 10

Ottawa Innovation Challenge

more photos…

During the weekend of April 24th I was part of the Ottawa Innovation Challenge. The event took place at the Entrepreneurship Centre and consisted of a 48-hour challenge of problems faced by 2 Ottawa local businesses.

The businesses were Wedding Republic and Unique Home Sites. Khaleel Jivrai) and I tackled issues such as marketing, product development and a final pitch of the changes to the Wedding Republic team. This was a short period to develop skills for each of these topics, but we were matched perfectly with our partners to tackle all aspects of the competition. As advisors to the teams we had arguably some of the more influential people in entrepreneurship in the Ottawa region. I was very happy to have finally met Stephen Daze, Scott Lake and Manu Sharma who I‚Äôve known of from discussions with others in the Ottawa startup scene and twitter. Sitting down with each and discussing our goals in solving the problem statement provided. After a couple minutes with each of them, I was impressed by the quick wit in marketing and product development that each displayed. It is definitely a great example of how experienced advisors are a great asset to a startup.

Although my team did not win I did use the experience as a means to draw some ‘Lessons Learned’.

Lessons learned:

1. 10 minutes to pitch is a lot of time to say nothing. Keep it brief and hit on the points you were asked to cover. They know their business so there is no point explaining what the product does. What did they ask? What are you proposing? Why will it work?

2. Deliver on what was asked and don’t think too much outside the box. Improving on what already exists and works may sometimes be better than introducing too much new functionality. This is especially true if you are a startup with limited cash.

3. Friendly competition will always bring the best out of you. Even though I was competing against a couple of friends I didn’t let my guard down. There is no fun in sharing too much information when you‚Äôll eventually find out what everyone else is doing in the presentation. I expected nothing less of exceptional from the team (we were all chose for a reason) so I stepped up my game. I never once thought I would be thinking of the wedding registry space for 48 hours straight. In many ways I feel I am too young to worry about that stuff just yet.

4. Consult with everyone you can but don’t let everyone tell you what you should do. We discussed our plans with a decent number of folks (organizers, friends, family, mentors, startup founder). In that process we got a lot of feedback; some amazing and other less amazing to our vision of the solution. I had difficulty disregarding some opinions and suggestions as they came from people that were more experienced. Of course, if you hear the same thing over and over again you most likely have to visit that issue. Regardless, we did and I feel that we met the goal of the competition.

5. Have fun! In the end it is an experience and no matter what the results are, you are experiencing this as a group. It is a great opportunity to network with like-minded individuals in Ottawa and potentially bond. I felt very honoured to be a part of such a talented group and will stay in touch in order to help grow this initiative in Ottawa. It is much easier to be successful and have impact as a community (or ecosystem) than as a lone ranger.

I’d like to thank OCRI and the OIC planning team for running such an event. They deserve a lot of credit as the event was well organized and they’re the visionaries behind the future of Ottawa’s technology ecosystem.

Cheers,

Filip

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4
Apr 10

TEDxCarletonU – March 30th 2010

On Tuesday March 30th I had the great fortune of attending the TEDx conference held by Carleton University. The event took place at the Gladstone Theater (@thegladstone). Having been a long time subscriber in iTunes of the TEDTalks, i was excited to say the least. At the event were some of the more influential and innovative people in the Ottawa area. I had the pleasure of meeting some of them both in person and via Twitter. I say this because there was an intense twitter stream of updates during the event. I could barely keep up with updating my twitter and listening that i resorted to re-tweeting some of the tweets that summed the talks best. Below is a summary of the updates.

TEDxCarletonU Photo Album

Presenters (all from Carleton University):

Dr. Banu Örmeci – Associate Professor (Environmental Engineering)

Manuel A. Báez – Associate Professor (Architecture)

Maria DeRosa – Professor (Chemistry)

Jesse Stewart – Music Instructor (Music)

Jim Davies – Assistant Professor (Cognitive Science)

Summary (reverse order):

filipmares Awesome night @thegladstone . Great to meet so many of innovators in the Ottawa community both in person and virtually. Cheers. #tedxcu

Japman_Bajaj "Imagination is all around us. We can make better education modules. Maybe an imagination alone can create movies for us!" #tedxcu

Japman_Bajaj The Grand Pumbaa back up for closing words. Luc Lalande closing the event #tedxcu

Japman_Bajaj "If you imagine doing sports, it acutally makes you better at that sport!" i guess the power of positive thinking is real! #tedxcu

Japman_Bajaj "We spend 20% of our time daydraemaing"#tedxcu

Japman_Bajaj Our next speaker is all about studying imagination. Jim Davies up! Professor of Cognitive Science at CU#TEDxCU

Japman_Bajaj "Decreasing infant mortality reduces population growth rates because families don’t need to anticipate the death of their babies" #tedxcu

amandaemmanuel Cost doesn’t have to be an obstacle for innovation #TEDxCU

filipmares We have highschool students in the audience that presented at#tedxottawa #tedxcu

filipmares "Creativity is our birthright as a specie." #tedxcu

isfan Jesse Stewart showing a clip of musical instrumentsade of ice. Now that’s unusual and very cool. #tedxcu

RiahiSonia @oak just heard idea to turn cymbal playing (Jesse Stewart style) into ipad app. I think it could be great :0) #TEDxCU

saraweaver100 Take some time to break your routine and find the beauty in tiny everyday things… Like windchimes or finger percussion on a podium #TedxCU

byronalley And Jesse Stewart is literally playing the podium. As an instrument. It’s awesome. Musical found art. #tedxcu

RiahiSonia Jesse Stewart next…I’ve been waiting for this!!!#TEDxCU

amandaemmanuel Making music from found objects…should be interesting!! #TEDxCU

filipmares Intermission is over and the MC Allan Neil is doing a great job.#tedxcu

Japman_Bajaj "Making fertilizer small is cool, but what about making fertlizers smart?! Lets feed plants ONLY when they needed to be fed!" WOW #tedxcu

amandaemmanuel Fertilizer that’s not getting used by plants is being wasted AND costing Cdn farmers 1 billion dollars!!!!#TEDxCU

filipmares Need to get fertilizer to root of plant. Need a more efficient delivery.#tedxcu

davechale "Without fertilizers we would need to use 50% more farmland." – Maria DeRosa @ #tedxcu

amandaemmanuel 1/2 of food supply we ha e can be directly linked to fertilizers #TEDxCU

amandaemmanuel Yeay prof Maria DeRosa talking about pesticide and nanotechnology!!!!!!! #TEDxCU

Japman_Bajaj "Trust yourself and believe. Whatever happpens, don’t give up." Important lesson from #TEDxCU

filipmares Can nanotechnology help feed the world? #tedxcu

Japman_Bajaj William Kamkwamba’s riveting TED talk now being shown at #TEDxCU Watch it here: http://bit.ly/a4mvXJ

amandaemmanuel From equilateral triangles to a potential travelling circus tent. That is innovation #TEDxCU

filipmares Dr. Baez talking about how spirals on structure look chaotice from some angles and organic and structured from others. Mindblowing#tedxcu

filipmares "the reciprocal relationship between form & process" AMA crystal & flame #tedxcu this sounds facsinating!! /via @krusk

krusk "the reciprocal relationship between form & process" AMA crystal & flame #tedxcu this sounds facsinating!!

amandaemmanuel Looking at patterns in fluids caused by vibrations…so cool!! #TEDxCU

filipmares Ppl here @thegladstone are 2 quick updating their Twitter that i resort 2 retweet. I will put it togther into a blog post after. #tedxcu

Japman_Bajaj Dr. Manuel Baez countless award wins, now speaking on architecture #tedxcu

Japman_Bajaj Solar Water Disinfection. Use a cloth, filter water into a bottle,put it on the roof. let the sun clean it. "This Can Save Lives!" #tedxcu

Japman_Bajaj Chlorine is cheap, but is not effective on certain microorganisms. Ultraviolet disinfection doesn’t add any chemicals to water. — #TEDxCU

amandaemmanuel Every 15 seconds a child dies from a water related disease that is preventable #TEDxCU

ampli2de Canada, take fewer showers. We are the 2nd most water wasteful country in the world. #tedxcu

Japman_Bajaj Dr. Banu Ormeci on Water, Health, and Sanitation. #tedxcu "Water is not abundant." Only 1% of the world’s water is available for human use

krusk The setup at #tedxcu . http://twitpic.com/1c1xk6

amandaemmanuel Ideas are the building blocks of innovation#TEDxCU

filipmares Opening the stage is @luclalande right now showing the intro video. #tedxcu

I’d like to thank Luc Lalande and the volunteers

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4
Feb 10

You can call me Mr. Solo Dolo cause i got them beats!

I caved! I did however not give in to the Bigger Dre Beats. These sound great. A little bassy, but that's what you expect. Overall A+!

Posted via email from filipmares’s posterous

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2
Feb 10

Maricela’s got a new hobby.

Posted via web from filipmares’s posterous

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19
Jan 10

Announcing 2Guys1Wave!

A lot of time has passed since i focused on blogging. I’ve been mostly tweeted out my tech thoughts and sharing (or over sharing) what i thought was interesting. I kept thinking of a way to revolutionize the way blogs are done. There is a lot of effort that goes into a post. I personally do not have that much time to compose and gather all my thought at once. I’d love to write short blurbs and patch them all together over time. I guess that is why i am not a writer/journalist. As much as i would love it.

A new idea of publishing content came to me on a late night of browsing the internet and waving on Google Wave. A close friend of mine and myself wave back and forth to keep in touch. We mostly talk about technology and web trends. I quickly realized that our heated debates and sometimes agreements on matters might make for a good editorial. I was always a fan of conversations and i guess that’s why i love twitter and Facebook so much. The ultimate thing that opened my eyes to the entertainment aspect of blog posts based around a discussion was a piece by Engadget on the Nokia N97. I was blown away by the sheer creativity of doing a blog post mimicking “mail correspondence”. If you have not read the piece i suggest you have a look and i guarantee you will be in tears laughing by the end of the review.

From all this we derive my next creation: “2Guys1Wave”! 2Guys1Wave will be a blog maintained between my friend Raj Paramerswaran and myself. We will be creating blog posts consisting of a Waves in which we discuss a certain topic. Each blog post will hopefully evolve over time into what we hope will be a semi-professional blog post. We plan on discussing such topics as:

technology
gadgets
web services and applications
events
cars
anything else that might interest us at the time

The posts will be on a weekly to bi-weekly basis as all changes we will do will be reflected throughout the week. We won’t be discussing anything we haven’t had experience with as I’d like there to some credibility to what we do. The only time we will do that will be when discuss product rumors and predictions. I will be posting the first few posts on here till we get WordPress setup just the way we want it for the blog. I’ll announce the launch as soon as it’s ready.

Check back in a couple of day when i will be posting our first 2Guys1Wave post on the Apple iSlate rumors. Just in time for the January 27th announcement!

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7
Oct 09

Google Maps Street View live in KW!!!

Vlad Filip Mares

Posted via email from filipmares’s posterous

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11
Jun 09

Update for the Summer

So i tried it out and i did not like my weekly posts summarized (see screenshot below). I felt as if it took the essence away from my blog. From now on my tweets will be available on twitter and hopefully soon i can get a new theme going for the blog to give more of a “life stream” experience.

As for new post coming up; i have a review of Brain Toniq energy drink and the 2nd part to my Living in the Cloud series.

Till then i leave you with the latest @tinybuddha quote.

“Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.” ~Eckhart Tolle

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22
Mar 09

An Interview with Microsoft

During the 2009 ‘Reading Week’ (Feb. 16th – Feb20th) I interviewed with Microsoft for a Software Development Engineer (SDE) internship. Throughout the day I had the “pleasure” of interviewing with some of the greatest minds behind the Windows Live Experience team. It was a dream come true and if only this would have been an interview I was conducting I might have left a little less troubled.

My day started out I’m building 19 which is know as the Recruiting Building. This was equipped with Microsoft’s latest and greatest. From Touch Smart PCs, to XBox 360s with Rockband and of course the Microsoft Surface. Needless to say I was drawn immediately to the surface and spent a good 15 minutes trying to “break it”. It didn’t, which impress me immensely. I managed to play some games on it along with 3 other internship candidates from some renowned colleges in the US (Michigan State, Ohio State, and Dartmouth…from what i remember). On this day in particular it seemed as I was the only Canadian University student.

After about 30 minutes of waiting I was greeted by my recruiter who seemed really interested in my future. She revealed that i would be interviewing with the Live Experience Team. This was no surprise to me as i expressed my great interest in the Live services side of Microsoft. I was however super excited as this opportunity got more exciting than before. She asked me what my plans are after finishing my undergrad program. Asked me if i was considering Grad school or joining the industry? I told her I was undecided, but I’m leaning more towards joining the industry and getting my feet wet. Grad school is not out of the question in the long run. It was a pleasant yet brief meet and greet.

Afterward i was set up with a “shuttle” which drove me to the Live building. The shuttles on campus are a mixture of Toyota Sienna and Prius. This one was a Prius. I was pleasantly surprised to see this, as they drive people around quite a bit and we could sure use a large company display their environmentally conscious side. Once arrived at the Live Building i saw the most hilarious nerdy thing of all day. Outside the front entrance there was a mailbox which was painted with the old Hotmail logo.

My interviews throughout the day were held with Senior Developers from the Live Sync Client team, SkyDrive team and the Live Social Team. We discussed Microsoft and how Live fits in to the big picture. From the start i could tell i was speaking to gifted individuals with tremendous experience. It was hard not to feel a little intimidated.

These are the questions that i was asked throughout the day:

You have a character array with the contents “the brown bear”. Reverse it. No stacks, no string manipulation.

What is the complexity of your algorithm and how can you improve on that?

You have another char [] with contents ” 5 3 3 15 2″. Output the repeating character.

How would you do it better?

What if you did know the character in the array? How would you do it?

Given a circular doubly linked list write out the methods to add a new node as such: addNode(Node itemToAdd, Node itemToAddBefore).

Write a method to remove the node.

Given a char[], find out if a given char[] is present. How many times does the char[] show up?

Can you do it more efficiently?

What extra curricular activities do you do? Strictly coding related.

How do you like Microsoft so far?

I might have missed a few questions as the interview was now almost a month ago. I’ve been working on this long post for just about that time as well. I’ve been incredibly busy and felt incredibly burdened as of lately to post this. I am sharing this with all the readers because posts like these helped me in my mental preparation for the interview.

I am sad to say that my interview with Microsoft was unsuccessful in getting the Internship. I consider myself very fortunate to have had the opportunity to get as far and be considered as a potential candidate. In the prep call for the trip to Seattle, we were informed that 1000s apply for the Internships and only a select few ever get the chance to interview on the MS campus in Redmond. I will remember this statistic for year to come and use it as motivation to pursue excellence. This has not been an end to a dream. IT has merely been a validation of my commitment to one day join the elite group of innovators that I idolize. I will be reapplying to Microsoft in the Fall for a full-time position as i will be graduating in the Spring of 2010.

So what’s next for Filip Mares you say? Well lot’s actually. I have my 4th year Engineering Project starting in the fall of 2009. I have a few ideas kicking around and now it’s just a matter of narrowing down to one which a professor is willing to supervise. As to the ideas; many of them have yet to materialize beyond paper. I have been fortunate enough to have met a fellow peer who is as passionate about new technologies as I am. We will be announcing a project within the next few months. I am very excited about the possibilities and hope to have more to say on the matter real soon.

Here are a few breathtaking pictures from the Seattle-Redmond-Bellevue area.

-Filip

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14
Mar 09

PROMOTION: Bell + Blackberry Student Offers

I recently got involved with a marketing campaign for new Blackberry plans and promotions from Bell for students. This is actually a pretty cool deal, so that’s why i am posting it on my blog.

Here’s the break-down:

trade any phone towards a new Blackberry from Bell at market value
sign up for the contest and become eligible to win $50,000
new data and voice plans for students
All you have to do is add the application on Facebook and sign-up for the contest.

You have the chance to win $50,000 with no purchase necessary and can trade to upgrade ANY cellphone, smartphone or BlackBerry you currently own to a newer device at a discounted price. Want to graduate debt free? Find out more, by checking the Facebook fan page here http://www.facebook.com/BlackBerryStudents or just go straight towww.blackberry.com/graduate .

I will be holding an event at Carleton University giving away Blackberrys, accessories and many other prizes, so stay tuned to my updates on my blog, twitter, Facebook.