May update: Warm weather and open doors for the community
Waterloo made an impression in Toronto, builders gathered on rooftops, in Den1880, and the community gathered at Communitech.
The warmer weather and a new term bring everyone out to connect, learn, and share new ideas!
Founders connecting and helping founders
Socratica kick-off - around 200 or so students who work on their side projects during the term got together on a rooftop in downtown Kitchener to connect and kick off their spring term at school.
Founder Dinners - a small group of experienced founders and very early founders have started a dinner series to help people develop and prepare to have their companies take off. The next series is being planned and collecting applications.
Builders Club - a new thing is starting for people who want to build their next thing and be encouraged/inspired by people around them. This is a collaborative group to help shape your ideas and build your network. More information is here.
Waterloo influences Toronto, the Kitchen opens up
Betakit hosted a town hall-style event for the tech community in Toronto featuring Tobi from Shopify (who was fantastic). The warm-up panel was just as amazing with Waterloo leadership showing up and having a big impact. Both Ali and Jocelyne have their feature articles.
From that event, Communitech took action and worked with Jocelyne to get the Kitchen up and running.
Communitech’s doors are always open
Communitech hosted a special open doors (which is all over LinkedIn) highlighted just how special the Waterloo Region is. Amazing to see everyone and learn about all the things that are available to support people building companies in the region.
Big congrats to the team at Communitech for hosting an incredible day!
DevHouse at Den1880
The monthly occurrence of DevHouse happened at Den1880 in Waterloo this month. With 100 developers and product-oriented folks in the room, there was a wide range of projects shared from games to brand-new frameworks. The next one will be the last Monday in June and hosted at Communitech.
Other tech news
Chris Wormald has a newsletter that features a bunch of Waterloo tech highlights. Nfinite Nanotech, Intellijoint, KA Imaging, RideCo, Skywatch, Plum, and TextNow are all featured this month. It is worth dropping your email in a subscription!
Also, for all things tech that might not be on Meetup… have a look at the long-running WatCamp calendar.
Also, don’t forget the MondayClub podcast. Jason Sun of AskRemotely was featured in May.
About The Barn
The Barn is a collective of builders in the community who look for ways to connect, grow, and support the community. This newsletter is designed to provide a regular update on tech-related things in the Waterloo Region and highlight the work founders/builders are doing.
Posts are currently once a month and might be bi-weekly when needed. If you would like to see more stuff featured — send me an email!