University of Toronto

by davidcrow on March 4, 2010

March 4, 2010 Democamp U of T Presentation
View more presentations from rhyndman.

I missed tonight’s DemoCampUofT sponsored by the cool kids at Web Startup Society. They had a kickass keynote speaker, my friend and startup lawyer, Rob Hyndman.

  1. Sidra Mahmood, “Typography and Design” for WebDevelopers
  2. James Cash, Building a Social Writing Site in Rails
  3. Alexander Synaptic, Online Music Portal
  4. James An, Social Network for LGBT
  5. Rafal Dittwald, Skule online voting app
  6. Kirk Williams, Facebook App: Garrison
  7. Andrew Trusty, Language Learning in Browser – firefox extension
  8. Danial Jameel, Location Based Mobile Startup

Love this team for pulling together a great event.

Random rantings of a grouchy old man: I wish I could take all students out and tell them job titles in a student organization are pretty much irrelevant. Vice president, technical director, consultant. Yes they are industry titles, but they only demonstrate that you are worth of buzzword bingo. My recommendation, stop with the bullshit titles, start with 140 characters describing what you did.

Keep up the great work at UofT. Details about DemoCamp Toronto 26 in the next day or so.

  • http://michael.mior.ca michaelmior

    The praise for the event is greatly appreciated, although I deserve none of it personally. The students putting together the event did some amazing work.

    Finally, as one of the students holding one of said titles, they are mostly irrelevant. But administration likes titles, so we do have to acquiesce to get formalities out of the way. And it does help add a little structure to a group still really in its infancy.

  • http://davidcrow.ca/ davidcrow

    The administration is equally irrelevant, and to acquiesce to a group that both needs to evolve and very little tie to your non-University careers. Seems like a copout.

    My suggestion is screw the made up titles. Specially once like Consultant. Is this person a consultant from the group to other groups, i.e., do they provide services for compensation whether they are inkind or cash? Or are they a 3rd party providing services to the group? Having seen this same nonsense from a variety of groups, all it does is make me think you don't actually know what is required by any of these roles.

  • http://michael.mior.ca michaelmior

    If the titles are irrelevant anyway, what harm are they doing? Everyone in the group is certainly ready and willing to participate where necessary. However, certain people in the group do have certain skills which makes them especially suitable for certain roles.

    As you may have seen, I am the student currently serving in the consultant role. This is mostly a matter of semantics since I am not able to commit the same amount of time as other students, but they have chosen to acknowledge my involvement.

    I appreciate your comment that the titles are potentially detrimental in the sense that an outside observer may not make sense to people external to the group. However, I don't understand how the mere existence of a title implies we don't know what it means. In any case, the group is having a meeting this evening and will certainly raise these concerns.

  • ecee

    when is the next democampTO?
    how do I get tickets?

  • ecee

    when is the next democampTO?
    how do I get tickets?

  • http://davidcrow.ca/ davidcrow

    March 29, 2010 – check out http://democamp.com/

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