Another year, another Entrepreneur Week. And once again, I’m unable to attend but you can!

If you are in Waterloo, Canada (click for Google Maps location) or near it, you can participate in this year’s exciting “innovation festival.”

Here’s some more information (also available on their website):

“Entrepreneurs! start your engines: Entrepreneur Week, North America’s largest annual innovation festival dedicated to the entrepreneurial spirit, will be held in Waterloo November 16-22 and it promises to be another high-octane event to inspire innovation.

Entrepreneur Week is an invigorating week-long festival of events dedicated to celebrating the significant contributions of our greatest community asset – our entrepreneurs!

Waterloo Region is the best place in the world to do a tech startup. Just ask the 200 tech startups doing their thing here. And Entrepreneur Week is a festival unlike any other on the planet. Entrepreneur Week connects entrepreneurs, financiers, students, youth, mentors and the services that support them to success.

Entrepreneur Week 2009 will feature:

Startup Stories: Intimate speaking engagements profiling successful techy entrepreneur founders, including Chris Hughes, co-Founder, Facebook, Tim Bray, Father of XML and Internet Search, Razor Suleman, Founder and CEO, I Love Rewards Jim Estill, the CEO Blogger, Ali Asaria, founder of Well.ca, and more!

The Waterloo Region Entrepreneur Hall of Fame Gala: A black tie formal gala event, celebrating local and international entrepreneurs.  Inductions are made into The Waterloo Way Hall of Fame.

The Leading Edge Youth Entrepreneurship Conference: This one is for the highschool students who dream of making it big with their own venture. A full day workshop and seminar to inspire young entrepreneurs.

StartupCamp Waterloo: the un-conference. An ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.

Celebrating Entrepreneur Week with Andy Macaulay, President and CEO, ZiG, at the Schlegel Centre for Entrepreneurship, Wilfrid Laurier University as part of their Innovation and Entrepreneurship Speaker Series.

The return of the Founders and Funders Dinner. Founders & Funders is a social event aimed at bringing together the people that start the next big successful company with the people that fund these companiesin their earliest stages. This ain’t a pitch fest.  It is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to meet funders, and each other.  By invitation only.

Strategic Partnering Day: Communitech connects budding entrepreneurs with some big guns in the Tech Industry (including RIM, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Celestica, Open Text, Sybase, Agfa HealthCare, Rogers and ON Semiconductor. Proposals to participate welcome. Now in its fifth year, Entrepreneur Week promises to be another huge success in sparking entrepreneurial innovation in the Waterloo Region. Save the date – and watch for more details coming soon.”

Peter Kao

Yes, I've arrived

Just moved into Velocity, Canada’s first (that I know of) student incubator residence. I first wrote about it in January (see Velocity – The UW Student Residence for Undergraduate Entrepreneurs) and now I’m living in it.

At first glance, the Velocity building doesn’t look like a student residence at all, rather it looks like an University staff building, but upon entering you are presented with a nice slab of glass that lists impressive sounding areas of the residence. You also get a top-view glimpse of the Rogers Wireless Device Lab which, sadly, is still in construction. I can already imagine it looking stunning though.

Entrance Slab

Device Lab in Construction

The residence will have several rooms that are completely at our disposal. Rooms such as the Device Lab, Great Hall and Conference Room will help entrepreneurial students like me collaborate on projects without having to worry about space or technical limitations.

My only peeve are the old-fashioned rooms and how everything is laid out. Don’t get me wrong, the rooms look nice and habitable. It’s decently sized as well. It’s only the old wooden cabinents and tables and the un-usable layout of the plugs that bother me. First off, the ethernet jack is at least 2 meters away from the today, so you’ll need an extra long ethernet cable to access the LAN line. The other thing is that when sitting down at the table, you irresistibly feel like you’re in a prison cell. There are no windows visible. Maybe it’s just the layout of my room, so let me know if yours is fine, but from what I’ve seen from my friends a lot of the rooms feel very secluded. These problems are small and won’t be a bother once you get used to the room, but I thought I would lay it out for those interested in joining us next term.

My Room! MH-225a

My Room (again)! MH-225a

Door Room Vanity

Here are some more pictures:

My Cheesy Looking Room Door

Sexiest Looking Kitchen I've seen on Rez

And here’s a video showcasing the world’s most advance window at Velocity! It’s a rod attached to a window…

The people are nice, the facilities look nice (though some are still in construction) and the energy is superb. Can’t wait till we have our first Velocity meeting tonight!

PS: News is that we’ll be hooking up an XBOX 360, PS3 and Wii on the big screen TV in the lounge! Man, how are we going to get work done in this place?

Peter Kao

I’m not going to lie to you, this is probably the most useful post thus far on my blog (if you’re a young entrepreneur, that is).

Here’s the list of all the grants and loans (aka free money) for young Canadian entrepreneurs residing in Ontario:
Ontario:

Youth Entrepreneurship Partnerships Grants for NON-PROFIT Organizations- provides funding of up to $100,000 per year for up to 3 years to non-profit organizations in Ontario that facilitate the development of an enterprising culture amongst Ontario’s youth (typically between the ages of 12 – 29) by providing them with educational, experiential, and entrepreneurial opportunities and programs.
Young Entrepreneurs Program: Summer Company – up to $3000 for students between 15 and 29 to start a summer business.

Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program – not clear on the benefits, it’s like an “after hours” co-op program for more info contact:
Ministry of Education and Training – MET Hotline Telephone: (416) 326-5656, 1-800-387-5656

For the complete list, click here

Enjoy.

- Peter Kao

I was pretty amazed to see this on the bulletin board (the physical one and not the digital one, silly) the other day.

It’s a brand new student residence dedicated for University of Waterloo students who wish to start their own businesses on campus. The poster and website don’t explain a whole lot, but here is the gist of it…

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