When I first evaluated the Ottawa area and ecosystem one of the striking discoveries was the depth and strength of the Ottawa open source community. My initial thoughts on open source excellence were that Ottawa is truly world class in this arena. Start with The Eclipse Foundation lead by Carleton University Alumni Mike Milinkovich. The Eclipse Foundation, in my opinion is perhaps the best example of open source excellence anywhere in the world. Carleton University is a pioneer in the area of open source software education and one of the leaders in this area worldwide. Ottawa has a rich and vibrant Ruby on Rails community with Shopify, OverlayTV, Infonium and many others using this as the open source platform of choice. Andrew Ross has been an open source dynamo bringing OSBootCamp to Canada and 5 other countries, soon to be more. The Ottawa open source community is alive, well and thriving.

As founder of TheCodeFactory I am particularly excited to note that each of these groups is actively involved in our community and each have (or will have) events at our space this month. The Eclipse Foundation will have a democamp on the 27th, Ruby Tuesday (OGRE Ottawa Group of Ruby Enthusiasts) meet on the fourth Tuesday of each month and OSBootCamp YOW10 will be held on the 26th. It is exciting to have all of these world class organizations coming to visit.

There has also been interest from a number of other organic groups that have taken the time to contact me directly. Chris Schmitt approached me a few weeks ago with an idea we called “Team Camp” and I am a HUGE advocate for this group. Team Camp is all about turning ideas into start-ups. Chris came to me with his team camp flow chart and idea just before DemoCampOttawa10 and by the end of our coffee we had agreed to launch the idea at democamp. We are now on Team Camp 3rd edition tonight.

The CocoaHeads (Mac OS and iPhone User Group) and Ottawa Software Quality Assurance will also be calling TheCodeFactory home this month and I wanted to thank them for taking the time to reach out. Of course both CapCHI and The Ottawa Network have been calling TheCodeFactory home to monthly events for some time.

I am extremely excited and jazzed about the fact that Ottawa’s world leading open source community and grass roots organizations are calling TheCodeFactory home for their events. Tech in Ottawa is alive, well and thriving and many of these groups are making TheCodeFactory their clubhouse or meeting place. November promises to be an exciting month for open source, entrepreneurial and software groups at TheCodeFactory this month.

If you are an open source user group or grass roots software organization would love to hear from you.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Open Source, Start-up, The Code Factory by Ian
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