I’m here in Banff, at the Banff Venture Forum 2008. I’m here with James from AdHack, who is presenting at 2:45pm on Thursday. We’ve got the AdHack booth set up at #14, and already had a great discussion with Kevin Dahl from Calgary Technologies, Inc.- a non profit that helps grow the Calgary technology ecosystem. Sounds like a great partner for Bootup (and I’m going to hit the Vancouver municipality over the head with your example) - we’ll be trying to make some cross pollination happen.

Update: a few one liners around some of the companies and presentations I saw during the forum. Look at Rob’s great coverage on Techvibes for a more in depth write up of each company.

In any case, for the next 2 days, we’ll be hearing 12 minute pitches from the following companies in the IT Stream:

• StandOut Jobs
  - social media upgrade your careers page. I’m going to talk to Ben to see if we can maybe use Standout Jobs to connect around startup jobs and co-founder searches somewhere on Bootup. Regardless, a good solution that’s getting even more interesting
• Shopster.com
  - good solution for super charging
• Myotis Wireless (placeholder page, no website yet?) - funny comment was “we have no one under 40″; has real tech around very low power radios, and cuts through interference
• Semanti Corp. - toolbar powered semantic search upgrade on top of Google results
• Business Infusions Inc.
  - practice management software for veterinarians
• Reflex Photonics Inc.
• VoIPshield Systems Inc. - security solutions around VoIP systems
• WideSail Technologies Inc. - sells digital chip designs that increase range and/or throughput using new error correction techniques - excellent quote is “when I make a sale, I send an email”
• Flixel Technologies Inc.
• Psyko Audio Labs Inc. - positional audio, initially for gamers
• Mingleverse Laboratories Inc. - stealth! out of Vancouver, interesting plan with audio, also related to positioning. More general usage with web-delivered audio conferencing and virtual rooms. Pretty much have to demo for it to make sense until they come out of stealth
• Akoha - Austin Hill’s new startup, labeled as “casual gaming”, but has lots of real world interaction through physical cards and missions. I went for dinner with Austin and have a bunch of Akoha mission decks that I’ll schedule a meetup around.
• MoboVivo Inc.
• Tribal Nova - kids gaming, lots of licensed content like Curious George, etc.
• Ph03nix New Media Inc. - casual gaming, deal with Big Fish Games, and new virtual world concept with education plus gaming on a hip hop theme.

I’ll be coming back to this post to flesh out some one-liners about what each company does, and link to any longer posts or comments from my myself and others.