Last Thursday night, May 21st 2009, I was part of the first edition of the Ecommerce Camp Toronto. The event was the result of the great initiative of Chris Long and Alexandra Dao from Well.ca.
Rick Segal, Partner at JLA Ventures and former President and COO of Chapters Online Inc., was the “keynote” speaker of the night. We welcomed the audience, talked about his experience and vision of the Canadian e-commerce and venture capital market. His speech was short, concise and to the point… may be too much “to the point”? Perhaps not. Well, it is the first event of this kind, and the opportunity to network and exchange ideas that came after was pretty valuable on itself.
It was interesting to see gathered a nice group of marketers, entrepreneurs, developers, web analysts (…myself) and other professionals. From seasoned marketing and e-commerce experts to new practitioners eager to learn, coming from a mixture of companies, recently launched startups and well established organizations.
Some of the comments during that night were around the potential this new series of events has, mixed with friendly chat between old time friend and networking, lots of networking. Also some of the participants mentioned they were expecting “to learn more” from this experience. Organizers take note. I am quite that in future sessions they will be able to fulfill these expectations.
It was also to realize how many people interested on this topic can get together on a short notice. Another fact to notice is the potential of new concepts that bring a fresh approach to the e-commerce field and try to close the gap we have in Canada compared to other markets. Wishabi.com, an all Canadian online shopping aggregator. With only three months in the market, it tries to differentiate itself from other “commodity-solutions” with added value services and social media elements.
I am particularly excited about how small startups and “lean” organizations with the proper leadership and support can leverage the power of web analytics and online business optimization. Taking action faster than bigger, more traditional companies, where adoption barriers like corporate politics and resistance to change can sometimes hinder the development of new ideas.
Would they be able to take advantage of this opportunity and close the gap with their bigger counterparts? It would be interesting to be part of this kind of changes, don’t you think?
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