There are a lot of Jane’s Walks in Toronto this weekend. Here are the ones I’m going on:
I was asked by the ICE team at MaRS to produce a map to illustrate a connection that’s often not understood by entrepreneurs: that Canadian companies that are acquired from abroad typically also have foreign investors. It’s a simple map — showing the 23 Canadian companies that were acquired by foreign companies in 2012 — and it’s included within a detailed and thoughtful report by Neha Khera, on the MaRS Commons site.
The MaRS Data Catalyst team has been diving into data on private equity deals, to better understand the patterns of investments in Canadian companies. Last week Joseph Lalonde published the first in a series of blog posts on the subject: Co-investment in the Canadian venture capital landscape. The post features a network graph which they asked me to create, to visualize the data (direct link).
I made the graph using d3.js. I’ve been working with d3 for a while now, but each new project has been unique… it’s an amazingly flexible library.
Collaborating with Joseph and the Data Catalyst team was a blast; a great group of people doing super-interesting work!
My 3.5-month contract with the Imagination Catalyst is over, and it’s been an amazing experience. I’m planning to discuss what role I could have with the IC on an ongoing basis, but my focus in the past few weeks has been to wrap up the deliverables attached to my original contract, and the other things that popped up along the way.
In these last two weeks: Continue reading
As my time at the IC winds down (just a couple more weeks!), I’ve been focusing my time on organizing and promoting our two upcoming events (The Value of Designers in Tech Startups, and the Imagination Catalyst Open House, Feb 28th, 6-8pm, 49 McCaul), and writing up lots of documentation and reports. I also met this week with Mark, Asma and Sunil.
Aside from OCAD, I helped organize Open Data Day Toronto, with my colleagues at Urban+Digital. It was a lot of work, but we all had a blast. (More on that in another post. Maybe.)
I was lucky enough to take a week off (and away), and so missed the biggest snowstorm of the year.
Now back, I’m sprinting to complete the documents I’ve been working on, and plan for the Imagination Catalyst Open House (Feb 28th), and an event with FounderDating and Extreme Startups called “The Value of Design in Tech Startups” (Mar 7th). Lots more to do between now and then…
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