Polytechnique Memorial

A short walk from the restaurant is the Polytechnique Memorial, and as one of the topics at lunch was the challenges faced by women in engineering and entrepreneurship, we decided it would be worthwhile and respectful to visit as this week will mark the 30th anniversary of the Montréal Massacre.

Bordering the park (on the left in the photo) is the office where I spent five years at the first startup I worked at in Montreal: Purelink Technologies. I started there when I was Camille's age. The walk gave me the occasion to share with my colleagues all the haunts and stories from that era.

If I'm to sum this up in the context of Startical, there is much to be learned from the past, both good and bad. As much as entrepreneurship encourages looking forward, it is healthy to pause from time to time and look back.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." — George Santayana

Reminiscing about last year's epic rail journey

Last year today I embarked on an epic rail journey from Montreal to Chicago via Vancouver and Seattle. This time of the year is pretty much the only time I can completely escape startup life (and Internet connectivity), and a year ago I seized the opportunity to do something I'd been dreaming of since childhood: take "The Canadian" across Canada. Sat down with a beer and watched my videos from that trip (see playlists below) which brought back very fond memories not only of the trip itself, but also of Startical 1.0 which involved a similarly ridiculous Montreal to San Francisco rail journey. The playlists: "The Canadian" - Toronto to Vancouver by rail "The Empire Builder" - Seattle to Chicago by rail Also reminds me of my Rails and Reels: History, Infrastructure and the IoT blog post from 2013, just after we had become "World's Best Startup". Somehow rail journeys bring out the philosopher in me...

Office painting continued

There was fugly wallpaper on BOTH of those walls... ...the last to (soon) be painted white. Only just today realised that our new office, which is on the corner of Sherbrooke and Parc streets (Parc is French for Park) could cheekily be called PARC. XEROX PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) is effectively the birthplace of much of the core technologies we continue to use today (tablet computers, graphical user interfaces, mice, object-oriented programming...). See this reelyActive blog post . I've been calling the office Sharc to date, but PARC is not only awesome, but also fitting since the intent is to use it as a living lab and showcase of all the emerging tech we have developed and continue to develop. It may seem silly, but this is the highlight of my day and unbelievably motivating!

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