Bolidea – Giving Rise to Stellar Companies

by Magda Rocki

Preparations for the event:

A few hours before the first FreeHackers meet was to be held in the offices of Bolidea, the team itself was efficiently scrabbling to provide a welcoming space fitting for big and small hackers alike. So late last night, while other worker bees were nectaring their stressful workweeks away with alcoholic pollen, the Bolidea team was fervently at work, prettifying our offices, and finally installing our company’s name plate.

As I arrived sleepy-eyed at the office on Saturday under the noon sun, I was greeted by the infectious grins of the newly arrived participants of the inaugural edition of the Free Hackers meeting.

Organized by the ever-connected Heri, the informal gathering’s mandate was to congregate hacking aficionados, web and software developers, and innovation-seeking, entrepreneurship- touting individuals together, and allow them to share projects and code and most importantly experiment with new technologies. And my, was it fun, educational and productive!

As the diverse group of skilled participants settled into the Bolidea’s infamous “nipple lounge”, brief introductions of their technical backgrounds, current interests and projects made the rounds, and Heri democratically listed the objectives of the meeting, basing himself loosely on the guiding principles of Zed Shaw’s Free Hackers Union. Rapidly auto-organizing themselves, the group split off into smaller units, regrouped together by a common interest of a programming language, or by the magnetic appeal of a project, or simply to learn and pick up new knowledge. Whether projects included debugging a tenacious corruption bug, assessing a microblogging’s plugin fit, or developing code for a financial application in python, the tangible atmosphere of joyful camaraderie, good humor and friendly bantering established itself cheerfully throughout the office space.

Cohesive hacking/ entrepreneurship energy

As I worked contently at my workstation, occasionally getting up to inform the boys of fresh coffee infusions, I marveled at the cohesive synergy coming from this group of fairly individualistic participants and listened avidly, supplementing my meager knowledge base with programming concepts and lingo (no small feat, I tell you!). As I chatted with some of the participants, I was enthused by their intelligence, the originality of their projects, their business acumen, but most markedly their willingness to share their knowledge and concepts so freely with underlying respect being paid to the social aspects of open source. As the productive afternoon winded down, coffee cups were progressively replaced with tasty beer and even wider smiles and plans were made for a continuation of the hacking spirit over supper plans. At the meeting’s closing, all the groups talked about the advances, improvements or discoveries they had made during the day -while some where more successful than others –all were reassured by the energizing fact that the entrepreneurial, resourceful spirit of this meeting is only a month’s date away. We want to thank all the participants for their presence and input. It was a really great first experience and success for all. To be present at the next FreeHackers Montreal meeting, sign up here.