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It's not uncommon for Toronto's residents to complain about the public transit system, but one blogger really caught the Toronto Transit Commission's (TTC) attention when he called its Web site an embarrassment.

The TTC responded by asking for some of the blog's readers to make suggestions for improvements to the decade-old Web site. Other bloggers from around the city quickly jumped on board, as did Jay Goldman, president of Radial Core Inc.

The co-founder of a unique collaborative approach – named by the Harvard Business Review in their breakthrough ideas issue – didn't want to settle on a simple e-mail response.

"We looked at the request and we thought we could do a better job than just submitting some comments," Goldman says. "We had been doing these Demo Camps and we wanted to take that and do a Transit Camp to get a bunch of people together in one room, talking about the Web site."

Though forgetfully scheduled on on Superbowl Sunday - Feb. 4 - Transit Camp enjoyed a good turnout, including the TTC chairman.

In between listening to a DJ spin tunes that had been sampled from the city's transit system and "speed dreaming" sessions that had illustrators drawing up streetcar designs, many recommendations came out of the day.

The TTC scrapped their old RFP for a Web site and came out with a much different one that took into account the suggestions from Transit Camp. The beta test for the site is now live.

"Every station on the new site has a page with a whole bunch of information on it," Goldman says. "We also hope to see them open up the data on their Web site for other developers to build applications on."

This successful collaboration is just one example of a popular new meeting format being embraced by tech communities internationally.
Conceived in Toronto at the end of 2005, Demo Camps are now held various other Canadian cities, and in locations ranging from Dubai to Dallas.

A gathering of Web start-ups with venture capitalists and enthusiastic technology geeks, the format aims at a casual idea exchange over a drink.

All presentations at the meetings are no longer than five minutes, explains co-founder David Crow, a senior UX evangelist at Mississauga-based Microsoft Canada. The software demos must show the actual software – no slides allowed.

The "ignite" presentations are meant to inspire the audience. These presenters must use 20 slides, and speak to each one for 15 seconds. The speaker doesn't even have control over the progression of the slideshow.

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