Are You There Blog? It's Me, James.

Has it been almost a month? It starts small and innocent enough, that nagging feeling that you've neglected your blog. It's kind of like not calling your mother. At some point, you're almost embarrassed to do so.

Well, here goes in any event. I've been in each of Montreal, Ottawa, Waterloo and Toronto since the last post, and my colleague Justin Young was in Vancouver, attending and organizing a myriad of events and meetings in each of the cities that suggest that things are basically rocking across the country in the startup space.

Since last post, we've had our startups get huge notice at RIM's DevCon show, as well as salesforce.com's Dreamforce show this past week. We assisted the new Toronto office of Bridgescale Partners close its first investment in Canada (in Bluecat Networks), helped Toronto-based Peraso Technologies close its Series A financing with Celtic House and iNovia, and (for the first time in a long while), helped three public companies complete public financings in the same week (Dynex, Chemaphor and IMRIS).

We attended a great event put on by the Fusion folks in Vancouver, I accepted an award as one of Canada's leading lawyers under 40 (hooray!), we attended terrific programs featuring early stage companies put on by Toronto's Extreme Venture Partners and the Ivey business school, we helped the Rogers Venture Fund with its Ottawa launch this coming December 3rd, and (phew) I met with or chatted by phone with 13 brand spanking new startups looking for some help to get things going and 5 funders/investors checking out the buzz up here (2 from the US).

If my blog neglect is a bellweather, then. let 'er ring and keep the good news brewing. Now, time to call mom.