On January 16th, Steve Currie, VP of Strategy and Innovation for Communitech joined us to talk about this important community organization and their event True North Waterloo to be held in late May 2018.
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Communitech was started 20 years ago to raise the profile of the Waterloo Region tech community. The vision at that time was to get more local tech talent, global recognition for our tech sector and better support for companies. This original vision has evolved to that of today which is to help tech companies start, to grow and to succeed. The association has achieved the original goal for getting international recognition for being world leaders in startups as KW is currently rated among the top 25 tech hubs worldwide. The staff of 85 people manage a budget of $25M+ in supporting a total membership of 1200+ companies. Funding of their budget is obtained approximately 50/50 from pubic and private sources and their member list spans everything from startups with minimal staff and resources to multinational tech companies. The association’s “club house” is called the Hub and is located at the Tannery in downtown Kitchener. At that location, they have the capacity to house up to 200 early stage member companies in the 80,000 building. At the Hub there is also space for innovation labs for large companies to tap into this unique environment for creativity and information sharing to build knowledge, create alignment and develop innovative solutions. The large companies and small work together to increase the collective creativity and give startups a better chance at success. The names of members that you may recognize today include Vidyard (video communication), Otto (Robotics, formerly Clearpath), Thalmic Labs (Wearable tech-they just raised $100M in investment!), Axonify (Training) among others. The names of tomorrow, who knows?!
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The Event that Communitech is holding in late May is called True North Waterloo. This event is spawned from the perception that all is not entirely rosy in the tech world. Worries about technology in the wrong hands, the rise of artificial intelligence, predominance of “fake news” and diversity in technology are some of the headlines of today that the conference is meant to address. Due to the Canadian predilection towards inclusion, diversity, openness and collaboration along with our local barn raising past, the region and Communitech have the opportunity to take a leadership role in addressing these perceptions by creating a dialogue on the topic of “Tech For Good”. This event is meant to put some big issues on the table because there are currently some things working and some things not working. The 2-1/2 day event is being held at Lot42 which is a newly refurbished space on Ardelt and is hoped to attracts 2000+ attendees. This event is an opportunity for community engagement while showing off some of our young companies while showcasing the region to an international audience.