When Rick and I founded Silicon Halton in late 2009 we said that a vision of SH’s success would be members bumping into other members in our community at coffee shops, bars and other local community spots and happenings. An equally important sign of success would be that Silicon Halton would create new connections and relationships amongst members. Well yesterday, at one of Silicon Halton’s many remote offices (Williams Coffee Pub!) saw these signs of success.
We bumped in to Ryan Gamble from iConferenceU and Rod Hardman from Psion Teklogix. They met each other at Silicon Halton Meetup 1 and are now collaborating on a project! This is the core of what Silicon Halton is meant to do. Make connections, create and strengthen relationships that help people and organizations grow in Halton. There are many more close encounters that we’d like to share. If you’re a member feel free to share your close encounter with us.
Inovex develops innovative web enabled software applications for Healthcare, Municipalities and the Wireless Telecommunications sectors. Rick Stomphorst and I sat down with Mike Branch and Bob Bradley the leaders of Inovex.
Timeline: 00:00 – Action! Our second video profile! Rick welcomes and introduces Mike and Robert from Inovex.00.30 – Introduction to Inovex! They’ve been in Oakville since 2003, Microsoft Gold Certified and develop web based applications for Water/Waste Water management and Healthcare. 01:15 – The guys talk about their flagship application called Canvas being used by York Region for water/waste water management and environmental compliance. We’re wondering if Halton Region could use this application? =)
01:45 – Bob talks about Inovex’s involvement in the development of myCELLmyTERMS web application/service that aims at providing wireless users better value with their cellular service providers. Mike talks about being on Dragons Den, where myCELLmyTERMS presented and got funding for their venture. 02:28 – Why is Inovex located in Oakville? What’s the benefit to companies starting up and/or staying in Oakville? Location, lifestyle, affordable rent and accessibility.
03:48 – Why did they join Silicon Halton? What’s the value? Networking, partnerships, access to local experienced business professionals and sharing their experience with companies and entrepreneurs just starting out, local joint business and relationship development and focused on ICT. And going out for a few cold ones with other IT leaders that live in Halton makes it that much sweeter!
On March 11th, 2010, mi6 conducted an all day social media marketing seminar for Cisco Canada and six Cisco Solution partners. The workshop covered three key things:
It provided an overview of the Canadian social media landscape. Specifically how I.T. buyers are using and participating in social media to make buying decisions.
It provided attendees with a best practices framework to assess their business as “social media marketing ready” and to plan a social media marketing program.
It provided hands on activities to learn how to use social media tools and networks. This workshop included a one day bootcamp style in-person hands on session, a workbook and access to a private members only site.
Workshops are available to Silicon Halton members a a preferred rate. Contact Chris Herbert for details. cherbert@mi6agency.com
To set the stage for myself, during the past year I, Rick Stomphorst, have attended a large number of professional networking events, seminars, panel discussions, meetups, tweetups, conferences and trade shows. I’d attended+volunteered at Mesh09 and Canada 3.0 conferences, which afforded me the opportunity see dedicated volunteers in the background executing a conference. At these events I’ve heard (for example) Premier McGuinty speak on the need for more technology based firms in Ontario, Gary Goodyear (M.P. Science and Technology) speak on the need for Canada to be a technology leader, the CIO of the Province of Ontario talk about paperless government, seemingly countless presentations delivered by CEO’s from small-to-medium ISVs, but it was the CIO of Waterloo’s Opentext, Eugene Roman, talk about the strong engaged hi tech community in Kitchener-Waterloo (KW), led by Communitech, and what Communitech has done to/for the community there. He spoke strongly about how he hasn’t seen such an engaged hi tech group anywhere else.
A lot can start over a cup of coffee
During a casual coffee meeting with Chris Herbert, we talked about our immersion in technology (albeit from different angles), the power of community, the need for growth in our area in terms of size and number of hi tech companies. We agreed on the positive effect Communitech has had creating a hi tech atmosphere in the KW region. Chris and I started verbally itemizing all the hi tech companies in our area and it quickly became evident that we have a sufficient base of hi tech companies here. The conversation meandered to about how our area needed a grassroots organization to connect the area’s technology firms and professionals. If connected, we could create awareness for the technology hub that certainly exists in the area. We could become the Silicon Valley North.
Why don’t we start one?
During our coffee, it was Chris’ question “Why don’t we start one?” that lit our hi tech group. All of the unrelated “wants” floating around in my consciousness suddenly converged and aligned. Yes, why don’t we start one? I was in immediate whole-hearted agreement. We could do this. We already had the “what” nailed down. Debating the who, when, why, how was written off to bureaucratism – we would have none of it. Within minutes we established the date for the inaugural meetup, ~30 days out, and established a target of one week later to name our new org. We quickly agreed to use free on-line tools to facilitate collaboration. Google docs was used to assemble seed-words, words we hoped would become the name of our hi tech group.
Fast Forward
One-week later, we sat down again over coffee reviewing the Google doc of seed words. The seed words Silicon and Halton stood out above the rest, as when combined, embodied what we hoped to create. Silicon, referring to Silicon Valley, and Halton establishing our area. Silicon Halton was born. A Twitter account and Linkedin group were created right then and there. We leveraged social media to spread the word about our inaugural meetup. Three weeks later, 20 of us converged on Williams Coffee Pub.
Start
Start: to move suddenly and violently; to come into being, activity, or operation; to begin a course or journey
If I had to choose a word to describe how we’re doing Silicon Halton, it would be start. Just start. If we’re headed in the wrong direction, we’ll change. That’s better in wasting time belabouring which direction to go, mired in analysis paralysis. Both Chris and I don’t have much patience to belabour decisions. Why? To quote Sir Ken Robinson at TED2006 “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” So here we go.
Chris Herbert and Rick Stomphorst met on January 8th at one of the many offices of Silicon Halton (translation a coffee shop in Halton Region with wifi!).
Silicon Halton is a group dedicated to connecting and creating strong/local relationships for hi-tech entrepreneurs and business leaders in the Halton region. The short term goal is to build a strong and engaged network to help us all realize how important and vibrant the hi tech community is in our neighbourhood. The next Silicon Halton event is Tuesday January 19, 7pm, at Boston Pizza (@BPDoval) located at Dorval & North Service Road in Oakville (Map) More information can be found by: 1. Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/SiliconHalton or the “Silicon Halton” group on LinkedIn 2. Viewing and sharing the flyer found here. Registration here (requested, as this helps us ensure we have enough space allocated). Look forward to meeting and exchanging, and most importantly, connecting our a hi-tech community.
