Halton Hi-Tech Ecosystem – Enabling Orgs
It takes a community to raise a child, or so the saying goes. Other enabling organizations exist in Halton, play in the same sandbox. Each group serves a unique purpose, each delivering various program(s), each serving a unique community. It seems right and proper to capture these organizations here for the benefit of Silicon Halton members and anyone else who finds this page. As we’ve said numerous times before, we can’t transform Halton into a world renowned hi-tech cluster alone. The groups are listed in no particular order.
Innovation Night
Innovation Night is Hamilton’s key event for innovators and entrepreneurs to share and develop their ideas, practice and perfect their pitch, and present to their peers and the local innovation community. http://www.innovationfactory.ca/programs/innovation-night
Golden Horseshoe Venture Forum
A group fostering the growth and success of entrepreneurial ventures by creating an environment for them to network with the financial, professional and technical communities. http://www.ghvf.org
Golden Horseshoe Biosciences Network
A regional partnership of business leaders, entrepreneurs, researchers, and economic development officers embracing the biotechnology and biosciences sector. www.ghbn.org
BitNet
An association of individuals, business and organizations with a common interest in the practical and innovative use and development of technology, to the benefit and prosperity of the Golden Horseshoe community. www.Bitnet.ca
HaltonITPros
Group aims to help to enhance all of the members ability to succeed at work and by sharing knowledge & experience. http://haltonitpros.com
CIPS Golden Horseshoe
Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) are a group of Information Systems / Information Technology professionals who meet and strive to uphold a set of professional ethics and standards. http://gh.on.cips.ca/
ENTMENT
Is a “social networking club” for Entrepreneurs (Ents), who share ideas and advice about their software solutions or software-enabled businesses, while also receiving advice from more experienced Mentors (Ments). http://halton.entment.org
TwestofTO
Social Media networking group. Meets monthly in the golden horseshoe area, between Mississauga to Hamilton. http://www.twestofto.org & @TwestofTO
Colborne Computer Club
To assist their fellow members in the understanding of computer operation and in the enjoyment of operating their computers. Monthly meetings are held at the Sir John Colborne Recreation Centre for Seniors, Corner of Lakeshore Road West and 3rd Line, Oakville. www.colbornecomputerclub.ca
IEEE Hamilton Section
The IEEE is the world’s largest professional association, with over 365,000 members worldwide. Its core purpose is to foster technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. It has 1,300 standards and projects under development. The IEEE Hamilton Section includes Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville, Milton and the Niagara. It has over 700 members. The Section hosts a number of technical talks and networking events through the year. http://hamilton.ieee.ca
Software Hamilton
Software Hamilton was created with the aim of uniting the Greater Hamilton Area, McMaster University and Mohawk College software communities. Software Hamilton is a website for the different elements of the community to become aware of each other and work together. http://www.softwarehamilton.com
Open Halton
A Halton Region Citizen Initiative. They are a group of citizens who believe in transformational power of open data and open government, our mission is to bring Open Data to the Halton region. http://www.openhalton.ca
Innovation Factory
Connects and enables active collaboration between the communities of science, business, government, academia and finance to accelerate the innovation process and amplify the economic and social impact of important new ideas and discoveries. Innovation Factory is a member of the Ontario Network of Excellence. http://www.innovationfactory.ca
HalTech
This is not necessarily a complete list. If you are aware of any other groups which should be listed here, please DM @SiliconHalton and we’ll add them to our list. Similarly, please comment on any corrections. Much appreciated.
We’re not going to publish the malware names as we don’t want to give any more attention to the miscreants who created it and wasted our time resolving the problem. While understandably everyone is embarrassed about being on the receiving end of a hack, I’m of the personal opinion that unless you have the resources along the lines of the Department of Homeland Security, no one can afford to spend the continual resources necessary to ensure a 100% bullet-proof site. Eventually some hack, some bot, some person with no socially redeemable qualities will detect the tiny gap in your site and exploit it. Our defense is to take reasonable, commercially available, efforts to protect ourselves. Of course, always interested in learning what the Silicon Halton community’s thoughts are. (post blog note:) to quote 
At the Skills Competitions at Robert Bateman High School April 13 the 
In the team of 2 Virtual Robotics competitions Hamid Tahir and Gordon Marks took gold while Declan Meurig and Ryan Sri Wijewardena scored a bronze. Silicon Halton members donated $100 to the Sparton Team to cover some of the costs for parts for their robot inventions. Helping youth is something Silicon Halton members believe to be important to the growth of technology in Halton and more importantly the growth of these future hitech leaders.
Thanks to member 
The demonstration lasts about 15 minutes and is interactive. VMware did a great job of demonstrating how their technology can be used in the work environment by IT teams and end users. They even had an iPad! If you’d like more information on the basics of virtualization check out VMware’s “
While we may be familiar with the dozen or so hi-tech companies that flank the major highways, The Weather Network, EMC2, VMWare, L3 – Wescam, to name a few, there are hundreds in our midst. If I said there are 25 hi-tech companies in Halton, I suspect most would agree that that seems like a reasonable number for Halton. If I said there is around 750 hi-tech companies in Halton, I’m certain most would balk at the number. But 750 is about right.
At Meetup #4 I had mistakenly quoted the total number as ~200, but the real number is 750. About 450 of those are < 4 person sized companies and are not shown in the 1st chart so as to make the chart more readable. Our challenge is to grow each band of companies to the next band, and attract new hi tech companies to the area. This is personally one of the values I would like to see Silicon Halton’s members return to the community – each one of us is an ambassador to companies considering expansion, relocation or startup.