<Transcript>Pffff. The only thing that Bryce influences is the gravity of smaller masses.<Transcript>
ZING
Well the big needs to be knocked down a notch after the success of CanUX 2006, but I am sure he appreciates the vote-of-confide…

On Diversity:

I agree with the comments here about the need for diversity and diversity as a source of strength and differentiation for Toronto. Women are part of our community, as are people from very diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Immigrant Canadians provide a powerful link to global markets.

Good Ideas, Worth Pursuing: Y-Combinator, early stage investment; Sponsorship for BarCampEarth; Innovation Commons space

I could envision Innovation Commons hubs of shared workspace, cafe and social gathering space across the Toronto region, located in or close to existing technology clusters. Innovation Commons provides space where entrepreneurs come to meet and where the garage startup can get out of the garage; space where people working at established companies come to hang out and pursue their next thing; space where the community comes together on a daily basis and at regular events to exchange knowledge; space where ideas meet talent, knowledge and capital.

I will forward these comments to Alicia Bulwik and see if there is any interest in convening a meeting with the Toronto technology bloggers listed above.

Keep the conversation going…

To me, this suggests that we can instead view diversity as one of Toronto’s competitive edges – and if the goal is to “compete” with other cities so that we’re in the top 5 while some other city isn’t, surely any competitive edges we have should be exploited to the fullest. For instance, as I’ve commented elsewhere, we can produce multilingual applications where the Valley might just produce English. As the Web becomes less and less English, we could accomplish a lot in the global marketplace (and the insular Valley might not even notice).

Great summary of the issues and challenges with ICT. I want to echo Deborah’s comment — women need to be involved in this initiative and in your suggested list of bloggers. Leesa Barnes, Sandy Kemsley, Jen Nolan, Malgosia Green, Estelle Havva, Julia West, Sacha Chua, Jen Schachter.

Following on the heels of the recent “Future of Web Apps” in San Francisco, a conf where all the speakers were men and all but one were white, Chris Messina wrote a great post about why men must be concerned about diversity. It is available at http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2006/09/15/the-future-of-white-boy-clubs/

If Toronto has any hope of being the top 5 anything in the world, we must ensure that there are a diversity of voices and perspectives collaborating on these initiatives.

Cheers … Kate

I wonder who hard it will be for them ICT, to get a small little fund allocation to sponsor an event which is not run by any company, any individual or where the responsibility is shared by the community.

Joey, is spot on with his comments.

Having had experiences within working and policy groups at the directorate level with the government, all I can say is , be rest assured- when their budgets are completed and no more funds available or someone at city hall feels like throwing the entity under the bus, the entity will be closed down. That’s the nature of the beast !!

Sincere advise, take the advise of Joey and Rohan !! -

‘nuf said

The biggest issue with ICT Toronto is there is going to be a very diverse audience it needs to cater to in order to achieve its goal of making Toronto a top 5 ICT cluster. i.e.

ICT workers
Toronto is a vibrant ICT hub with a robust job market with lots of companies working on leading edge technologies

Students
The ICT field offers an interesting career with good job prospects & Toronto has universities that are world renowned in the ICT field

Entrepreneurs
Toronto has a strong ICT hub to support emerging companies in terms of university linkages, talent, funding, and a marketplace

CEOs
Toronto has a strong ICT hub to support corporate R&D and product development centers

Investors
Toronto offers good deal-flow of start-up companies seeking investment

General public
The Toronto ICT hub is an important contributor to the region / economy & ICT companies in Toronto have produced new technologies that have improved our standard of living

Politicians
Importance of the ICT hub in terms of tax base, job creation

Associations
ICT Toronto can complement the activities of your association and make the ICT sector stronger through a unified voice

Educational institutions
Toronto offers a strong ICT hub to support the commercialization of academic research

Each of these areas has existing people, groups, organizations doing good work. There is no need to try replicate or subsume them under umbrella of ICT Toronto. Nor is there a need to try “micro-manage” them as they will all rightfully have different agendas, interests that ICT Toronto may not care about. What is required is an lighweight overall organization that can be the focal point.

It needs a visible leader that can identify & lead a limited set of top issues that we agree should be tackled (i.e. the ideas of the world class conference or immigration issues that were mentioned at the meeting). This person/group can then look to tap into/mobilize all of the various other entities that can contribute/help pull this together. The other entities can collectively contribute to this so for these top few issues we feel strongly about, we have a coordinated effort. However, they still actively pursue their own goals/objectives to provide value to the own stakeholders.

So my personal approach on this is to wait for them to sort out their business plan / pick a leader. After that it will be a lot easier to understand/influence the direction. For the areas where there is synergy ICT Toronto can be tapped into to help complement initiatives that each entity is working on.

Talk About Your Strange Timing

This morning, I decided to voice my displeasure over a lack of visible progress by ICT Toronto, which purports to be a group whose mission is to make Toronto one of the world’s leading centres for information and comm…