Adapting innovation programs to small urban and rural areas

Thanks to funding from the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, I got to spend five months over the fall and winter focused solely on bringing (and figuring out how to bring) Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE) resources supporting the commercialization of innovation to small urban and rural parts of Southwestern Ontario—specifically, the region from Goderich to Simcoe, excluding the City of London.

I've lived in a small urban area in that region for over a year now and spent a lot of time over the last five years travelling across Southwestern Ontario. We'd actually lived in Waterloo for more than a decade before cluing in that there was a whole world around us that we'd never seen. We quickly made up for lost time.

Connecting innovation and productivity programs to the economic development priorities of Southwestern Ontario became a priority for me and the last thing I did before leaving TechAlliance was create a project to reach out to the small urban and rural areas across the region. Since it was a personal priority more than an organizational one, there was never any discussion around lessons learned and recommendations, so that will be my theme across several upcoming posts.

I spent five months talking to companies and supporting organizations in seven counties or county-sized municipalities: Huron, Lambton, Chatham-Kent, Middlesex, Elgin, Oxford and Norfolk. Until I moved to Strathroy, the only places I'd ever lived were Toronto, Boston, and Waterloo—three internationally renowned innovation centres—and the strengths and challenges of the communities I was now working in were very different from anything I'd experienced.

But one thing was clear from the beginning. There was plenty of innovation going on throughout this region. When I looked through the disclosed NRC-IRAP contributions over the last few years, there were just as many (slightly more, in fact) companies in these smaller urban and rural areas that had received funding as there were in the City of London.

So the companies were there, the innovation was there, and yet these regions were clearly not the focal point of the provincial innovation programs. Yes, every area was assigned a Regional Innovation Centre, but they were almost all based in major urban centres and outreach was rarely a priority.

The key sectors of the programs were also not well aligned with small urban and rural needs. Unlike London, for example, these regions were generally not looking to digital gaming and medical devices as cornerstones of their future economic prosperity. Resources as the "regional" centres were nearly always weighted toward the innovation/technology priorities of their major urban centres. Medical device expertise is useful in the City of London, but not so much in Huron County. And the region I was covering has a population that's nearly double (1.8x) that of the City of London.

The provincial programs originally took a very narrow view of "innovation" and mostly used the word as a euphemism for inventions generated at universities. That's improved over the years, although there's still a long way to go. Some universities started out in small urban and rural areas, but all of Southwestern Ontario's universities are now in the largest urban areas. The University of Guelph has a good-sized campus in Ridgetown (part of Chatham-Kent) and a site in Simcoe and Western has at least one research institute in Middlesex County, but it's mostly the colleges that have a presence in smaller urban centres. The colleges' share of innovation program resources has improved, but since they don't have a research focus, they don't play as integral a role within the programs as universities.

The university-centric view of innovation is a challenge for small urban and rural areas, which not only don't have university campuses but also typically have a smaller pool of university graduates. Here's a table taken from the last census showing the percentage of residents aged 25 to 64 with university degrees in selected parts of Ontario (the second number is the ratio of the percentage to the provincial average)—some of which overlap:

City of Waterloo	40.3%	1.55
GTA (Toronto CMA)	33.6%	1.29
City of London	25.6%	0.99
Middlesex & London	23.8%	0.92
Waterloo Region	23.2%	0.89
Lambton County	13.3%	0.51
Strathroy-Caradoc	12.5%	0.48
Oxford County	11.4%	0.44
Chatham-Kent	11.2%	0.43
Elgin & St. Thomas	11.0%	0.42
Haldimand & Norfolk	10.5%	0.40
Huron County	9.9%	0.38

The City of Waterloo—with its two universities—is off the charts and the other large urban areas all score well, and then there's a huge drop once you get past Waterloo Region. The difference is large enough to raise questions about whether an approach that works in Waterloo and Toronto and London will be as effective in the less urbanized areas.

Now that provincial innovation programs have been merged into the economic development ministry, and with the increased emphasis on productivity—which requires a broader view of "innovation"—there looks to be an opportunity to rethink some of the programs to make them more applicable to companies and regions outside of the major urban areas.

There are some interesting initiatives and approaches throughout the region as municipalities look to enhance their economic development through entrepreneurship and innovation. That's what I'll be looking at in the next post in this series.

Moving ahead in London: New vision and leadership filling the gaps

I had a great time in Waterloo on Friday, attending the rebirth of LaunchPad$50K, now run by the GTAN angel group, which means there are real investors on the judging panel (and in attendance) making actual investment decisions, the lack of which is always my first lament about most business pitch competitions.

"How are things in London?" was usually one of the first questions that came up as I bumped into a lot of old friends—this was my first time at a Waterloo event since moving to Strathroy—and that reminded me that I've never said anything here about my London experience.

I stepped down from my role at TechAlliance last November after 13 months. I was affiliated with the organization for a few more months—managing a project I had initiated that focused on small urban and rural areas in Southwestern Ontario (more about that in future posts)—but that wrapped up at the end of March.

The point I made repeatedly on Friday is that I didn't leave because of a lack of confidence in London's potential as an innovation and technology centre. If anything, it was just the opposite.

London has a ton of potential—which is what motivated me in the first place to uproot my family and make what was only my second big move (the first was from Toronto to Waterloo when I was 28 and single). That potential is now beginning to transform into reality. London is now starting to get the vision and leadership that it's needed for years to make it happen.

Unquestionably, there are major gaps that need to be filled, and some of them probably should have been addressed years ago. But we can't step into a time machine and go back, so the best we can do is start now. And that's what I've turned my attention to.

Thankfully, there are others who have also been working on filling those gaps. Two initiatives in particular—BizInc, the student business incubator at Western and Fanshawe, and UnLondon, which (among many other things) created the UnLab hackerspace—have shown how much can be achieved in a short period of time when you have that vision and leadership and drive. I quickly became a big supporter of both, and whenever I was asked what exciting things are happening in London, those were the first two I'd mention.

There are other grassroots initiatives in town that also hold a lot of promise, and some impressive new companies like Cyborg Trading Systems, Big Viking Games and Carbyn (now part of Synacor), among others that I'd better not try to name one-by-one. BizInc is connected to Western and Fanshawe—two fantastic resources that the city had never really tapped as a source of startups. The local office of NRC-IRAP deserves to be singled out as having done an outstanding job, particularly in the years when it had extra funding and was unmatched locally in its support of early-stage innovation-based companies. As well, there's a solid core of supporting services and infrastructure in London, which is becoming an increasingly vibrant and creative city (something I also got to see in Waterloo).

I had the opportunity to see firsthand where these exciting new initiatives were happening—who was looking ahead and who was looking back. Who was rowing the boat and who was coasting, or even rowing in the wrong direction.

I saw the potential and I also saw why London had fallen behind other cities in building an innovation and technology business centre. It was one thing to cede dominance to Waterloo Region, but we're now seeing other Ontario communities catch up. Even Waterloo wasn't that far ahead of London just a few years ago, but the gap has widened every year. It took Hamilton about nine months to surpass what it took years to build here—again, proof of what can be done in a short amount of time. Guelph been making huge strides as well. We've been too satisfied for too long with mediocre results.

Vision and leadership matter. Being in touch with your industry matters too. Complacency is a killer.

And that vision and leadership exist in London. You'll find it in the people who brought us UnLab, PodCamp London, StartupCampLondon, Geek Dinner, Hello My Game Is, Lean Coffee London, Seed Your Startup, and the 100+ projects that BizInc has worked with. These are the kinds of forward-thinking initiatives London needs, and there's lots more to be done—and people eager to do it.

It would be great to see resources reallocated to these initiatives that are actually making big things happen. There are people at a grassroots level accomplishing a lot on shoestring budgets. Shoestrings only get you so far, though. They deserve our support.

I've been talking with many of those people over the last several weeks. There's frustration, but also an ambition and desire to make things better. The raw material has always been here but for too long we've had administrators where we need leaders. I hope what we're seeing now is a sign that a change has started.

After spending more than 10 years working to build the Waterloo tech community, I came to London with high hopes. Those hopes are still there and I'm looking forward to being part of the changes ahead.

Path looks clear for the Southwestern Ontario Development Fund

Quick takeaways:

• Looks like the Bill that creates the Southwestern Ontario Development Fund will pass
• No big changes in committee, although there will now be a standalone corporation managing the fund
• SWEA and Invest Ottawa were among the presenters at the public hearings
• I like a lot of SWEA's vision for the fund, except its reliance on commercial lenders
• That's sounding like the old Michelin Development fund in Waterloo Region, which may be an achievable model, but not one I'd prefer

We're down to the homestretch at the Ontario Legislature for Bill 11, the proposed legislation that would establish the Southwestern Ontario Development Fund and continue the Eastern Ontario Development Fund. The NDP seem to be on board with the governing Liberals—and had the run of the place when the bill went to committee in April—while the PCs remain opposed. That means that, barring a late surprise, the bill should have enough votes to pass third reading.

Most of the details that will be of interest and debate are going to be in the regulations rather than the bill itself, which avoids such messy issues as which areas are eligible and ineligible and how the fund will actually operate.

Clause-by-clase amendments
Since the details are in the regulations, the clause-by-clause consideration by the Standing Committee on General Government mostly dealt with higher level issues. The PCs supported every amendment the NDP proposed, so all of them passed and became part of the bill. One amendment—which the NDP said was modelled after the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund—will require the creation of two new corporations to manage the SWODF and the EODF. Each will have its own board, consisting of the minister and at least seven other people, who must be residents of the area covered by the fund. The board will establish a local advisory committee that "must reflect sectoral and sub-regional interests" in the region.

A second amendment will require every funding agreement to include performance standards and that payments received by companies be paid back to the fund if they don't satisfy the standards agreed to. All funding agreements would be available for public inspection, with any commercially sensitive information removed. Nothing particularly dramatic, and those were the two biggest changes.

Public hearings
Public hearings were held two weeks before the clause-by-clause review. There were fewer requests than expected to speak to the committee, so there was only one day of hearings instead of the two that had been pencilled in. One of the groups appearing before the committee was SWEA—which MEDI Minister Brad Duguid identified as the main instigator for the creation of the SWODF, with support from SCOR, SOMA and the Western Ontario Wardens' Caucus (all groups I had the opportunity to meet when I was overseeing Ontario Network of Excellence outreach in small urban and rural areas across much of Southwestern Ontario). Other groups to present included ONE member Invest Ottawa, the Windsor-Essex Economic Development Corporation (WEEDC), and the Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce, along with representatives of Durham Region and the District of Muskoka. Two businesses and an individual also gave presentations.

Durham and Muskoka were concerned about falling through the cracks of the three regional funds that would exist if the bill is passed. They aren't in the north, east, or southwest. There may be several others in the same boat once all the definitions are in. There'd better be, because there isn't enough money in the three funds to cover everyone. Even so, if I'm an oddsmaker, I think the coverage for SWODF will be broader than I'd prefer.

Even Invest Ottawa was mostly trying to get in on the action, since the urban parts of Ottawa are currently excluded from the EODF. Invest Ottawa CEO Bruce Lazenby (who mentioned growing up in London) told the committee that Ottawa has "hundreds of companies that will not succeed because they can't get $5,000, $10,000, $50,000, $75,000, that little bit which is going to tip them over into the next phase." He said Ottawa is "on the cusp" and will either succeed or "get beat up" over the next couple of years.

The role of commercial lenders
SWEA has consistently been advocating for a fund that is both loan-based and integrated with commercial lenders—and Harry Joosten from Libro Financial Group was part of its delegation, along with chair Dan Mathiesen and president Serge Lavoie. Much of what SWEA has recommended is compatible with my preferences—a low ceiling on the funding received by any one company, a low threshold on the number of jobs any single company is required to create, an emphasis on what Lavoie called "a grassroots approach to building small business" and a specific reference to startups (Lavoie was the only presenter who explicitly refered to business startups, although they were implicit in Lazenby's presentation as well)—all of that was great for the committee to hear.

But I'm still skeptical of the commercial lender-focused approach. The model described by Joosten would have companies first go to a bank, credit union, or other qualified lender and "go through all the normal credit assessment procedures." Companies would have to complete this assessment before being evaluated by a committee from the fund. They would then get credits at the end of each year for each job created (smaller amounts in the second and third years), and could use those credits to repay their loans.

Joosten undoubtedly has a rosier view of the value of commercial lenders to growing companies—particularly early-stage ones—than my experience has provided me. Above all else, this fund is supposed to be a tool for regional economic development, and I don't agree with Joosten that "the expertise is there" within banks or that they've shown themselves to be sufficiently progressive in working with high-potential companies that I would make them the gatekeepers for the fund.

The SWEA vision for the fund doesn't sound very different from the Michelin Development fund that we had in Waterloo Region a few years ago—although the banks would be even more hands-on in this case, which I don't see as a positive. I was on the review committee for the Michelin fund for about a year. It made some good loans (Miovision was one of the recipients), but had a hard time dealing with companies without hard assets and overlooked many promising companies. As long as companies met the credit worthiness check, it was mostly a superficial matter of dividing the loan request by the number of jobs they were claiming to create and seeing if they met the threshold. There was no consideration for regional economic development—which wasn't Michelin's mandate, so that was fine but I don't think anyone could say it had any kind of transformational effect on the community.

Maybe for $20 million that's as good as we're going to get with the SWODF—the Michelin fund was one-seventh that size and served a population about one-seventh as big (assuming the City of Hamilton isn't included in the SWODF). So that could be a realistic model, which is a sobering thought. Better than nothing, but I'm hoping for more.

Some recommendations for the Southwestern Ontario Development Fund

Consultations start this week on the Ontario government's proposed Southwestern Ontario Development Fund, with public meetings in Owen Sound on Thursday and Windsor and St. Thomas on Friday (with St. Catharines on the schedule next week and Guelph the week after that).

Rather than continue my previous post, I thought I'd rearrange my followup as answers to some of the questions asked in the government's consultation paper. In comparison with the Eastern Ontario Development Fund, I'm hoping we see lower caps, wider distribution of funds, fewer pre-set barriers for applicants (especially since they are primarily used to exclude smaller, younger companies), and an evaluation that goes beyond counting the number of jobs that applicants claim will be created.

Should the fund focus exclusively on providing direct support to businesses? Should some funding be provided to community organizations?
There should be funding for both businesses and community/regional organizations. The fund should be a catalyst for economic prosperity, which will be driven by businesses achieving success in the marketplace. That's how they will attract money to their communities and create sustainable jobs. Therefore businesses should the beneficiaries of the funding, but that will not always be best achieved through direct support. Resources can be leveraged to benefit a range of companies through programs and services run by community/regional not-for-profits.

Should two funding streams be available? That is, one for community, regional economic development and industry associations, and the other for businesses.
Whether the funding for those organizations is formalized as a separate stream or not, both types of applicants will have to make the case for the economic value of their proposed projects and justify the level of funding sought.

Should the Fund provide only grants, or should there be a mix of grants and loans?
Funding to regional not-for-profits should be grants. With businesses, the optimal mix will depend on the structure of the fund. If there is a large cap on project funding and the recipients are a relatively small set of established companies receiving sizable investments (not the recommended approach), then a lending program would make sense. On the other hand, if the cap was set low, with funding spread over a larger number of recipients, including high-potential early-stage businesses, that would be a better fit for a straight grant program. Loans, in many cases, will require lengthy pay-back periods and leave the fund open to being evaluated on how much has been repaid instead of what has been achieved.

What is an appropriate amount of project funding support by the province?
$20 million is a reasonable starting point. At that level, demand will greatly exceed supply, which should lead to some strong projects being funded. That will demonstrate the value of the fund, which could then be used to justify larger amounts of funding down the road. With anything much less than $20 million, a development fund would no longer be the most effective use of the money.

Should funding from other [government] sources be allowed?
Yes, subject to a ceiling for the percentage of total project costs paid from all sources of government funding. That ceiling could be 100% for projects headed by not-for-profit organizations.

Should there be funding caps?
Yes. The strategy should focus less on trying to pick a small number of winners and more on having several irons in the fire—still looking to back winners to some extent, but with a lot more picks. A cap of $125,000 for grants is high enough to make a difference and low enough that the funding can be used to help a wider range of potential job and regional wealth creators, greatly improving the odds of sustainable success.

How many jobs must be created (direct or indirect) by the project to be eligible for funding?
There's no need to set a hard-coded floor for the number of jobs to be created. It's not an entitlement program and there will be far more applicants than recipients. If the case for the proposed project isn't strong, it won't be funded. If the case is strong, then it shouldn't be rejected solely because it failed to meet some arbitrarily-selected target.

In addition to job and investment targets, what other metrics should be considered when evaluating proposals?
Regional economic prosperity will be driven by the market success of companies in the area. Job creation is an outcome of that success. (Jobs may exist temporarily in anticipation of future market success, but they can't be sustained and will vanish without it.) The economic value to a region of that success goes beyond a simple job count and includes many other factors—all of which could be legitimate points of assessment in evaluating proposals.

For example:

• Business prospects of the company/opportunity for continued growth
• Likelihood that future company growth would be in the region
• Value of the jobs created—salaries, prospects for career development
• Fit with regional economic development priority areas
• Fit within regional value chains
• Extent to which the profits of the business and the value of the enterprise remain within the region
• Ability to capture locally the value of revenue generated outside the region

Along with economic value, other factors that should be considered include:

• Capability of the recipient to execute the proposed project
• Impact of the project on the company/region
• Project is adequately described/scoped, priced

What should be the geographical limits for the fund?
The eastern border for the fund should be Haldimand, Brant, Waterloo, Wellington, and Grey. This is an area comprised of five single-tier municipalities, six separated cities, two regional municipalities (which include four cities) and nine counties (15 county-sized municipalities in total). In its own materials, Dufferin County identifies its location as South-Central Ontario and Simcoe County is even deeper into the South-Central region. Hamilton, Burlington and Niagara Region are part of the Golden Horseshoe region. These are both distinct from Southwestern Ontario. Every region could undoubtedly make use of a development fund, but this one is for Southwestern Ontario, a large area that's home to some of the highest unemployment rates in Canada. Boundary creep will only dilute the fund's effectiveness and make it less likely it will achieve its objectives.

How many employees should a company have in order to be eligible for funding?
An eligibility floor on the number of current employees isn't necessary since the proposals will all be evaluated in a competitive process for their economic impact. If a small company makes a more compelling case than a larger company for the value of its proposal, then there shouldn't be any arbitrary barrier to funding that project. For the same reason, there shouldn't be a floor on the number of years in operation. Some of the most exciting opportunities for economic value come from smaller, younger companies.

What priority sectors should the fund concentrate on for the region?
The priority sectors should be in-line with local economic development priorities. The fund should promote economic development across the entire region, which includes cities, small urban, and rural regions, each with distinct priorities. The fund should not favour one above the others.

Southwestern Ontario Development Fund: Challenges and decisions ahead (part 1)

Consultations—or at least “pre-consultations”—began last Friday for the Ontario government’s proposed Southwestern Ontario Development Fund (SWODF) to promote economic development in the region, modelled after a similar fund for Eastern Ontario created in 2008.

If passed by the legislature, the fund would provide $20 million a year to projects in Southwestern Ontario—an area that hasn’t been defined yet—with the goal of attracting and retaining investment, creating and retaining jobs, and promoting innovation, collaboration and cluster development.

Dalton McGuinty announced SWODF while on a tour of Digital Extremes in London and the bill was introduced the following day by Brad Duguid, Minister of Economic Development and Innovation (MEDI). Along with creating the new fund, the bill would also make permanent the Eastern Ontario Development Fund (EODF), which is currently a four-year program scheduled to end next year.

It’s only been a week since Bill 11—the Attracting Investment and Creating Jobs Act, 2011—was introduced and we’re already seeing some of the issues that the government—and the opposition parties—will have to wrestle with over the weeks and months ahead. Potentially opposing voices—rural vs urban, region vs region, sector vs sector—will all want to be heard as details of the proposed fund are developed.

Challenge 1: Who’s in and who’s out

One of the challenges will be establishing the boundaries of the fund. The map in the consultation paper—which MEDI emphasized was for illustrative purposes only—went as far east as Simcoe County, the area around Barrie and Orillia (Kitchener-Waterloo-Barrie is actually defined as an economic unit in many government studies, especially at the federal level), and also included the City of Hamilton and Niagara Region.

That’s going to be too big an area for a $20 million-a-year fund, so where should we draw the line? With money on the table, you’d have to think that borderline areas will be eager to make the case that they be included, but I don’t expect Simcoe and Dufferin to make the cut. Including Hamilton would significantly dilute the impact of the fund, and from the comments and actions of the government, I don’t expect that it will be part of the SWODF territory. Once you take out Hamilton, it’s difficult to include Niagara. That leaves Wellington and Haldimand on the eastern edge of eligibility, and that seems like a reasonable cut-off point.

Challenge 2: Urban vs rural

Outside of Hamilton, the largest city in the region is London. The EODF excludes from eligibility projects in the urban ridings of the City of Ottawa, but from the comments made by London mayor Joe Fontana at the first pre-consultation meeting, it’s clear that he fully expects his city to be eligible for SWODF (which looks like a safe bet, given the area’s high unemployment numbers and the fact that the fund was announced in London).

So the region will likely include the urban areas of London, Kitchener, Cambridge, Waterloo, Windsor, and Guelph and a large rural area spread out among at least 14 counties or county-sized municipalities (e.g. Chatham-Kent).

Urban and rural areas both need economic development, but their economic development priorities are very different. This is something I’ve had to work through at TechAlliance, which is now the ONE Regional Innovation Centre serving an area from Goderich and Huron County in the northwest to Norfolk County in the southeast. Across that region, most areas have no interest in pinning their economic hopes on medical devices and digital gaming—two of London’s priorities. On the other hand, you don’t hear a lot of discussions about agriculture in London (outside of Dave Sparling’s office, anyway), but it’s at or near the top of nearly everyone’s mind outside the city when it comes to economic development. Which is a segue to...

Challenge 3: Sector vs sector

Closely coupled with the urban/rural issue is the question of whether the fund should give preference to particular industry sectors. This was a concern raised at the first pre-consultation meeting by Stratford mayor Dan Mathieson, who also chairs the Southwest Economic Alliance (SWEA), which lobbied for the creation of the fund. He said that no single sector—and specified technology, in case there were any doubts—should receive a disproportionate amount of the funding.

Given that the two areas of growth and investment identified in the consultation paper were ICT and digital media in “Kitchener-Waterloo” and London, it seems like a legitimate concern. The paper also says applicants should be aligned with priority sectors and lists advanced manufacturing, science and technology, and food processing as three examples. It doesn’t ask if certain sectors should be favoured, it asks which sectors the fund should concentrate on.

Until a year ago, I’d lived all my life in Toronto, Boston and Waterloo and have primarily worked in the technology sector for more than 15 years. It turns out that not every area has much in common with those places. London should, and is ambling along down that road. But I’ve spent much of the last four months trying to find technology companies across the less urbanized parts of Southwestern Ontario, and it hasn’t been easy. They exist, but it often requires a different notion of “technology” and “innovation” than you can apply in places like Waterloo or London. The MEDI program I work with is explicitly focused on technology sectors, but it would be a mistake for SWODF to be so narrowly targeted.

Favouring some sectors over others is fine (I don’t expect we’ll see much of this money going to restaurants, for example), but the fund needs to accommodate economic development priorities across the region, and not just the sectors favoured by urban areas.

Challenge 4: Region vs region

I’m not sure that anyone’s going to say this in front of a microphone, but having lived in Waterloo for years, worked in London for a year, and spent the last year living in—and now working in—small urban/rural areas in Southwestern Ontario, I’ve seen first-hand that London is looked upon with suspicion by many of the surrounding municipalities and the entire area is wary of Waterloo Region. And with this fund, there’s a possibility that we may also have to deal with some additional areas that hardly anyone even considers to be part of Southwestern Ontario.

That in itself can make collaboration a challenge, but what could be an even bigger issue is that different parts of Southwestern Ontario have very different priorities. Sometimes it’s because their strengths are in different sectors, sometimes it's because they’re at different points in their development. London would love to have a facility like the Hub, but it’s not a priority for Waterloo Region because they already have one (two, really, with the Accelerator Centre). In other parts of the region, something like the Hub would make no sense at all, except maybe at a very different scale and with a very different focus (which would make it not much like the Hub).

Some see SWODF as a great motivator for inter-regional collaboration. And it should be. But there will be challenges in an area where some regions are cautious of others and where there are significant differences in priorities between regions. Many potential partners won’t have common priorities. Where there is going to be collaboration, it has to be toward priorities that are legitimately shared by all partners. What we don’t need to encourage are artificial partnerships awkwardly forced together for the sake of a funding proposal.

Coming in part 2: Who should get the money, and what kind of money should they get?

Added bonus for StartupCampLondon: eProf at Chinaccelerator

On top of the other items on the schedule at StartupCampLondon tomorrow (Thursday) as an extra added bonus, we'll have Trevor Koverko from eProf talk about his experience spending the summer at Chinaccelerator, a TechStars-network accelerator in China. eProf was launched by Western students earlier this year and helped by BizInc, the new student incubator at UWO.

So we have:

• Featured speaker: Roger Skubowius, founder of Reqwireless, a mobile apps startup that was acquired by Google
• Trevor Koverko of eProf on his Chinaccelerator experience
• Titus Ferguson and Adam Caplan from UnLondon to talk about the open data app contest using the City of London's 2012 budget data
• An opportunity to see the UnLab hackerspace, which is right downstairs from StartupCamp

That's all on top of the informal presentations from startups (just sign your name on the whiteboard when you arrive and you can talk about your idea or startup and get everyone's feedback), which are at the core of the event.

And we may still get to hear from Jaafar Haidar about his experience last month in having his latest initiative, Carbyn, featured on TechCrunch—although it's looking like Jaafar may be on the highway coming back from Buffalo and unable to make it.

WHEN: Thursday, October 27, 5:30pm
WHERE: Convergence Centre, 999 Collip Circle, London [Map]
Register here

StartupCampLondon this Thursday

The second StartupCampLondon this Thursday, October 27, starting at 5:30 at the Convergence Centre. If you've got a startup or an idea for one -- or just want to be part of the local startup community, you won't want to miss this informal "unconference."

The centrepiece of the event will be brief presentations from startups or prospective startups. If you want to get feedback and suggestions on your startup, just sign up when you arrive and you'll get a chance to tell everyone about your idea or company. They probably won't be shy about giving their opinions, but it's all friendly and fun.

Our guest speaker is area resident Roger Skubowius who will share his experiences of starting a mobile apps company that was acquired (very secretly, at the time) by Google. That was the deal that brought Google to Waterloo and from which it has grown its current development office. Roger will talk about what it was like selling to Google--and not being able to tell anyone about it.

We'll get an update from Jaafer Haidar on what it was like for Carbyn to be featured last month on TechCrunch -- one of the world's highest profile tech business news sites.

We'll also hear from UnLondon about the contest they're launching to develop apps for the City of London's 2012 budget process. There are thousands of dollars in prize money to be won (assuming the proposal is approved by city council on Monday night) and lots of cool startup services as well.

And if you haven't yet been to the UnLab hacker space, it's located right downstairs in the Convergence Centre so you can go take a peek at one of the city's most exciting initiatives.

Windermere Manor will once again be serving food and drinks. StartupCampLondon is co-instigated by UnLondon and TechAlliance and co-sponsored by The Research Park. We had a packed room at the first StartupCampLondon earlier this year, and we hope to see you this Thursday.

WHEN: Thursday, October 27, 5:30pm
WHERE: Convergence Centre, 999 Collip Circle, London
Map
Register here