“I’ve just come to expect that my (public relations) agency can’t write,” was the astonishing admission I heard a few weeks back from a vice president at one of Ottawa’s larger technology companies who called us to see if we’d be interested in participating in an agency review process.

(I’ve promised not to name him (or her) for reasons that will be obvious as you read the rest of this post.)

I could hardly believe my ears. But yes, he said, it had long been his experience that the PR practitioners he had been dealing with from a range of different agencies and across a number of companies just weren’t very good writers, and so it fell to him to write most of the materials used in his campaigns. One of the key reasons he was approaching inmedia, he told me, was our very strong reputation in the marketplace as superb writers, a reputation he said was confirmed when he read our blog and web site.

I chalked this one up to what I assumed was just an unfortunate experience on the part of one technology marketing executive until I relayed the story to a colleague last week, a CEO at another technology company here in Ottawa and an insightful marketer in his own right. I was again utterly gobsmacked when he said he didn’t view writing as a core requirement in the PR function, that the ability to pitch the story was far more important.

“And what do you do,” I asked him, “When the pitch is initially well received and the next words out of the reporter or editor’s mouth are, ‘Sounds good, send me something about it.’?”

Here’s the thing. To work at inmedia and, I believe, to be an effective media relations practitioner anywhere, you must be able to write at an expert level and you must be able to effectively pitch what you’ve written. There is no hierarchy between these two fundamental skills. Lack one, and you’re out of the game.

And here’s why.

To believe, as these two otherwise successful technology marketers clearly do, that writing is either not terribly important or that your PR function, whether internal or an agency, can be permitted to be lousy writers, is to completely beggar the entire communications process.

In the first instance, despite all the wonderful new communications tools at our disposal, most journalists still want to see something in cold, hard black and white, even if it is delivered electronically. And even if they don’t ask for it, it’s just gotta be in your best interests to give them well-written material so they have the complete story, with all the relevant facts and accurate spellings of company, product and people’s names to which they can refer. This is just so basic I’m staggered it needs stating.

Second, how in the heck does a PR practitioner demonstrate her or his understanding of the story without writing about it? Yes, a properly written document proves the communicator can — gasp! — communicate. That is, the words run together in some sort of comprehensible order, everything is spelled correctly and the commas and periods are in the right places. But it still won’t be any good unless the person writing it actually has a thorough grasp of the subject matter.

Effective writing is not a case of cutting and pasting bits and pieces from other documents to make a different document and it needs to be more than a merely technically accurate use of words, grammar and punctuation. Effective writing is the process of distilling what has been learned — from other documents, certainly, but also, and critically, from interviews with a range of subject-matter experts — into a new piece of work. It not only communicates the story to all who read it, it also demonstrates understanding.

Bottom line: If your agency can’t write about it well, they almost certainly can’t pitch it well. And even worse, they probably don’t even understand it well.

So, did we get the business? Well, that’s another story that I cover here: The Ottawa inferiority complex theorem strikes again.

Technorati Tags: writing, pitching, media relations, business development

Labarge Weinstein hosted yet another well-attended and informative Startup Drop-in event last night for The Ottawa Network, and the theme of the evening demonstrated how seemingly innocuous things can have a most profound impact when duplicated on a large scale.

The theme was cleantech, featuring Ron Dizy of Sempa Power Systems, a Vancouver firm that specializes in hybrid power systems that help cut utility bills for commercial and industrial buildings. Ron talked about how customers can cut their power bills by 10 to 30 per cent by switching to electrical heating during off-peak hours and back to fossil fuel-based heating when the demand for, and the cost of, electricity is at its highest.

The evening also featured three of Ottawa’s rising stars in the cleantech sphere.

Energate, which helps consumers and utilities manage and reduce energy use in the home, was represented by chairman and CEO Niraj Bhargava. He emphasized the simple truth that we’re all creatures of habit unlikely to adopt methods of energy conservation if they mean curbing our use of the domestic comforts we’ve all come to take for granted, such as heating and air-conditioning. Energate’s speciality is managing energy use in ways we can bear to live with.

Dave Gerwing, president of Menova Energy, talked about how much power there is untapped in the rays of the sun. (I believe he said enough sunlight strikes the earth in one minute to power the planet for six months. Any error in that statement is entirely mine). But the trick is to capture it. Menova has developed a high-efficiency solar concentrator that captures this clean power source for electrical power, heating and lighting, hundreds of times more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost of traditional solar power technology.

But the most profound illustration of how the little things can add up to monumental proportions came from Scott Feagan, CEO of TireStamp. His company is in the business of making devices that allow corporate fleets to monitor and manage tire pressure and condition. Sounds like a practical enough solution, but not much of a “Wow” factor, is there?

Well, then Scott started talking about how quickly an under-inflated tire wears out, how under-inflation impacts fuel efficiency, how many gallons of oil are needed to make a replacement tire, the highway fatalities attributed every year to blowouts on commercial vehicles, and the billions some of the big parcel companies pay each year in fuel, no one in that room was left with any doubt that proper tire inflation and maintenance is a huge factor in reducing global pollution and resource consumption.

As individuals, we often wonder what we can do to make a difference. The truth is, there is no magic bullet to cure our environmental challenges. But, as last night’s event demonstrated, all those little things we can do, either at home, on the road or in the workplace, can add up in a big way.

Technorati Tags: The Ottawa Network, Start Up Drop-in, Labarge Weinstein, Tirestamp, Energate, Menova, Sempa Power, clean tech, green tech

When it comes to the next generation of technology companies taking root in Ottawa, Enablence is definitely at the top of the heap. At OCRI’s Technology Executive Breakfast this morning, CEO Arvind Chhatbar revealed that the company’s meteoric rise over the past 18 months has been driven by the often elusive ability to recognize true opportunity when it arises.

As Arvind described it, Enablence is in the business of making the optical part of optical networks work more like electronics. With more than a dozen different product lines already in its pipe, the company develops and manufactures optical components, subsystems and systems to meet our ever-growing appetite for high-bandwidth services. A key focus is FTTH, or, fibre to the home. Enablence is eager to sing the death knell of copper-based networks that suffer from extreme bandwidth limitations that only get worse with distance.

Arvind offered the telling example of trying to download a movie over a standard “high-speed” Internet connection over copper wire, vs. fibre. What would take a couple of hours on the one is reduced to a mere minute or so on the other.

Over the past four years, Enablence has positioned itself as a key player in this space through innovative product development and timely acquisitions, driven by about $95.5 million in financing to date from angel investment, private placement and a public offering. It has grown from a handful to more than 200 staff. The hockey stick on the revenue projection slide in Arvind’s PowerPoint presentation has to be seen to be believed.

What I found noteworthy is how the company has arrived at this point, which Arvind is quick to say is still an early stage. When Enablence was founded in 2004, the label “optical company” was considered fatal. Ottawa itself was still reeling from the loss of a host of startups in the optical space that had wizened away despite tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in venture backing. Was this a challenge for Enablence? Certainly. But it also provided significant opportunity.

How?

1. Early on Enablence raised $5.5 million in angel financing, a sum that is that much more impressive considering the sour climate at the time. But the money wasn’t raised from local friends and family familiar with the industry. They were still licking their optical-investment wounds. Instead, Enablence looked further afield to contacts who had made their money in other sectors, such as oil and gas, and were looking for fresh investment opportunities.

2. The meltdown that had cut so deeply into the employment ranks at home and abroad had put a lot of top talent into play at a good price. Enablence was able to snap up some of these great people.

3. By the same token, there was a lot of equipment to be had at bargain prices, as well as facility space.

4. Despite the ongoing need for cash, the company wasn’t afraid to say no to the sure thing if the terms were not palatable and instead explored other options, such as listing on the TSX Venture Exchange. In fact, the company turned away a fat cheque that had one key string attached — Arvind had to resign in favour of a new CEO hand-picked by the investor.

5. The company has so far avoided the need to look at outsourcing manufacturing to China by investing in state-of-the-art manufacturing that is highly automated, thereby reducing labour costs from the outset.

It’s by being able to recognize and capitalize on such opportunities that has allowed Enablence to put itself firmly on track to become, as Arvind said, “a force to be reckoned with in the optical world.”

Technorati Tags: FTTH, fibre-to-the-home, Enablence, Arvind Chhatbar, OCRI, optical, financing, business development, investment, angel financing

I already wrote a post at Dangletech.com, where I try to contribute weekly, about the most fascinating highlight the Red Herring Canada 08 conference held earlier this week at Mont Tremblant. For my money, the best entertainment was the riveting behaviour of Red Herring publisher and CEO Alex Vieux who dominated the event with his bewildering mix of brilliant observation, insightful analysis and boorish, insulting and condescending treatment of those who paid big bucks to attend.

But there was, fortunately, more of value beyond Vieux’s theatrics and here, in no particular order other than how they appear in my notebook, are some of the better gems from nearly two days of presentations, round tables and corridor chitchat at an event focused on technology startups and the venture capitalists they pursue for funding.

Miranda Technology Inc. chairman Brian Edwards said there is a “liquidity crisis in Canada,” leading many funds-seeking companies to consider going the capital pool company route on the TSX-Venture Exchange. “That’s pretty scary to me.” And while he applauded that lots of government money is going into research in Canadian universities, he said there is “very little management of that money. … We need to bet on the creation” of new companies.

Jacques Bernier, senior vice-president at Fonds de solidarité FTQ, was equally skeptical of the temptations of an early or inadequate IPO. “We won’t touch” a company that goes public on the venture exchange for its first million dollars or so and then comes to his firm looking for more. Being public “puts the focus entirely on the wrong place,” he said.

Mike Grandinetti, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, said too many companies looking for funding have “an unhealthy focus on not wanting to dilute” the founders’ ownership. If you’re in it to win, he said, retaining less than 50% ownership — sometimes much less — should not be an issue. As for the view that markets are too unsettled or times are too tough, “turbulence creates opportunity,” he said.

RBC Venture Partners managing director Robert Antoniades agreed with Grandinetti on founders accepting lower stakes in their companies, saying, “You can be a very successful entrepreneur with 10% ownership.” He cautioned founders not to try to remake a “VC process (that) is well understood.”

The critical role marketing plays in the early development and revenue growth of a young company was emphasized by Yahoo Canada general manager Kerry Munro. He encouraged companies to boost their marketing spend when the economy turns sour. “Marketing is the first thing you cut in times of trouble,” he said. “It should be the first thing you invest in in times of opportunity.”

The challenge, he added, is to see marketing in a new light. “Most companies in Canada look at it as a cost and not as an investment.”

One Ottawa CEO who successfully found venture backing earlier this year told the conference he did not share any belief that money is not available, so long as the idea being pitched is worthy. “If you want to raise VC money, you’d better come up with an idea that’s VC-fundable,” said OverlayTV’s Rob Lane, something he defined as having the potential of being worth $100 million some day.

Technorati Tags: entrepreneurs, venture capital, Red Herring, Miranda Technology, capital pool companies, TSX Venture Exchange, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, MIT Sloan School of Management, RBC Venture Partners, Yahoo Canada, OverlayTV

I had dinner Friday night with about 70 students and several other folk at the University of Waterloo as the school celebrated the official opening of its innovative VeloCity, a mash-up of student residence and business incubator. The energy in the room, as one speaker put it, was electric and I was blown away by the enthusiasm of the students, the speed with which the university brought this facility from concept to reality, and the massive support shown for it by a wide swath of the Waterloo business community. The prime rib was pretty good, too.

I wrote about this so-called “dormcubator” when it was first announced earlier this year. I said at that time that I’d “keep an eye on this initiative and let our readers know how it’s working.” Well, I did one better than that. That same day, I emailed the organizers and offered to help out in any way we could. Contrary to my expectation that, being a university, they’d take their time responding, I heard back scant hours later from VeloCity founder and director Sean Van Koughnett. Sean took me up on my offer and now inmedia Public Relations is a partner with VeloCity, along with such exalted company as Google, Microsoft, Rogers Wireless and what looks like most of the Waterloo-area technology and entrepreneurship brain trust. I’ll be back on campus next month to deliver a session on media and analyst relations.

Sean, who has been at Waterloo for only about a year, said the genesis for VeloCity lay in his wondering “where will the next innovations in technology come from?” The answer for him was that innovation “will come from students” and he set out to create a facility that “cluster(s) talent and ambition in one place.”

The speed with which his vision was realized strikes me as nothing short of breath-taking, even allowing for the fact that, as Sean pointed out when he showed me around Friday afternoon, a glass wall had been installed just the day before, the furniture in the great hall was borrowed from elsewhere on campus and a couple of other finer touches have yet to be completed. The 70 students are housed in a traditional student residence but have access to a state-of-the-art mobile-device lab outfitted by Rogers with a few dozen of the latest cell phones, smart phones and other handheld equipment. There is also a boardroom for presentations and a great hall for social events and larger presentations, and the entire facility was rewired over the summer to support its focus on applications in mobile communications, the web and new media.

The students are expected to form teams and develop business ideas that will be evaluated every term by a panel of business people who can, as the facility’s web site says, “help take things to the next level.”

If Ayushi Patel is at all an example of the rest of the students, get ready for a torrent of new ventures. This spark-plug of energy and excitement and a third-year honours economics major told me she was working with a group of students who had already met to brainstorm ideas and were working towards soon finalizing the first one they’ll pursue.

It’s an impressive facility with an ambitious mandate, but one that synchronizes nicely with the university’s pro-business-creation attitude. I don’t know how unique Waterloo is with what one speaker called its “creator-owned IP policy,” the philosophy that if you develop something of commercial value while a student, faculty or staffer at the university, you own it, and the school doesn’t try to hone in on your action with licensing or partnering demands.

I intend to get to know Waterloo, both town and school, and its technology community better. This was my very first visit to the city that spawned Research in Motion Ltd., Open Text Corporation, Sandvine Inc. and many other companies that trace their roots back to university-based research. While there Friday, I also dropped in to the very impressive Accelerator Centre housed in the Waterloo Research and Technology Park across the road from the university. (My thanks to Claude Haw of Venture Coaches for insisting I go see the centre.) I have an invitation from operations director Tim Ellis to come back and do a PR lunch-and-learn for the centre’s dozen or so client companies, something I’m very much looking forward to doing.

Technorati Tags: VeloCity, dormcubator, University of Waterloo, Accelerator Centre, entrepreneurship

Last week was quite an extraordinary one for Ottawa’s start-up community.

Wow. When was the last time over the past six or eight or 10 years that I could make a bold statement like that and not have the guys in the white coats start measuring me for a jacket that buckles in the back?

And no, I’m not referring to a spate of product launches or company foundings or even venture capital funding announcements that would have been the basis of such enthusiasm in the past when Ottawa’s technology sector was dominated by capital-intensive efforts to invent a better telecom system or new semiconductor.

Instead, my enthusiasm today comes from a series of events we attended last week, all of which we blogged about and all of which contributed to a subtle but undeniable sense that something very exciting is afoot.

On Monday, I joined a warm and standing-room-only crowd at DemoCampOttawa9, where developers from six companies demonstrated their applications and received scads of intelligent, creative and constructively critical feedback from their peers.

Tuesday night, several generations of Ottawa technology entrepreneurs helped Ian Graham celebrate the official opening of his novel and creative co-working and collaboration space, TheCodeFactory. A series of short speeches was book-ended by veteran Denzil Doyle and emerging company founder Scott Lake. We here at inmediaare such big fans of what Ian is doing that we’ve signed on as founding partners of TheCodeFactory and we’ll be watching with more than passing interest as he builds a facility that is much needed in this town.

Wednesday night was The Ottawa Network’s regular monthly Start-up Drop-in at LaBarge Weinstein and this was when the penny really dropped for me. As I wrote here Friday, every speaker was, among other things, sounding the consistent notes that Ottawa’s start-up community is focused on exciting new opportunities in the online world, is actively supporting its individual members and is building a broadly collaborative and globally minded ecosystem that may just yet spit out the next Facebook.

Thursday night I took a pass. But my colleague Leo Valiquette attended an event that in many ways emphasised one of the key realities of this exciting new world. In a session titled, “Buddy, keep your million, but buy my product,” The Ottawa Network in collaboration with the city’s various technology clusters came to the inevitable next stage of its now three-year-old series on how to tap into venture capital.

The first year, the title was, “Buddy, can you spare a million,” emphasizing the traditional route to building a company — beg for whatever venture capital you can lay your hands on.

The second year’s title, “Buddy why should I give you a million,” betrayed the fact that most of the begging was going wholly unanswered as VCs shut their wallets and became unyieldingly skeptical about the business plans they were seeing.

Last week’s title brought the whole thing full circle. If you can’t beg funding from VCs who either don’t have it or won’t invest it, then you have to build a company the old-fashioned way — develop a product and find someone who wants to pay you money to buy.

What a concept.

Fortunately, this reality now aligns with what Ottawa’s startups are doing anyway. Exciting and promising new ventures really can be launched on a shoestring. When a budding entrepreneur needs help, there is a wealth of events to attend, or many willing peers in the community who will contribute counsel or even hands-on support. When the venture grows a bit larger, places like TheCodeFactory will give it an affordable home. And by the time the VCs come calling, they really won’t be needed very much.

Hold the buckled jacket. It really is an exciting new day here in Ottawa.

Technorati Tags: Start ups, DemoCamp, The Ottawa Network, TheCodeFactory, entrepreneurship, venture capital, technology, business, bootstrapping

What does it take to build a successful business from scratch without selling your soul to the venture capitalists? Pretty much what it takes to turn any vision into reality – persistence, optimism and thinking first about qualifying the market demand for what you want to offer.

Last night at the Marshes Golf Club, six local entrepreneurs, a couple fresh out of school, the rest somewhat grayer, manned a panel to discuss how they developed their individual businesses without the aid of venture capital dollars. The event was called Buddy keep your Million – but buy my product! To my mind, their insights are key to the success of any venture regardless of who is filling your bank account.

First up was the energetic Aydin Mirzaee, founder of bOK Systems Corp. and Chide.it. For him it’s all about persistence. He told the story of how Col. Sanders, a retiree not so keen about living on a fixed income, hit the road with his family chicken recipe and endured over 1,000 rejections before finding a restaurant willing to pay him royalties.

Next came the equally young and enterprising Kareem Sultan of RaceDV. The right mentor made all the difference for him. In this case, an employer who encouraged him to use his downtime at work to pursue his interests and to “go out and learn something.”  When things began to move along, his employer continued to help him incubate his idea, and, most importantly, allowed him to retain full ownership of his intellectual property.

Moving down the line came a more seasoned entrepreneur, Scott Lake, founder of Jaded Pixel and Shopify. With his focus on open-source software development, he puts a high premium on cultivating a passionate community following around a product to generate word of mouth and provide user feedback. But in addition to that, it must be an interactive communication, in which your developers have a dialogue with this community. It’s all about harnessing the power of social media.

Next up was Paul Slaby. His latest role is CEO of Kaben Wireless, but he has a long track record in Ottawa, with start-ups that include ATMOS and VoIPShield. What he found when he arrived at Kaben was a very strong engineering culture that needed to refocus on sales and marketing. Customer money is the best money to have he said, and one of the most effective ways to get it is to develop the services side of your business early. For him, that has translated into joint ventures on product development and providing that partner with outsourced R&D services with a running royalty arrangement.

For the next speaker, Wael Aggan of TradeMerit, one truth has been self-evident since his first venture in Egypt more than 30 years ago—define a market niche first, figure out how you will engineer a product to fill that need second. His preference is always to define a niche and dominate it, rather than pursue a broader market opportunity where there might already be established incumbents or too much open playing field for “me too” rivals to muscle in.

Lastly, Rob Lane of Overlay.TV discussed how it was the right choice for his company to secure venture capital financing. For the market his company is trying to tackle and the big incumbents that are already there, an infusion of VC cash was the only way for his company to generate adequate market momentum. However, his message is that each individual must first define what success means for them. Is it a $1-million venture, a $10-million venture, or a $1-billion one? (And of course, VCs won’t bother with anything that doesn’t have the potential to become at least a $100-million enterprise). He also stressed the importance of global networking thanks to the dramatic impact of social media. 

Technorati Tags: bootstrap,  entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, Ottawa, Technology, venture capital

The official theme was “Ottawa’s digital media industry,” and the gamers, social networkers and content developers were there in spades. But what I heard at Wednesday night’s regular Start-up Drop-in put on by The Ottawa Network at LaBarge Weinstein had as much or more to do with propagating and supporting the entire start-up — indeed, the entire technology — community in Ottawa than it did with digital media per se.

In keeping with the format now well established by LWLaw partner and event host James Smith, we heard briefly from several different actors before the headline act shared what is billed as “words of wisdom.”

First out of the gate was a quartet of self-described “next generation” entrepreneurs who see themselves as having a serious role to play in cultivating and supporting their fellow tech entrepreneurs. Putting their blogging skills where their mouths are, they run StartupOttawa.com, an active blog by and about the start-up community. Mercury Grove’s Scott Annan, Shopify’s Scott Lake, TravelPod’s Luc Levesque and Jean-Sylvain Sormony of Fuel all talked about the importance of cultivating “our generation of entrepreneurs,” as Lake put it.

Two start-ups whose very business model is all about propagation went next.

David Thompson described his company, Noleo, and its platform that hosts social networking applications, allowing them to simply and simultaneously run on a number of social networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Alan Isfan’s FaveQuest is also all about propagating content across social networking sites, in this case taking broadcast television material and packaging it for redistribution to the social networking ecosystem.

Ben Houston, a fascinating young developer whose computational magic has been seen in several Hollywood movies, was an example of the propagational potential of the Start-up Drop-in itself since that’s where, a few months ago, he first met Keith Taylor, the business executive he has now recruited as president of his company, Exocortex Technologies.

I was momentarily stuck when Distil Interactive CEO Robert Thompson began to share his words of wisdom since it was not immediately clear to me how his comparison of Ottawa to other tech-savvy centres in which he worked would fit into my propagation theme. But his talk was really about challenging the 50 or so company leaders and managers in the room to propagate their obvious enthusiasm, commitment and empowerment throughout the rest of their company employees and, indeed, throughout the rest of the community.

It was a high energy evening, as have been the last several of these drop-ins.

Technorati Tags: Ottawa, start-ups, entrepreneurs, technology, digital media

Now we’ve got it, let’s put it to good use.

Last night was the official launch of TheCodeFactory, a private business accelerator/incubator intended to help fill the gap between a great idea and a commercial product gaining traction in the marketplace. It’s the cherished baby of business consultant Ian Graham and its launch attracted plenty of interest from the local business community, including remarks from Denny Doyle, the “Don Cherry of Ottawa’s tech sector,” Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, and Scott Lake, founding partner of both Jaded Pixel and Shopify and blogger on Startup Ottawa.

First up, I’ll freely admit inmedia’s support of TheCodeFactory and my role as PR flack for its launch. But my personal interest and support for this project goes right back to my previous incarnation as editor of the OBJ and my favourite hot-button topics. We need to foster a culture of true entrepreneurship in this town defined by people who want to build a successful company versus those in search of a paycheque who are just trying to give themselves a job. Problem is, having that mindset is only half the battle. You need the means to get from the idea stage to the cash-flow stage. Plenty of great ideas with talented, committed people behind them wither and die thanks to a lack of support for the earliest stages of the start-up lifecycle.

That’s where TheCodeFactory comes in.  

What Ian is offering up is a combination of office space for start-ups looking for a desk without all the administrative and costly aggravation of setting up their own office. That’s the fourth floor. What’s truly unique is what’s on the second floor. There he offers co-working space with the relaxed atmosphere of a coffee bar (with full connectivity, of course) where entrepreneurs at every stage and code warriors from local schools can network, collaborate, troubleshoot and refine their ideas, even connect for potential employment opportunities.

It’s this unique community approach, the emphasis on creating a “vital, vibrant, ecosystem” that truly sets TheCodeFactory apart from other venues that fit into the business accelerator category. And Ottawa couldn’t need it more. We’ve seen a host of anchor tech tenants of one stripe or another downsize, pull up stakes or get bought out over the past while. There’s plenty of volatility and uncertainty our there, the perfect breeding ground for startups as people decide it’s time take hold of their destiny and go into business for themselves. It’s been referred to as the “supernova effect,” as experienced and savvy individuals disperse their knowledge and expertise throughout the tech community like seeds cast to the winds. 

In this environment, TheCodeFactory is just the kind of place we need for those seeds to sprout into new ventures or for that kind of experience to be made available to others. As Scott said in his remarks last night, it’s “a place for innovation to grow.”

Technorati Tags:  business accelerator, Business incubator, Denzil Doyle, Doyletech, Eclipse Foundation, entrepreneur,  entrepreneurship, Ian Graham, innovation, Jaded Pixel, Mike Milinkovich, Scott Lake, Shopify, TheCodeFactory

We’re doing a bit of work for the Information Technology Association of Canada, helping to promote the organization’s IT Hero Awards program. The ITAC IT Hero Awards celebrate and recognize creative applications of information technology that significantly improve the lives of Canadians and readily demonstrate social and economic benefit.

Nominations are being accepted in both community and corporate categories until May 9 and the winners will be announced at the ITAC Chairs’ Dinner in Toronto on June 26. The nominees’ work highlighted in the submissions so far is impressive and truly making a difference in communities across the country.

Are you aware of a company or individual that might be worthy of a nomination? If so, please submit an online nomination form. A full set of guidelines and nomination criteria is available on the IT Hero Awards web site. We’re working to get media coverage for stand out nominees like Paul Gillespie and Dan Babineau, and could potentially promote outstanding work that is being done in your community to the media as well. Good luck to all of the deserving nominees and keep up the good work!

Technorati Tags: ITAC, Information Technology Association of Canada, IT Hero Awards