I’m sitting at a meeting with ICT Toronto and I’m realizing that we need to start a non-governmental organization like the SDForum here in Toronto and possibly Canada. There’s a number of pseudo-competing organizations including: ITAC, York Technology Association, CIPS, NMBA, CATA, CITO and others. This is something where MaRS could be a leader in the founding of this new entity.
I think we should incorporate a new entity that is focused on (copied from the SDForum ):
- Provides a venue for engineers, executives, researchers, technology leaders, and venture capitalists to exchange information on emerging technologies and best practices.
This is something that we should start immediately. MaRS provides a lot of the proposed services:
- Monthly Events
- Business Seminars
- One-to-One Advisory Meetings
- Special Interest Groups
- Meeting Space
- Annual Conferences
We need to build a sense of community. We need to attract individuals forced emerging technology and practices. We should take what we’ve built with TorCamp and Innovation Commons and figure out how to serve the community. This is my call to action.
- We need to incorporate a not-for-profit organization focused on emerging technologies
Would companies be willing to join an entity that could provide like the MaRS events? We need to figure out how to seed this entity. We need to find seed money, whether this is government money, corporate money, and individual money to get this started. We need a founders loan to kick start this. Is it MaRS that should host this? Should we talk to a Celtic House, VenturesWest, GrowthWorks, or others that have financial investment interest? Is this a government program?