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Hundreds of information and communication technology industry professionals, along with students and government officials flocked to the Saint John Convention centre on Thursday for the second annual ThinkNB ICT Showcase.

The trade show is designed to connect the province's software and hardware providers with potential buyers in the private sector as well as the provincial and federal governments and their respective departments.

"We've meet people from other companies that have products that we can apply and use in our office," said Jeff Taylor, systems manager for InteliSys, a company responsible for the back-end of flight booking websites.

Even though Taylor wasn't likely to find any potential customers at the trade show it was an important networking opportunity for his business.

"(It's a chance) to recruit university students, look for developers (and) database administrators," Taylor said. "Hopefully we can make some inroads with them and get potential recruits because they're really hard to find."

"We made a lot of connections with some of the government people that are here as well as the colleges."

For Taylor an important goal for the day was to try to ensure colleges continue to teach students the skills he wants them to have as potential future employees.

Business New Brunswick Minister Greg Byrne referred to the industry's work as "incredible."

"There are tremendous synergies here for growth of this industry, and there are no limits to where we are going," he said.

With a growing ICT industry Byrne emphasized the importance of supplying finding employees for the industry.

"It's a focus, not just for government, but of the industry as a whole to work hand in hand to make people aware of the opportunities that exist and to make sure that we're training people to take advantage of those opportunities," Byrne said.