propel Accelerator

NB Innovation Forum 2009: Call for Proposals - Extension of the deadline

Rowser — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:26:15 -0300

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EXTENSION OF THE DEADLINE TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL

Please note that the deadline to submit a proposal for the New Brunswick Innovation Forum 2009: Your Fast Track to IT Opportunities has been extended to Friday, June 26 at noon. The Forum will be hosted by the National Research Council Canada Institute for Information Technology (NRC-IIT) on October 27-28, 2009 at the Saint John Trade and Convention Centre, Saint John, New Brunswick.

To submit your proposal, please visit the New Brunswick Innovation Forum 2009 website.

This event is designed to complement and immediately precede the Think NB ICT Showcase.

More ideas will generate more capital

Jeff Roach — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:33:34 -0300

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John Pollack

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Telegraph-Journal, Published Wednesday May 27th, 2009

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/679971

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Marcel LeBrun, chief executive of Radian6, a New Brunswick company that has become a global leader in social media monitoring, says attracting large companies to the province won’t likely create the human capital necessary for developing a cluster of new innovative businesses. LeBrun says the province just needs the people that are here to bring their innovative ideas to market. ‘I’m a believer that the more good ideas there are the more capital will come.’

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Technology Executive favours attracting entrepreneurs to province, not big companies

New Brunswick needs to stop promoting the province as a place to do business if it wants to encourage new innovative startups, a leading technology executive says.

"If they're setting up here because they can get access to low cost call centre workers than no, it's not going to do anything for the tech sector," LeBrun said of a large technology company hypothetically opening operations here. "If they move their research and development here that would be a different thing, but I don't think that's what's being sold to them at the moment."

He said idea generation is usually kept close to the leadership of a company that won't likely move its headquarters here.

LeBrun will be the keynote speaker at Propel ICT's annual general meeting today in Saint John. His speech to the technology association crowd will focus on how web 2.0, particularly social media, provides new opportunities for businesses and further breaks down geographic borders.

Though the Internet has connected people around the world for about 20 years, LeBrun said in an interview, he will argue in his speech that the more recent popularity of the social web makes virtual proximity more important than physical proximity thereby eliminating geography as a factor for many businesses.

LeBrun said attracting companies to New Brunswick may make sense on an economic development agenda, and acknowledged discouraging the job creation efforts is controversial, but he, like many others involved with Propel ICT, feel the province needs to have a strong focus on entrepreneurship.

LeBrun sees value in inspiring creative home-grown business ideas that can use new Internet tools to compete in a world-wide market.

"It's a global world and we need to build globally minded companies," he said. "When you're in a flat world where geography doesn't matter you can't take your geography and use it as a differentiator."

He wants to see New Brunswick develop a technology cluster that will breed creativity, such as in California's Silicon Valley. Similarly to the popularity of a sport, LeBrun said a successful regional industry will come from people seeing it done and wanting to give it a try.

"If you come to bat enough times you're eventually going to hit something," LeBrun said. "I think the number of times we swing our bat is the key metric we need to be focused on."

Though New Brunswick doesn't have the population or money that Silicon Valley does, he said the province just needs the people that are here to bring their innovative ideas to market.

"I'm a believer that the more good ideas there are the more capital will come," he said.

LeBrun argues consumers don't care where a product or service is from - if it is interesting and stands out enough to generate discussion online it will likely sell.

"If you're a little jewelry company in Fredericton and you've got a product that's remarkable, that people will talk about, there's no reason why you can't really figure out how to grow that business," he said.

54Hour StartUp Weekend Launches 3 New ICT Companies

Jeff Roach — Sat, 16 May 2009 11:20:42 -0300

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Saint John, NB, May 13, 2009: On May 8th, 9th, and 10th local developers, designers and entrepreneurs gathered together for a community building startup event in the uptown of Saint John, NB. “We intended the event to be a networking opportunity for the local software development community, and hoped that we might be in position to launch one new software a company by the end of the weekend,” says Michael Wilcott, one of the organizers of the event, “But we have managed to exceed that goal”.

Three different teams, which formed during the course of the event, are now in the process of incorporating in order to continue the development and marketing of the ideas that brought them together starting on Friday night.

GeoCure is a product that seeks to leverage the tremendous growth in adoption of social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter in order to track and present infection rates for many communicable diseases. “Young people like me don’t watch the news, read a paper, or even visit online new sources like CNN to get our information.” said Robert Foley, who pitched the idea of GeoCure, “We get all of our information from social media, a form of news which is more immediate and less filtered than traditional sources.” GeoCure seeks to collect content from various social media sources and use it to track the spread of infections in order to assist consumers in evaluating their risks. “We also think that there are potential applications for various public health organizations, as well as private enterprises that are in the health care space” stated Robert.

Another product that caught participants attention was ‘eCeipts’, an electronic receipt system that holds the potential to completely transform the way people shop and buy goods. “After every transaction at any retailer the final step in the process is for the cash register to print a paper receipt.” says Alex Scott who presented the eCeipts idea at the event, “Most of us simply throw the paper receipts away, or we lose them. For those who need to keep their receipts for the purposes of tracking expenses, losing them is a major hassle”. eCeipts looks to save consumers these hassles by capturing the information from traditional paper receipts and instead sending it to a database that sits behind a website. The website can be used to store and organize an individual’s receipts in a convenient and powerful format. The eCeipts team is in the process of incorporating and has launched a website at www.eceipts.ca as the first step toward building their eCeipts solution.

The final group that is moving toward incorporation is working on a web-based game called ‘Karmundi’. “We all believe we have an idea that creates a whole new genre of game that we call Progressive Social Gaming”, says Michael Wilcott, spokesman for the six member team that launched www.karmundi.com as part of the 54Hours weekend event. “I’d describe it as part Pokémon, part scavenger hunt, and part social networking” said Wilcott. “We are targeting families who are looking for fun activities that they can do together, that also allows parents to teach positive social values to their children while leveraging the tremendous power of the web to create communities”. The Karmundi team, whose slogan is “Karma. For The World”, is looking to launch a pilot of their new service by September of this year.

Jeff Roach of propel said the event is a perfect activity for stimulating entrepreneurship and new business formation at a grassroots level. “Many people have good ideas but very few are able to visualize what that idea looks like as a business.” says Roach. “This weekend event allows people to have fun expanding their ideas and having others share in building on their idea and growing a team of shared interests. We appreciate the efforts and enthusiasm of Jason Richard and Michael Wilcott who organized this event and are proud to sponsor this and future weekend events”. Roach said the propel Accelerator supports startup companies like these to help them grow rapidly to maturity and profitability with the support of a broad provincial network and hopes to see companies enter the program from events like this.

As to the 54Hours event itself, Matt Doherty, who joined the eCeipts team, summed it up this way, “…54hours was an experience akin to throwing a handful of seeds in a garden and seeing what grew. To have such a talented cross-section of people come together and create three businesses with actual opportunities is such a great outcome. Everyone who attended brought something different and being surrounded by these people showed me how myopic we can become in our day to day life. It was refreshing to be able to learn from and to interact with such a varied group. If I had to
pick one word to describe the weekend, it would be 'intense'”.

Organizers of New Brunswick’s first 54Hours event have already been approached to hold additional events in both Fredericton and Moncton over the coming year. For updates regarding these events and other 54Hour activities visit www.54hours.com and www.propelict.com.

Media Inquires:
Michael Wilcott, (506) 647-3269
Jeff Roach – (506) 642-9029

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TME Times Newsletter - April 2009

Jeff Roach — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:09:17 -0300

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Technology Management and Entrepreneurship (TME) Program at UNB Fredericton

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Pictured, from left to right are: TME Chair Linda Bulmer, Marcel LeBrun (Judge), Nancy Mathis (Judge), Jake Arsenault (Judge), Laura Malone and Jane Simmons (2nd place winners), Samir Kadhim (1st place winner), Anmol Bansal (3rd place), and Michael Arbow (Judge).

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As we prepare to wrap up another academic year, the winter over and spring is emerging all around as we prepare for graduation!

Here is a link for the April issue of the TME Times newsletter for your reading pleasure!

Some highlights…

Technology Innovation Pitch (TIP) 2009 Winners
TME Student Enters the Dragon’s Den on CBC
TME 3423 Prerequisite Change
Adios to our NAREN Exchange Students from Mexico
And … much more!

Report for propel ICT Shows Great Opportunity and Spurs New Talent Survey for the Sector

Jeff Roach — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:00:30 -0300

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propel ICT

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A Statistical Profile of the New Brunswick Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Industry

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New Brunswick, May 4, 2009 – A new report of the statistical profile of New Brunswick's ICT sector prepared for propel ICT and released today shows great opportunity for the province's sector as well as revealing data that much more work needs to be done to capitalize on it.

“The Survey shows that, in addition to capital, skill-specific talent for the ICT sector is required to take advantage of the opportunities we have” said Anita Punamiya, propel ICT Director and Chair of propel Talent. “This is an industry in dire need of a strategy that includes a priority on recruiting and training the talent pool that is currently lacking in our province.”

Among other details, the report shows:

New Brunswick is the only province to register a decline in the number of ICT firms BUT New Brunswick's ICT sector is still growing at double the rate of the rest of our economy, showing a great opportunity that we are not taking advantage of.
No single community in the province is leading the others in growth of their ICT sector. The profile shows Fredericton, Saint John, and Moncton are very comparable to each other in terms of opportunity and current size and strength of the sector, highlighting the need for the communities to work together to build a provincial industry.
The average ICT company in NB is larger than the average ICT company in other parts of the country, which indicates that support is missing for building a nimble, entrepreneurial culture of small innovative companies that feed the sector and support the larger emerging components of the sector.

“Start-up companies in the ICT sector need capital and people” said Jeff Roach, Executive Director of the propel Accelerator. “This is a people-driven economy and both large and small businesses need the right talent mix to grow their businesses.”

Jeff Reid, organizer of propel Talent and xwave Operations Manager for Saint John believes that the need for more people in our sector is one area where the industry is in full agreement. “propel Talent is a very actively supported initiative from across the province because we all agree that finding the right people for our sector is challenging and will likely get worse if we don't address it immediately” says Reid.

Starting this week, propel Talent is re-distributing a survey to New Brunswick ICT companies that it originally reported on in late 2006 that showed a great demand for people in the sector. “We expect, based on the anecdotal reports that we are already receiving, that, despite the recession, our industry is still growing. This survey and the report that will follow should make this a bit more tangible for us.” says Reid.

About propel ICT
propel ICT (http://propelICT.com) is a private, non-profit, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) organization focused on growing the ICT industry in New Brunswick

About propel Talent
The propel Talent initiative of propel ICT is an active committee of professionals from the ICT and education sectors focused on growing, attracting and retaining talent within the ICT sector of New Brunswick through an integrated workforce solution addressing: Attracting new students, Immigration for internationally-educated professionals, and Repatriation.

About propel Accelerator
The propel Accelerator is a support program that gives New Brunswick start-up ICT companies guidance and mentoring, access to low-cost resources such as equipment, office space, communications and support services, and, most importantly, membership in a business network that can be used to build partnerships or find new markets.

Media Inquires:
Jeff Roach – 506-642-9029

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'54 Hours' StartUp Weekend Announced

Jeff Roach — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:15:28 -0300

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54 Hours

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Saint John, NB, April 25, 2009 - On May 8th, 9th, and 10th developers, designers and entrepreneurs from around the province will gather together for a community building startup event in uptown Saint John at the Delta Brunswick Hotel. Similar to other startup weekends that have been held in cities across North America, the 54Hours event seeks to take business ideas from concept to launch in just one weekend.

Participants begin by Sharing idea pitches beginning on Friday evening and will then divide into teams to work on bringing the ideas to market by the following Monday morning. “The entire weekend is meant to be a fun way for members of the ICT and business community to interact and network with one another at a deeper level than is generally possible at a traditional industry event,” says Michael Wilcott, an ICT project manager based in Saint John who is one of the organizers. “54 Hours will be a lot of fun, and will hopefully result in the creation of several web-based enterprises that will enrich New Brunswick's ICT environment”.

There is no cost to attend the event and the only requirement is a little skill, a positive attitude and a willingness to roll with the punches. The atmosphere is meant to be fun and the entire process organic. “We’ve adopted the slogan 'No Talk. All Action.' for the event and we are intentionally keeping the agenda loosely defined. We want to the weekend to be like the early days of a startup, where creativity and frenetic energy are the norm and there aren’t a lot of rules”, says Wilcott.

So what happens when the weekend is over? Above all, it is hoped that a strong community bond will form but beyond that, it depends on the group. Some groups work beyond the weekend and continue to build and market their products; some may incorporate as companies and even engage in angel rounds. Issues like ownership and shares are determined by the members of a team over the course of the weekend and 54Hours will not retain any ownership of any company that might be formed over the course of the event.

"We strongly support these grassroots, creative activities that help people visualize what their ideas might look like in the shape of a business." says Jeff Roach of propel ICT. "There are plenty of good ideas but few people give their ideas legs. We are as interested as everyone else to see what might come from this weekend."

To participate in this fun, unique networking event, please visit www.54Hours.com and sign up for this free event!

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Media Contact: Michael Wilcott, (506) 647-3269

Stimulus - Creating Cash Flow in a Recession

Jeff Roach — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:21:19 -0300

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Rizwan Kheraj

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Bootup Labs Blog

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http://blog.bootuplabs.com/2009/03/12/stimulus-creating-cash-flow-in-a-recession-by-riz/

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Rizwan Kheraj, Industrial Technology Advisor at NRC-IRAP, Vancouver

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The Government of Canada has increased their support of NRC's IRAP Program. For more information, view presentation slides below:

Riz's IRAP Slides

View more presentations from dannyrobinson.

Former executive chef shares his food costing software

Rowser — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:28:01 -0400

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Rebecca Penty

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Telegraph-Journal, Published Monday March 2nd, 2009

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/588914

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Wayne McKay, the owner of Riverview-based Menu Tools Inc., is giving his food costing software – Menu Maestro – away for free to culinary schools in Atlantic Canada, beginning with the New Brunswick Community College’s culinary program in Moncton. McKay is pictured with instructors from the school’s program. Photo by Adam Huras

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Wayne McKay says 75 per cent of restaurant owners do not know how to price menus to turn a reasonable profit and end up losing money at the table.

The former executive chef with 30 years of industry experience started his food costing software company Menu Tools Inc. in 2005 to address the industry problem.

Now the Riverview-based businessman is giving the software away for free to budding young chefs and waiving membership fees for three years.

The tool allows chefs to take a meal, consider the input costs of the food and have a system that does the math to decide on what price a customer should pay.

A program set to launch at the New Brunswick Community College will see McKay's Menu Maestro software offered to culinary school students and instructors for free.

McKay plans to hand out the software to any school in Atlantic Canada and may eventually extend the deal to the rest of the country.

"I'm trying to fix the problem before people get into the industry," McKay said of the initiative.

The plus side for his company is that students entering the restaurant sector will become familiar with the Menu Maestro software and could choose to use it over basic Microsoft Excel spreadsheets when planning menu items and how much a customer should pay.

"We expect that if there's a comfort to use Menu Tools and we can help the operators, that's the right impression to make," McKay said.

Restaurants can subscribe to Menu Maestro, an online application, and access a slew of basic recipes up front. When the restaurateur clicks on a clubhouse sandwich, the cost of each ingredient is listed and can be deleted or altered, which changes the ideal price of the item at the table.

McKay said his software can help restaurants - which operate on tight profit margins - take back revenue.

"At the best of times restaurants make profits of five per cent," McKay said. "Imagine on $100,000 of sales only making $5,000."

McKay's software can also help restaurants analyze how much food is being thrown into the garbage to assess lost revenue there.

In the future, McKay envisions his company acting as a sharing platform for chefs. He'd like to see customers submit generic recipes to the database, which anyone using his software could access.

"My vision is that this will become like a Wikipedia," he said.

McKay started in the kitchen at the age of 14 and spent years working for the World Trade Centre in Halifax. He was hired on at Marine Atlantic ferries and worked in corporate food and beverage control using an in-house food and menu pricing system to control costs.

Inspired in part by his wife Amy, McKay decided to launch his own consulting business and says he now has hundreds of customers in North America.

Menu Tools is part of information communications technology industry association Propel ICT's business accelerator program, which pairs entrepreneurs with industry veterans who serve as mentors.

Jeff Roach, the executive director of Propel ICT, said McKay's product is one that has a great deal of potential.

"We're very supportive of what he's going. Every potential client he's spoken to is very enthusiastic about his product," Roach said.

"There's no one else doing what he's doing right now."

ICT Scar Tissue

lrousseau — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:48:50 -0400

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David Campbell

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Telegraph-Journal, Published Wednesday February 25th, 2009

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/583689

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Gerry Pond

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I sat down last week for a three hour conversation with one of the most important people, if not the most important person, in New Brunswick's information and communications technology (ICT) industry.

Gerry Pond, the former CEO of NBTel, is now investor, mentor, advisor and chief advocate for the ICT industry in the province.

Until recently, I didn't fully appreciate the importance of the ICT industry in New Brunswick. More specifically, the importance of ICT activity to the economic development of the province.

I make this distinction because some of the most important ICT players are companies in other industries that have large ICT departments. For example, an insurance company, Medavie Blue Cross in Moncton, has some 200 people employed in this area. If this division of Medavie was its own company, it would be one of the largest ICT firms in the province.

While there are a few big ICT brands (CGI, Oracle, etc.) here, the vast majority of the ICT industry in New Brunswick are home grown firms. There are some 500 firms in the industry and total ICT employment is in excess of 8,000 people.

More importantly, the industry is one of the fastest growing in New Brunswick. Between 1996 and 2006, the New Brunswick economy added just about 19,000 people to its labour force (according to census data). If you remove all the new public sector workers (health care, education, public administration, etc.), there was a private industry labour force growth of some 12,000 people. Between the customer contact centre and ICT industries there were over 12,000 new jobs created in that 10 year period.

In other words, without the customer contact centre and ICT industries, there would have been zero net new private sector job growth in that entire decade. You could also argue that many of the public sector jobs would not have been created either as there wouldn't have been the new tax revenue (generated by the private sector) to support those jobs.

I mention these two industries to illustrate a point about economic development. The customer contact centre and ICT industries followed a completely different growth path. The former grew almost entirely by national and international companies setting up in the province while the latter achieved its growth almost completely from the growth of New Brunswick based firms.

I am a big advocate of attracting national and international companies to set up in New Brunswick, as I believe that we need to attract our share of global business investment. At the same time, developing policies and programs that encourage industry growth from within can also be a vital part of our economic development. The ICT industry is a perfect example.

The reality is, however; that the ICT industry by its very nature has high attrition rates. Across North America for every successful ICT firm there are 10 that start up and fail. We have many examples in New Brunswick of companies that have set up with great promise only to flame out within a couple of years. The technological uncertainty and pace of change in the industry makes it inherently risky.

But the flip side of risk is reward and for those companies that get it right, the reward can be substantial. That, in turn, generates significant economic benefits for New Brunswick.

Gerry Pond has an interesting term for this process of creative destruction. He calls it "scar tissue" and believes that it is an important part of the development of a healthy and successful indigenous ICT industry. That is not to say that we should encourage business failure, but without ICT entrepreneurs and investors willing to try and fail and get up and try again, the industry would have never grown to where it is today. Pond recollected for me numerous ICT firms in the province that were born out of the failure of others.

What then is the role of government in the development of the ICT industry? The idea of using taxpayer funds to develop strategies to grow an industry that has a high failure rate is a complicated one.

It's not in the older version of the economic development manual. But what government policy makers and economic development professionals need to realize is that the process of creative destruction is fundamental to growing a successful indigenous ICT industry. I am certainly not advocating that governments become cavalier with taxpayer money but I am saying that for this specific industry we need to understand and accept the role that scar tissue has played and will continue to play in the growth of the industry going forward.

David Campbell is an economic development consultant based in Moncton. He writes a daily blog, It's the Economy Stupid, at www.davidwcampbell.com.

Peter Schiff Announced as Keynote Speaker for Fullsail 2009

lrousseau — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 08:54:07 -0400

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New Brunswick Securities Commission

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Peter Schiff

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Saint John - Market guru and president of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., Peter Schiff has been engaged by the New Brunswick Securities Commission (NBSC) as a keynote speaker at the Commission's annual Fullsail Summit. This year's summit is entitled Moving Beyond Today, and will take place at the Delta Fredericton Hotel in Fredericton, May 11-12.

"Once referred to as Dr. Doom, and more recently as Mr. Right, Mr.
Schiff is the acclaimed predictor of the 2008 market collapse," said Rick Hancox, NBSC executive director. "He will be sharing how he predicted the current market crisis, his recommendations for meeting these challenges and his predictions for the economy's future."

The Fullsail Summit supports initiatives aimed at encouraging and increasing equity capital opportunities and entrepreneurship in New Brunswick. Recognizing the impact and importance of today's market challenges, the Commission is focusing its third summit on ways entrepreneurs may advance their business during difficult economic times.

The Commission has also engaged Rahaf Harfoush and Tod Maffin as panelists. Harfoush is a new-media strategist, and was a key member of President Barack Obama's highly successful and acclaimed online social media team. Maffin is recognized as a leading international authority on the strategic use of social media. The panel will inform delegates about available outlets and technologies that can help advance business goals and get out their message in new and innovative ways, despite the current economic situation.

"We will be announcing more exciting speakers in the next few weeks", added Hancox, "watch our website for regular updates."

Fullsail has become a high-profile event attracting local, regional and national recognition, and is attended by entrepreneurs, investors, senior politicians, government representatives, academics, and representatives from the accounting and legal professions.

YouTube videos of Schiff, Harfoush and Maffin may be viewed by visiting the NBSC website, and clicking on the Fullsail button to view the links.