CBRM's Director of Technology, John MacKinnon, joined the Innovacorp sponsored TecSocial monthly meeting in Sydney last night, hosted by Bob Pelley.
And he should be given big props for several reasons:
(1) his enthusiastic attitude and quiet acceptance of fair criticism on behalf of the CBRM,
(2) his list of IT related things CBRM has tried or would like to explore,
(3) his commitment to working more closely with the technology leaders in our community from here forward,
(4) his willingness to speak casually without any notable political bias,
(5) his invite to the tech stakeholders to look at projects involving taking over tickets.capebreton.ca, or tracking the location of the Transit Cape Breton fleet for bus passengers.
The room had a strong concentration of Sydney-based high profile names in the tech space - including Mike Targett of UIT, Richard Lorway of gocapebreton.com, reps for the recently announced Louisbourg Seafoods' technology initiative, Innovacorp I3 winner/local entrepreneur Jim Deleski, and others.
Perhaps the most prominent of those in the room was one of the founders of Protocase, Doug Milburn - who, by the way, employs a ballpark number of ~115 employees and growing in our tech sector (yes, we have one).
Protocase fabricates custom metal enclosures to meet any engineering or design need. And just in case that doesn't stir up the fizz in your soda pop enough, you should know that their customers include Apple, Boeing, Bose, GE, GM, Lockheed Martin, the US Army, NASA... and many more companies that are just as impressive. Their services are delivered here, pulling International revenues directly into the Cape Breton economy.
From what I've observed of Milburn so far at local events, he should be regarded as a bold, no-nonsense kinda guy. He's intelligent, passionate about his company, and committed to his community. And so it wasn't entirely surprising that he picked up on John MacKinnon's suggestion that the CBRM doesn't have any money to invest in the startup community or significant technology implementations.
So in keeping with Doug's no-nonsense style, during the Q&A period, his comment included displeasure with how the CBRM has come up with money for highly political investments like the greenfield site ($6 Million purchase price, a key asset in Sydney Port project), but not for technology.
And though perhaps not quite the tippy-toed approach to pointing out the obvious, it was a fair point for discussion. His assertion that the Sydney Port won't happen is a subject for debate - and one that is frequently undertaken. But Mackinnon took the right approach and didn't take a defensive position. A point that needed to be made was made and the Q&A continued.
The CBRM hasn't done enough to embrace and support the tech community. But this is an opportunity for them to get onboard. It was a good starting point, and we should hold Mr. MacKinnon to his commitment to more involved from here forward - and welcome him to stay connected.
For my own part, I'm not one to end many posts without an ask or suggestion. So I have a few incremental suggestions for John regarding technology and becoming a smarter city:
#1 Signup for a Twitter account. As the Director of Technology for the CBRM and now a part of the tech community, we want to engage with you in an open forum.
#2 Start uploading the council videos to youTube.com. This allows our community to easily share the videos into social media, cut out relevant bits of importance, comment on the video itself, or discussions around the videos within social media. These meetings are for the citizens to see. And uploading to youTube rather than a self-hosted copy on your server will help make that happen. Cost: $0 (same as current method; easier).
#3 Arrange with Mike Targett to come to UIT Startups to give a short presentation, and to observe what the current and future startup founders among the students are working on.
#4 Create an email signup list for tax sales (Tip: Use and notify anyone on the list prior to the sales. Consider this a precedent for similar periodic information updates on the site.
#5 Begin communicating on technology-related topics at gocapebreton.com, and contributing here.
The great thing about technology is that even incremental improvements have value. Small steps matter. And we invite you to start taking those small steps with us.
"If not the port, then what?" someone recently asked.
There is an answer. And it lies within our technology sector.
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