Ramping up

Momentum continues to build toward the May 29 launch of True North, the groundbreaking “tech for good” conference at Kitchener’s Lot42 event centre, and the momentum was reflected in a number of developments and stories through April.

Leading the way was a piece penned for Communitech News by Communitech CEO Iain Klugman, who passionately articulated the rationale and value proposition for the three-day conference, which is expected to attract more than 2,000 attendees from around the world and will pair with a downtown festival during the course of the event.

Days later, Klugman teamed up with economist and former Clerk of the Privy Council Kevin Lynch on a True North themed op-ed that appeared in the Globe and Mail, which described how the technology sector can build bridges, reconnect and deliver on the promise to improve lives.

Meanwhile, BuzzFeed media editor Craig Silverman, a featured speaker at True North, chatted with Communitech News about the scourge of “fake news,” a term he is credited with coining back in 2014, and which will be the topic of his True North address.

Sarah Lacy, another True North speaker, was featured on CBS This Morning, and talked about her new startup Chairman Mom, which provides safe space for working mothers and has been attracting a great deal of attention in recent weeks.

And still with True North, don’t miss Communitech News videographer Sara Jalali’s continuing video series. In her latest, Jalali profiles digital marketer Elizabeth Azuya, whose Kitchener-based startup Kiiah is working on an e-gifting platform that encourages meaningful gifting.

Count Kik among companies aiming to use tech for good: the Waterloo maker of the popular chat platform announced it has extended its partnership with non-profit Crisis Text Line, where it scans conversations for signs of emotional distress or self harm and provides trained counsellors via text.

Likewise, Waterloo’s Magnet Forensics announced it is  teaming up with the Child Rescue Coalition, a U.S.-based non-profit, to fight child sexual exploitation crime, and will make a multi-year donation.

Making a difference was on Google’s mind, too. The Waterloo Region office of the tech giant announced it will provide CDN$2.1 million for three different local groups to boost STEM, youth education and gender equality. It additionally announced it will make 4,000 square feet of space available for ongoing community use.

Northern talent play

A decades-long green card backlog and antagonism toward immigrants in Trump’s America are pushing increasing numbers of tech workers to look north to Canada, a feature-length piece in Bloomberg reported.

That notion was amplified by the CEO of the MaRS Discovery District, Yung Wu, who wrote a Globe and Mail op-ed entitled: “Canada’s brain gain – the reverse migration of tech talent is happening.”

Wu’s story served as a powerful day-after rebuttal to the release of a study claiming that tech students were fleeing Canada for the U.S. after graduation. It should be noted that on the same day that Wu’s op-ed appeared, questions emerged about the study’s methodology.

Evidence that many foreign tech workers are being welcomed to Waterloo Region with open arms thanks to Canada’s Global Skills visa program was highlighted by the Waterloo Region Record’s Terry Pender, who described the success of fast-growing Thalmic Labs in securing 12 visas with the program.

Certainly Canada, and specifically Waterloo Region and its available talent base, has proven to be attractive to Norwegian testing and certification company Nemko, which decided to leverage its partnership with Kitchener startup Swift Labs and open a lab on the 401 corridor in Cambridge, its third Canadian location.

And speaking of corridors, the Toronto-Waterloo tech corridor got a nod in Startup Genome’s Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2018 as one of the top 20 tech clusters in the world.

Cap and gown

William Pristanski, a member of the board of governors at the University of Waterloo, explained in a Record opinion piece why ENCQOR, a private-public partnership that aims to build a 5G-enabled test bed corridor in Quebec and Ontario, will help advance next-generation technologies.

In a related announcement, the University of Waterloo was on the receiving end of $1 million over the next five years from Cisco Canada. The money will go toward researching improvements in wireless technology.

Private-public collaboration was on Pearl Sullivan’s mind, too. The dean of engineering at University of Waterloo wrote in the Globe and Mail about the need for government and business to partner in order to keep up with advances with AI.

That very objective was foremost recently at UW with the launch of the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute, a “reverse co-op” that will give private companies a resource where they and their personnel can enhance their AI capabilities.

Meanwhile, Waterloo Region’s other post-secondary schools, Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College, had some news to share – that they’ll partner on an “education village” in Milton, where they’ll offer courses for up to 2,000 students beginning in the fall of 2021.

Moves, milestones and money

Catalyst137, the new, sprawling technology and IoT space in Kitchener on Glasgow Street, welcomed new tenants, including Kik, which has moved from Waterloo and taken 23,000 square feet to accommodate continuing growth, and BDC, the Business Development Bank of Canada, which has opened an 8,200-square-foot outpost.

Speaking of growth, Waterloo-based Intellijoint celebrated the 5,000th hip replacement completed by doctors using its product, then celebrated being on the receiving end of $1 million through the Ontario Scale-Up Vouchers Program. One other growing Waterloo company, Axonify, received funding through the same program.

Some scaling up is unfolding at Waterloo’s RideCo, which won a contract from the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority on a service that will enable customers to use cell phones to request a ride.

Kiite’s co-founders, siblings and serial entrepreneurs Joseph Fung and Donna Litt, described in a Record story the satisfying ride they’re having with their latest startup, which has raised $3 million and now employs 15 people.

And as Kiite soars, another Waterloo company, 2G Robotics, is preparing to dive deep, as in under the Atlantic Ocean, where it will take part in an expedition this summer researching and documenting the wreck of the Titanic.

In other news

    • Evolv1, the new 100,000-square-foot office building in Waterloo’s David Johnston Research and Technology Park, earned distinction as Canada’s greenest building.

    • Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne stopped by Vidyard’s Kitchener office where she re-stated her government’s commitment to improving rail service between Waterloo Region and downtown Toronto.

    • CBRE says the vacancy rate among industrial properties in Waterloo Region is at a 16-year low due to tech-sector demand, and that investment in commercial real estate in the region last year reached $1.8 billion, a 63.4-per-cent increase over the previous year.

    • Waterloo’s Aeryon Labs, maker of high-performance drones, unveiled its latest product, the SkyRanger R80, which features real-time, on-board AI and is capable of autonomous missions.