Announcement below from Startup Edmonton and GameCamp Edmonton - too much fun (if you're of the right mindset) for creative programmers: It's the  Startup Hackathon + Global Game Jam – the city’s biggest-ever 54 hour marathon of coding, design, and lots of energy drinks. Make an app, make a game – just make something people want. Like previous Startup Weekends, developers, designers, marketers, players, and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch startups. Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, attendees bring their best ideas and inspire others to join their team. Over the weekend, teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas, and culminating in a final demo night where teams show off their prototypes and receive valuable feedback. Date: January 27 – 29, 2012 Time: 7 pm on January 27 Location: University of Alberta Cost: $65 Earlybird Registration (ends January 19) $85 Late Registration (ends January 27) $25 Stude ...

TEC Edmonton is pleased to see two companies it has assisted in the past climb up the Alberta Venture magazine's Fast Growth 50 chart, published in the business periodical's January 2012 edition. CAN Telematics, now of Calgary, placed ninth in the fastest growing businesses of Alberta survey, with three years annualized growth of 438%. The remote monitoring firm saw its gross revenues grow from $230,382 two years ago to $1.1 million last year. In 2009, when CAN Telematics was a much smaller company, TEC Edmonton helped CAN Telematics develop its business plan. The survey's 12th place finisher, Yardstick Software of Edmonton, grew its revenues from $5.3 million two years ago to $6.2 million last year. Yardstick Software has grown in revenues by 33% a year over the past three years. Yardstick Software co-CEO Chris LaBossiere credits  TEC Edmonton for effectively launching Yardstick, when Yardstick won TEC Edmonton's VenturePrize competition in 2006. "Entering the ...

TEC Edmonton is pleased to have played a role in another milestone for University of Alberta researcher Dr. Dileepan Joseph’s advanced image sensor prototype.  Dr. Joseph, a  University of Alberta electrical and computer engineering professor, has been awarded an “I2I” (Idea-To- Innovation) one year grant of $125,000 from NSERC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, to further develop his prototype. TEC Edmonton Technology Transfer Officer Alessandro Vena and Business Development Associate Khalid Hansraj worked with Dr. Joseph on the major grant application.. Dr. Joseph’s sensor has implications for the digital imaging world. His team is working towards combining high contrast levels, from bright light sources to dark shadows, together with the ability to capture very low light levels. THE NSERC I2I grant enables Dr. Joseph to further develop his prototype, preparing for presentation to the digital marketplace.

TEC Edmonton must be the only outfit in Alberta that cheers when four top executives exit simultaneously. Why cheers rather than groans? Because the four - Shaheel Hooda, Denis Taschuk, Kyle Kasawski and Bern Philip – are leaving their positions as “Executives-in-Residence” at TEC Edmonton to become the CEOs of current or former TEC Edmonton client companies. Is this not EXACTLY what TEC Edmonton is supposed to do? To take fledgling high-tech/innovative companies under its wise business wings, offer them invaluable business assistance and then launch them into the world to create knowledge-intensive jobs, to create wealth and pay taxes in Edmonton and all Northern Alberta. To provide exciting  career opportunities that our best and brightest, our future leaders, can stay in the region, raise their families here and contribute back to society. And. finally, to create an entrepreneurial class in town that’ll doggedly keep trying until they succeed. TEC Edmonton’s Executives-in-Residence are recruite ...

Interesting story in the Edmonton Journal on Dec. 10, 2011, on General Electric's  role in the oilsands as a major supplier of water evaporation technology for SAGD (steam-assisted gravity drainage) bitumen extraction operations.

GE is planning on setting up a major support centre in Fort McMurray for all its oilsand processes and equipment. And come the spring of 2012, GE's "Global Centre for Excellence in Heavy Oil" will open in Calgary. 

 

 

 

The three premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia held a joint press conference on Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2011 following their "New West Partnership" meeting. From a technology/innovation perspective, the premiers - Alberta's Alison Redford, Saskatchewan's Brad Wall and B.C.'s Christy Clark continue to emphasize the need for innovation in health care, agriculture, energy and environmental technologies to spur Western Canada's economic growth and to continue to promote the region's natural and intellectual resources to new international markets.  "As we move forward," Redford is quoted in the Wed. Dec. 14, 2011 Edmonton Sun, "the innovation agenda and research agenda - in terms of how we can continue to be one of the greatest producers of food in the world - will be very important in terms of economic development and diversification."   The Premiers also agreed that the federal government should continue to provide the current 6% escalator in the Canada Health Transfer to su ...

 In case the world thinks tekkies have their heads so buried in research and discovery, that they don't think of anything else ... TEC Edmonton and TEC Centre receptionist Audrey Dolinski is a lady with a big heart. Audrey ensures the TEC Centre concession - a self-serve snack centre that works on a honour system - is well stocked with goodies. This Christmas season, the proceeds from the concession, from our snacking, is going straight to feed others. TEC Edmonton is purchasing all the festive goodies for three Christmas hampers to be delivered to less-fortunate families in Edmonton that are registered with the Edmonton Christmas Bureau. After buying all the groceries for the hampers, there's still $2,000 in the concession kitty, and that money will be donated directly to the Christmas Bureau, which has a huge task ahead of itself in the next two weeks, of raising $1.8 million so 70,000 less-fortunate Edmontonians can enjoy a festive meal of some sort, be it a Christmas hamper or a Sobey' ...

TEC Edmonton is proud to be a sponsor of Deloitte’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Predictions 2012 Edmonton breakfast session on Friday, January 27, 2012, 7:30 a.m.in the Westin Hotel. The keynote speaker will be Duncan Stewart, Deloitte Canada Director of Research and co-author of the Deloitte TMT Predictions 2012 report.  Duncan will cover emerging technology trends expected to impact Canadian businesses in 2012.  He has a broad base of research, namely Deloitte's 6,000 global employees who specialize in TMT practice. The hot breakfast is complementary but attendees must register in advance, Deloitte TMT Predictions 2012 registration: Edmonton  More background information at Deloitte's TMT Predictions. See also Deloitte's 'Fast 50. and for a look backward, Deloitte's TMT Predictions of 2011

Looks like TEC Edmonton's Technology Transfer division could be kept hoppin' - at least down the line - with a major boost to the University of Alberta's industrial research funding. Here's a link to the Edmonton Journal report "U of A adds six new research chairs", published December 1, 2011.   The federal government funded Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) has announced it will fund six more industrial research "chairs" in the U of A's engineering faculty - bringing the total up to 16. NSERC's $5.78 million for the six new chairs is leveraged up to $14.2 million, according to the Edmonton Journal report, thanks to investments from the private sector, the province of Alberta and the University of Alberta. The chair means essentially that the NSERC will cover a leading industrial researcher/professor's salary, thus freeing up others resources that can be put to the particular professor's research effort. These chairs reflect recent government poli ...

Looks like the Alberta oilsands have an ally in Canadian Governor General David Johnston ... as do all of us concerned with increasing Canadian productivity through research, development and innovation. In remarks following a speech to the Canada Foundation for Innovation on Monday (Edmonton Journal, Tuesday, November 29, 2011, "Take oilsands to next level, GG urges")  the new governor general - an academic with vast industry experience - showed a great deal of common sense and insight about the role of the oilsands, its ongoing economic potential and the need for honest but positive reporting on the oilsands' environmental impact.  Calling the oilsands a "great Canadian development," the governor general went on to suggest that moving beyond bitumen to "higher developed products" would be of great benefit to the country by combining Canada's "two economies" of commodities mining and the creation of high-value good and services in the oilsands sector. He bolstered ...