- Thank you.
- All right, we've got everybody,
we've got lots of crevices here,
so last call for all the
startups hiding, wonderful.
Well welcome everyone to our
fifth installment of TeCK Night
here in Chatham-Kent,
my name is Yvonne Pilon,
the President and CEO of WEtech Alliance,
we are a regional innovation Centre,
located in Windsor, Ontario,
but servicing Windsor-Essex
and Chatham-Kent.
So I'm excited to be here
today for many reasons.
We have a very action packed agenda.
Tonight we have a number of delegates,
including members of Parliament
and our mayor, Darrin Canniff here,
that are gonna be bringing greetings
and really talking about,
as we near the 2019 closing,
coming up to 2020,
what the future looks like
when it comes to innovation in technology.
And I think when you look
back in the last year,
we have tons and tons
of things to celebrate,
and I do want to bring just a few comments
on behalf of WEtech on some of the things
that we're extremely proud
to have accomplished here.
First and foremost, this space.
This space is a VC funded
space, this is not, no,
and again it's not provincially funded
or federally funded, it
started with entrepreneurs,
and I think that's a big
accomplishment for this region.
It's allowed us to really expand our reach
here in Windsor-Essex.
I also wanted to talk about
our board representation.
Tonight I'm joined by two board members,
Kit Moore and Bill Johnson, we
now have five board members,
if I'm not mistaken, from Chatham-Kent,
which is amazing for us to
have the voice of Chatham-Kent
at the table,
as we talk about the
strategy of WEtech Alliance.
I also want to recognize activities,
like our first Women in Coding
event that happened here
just a few weeks ago, a SOAR initiative,
and I know Sara Pegg,
whoever's, if she's here,
she also participated in that session.
And also again just working
with over a dozen Chatham-Kent
companies, in fact I know
there's a few in the audience
that are here today, MPV
WiFi, we have 42 North,
there's a number of
companies that are here
so we thank you for being here,
and we know that this
is just the beginning
of WEtech's presence
and impact here locally
and we have great partners to do so.
So on the topic of partners,
thank you to SOAR Innovation
for hosting us today,
thank you to the Chatham-Kent
Economic Development
and the Small Business Centre.
I do want to recognize this act, while,
another reason why I'm so
excited about tonight's event
is it truly is about partnerships,
partnership with industry,
partnerships with government
and partnerships with academia.
And to be honest when
you look at this agenda,
it's announcements, it's remarks,
it's inclusion of all
three of those parties,
and it is all three of those parties
that are really going
to transform the future
of this region, of really the
national and global industry,
and it's truly about partnerships.
And that's why I think I'm
most excited about tonight,
is that we're gonna see this intersection
of academic announcements
we're gonna hear tonight,
we're gonna hear about the
vision from the municipality,
the vision from the province
and really the vision too,
where the industry wants
Chatham-Kent to go.
Before I introduce Mayor Darrin Canniff,
I do want to talk about something,
about what makes a strong
startup tech ecosystem?
And again, this is not
something I created,
this is something that
people have been researching
for years, and years, and years,
especially as this whole new
tech ecosystem has started.
So I'm gonna just go through
the points very high level,
so get the attitudes right,
attitudes such as being
an entrepreneur-led,
give-first mentality, put founders first.
We always have to be mindful who is it
that we're actually servicing.
Engage actors from all communities.
When you think about the
tech startup ecosystem,
it's not just about
the tech entrepreneurs,
it's the business community,
it's the agriculture,
it's the culture, it's the arts,
it's all levels of the community.
Layer in many activities.
10 years ago WEtech was,
I guess, established,
and it's taken us 10 years
to really build momentum.
So when I think about this new
space here is, we have a few
companies here, but again
you gotta build up pipelines,
you gotta do lots of
activities, so I would say
don't get discouraged when
you see only a few companies
in this space, it's just getting
started and we need to get
this started in order to
build our future economy.
Also we need to be inclusive, right?
This is not just for
just the entrepreneurs,
we have to ensure that all
levels of people feel included
in this movement.
And lastly, the road to
startup community development
is not measured in months,
it's measured in years,
and that's something we
really have to look at.
This isn't a quick fix,
this isn't, "We're gonna
solve the economy".
This is something we need to invest in,
and we know it's a long-term
play and it's pivotal that we
invest in spaces like this,
in companies that we're gonna
see today and the talent is
a critical piece to that.
And last but not least,
there's no shortcuts,
there's no easy way to get this done,
we've gotta work together,
we've gotta all roll up our
sleeves and I hope that we today
can leave this knowing
that we all play a role
in building the technology
and startup community.
And that is it for my opening remarks,
I now have the pleasure to
introduce Mayor Darrin Canniff,
who's going to, he's our
keynote speaker today,
he's going to be bringing
greetings from Chatham,
in terms of what Chatham-Kent looks like
in terms of innovation,
technology, the all in 2020 so,
Mayor Canniff.
(audience applauds)
- I was rather surprised
when I looked at the agenda
and I looked and it said,
"Keynote presentation
regarding technology".
I'm saying did anybody
ask to look at my resume?
which wasn't a whole
lot of technology on it,
so I was joking out there and
said, "Do I go throw big words
"around like internet,
computer, smartphones?"
And then Yvonne said, "No you
shouldn't, we'll just put up
artificial intelligence and
it'll build press ever advance.
So I was asked to say, well,
what does technology look like to me?
I really get excited about
the future for Chatham-Kent's
technology, but there's a
lot of things we need to do.
I see a community that
needs to embrace it,
that's embracing it.
That ties to all aspects of the economy,
going from manufacturing,
to the municipality,
to small business, to
the community itself.
I'm just gonna talk a little
bit about some of those things,
I wanna talk a little bit
about what do we need to do
as far as a municipality and
then some of the examples.
That, actually I'm gonna
talk about something
that I'm gonna be
introducing very shortly,
this kind of ties in
with the smart cities,
and we're gonna talk about that as well.
But Yvonne, you talked about
that already, collaboration.
We're starting that right now.
I'm looking and seeing all aspects
of the Chatham-Kent economy
sitting here tonight,
as we need to collaborate.
We need innovation and
that's something big
then we're gonna hear from
some panelists up there
that are very innovative people
that are thinking of the future,
what we need to be innovative.
And well, I don't mind
going out and stealing ideas
from other communities,
there's a lot of communities
out there doing right now, like Stratford,
I wanna get over to them
and I know they're doing
a lot of good stuff.
I've got a meeting with the mayor up there
to say, "Hey, what are you doing here?"
So it's those type of things.
Resources, that's one big role
the municipality's gonna play
is providing resources,
we're gonna go out,
we're gonna work hard with
the federal government,
the provincial governments,
municipal, private funding,
to get these things going,
because it is a long-term play
for this, so one of the big things
is we need willingness to accept.
There's a lot of people out there that,
"Smartphone, ooh I didn't wanna go there",
so that's gonna be a tough nut to crack,
when they don't even wanna
look at a cell phone,
and then you start talking about
all the wonderful technologies,
because we need to be
vibrant as a community,
to be a big piece of the
municipalities marketing
and just pushing it out there
and saying "Well how are we doing this?"
So a few things I just
wanna talk about briefly,
swift funding, we're working on that
with the federal government,
provincial government,
working to get money in,
money in to making sure
that we have fiber across Chatham-Kent,
six and a half million dollars
to ensure that rural Chatham-Kent gets it,
gets the fiber.
So we're working across
the ward in that aspect,
working hard, an example,
that whenever we open up a
trench for PUC or something,
we're laying conduit,
because 95% of the cost
of laying fiber is that.
So we've recently done a
number of kilometers of that,
so that's little things
we're trying to do there.
Smart City initiatives,
Maureen Geddes is on the panel,
she's gonna talk about
that, but I've actually,
I know that we went
through a whole process
to apply for a grant, we didn't get it
but we didn't want to lose all the lessons
we've learned through that.
So Maureen's gonna be, I'm
gonna be working with her
to ensure that we get those ideas
so that it's not just tossed on the shelf
and forgotten about.
We wanna make sure to take all that work
and start doing it a little bit at a time,
because in the long term we
need to be a smart city here.
The munitech, we in this
municipality have to adopt it,
we have to accept it and
people have to get excited
about the whole concept
within municipality,
because if we're not embracing it,
how is everybody else going to?
So the manufacturing, I've
toured tons of manufacturers
and it boils down a lot of times to,
if we wanna compete, we need technology.
When they looked at
those robots out there,
they said, "We wouldn't
be able to compete."
And where it costs
jobs, but it saves jobs,
it gives you better jobs,
rather than just having an assembly line
that people are just grabbing
one thing or the other,
your robots are going to
do the higher end jobs,
is programming them and
doing all the other stuff.
We have a shortage of labor now,
so we need to embrace
technology to bring the jobs in.
If we don't, I don't know
where our economy's gonna go.
So a few examples I wanna
talk about specifically is,
when we start looking at buses,
we're looking at both,
Chatham-Kent is a really tough
place for transportation,
so how are we gonna get to 21st century,
how are we gonna start adapting buses?
So we're looking at various
things, on demand busing,
it's a concept that's
in other communities,
we need to bring that here.
Because it is not economic
for transportation here in Chatham-Kent,
particularly once you
get outside of Chatham
and go into various communities,
but we need to have that
transportation network
to bring people to and from,
and keep the community vibrant.
The traffic, another thing
we're gonna start looking at is,
I was in Australia recently
and everywhere you went
there was cameras,
and when the speed limit
was 100 kilometers an hour,
guess how fast everyone was going?
100 kilometers, because
they were everywhere,
and in Australia, right across the board
they told me, they said,
"If you're going 104,
you'll get a ticket."
So it's one of those things you
say okay that's good and bad
when we talk about safety.
And we were looking at various things.
We know that recently when we put down
the speed limit at crosswalks for schools
to 40 kilometers an hour,
we're looking at okay
we need technologies,
we can't post police
officers at every spot,
but we don't wanna risk
the safety of our kids,
so it's those technologies as well.
One of the things that we
actually are putting up to council
on Monday is, I'll be putting
together, putting a proposal
that we start putting video
cameras downtown, 21st century.
The recognition, as far as
facial recognition goes,
we're gonna go top technology
and start with that here,
there's gonna be a pilot downtown here.
That's what I'm proposing,
we're gonna need some money
but we need to do that
and the benefits are huge.
We start saying look,
we start monitoring it
and you don't have to have police officers
all over the place, and it'll all be tied
to the police station.
But that's another example
of the 21st century
that we might wanna see
the municipality adopting.
So in the end, I love
what we're doing here,
I love coming together,
I love seeing all of you
and hearing about all of the ideas.
I've heard so many wonderful ideas,
it's a matter of executing on those ideas.
So looking forward to hearing
everybody talk about them
and let's get it done, thank you.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you Mayor Canniff,
and I must say the Chatham-Kent
Municipality Economic
Development have been here since day one,
fifth installment, and
I do wanna make a note
about Stratford, so if
anyone doesn't know Stratford
is a demonstration site
for a town's vehicle
and connected vehicles, and
in fact how that started
was simply by introducing smart meters.
So it started with the city
putting together a proposal
with your utilities
company to do smart meters,
and then when they realized all the optics
that go into the ground in terms
of all of the fiber optics,
they realized that that fiber optics
can also deal with a lot more.
And when they started talking
to their local institution
they realized that, hey
connected cars take a lot of data
to transfer, and then that
sparked the conversation
with the Waterloo Research Centre,
which then they developed.
They're now kind of an Ontario-wide leader
when it comes to the demonstration zone.
So it just came again
with the right leadership,
with the right connections, and again,
that mentality of partnership.
So I now have the pleasure,
and I'm just gonna make
sure I get everything ready.
I have a little bit of a bio here,
so forgive me here.
- [David] It's all good.
- Okay wonderful, so I'm excited tonight
that our newly elected
Member of Parliament,
David Epp is joining us here.
He is the newly represent,
the new Member of Parliament
for Chatham-Kent-Leamington.
And David Epp is a
third generation farmer,
this is Google, so thank you Google.
I hope I'm saying this right.
(laughter)
I hope I'm saying this right.
I'm afraid now like my face
is being recognized here
and I'm not gonna be able to--
- It will soon, not now though.
- So David Epp is a
third generation farmer
of processing vegetables and cash crops,
born and raised in Leamington.
He has been active in sports, agriculture,
and community organizations
his entire life.
He's also a former single-engine pilot,
who enjoys fastball, hockey,
golf and a good choir.
With his wife of 34 years,
Charlene, he has four daughters.
So it's now my pleasure
to invite newly elected
Member of Parliament,
David Epp, thank you.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you everyone,
and thanks to everyone
who had a hand in
putting tonight together,
it's truly a pleasure to be here.
I want to acknowledge
Mayor Darrin Canniff,
thank you for laying out your vision,
congratulations to you,
you're one of the first
of the newbies that's
coming to the front here,
so congratulations to you.
I also want to acknowledge my colleague,
Irek Kusmierczyk, Windsor-Tecumseh.
Congratulations on your victory.
(audience applauds)
Irek and I may be on different parties
in the House of Commons,
but we share an interest
in furthering our interests
here collective regionally,
so I look forward to
working with him and others
who share that same, that
with you tonight Irek.
I'm here to become more
familiar with technology,
with what's going on with technology,
though my understanding
thus far, at least,
is that many see my role as
providing federal top-up dollars
to many people's wish-lists.
(audience laughs)
I think that Irek has
also felt that already.
By the way, I feel that in other areas
besides technology, as well.
And while being a funding
advocate for ones community,
that's certainly a part
of being a good member
of parliament, my interests
go well beyond just providing
that role and handing
out taxpayers dollars
for a picture in the paper.
My commitment here is to
be a catalyst for change.
It's very much here in
Chatham-Kent-Leamington,
so that our remote communities,
communities like Pelee Island,
have a lifeline to the mainland,
and so that our field farmers,
our greenhouse operators,
have state of the art technology
to operate more productively
and more efficient.
So that our seniors and
family members can overcome
some of the challenges of geography,
and so that we can
attract new investments,
new industries to our area for
long term sustainable jobs.
I've already had some meetings
with community leaders,
with industry leaders about the next steps
in ensuring that all of our communities
have access to technology for success.
So I have much to learn,
especially when it comes
to technology, just ask any
one of my four daughters,
they will acknowledge that.
But tonight is another
helpful step in my journey
to more local learning here in this field,
so I look forward to
working with all of you
as we move forward to achieving
our community's potential.
Thank you so much for being impatient.
- [Yvonne] Thank you, thank you.
(audience applauds)
- What a cool night.
I definitely agree it
goes beyond the dollars,
and I know working...
For anyone that doesn't
know, Irek was the former
WEtech director of innovation,
or director of partnerships,
sorry, we have the other director
of innovation in the back.
And one of the things
that we've talked about,
and I think this coalition
here today is storytelling.
We need to tell our story
loud, proud, everyday, all day,
and I think having
advocates in an honor role,
will help us tell the
stories of what's happening
with our local entrepreneurs,
what's happening with our local talent.
So we look forward to
sharing many, many stories,
in fact your inboxes will be
inundated with all the stories
that we're gonna be sharing.
So now we're gonna get into
some exciting announcements,
so as I mentioned we
have some opening remarks
and we have a couple
of great announcements
that are going to enhance
the technology ecosystem
here in Chatham-Kent.
And I'd like now to invite
Rosemarie Montgomery,
the economic development
officer at Chatham-Kent
Economic Development, to
talk about a new and exciting
announcement called Digital Main Street.
(audience applauds)
- Don't mind me, I'm just...
- We good?
- Hopefully.
- So Chatham-Kent is launching
a Digital Main Street
service squad, and it's
thanks to an $85,000 grant
made available from the
Government of Ontario
for digital rehistory, to
fund the Digital Service Squad
that's gonna be joining our team.
In an effort to help businesses boost
their digital profiles,
Chatham-Kent Economic
Development will provide
a program focused on assisting
main street businesses
with improving their technology.
The Digital Service Squad
grant program will provide
training, advisory support
and a grant to support
the Digital Service Squad across Ontario.
In partnership with the
Province of Ontario,
Ontario Business Improvement
Area Associations,
and the Digital Main Street,
the program is available
to all main street businesses in Ontario
that are part of the local BIAs.
Digital Service Squads are
digital technology specialists
in an area or region of
Ontario delivering one on one
assistance to small
main street businesses.
The squad will provide
assessments, consulting,
and advice to main street businesses
on how they can adopt digital technology
to help them promote, sell, and manage
their businesses more effectively.
In today's digital economy,
a strong digital footprint
is essential for small businesses.
Our Digital Service Squad team
is helping businesses
adopt new technologies,
including e-commerce, social media,
and important back-office systems
such as payroll and inventory.
We know that there is a
need in our community,
and that they will be part
of our strategy to help us
address the opportunities that
are needed in our community.
We have the three digital
squad members here tonight,
Irene Sisar...
I don't know where they are,
if they could just stand up
and kind of let everyone
know that they're there.
- [Yvonne] Wave wave!
- Kevin Vadovic, and Zainab
Oda, so that's all of them.
(audience applauds)
This program is built to run
in online learning platforms,
structured training programs,
and grants to manage
and evolve their operations
through technology.
Email marketing is one of
the most effective mediums
when it comes to internet marketing.
With return on investment
calculations 40 times higher
than any other medium, you
can see the potential in email
for business, sending
out emails every month,
particularly those that
are both promotional
and informational, is nothing new,
however automating these emails
based on a customer's
personal preference is new.
Businesses can now send out emails
based on content users have engaged in.
If you know your users have
engaged in an important piece
of content on your website
that helps to convert them
into a customer, you can automate
dynamic content emails
sends to subscribers,
based on URLs of the
pages they have visited.
If you're going to increase your sales
through email automation,
you may need to overhaul your email,
almost to work more as a repeat tool
rather than a direct selling tool.
Instead of sending emails about products
or service offerings,
sending emails to encourage
learning or behaviors
mostly associated to
creating a conversion action.
New statistics show that
52% of all website traffic
comes from a mobile device.
If your website cannot load
quickly, users will bounce
and you may lose the customer.
Since load speed is important
to have for mobile phones,
using accelerated mobile pages
has become a popular
option for businesses.
With accelerated mobile pages,
your website pages load incredibly fast,
on averages, pages load
quicker than half a second,
meaning you'll be able to get
more eyes on your website.
With progressive web apps
you get faster loading times
for mobile website visitors,
better user experience
through a simplistic website
with a large amount of features.
Instead of searching through websites
for specific details
about items or services,
chatbots make the same
information easy to access
through a series of simple questions
or conversational inputs.
In addition, chatbots respond instantly
and run 24 hours a day.
As a business makes the change
to become more approachable,
chatbots let them do so by
conversing with customers
by text, chat or through
verbal interactions.
Chatbots offer a power to provide
personalized resources to customers.
By 2020, it's reported
that 80% of businesses
will be using chatbots.
Video marketing is also
another really important piece
that the squad will be helping with.
As we use our phones to
consume more and more media,
the ways in which we consume
media content changes too.
Google operates its search
engine as a referral business.
If Google finds that one type
of content format or video
works well to engage and
satisfy user's search intent,
it will make that type of
content more readily available,
therefore Google will change
how its search algorithm works
to prioritize video content
above other types of content.
Video importance is evident based,
YouTube is one of the top
two most visited websites
on the internet, other than Facebook.
Google bought YouTube in 2006,
because Google understands
video content works.
Since Google owns YouTube
your search engine rank,
so we're hoping that all
of the small businesses,
in all of our downtown cores
that are part of the BIA's
are gonna reach out
and have this team come
and assess their online presence
and make Chatham-Kent global on the map.
Thanks.
(audience applauds)
- We now have a short little
video from Kay Matthews,
who's the executive director,
and I don't know this acronym, OBIAA.
- You should learn this acronym.
- Yes I will learn this acronym.
So Kay cannot be with us today,
so she sent along a video.
- The Ontario Business
Improvement Area Association,
or OBIAA as we call it.
Thank you to OMAFRA for
continuing to support
our communities,
especially our rural ones.
At this point we have
provided 85 communities
Digital Service Squad grants,
however this grant stream is now closed.
We're gonna be focusing now specifically
on the digital transformation grants,
which allow small businesses
to improve and increase
their digital technologies.
Every business first registers
with digitalmainstreet.ca,
takes the assessment based on the goals
of that individual business,
and receives a digital audit.
A series of videos have been created,
viewing of which is required
if your business is planning
on applying for the $2,500
Digital Transformation Grant.
This grant has very specific
eligibility requirements
for main street businesses only.
Hurry and apply,
as the deadline for applying
is fast approaching,
December 31st 2019.
We're so excited by this program,
and know the value of our
main street businesses
as the backbone of Ontario's economy.
Thank you very much
Chatham-Kent for applying
and for participating in this program.
Thank you.
- Andrew, you have to pass
along a big thank you to Kay.
Again what Rosemarie said, a fun fact,
by 2020 the average person
will talk more to AI chatbots
than they will their significant other.
This is a true fact, or so they say.
We have Stuart McFadden,
Director of Economic Development
who's joined us.
So Stuart I know you had a busy afternoon,
so thanks for joining us.
So just to give, again, the
first portion we talked a lot
about high level stuff,
strategy, a lot of resources,
but who in this room is a
tech entrepreneur in tech,
whether it be med-tech, agri-tech?
Raise your hands for those who
are representing a company,
right, I know there are
some up here too, right?
So this panel is really to engage industry
and engage economic development
in some really provoking
and strategic questions.
So I wanna thank our panelists.
We have Maureen Geddes and
we also have Gaurav Gupta,
we have Bill Johnson and
we have Phil Cameron,
and we also have Taylor Hughes.
So what I'm gonna do is
I'm just gonna give a quick
microphone, so very quick, on who you are
and who you represent.
- So again I'm Taylor Hughes,
I'm with Economic Development
in our Small Business Centre,
I'm a Development Officer
as well as a Business Consultant.
- I'm Bill Johnson, I'm head
of IT and Software Engineering
at Scribendi.
- Maureen Geddes, my
company is Geddes Global.
I work in diversity and
inclusion across Canada
and another dozen
countries around the world,
and more recently with
a passion and interest
in smart cities, and AI,
and tech of all kinds.
- I'm Philip Cameron, I'm
part owner of MPV WiFi,
a rural internet provider of Chatham-Kent,
helping to connect most
of rural Chatham-Kent.
- Hi everyone, I am Gaurav
Gupta, I am Director of Finance
for SOAR innovation at Ekagrata,
it's an investment company,
based in Chatham, and has
impacted this work in this region,
and I am passionate about
technology and legal industry.
- So as you can see we have a
broad range of representation,
so thank you again for participating.
So just some rules of engagement,
we've got about 20, 25 minutes
to go through four questions
and then kind of a
surprise fifth question,
so act surprised when you got it,
but really this panel is about
helping Chatham-Kent plan
for 2035, so the first question
and I'm gonna thank Irek,
where's Irek?
He actually wrote these questions,
in a panel in Winter so
I got to duplicate this,
so if there's a tough question
it's all Irek's fault.
So first question, what
are we doing really well
in the ecosystem right
now, what is a strength
and what should we be doubling down on?
And feel free, not everyone
has to answer this question,
so I'm gonna pass it along
and feel free to pass.
So, what is our strength
and what should we be doubling down on
when it comes to the tech
innovation ecosystem?
- That's a big thing in Chatham-Kent,
and I'm gonna toot Economic
Development's horn here
a little bit, and Andrew
Tompsett, more than anything,
as the marketing and comms guy,
but we're really starting
to go mobile for business,
probably more than I've
ever seen employed before
and it's gaining incredible
amounts of traction.
The biggest thing we see with that
is that people are realizing
that there's a big buzz
around Chatham-Kent right
now, there's a lot of reason
to be here, a lot of
good things happening.
To say we double down on it, I'm not sure
if it's humanly possible at the moment,
but we have an administration
that's promoting
the exact same thing that the mayor is,
and we're over 250 probably
businesses in 10 or 11 months,
so it's really exciting stuff.
The business community's
really starting to reach out
and show their appreciation for it,
so it's kind of establishing that culture
where we're happy to have all
the businesses that we have,
and I think from an investment
attraction standpoint
it's also promoting a lot of
businesses to start looking
at Chatham and say, "Hey,
you know there's a lot
"of good things going on there right now."
We're all over social media,
you can see it out there
so it's starting to expand our
horizons a lot more as well.
- Great, yeah, I think
one thing we're starting
to do really well is this.
We're getting together, local experts,
community leaders and
discussing common challenges
and coming up with solutions
to those challenges.
I think one thing that Darrin
and his Economic Development
team are doing really well
is opening up a channel of communication
between industry and municipality,
and at the end of the day, I
think it's really important
that we build the tech
community here in Chatham-Kent.
I think both those
initiatives are a great start
to laying the groundwork for that.
- I'm really just gonna add on that,
a community in collaboration.
I think our strength is community,
and our double down is on community.
So we can shift the world perspective,
because you say you're from Chatham,
like I get that from my
clients when I'm around,
"You're from where? You're
from Chatham, what's that?",
or they don't know and I'm
always singing the praises
but we all could double down on doing that
and we can create an
amazing presence together
and a collective presence.
- I think I'm gonna actually
just kind of continue the train
as well that Chatham-Kent
is a really great location
to start and grow business.
Housing prices are affordable,
everything's affordable
here, overhead's quite low,
which means that you can
focus in on your business
and really expand it and try and capture
as much of a market as you can.
- Hi, I've been in Chatham for
the last four and a half year
and my experience has been
like this community selling me,
you're setup, now ship.
Whenever I'm new to the SOAR venture,
I have always seen other
people, they just support them,
they just celebrate their own thing,
and which here is, I really
like about this community.
And beside that I am seeing
that there is a good focus
on training, on basic skills,
and I think if we have to
double down on anything
that would be training.
We need to bridge the skill gap
that exists in the community
and to align the community
with the need of the future,
I would say.
- Thank you.
And maybe I can just attest
to some of the strength here,
as an outsider,
as someone that doesn't
necessarily live in Chatham-Kent,
but I do agree on the
story telling piece of it
and also how engaged the ecosystem is.
You have members of Parliament
here, you have the mayor,
you have Economic Development,
in past TeCK Night,
we've had six City Councils,
that is very rare for regions
and I think that is always a
compliment that I pass along
to the Chatham-Kent community,
that in fact it is truly
all about community,
and I'm starting to see the collaboration,
and Bill I agree with you.
We wanna do more of this so
as you're here and you see
myself or any of the organizing groups,
let us know what you wanna hear about,
this is all about you,
what do you wanna hear,
what experts do you wanna see?
Are you one of the experts
and wanna be on a panel like this?
So we really wanna develop
and program the events
that cater to the entrepreneurs
and the tech ecosystem.
So question number two,
you've all spent time in other
ecosystems in other regions,
what's one thing out of their playbook
we should be working towards
implementing regionally?
- So I'm sorry, broken record,
but being in the Kitchener-Waterloo
area in downtown Toronto
where Shopify is, a
collaboration is insurmountable,
it's sometimes, if you're
not around them very often,
it's almost awkward feeling
but I see that we're starting
to do it a lot more here,
again with nights like this
and looking to find more advocates,
to keep speaking with the community here,
but I think we have to
keep raising the needle
on collaboration.
The amount of energy
that you find in Columbia
for some of these places,
like Communitech in
Kitchener-Waterloo or even WEtech's,
in that, for some of
these, people are excited,
they're excited to go to work,
knowing that they have like-minded
individuals next to them.
SOAR Innovation and incubator spaces,
venture capital's going
up in Canada period,
but if we keep expanding
our collaboration,
we keep moving forward together,
everybody's gonna get
to eat a piece of pie
and looking pretty good
ahead for next year.
- Yeah I mean, just to expand
on that, I totally agree,
I mean, in these larger municipalities
where these economies are thriving,
they have really
established tech community
where everybody's collaborating together.
I mean, you can go to
one of these community's
and just name a technology buzzword,
or your programming language,
or a technology paradigm,
and you're gonna find workshops,
and seminars, and tech
events for these things.
I mean you'd be hard
pressed to find a workshop
about technology in
Chatham-Kent at this point.
So I think an important
thing is to build up
these tech communities like
these other municipalities have.
And it's gonna help foster innovation,
it's gonna help draw in more tech talent,
and it's gonna help with
what we're trying to achieve.
- I was in Toronto at an event,
I lived in Toronto for a
year, just came back recently,
and I was at an event with
Rethink Sustainability, RSI,
an executive event and
they had about 200 CEO's
of companies from primarily Ontario,
and we were talking about
AI and the implementation
and what we could be doing,
and it was interesting to note that
one of the couple of things
they did really well,
one was that we not only
had this kind of discussion,
and panelists and whatever,
but we actually sat and worked
in action teams to talk about
what was one thing we were
gonna take and implement,
what are the key challenges,
like actually turning into
research on the spot and
helping to leverage that.
The other piece they had
structured into it was something
they called InterGEN, so how
important intergenerational
learning and learning transfer is,
and I think especially for Chatham-Kent
with an older population,
to structure the youth involvement.
I mentioned it to a number of
young people, they found it,
young people, I'm a young people, (laughs)
I'm gonna live past 100, that's
coming up later, (laughs).
The young people though, the students,
both our high school,
even our grade school,
but definitely both of our
post secondary institutions,
and to also do partnerships
with the University of Waterloo
or others, and bring those courses here
so we can do that with technology,
just make 'em virtual, tag into these.
Getting that kind of thing
set up so that we're doing
more and more of the tech conversations
and we're engaging
together, I think is huge.
And it's exciting to see that technology
makes it possible to
be right here at home,
because I was born and raised here,
and be around my family,
and still be connected
to the tech universe.
- One area that I think
we could double down on
and I think while you're all sitting here,
Chatham-Kent is making
a great step forward,
is marketing and getting
together the events
that are going on in the neighborhood,
the different great activities
like the Dresden Night Market
and all those other
markets that are out there,
and just allow everybody
to know what's going on.
An event is only as good if
you can get lots of people
to go to them.
And if we can keep pushing up more events,
getting more people educated
and getting more people
out there, makes Chatham-Kent
a great place to live,
which is provides more
challenges, which is great.
- I see it more from a VC lens,
and our observation has been
that 90% of the business incubator fails.
The two keys reasons are that
one is the long term vision,
and when you look at the
long term, long term,
which, to a person, could
mean five, 10 years,
but in reality, long term
should mean 20 to 40 years.
Because if you look at
enterprise over five, 10 years,
some of that may appear unreasonable
or prohibitive,
but the moment you set
out timescale 40 years,
things will start making sense,
and when you reach out that 40 years,
when you have completed that annum,
I guess you will make
good readouts from now.
And the second thing would be
innovation of the business form,
you know which people
think that innovation
is about investing in new technology.
I think if you see that
we have not evolved many
new new technologies
over the last 30 years,
all what we have done always
is that we have re-engineered
the previous form over more original thing
and I'm saying that is because we live
by these two principles in our VC form,
and we have been quite successful.
So long term vision plus
innovation of the business model
are the two key indicators from my side.
- All right, next question,
what is one trend that local companies,
organizations, decision makers,
like the ones in the room today,
what should they pay attention
to in order to future-proof
themselves and our region?
And this can be an opportunity
or even just a rock
right near the waterline.
- All right, so I think
we're seeing quite a bit here
in Chatham-Kent with Lake Erie next to us,
but environmental sustainability
I think is something
that we can't shut our eyes to.
It's generations, modial generations
before we are really putting it,
so it's a really significant footprint
that we can't ignore anymore.
So I think we want to call it a trend,
I think it's inevitable and
it's something that's crucial,
but we definitely have
to maintain focus on that
and future proof our communities,
whether it's looking into
what we do with waste
from businesses, how
can we reuse this waste?
Not necessarily just from
a recycling standpoint,
but we had our manager coming over from,
whatever we wanna call it right now,
and bridge, but he
showed us a bar of Sulfur
that they'd made from CO2 emissions
that were, maybe shot out of,
I don't know where the
process was coming from,
but environmental sustainability
I think is something
we gotta stay focused on,
it's not gonna go away,
so it's that stuff we need to
use to future proof ourselves.
- Yeah, I think the obvious answer here
is probably artificial intelligence, AI
If it's not you, it's
gonna be your competitors,
who revolutionize the industry using AI
It's gonna be a difficult situation.
So, that's the obvious answer.
Also, I think, file adoption
can't really be ignored.
We just as Scribendi,
we recently did a migration tool file,
and that helped us reduce
our production workload
by about 50% of the original cost.
So those costs can be used elsewhere,
not to mention the opportunity costs
that goes along with having to maintain
all this hardware and everything else.
So, yeah.
- I want to point out two.
One is, AI machine learning,
big data, the whole mix.
There's a really interesting
course on Course Hero.
How many of you are familiar with
massive open online courses?
Show of hands.
They are free,
they're the top institutions
around the world.
You can get any course.
There's one that's been
developed by Andrean,
who was the head of AI for
Google, for a number of years,
as well as other.
And it's a brilliant
course, four quick weeks,
to really introduce strategically
at the leadership level,
how do you start this process?
How do you engage this process?
How do you move along?
And, a lot of things is to
look at the low hanging fruit,
I guess as a similar infer to look at,
what are some of the things
that you could automate,
and not necessarily go
for the biggest return
on investment financially, first.
But, what is going to succeed?
What do you know can work?
What's an easy win to
start engaging your people.
I'm the HR, people person here,
and we really want to make
sure that as we engage
with technology in our community,
especially with an older community,
that we're engaging people, and teaching,
and developing new skills.
And with that,
the second one I wanted
to mention was health.
And I'm going to talk
later about blue zones,
but everything about health promotion,
we could be really
expert in sickness care,
because we're not as healthy
as the rest of the province.
Or, we have some of the
least healthy people
in a very healthy country.
And I think that reality to get stated,
and going forward, I think
that's a huge issue for us,
to really focus on our
health and wellbeing,
including the environment,
and really creating some new blue zones.
So, I'll give one quick
example on the green,
because I'm action for
the environment as well.
The mayor was wonderful to
host a group of us coming in,
to talk about bringing
the roofs from downtown,
Chatham, for example.
So that we can mitigate the storm runoff,
and quick high water events,
and we can reduce the
urban heat island effect,
because it's mostly concrete down here.
And turn them all into either
green roofs, or solar roofs,
or what's called white roofs,
which are now legislated in a few cities
in the United States,
that any new construction
has to be reflective.
You don't want a dark roof up there,
because it absorbs more heat.
You want it to reflect.
But, doing things, like the University
has already offered to give us
20% of a tech person's time,
and 10 hours per student, per semester,
to do the maintenance,
and to help with the development
and the implementation.
So, with a host of partnerships
we can make things happen
that no individual business
would dream of doing.
Like, who down here, as a business owner,
has time to worry about
putting green on their roof?
That's not their line of business.
But if as collectively, as a community,
we can own our collective
space in our community
and our commitment to think
bigger, and to think longterm,
and to think about our health,
and make a win, win, win, for all of us.
- So, coming from the egg
industry, one thing...
I also work inside the
AI industry as well,
but blue zones of your industry
is coming fast and coming
strong, either side.
But, very quickly, I saw
it in the egg industry,
and I've seen it across
every single industry.
And again, cloud adoption,
is a great place to start,
and to start moving
yourself to an expendable
technology sector, is the
best way to move forward.
If it's not you, it's your competitors.
It's just the way to stay
competitive inside your industry.
- AI has been used as
a buzzword for today.
And I have good news for you guys.
I have been doing a lot
of research in this area,
and I have found that, general AI,
it is not smarter than
your dog or cat at home,
it will not take your jobs in the course
of the next 10, 20, years.
But, with the coming up of auto-computing,
things will take change,
things may escalate,
but I am expecting that there
will be a tipping point,
maybe after 2040 or 2050.
And I guess, this is a threat,
but also an opportunity for us,
to focus on areas where
machines cannot beat human,
and we have ample time, we
cannot complain in 20 years
that we did not have the time.
So, we should invest and
focus more on the areas
where AI would appear as a threat to us,
and work on our skill.
And the second area is that auto-computing
would put some risk
against our digital assets,
so we have to start
evoking discussions around
auto-computing, as well,
so as to operate this process.
And the third thing will be,
distribute the technologies.
All the government and businesses
are in the business of pressed.
And I think it's high time that,
before people start demanding
for an additional layer of trust,
which distribute technologies can provide.
Like, blockchain is one
of these technologies,
but there are now much
more refined technologies
which are coming out,
and that can be used for
many years time contracts,
and within your company records,
which might work to grasp it robustly.
- Thank you.
That's a great transition
to our next question,
which we're now gonna move
to the future of work.
So, you mentioned about, you know,
I constantly hear, "Robots
are gonna take our jobs",
and there's this misconception
about the future of automation.
So as we look to the future of work,
we know that it offers
lots of opportunities,
but it offers a lot of challenges.
Let's see here.
How can we prepare our region
for the future of work?
- Well, I think it's
just understanding that
what's coming is coming.
As Bill mentioned, that AI,
machine learning is here,
automation is inevitable.
What is also inevitable is the fact
that things are gonna break,
and we're gonna have to fix things.
So, whether it's looking at
trying to highlight robotics
tech engineers.
It's also launched the CNC machines,
that are not gonna be operating itself,
somebody's gonna have to make sure
that it's always operating itself.
The biggest thing is
basically global technology,
5G is on the horizon, at some
point or time, who knows.
But, I think we just have to
understand that the culture
is gonna change, the
way people want to work
in the office place is gonna change.
And, work from home
opportunities are changing,
so how are we gonna make sure
that people are efficient
while working at home?
All these different things are coming.
I think it's basically just understanding
that they are coming, and start to think
what are the ways that we can make sure
we're all at the right
place, at the right time,
to address the challenges as they come up.
- First, I think, we need to
address our infrastructure,
set it up for the future of work.
I think we need dependable fiber internet
throughout the entire community.
I think we need to, as I mentioned before,
build up a tech community
so we can all collaborate.
And finally, I think,
yeah, I think that's it.
- I think what's most
important when it comes to
the future of work related to tech,
has nothing to do with tech,
and it's everything to
do with people in here.
I think we need to care about each other
and understand the
implications of the changes.
I was reading this again,
but through some other research,
the changes that Gaurav,
I respectfully disagree with Gaurav,
I think we're seeing
transformations happening
much more quickly,
and disruptions will
happen much more quickly.
And I think we can adapt to
them together, and collaborate.
We've been sideswiped before.
The change in automotive
really hit us hard.
I like the analogy of going
back to horse and buggy.
We need to be the best
in the buggy manufacture
in the world, but they went to cars.
We could be the best
automotive fossil fuel car manufacturers,
and we could be the best at traditional,
what I'll call traditional agriculture,
which is cash cropping
with chemical companies
and with mass production.
And that's all great,
but that is not where we're going.
And so, for us, to be one step ahead,
and to recognize the
implications for people,
when these changes come in
they don't wipe out all jobs,
but they take the first
five or 10% of the job.
And the industries or the work,
that is most impacted,
is food preparation,
construction, cleaning, driving,
and agricultural labor.
Those are the ones that
disappear in a nanosecond
and overnight, and so
those are the ones that,
we have lots of that here.
And so, engaging, again, with people,
and having a collaborative approach,
and I would look at Scribendi
and some of the work they did
with their using AI in their company.
I think they were amazing,
they did a wonderful job of implementing
artificial intelligence to improve.
They do online English editing,
and to make that process better,
but to engage their
employees so their employees
benefited as well.
So, rather than be frightened
by the change in technology,
employees embraced the
change in technology.
It makes them better,
them more profitable,
it makes the whole
company more profitable.
That's a win-win.
And I happened to hear
Terrence talk about that
in a seminar in Toronto,
that's why I have to go when he's up too.
But that's the kind of thing, right,
when we have these kind of
collaborations with each other
and talk about, that's just great
that we can share more
and learn from each other.
- Future work, as mentioned earlier,
it's in the green,
and that means infrastructure
and being able to transmit data
as efficiently and as fast as can be.
It's paramount for a strong do.
- The future of work is a
reflection of the past with work.
In Canada, an average
person changes their career
three times in their lifetime.
In the global and tech economy,
this could accelerate,
a person could be expected
to do work more part-time,
on a part-time basis.
So it could be imperative
for most of the people
who work, these two or three revisions,
instead of focusing on
one vocation at a time.
So, to communicate that kind of thing,
I believe we would have
to create more awareness
in the community,
so that people should
have another mindset,
they should know that they
have to learn different skill
at a very short span of time,
maybe five years, 10 years.
And, as for the industry,
I believe we need to focus
more on the areas of soft,
how to adhere,
and those kind of areas,
if we want to continue to have our jobs.
So I think that area we
really should focus on.
- And as we look to the future of work,
we know future of work is
a big part of this economy.
It's exactly spaces like this,
that are going to cater
to the future of work.
How many of you have side hustles?
A lot of us do, right?
This is a great space to
start that side hustle.
That's exactly what
spaces like this are for.
So, in the interest of time,
we're gonna skip to the last question.
And this question comes,
a few months ago I had the
chance to go to Elevate,
it's one of Canada's
largest tech festivals.
And the theme based on our anniversary
of landing on the moon, was,
what is your moonshot idea?
So, I've asked all of the
panelists to talk about
what is their, beyond 2020,
moonshot for Chatham-Kent.
So this can be anything,
pilot, whatever it is.
It can be mythical, it doesn't have to be,
it's just your dream.
So what's your moonshot?
- So, with our collective conversation,
we started with Matt
Ream, interpretive dance.
We've been talking about a
hyper loop as our moonshot,
and now I'm also going
to start investigating
some pretty high speed travel.
Let's be real, it seems like
it's a little bit further away.
But hold down our point,
but if it's a little less of a moonshot,
it would be high speed rail for me.
- It's funny, he actually stole my answer.
(laughter)
We have an obvious public transit issue
here in Chatham-Kent,
I think this whole region of Ontario.
And, I think a high speed rail
or some sort of high speed transportation,
would be a great asset.
- I've just finished reading
a book called "Moonshots",
which takes the idea of a
moonshot just one step further,
but really how you do describe it,
that it's just, people think you're crazy,
and horrid for even suggesting it.
And my moonshot is to make Chatham-Kent
one of the world's blue zones.
Anybody heard of a blue zone?
Hey, some of you have
followed that research.
So those are the five places in the world
where people regularly
live to a hundred or more,
but healthily.
There are very low rates of disease,
people are natural weight,
they're very engaged in community.
So, if you look at what
they eat and how they move,
you think, that's what we
need to do to stay healthy,
but the reality is, the research shows us,
that the most important
thing is connection.
So, I come home after a year in Toronto,
I go everywhere, Gaurav can testify this,
what everybody brings in, I know somebody.
It's wonderful where you go.
In fact, who was it, somebody
said I was the Norm, on Cheers,
and I said, "I hope that's a compliment",
for anybody who watched Cheers.
And maybe I hope I don't look like Norm,
but anyway, the idea is
that you're connected,
you feel cared about, you know people.
We build a kind of place where
people are working together,
and we love our community,
and we do all these things,
that we use technology and
serves us at higher purpose.
- I'd like to see a moonshot idea to have,
trying to get connection
across every connection,
across the whole network.
Obviously, I work there, it's my dream.
And obviously, there's huge steps forward,
so this moonshot is probably insane,
but it's still a ways to go.
- My moonshot would be, we
want to see Chatham-Kent
as the biggest food hub,
because Canada is the second
largest country in the world
and we are not among
the top five exporters
of any vegetable produce.
Netherlands, which is
a very small country,
it is on number two,
just because of one food hub they have.
We want to see Chatham-Kent,
building a food hub just like that,
and put not only Chatham-Kent,
but Canada, on the map
of the world.
And second thing, that I
would see as a moonshot
for Chatham-Kent is, and it's
also our mission to create
one big company like
Amazon, or Blackberry,
out of Chatham-Kent.
- Thanks.
(audience applause)
- Okay, I want to share my moonshot,
because I'm constantly inundated
with the Toronto-Waterloo quarter,
and they've done a great job.
But, my moonshot is Chatham-Kent, Windsor,
becomes the new Silicon Valley,
the new corridor to watch,
and really is the gateway to Canada.
So, that is one of my moonshots,
in align with many of yours.
So, if I can summarize,
I think, we have the leaders
are still in the room,
so we have an interest in infrastructure.
We have an interest in skills training
in the tech community,
investment infrastructure
in terms of digitization,
an investment in people,
and just doing and having
more of these conversations.
So, let's give another round
of applause to our panelists.
(audience applause)
You are now excused.
Thank you.
Andrew, I think you're up next.
So, you could stay up here if you like.
You'll be in all the pictures.
So now I get to introduce
Andrew Tompsett who is,
everyone knows who Andrew is.
He's one of the people who
makes events like this happen.
And he recently won WeTech's Choice Award
at our Tech Awards.
Again, you can't thank less,
and when it comes to branding
this event, it's all
the businesses helping,
and I know it takes a team behind you,
but I do want to recognize Andrew.
We're gonna end the
night with talking about
some companies to watch,
and they're in this room,
so Andrew I'm gonna let you
talk about those companies,
and then do our closing remarks tonight.
Thank you.
- Thanks, Yvonne.
Before we do the companies,
I just want to say,
I just came back from a
really interesting conference
that was talking about...
I got to talk with lots
of community leaders,
not just from across Canada,
it was from across the
States, across the world.
There were some there from Australia.
There were people there from Barbados.
And they were having these conversations
we're having tonight.
So it's not as though Chatham-Kent,
we should ever feel we're behind,
we're actually... There was
a lot of people when I said,
"So, were having a Techithan on Tuesday",
and they went, "What's that?
"We're not doing that in our community.
We're not having these meetings."
So, in some ways, we're ahead
of a lot of places out there,
which is really exciting to hear.
So, thank you Yvonne, and
thank you to everyone else
for being here.
It's really inspiring when
they can stand up there,
in front of colleagues, and say,
(speaks faintly).
But anyway, one of the things...
Oh, oh, I'm sorry, before I go into the
businesses I'm gonna brag about.
Tomorrow we're having a
business development trade show,
it's over at the Bradley Centre.
Please come out.
We've got some wonderful...
I heard one discussion about
marketing and communications
as being really important.
It's as though we have some marketing
and communications people
already sitting here in the room.
Chris from Coast Media.
So, I mean, there's some
marketers out there.
I'm going to highlight one marketing
and communication business, in a second.
But, please, tomorrow, Bradley
Center, we've got this.
It's the first trade
show in a very long time,
Stewart, is that fair to say?
- [Stewart] 12 years.
- 12 years, okay.
Okay, so this is the first goal is,
we have filled the Bradley Centre
with people who are there
to provide resources
to businesses, that
business have said to us
in the past year, that they need.
So we've brought it, they're there.
That's tomorrow, if I haven't mentioned.
Now, we get to brag about businesses
and this is the fun part of my job.
People pay me to brag about businesses.
I love this.
All you have to do is
put in 14 hours a day.
The first one I want to brag about,
by the way, he wasn't even on the list.
I know Yvonne said five, I'm gonna do six.
The first one is Wader.
Where's Wader?
Wader's out there somewhere.
Did he run away?
He was supposed to be on camera.
He's probably running back
to do the videos right now.
So, Wader has a company
called Wader Likes Media.
I want to give a shout out to him,
because Yvonne and I were
talking just the other day.
In fact, it was Sunday,
or Monday, or something,
and during our conversation she said,
"Hey, can we shoot some videos."
I said, "Sure."
As we're talking I send
Wade a message of Facebook,
because that's things happen right now,
and he replied immediately,
which meant hey, he got my business,
because he replied immediately
and said, "Yes, I can do this."
And now he's here tonight.
So that's how fast...
If we're talking about
economic development,
and try to move at the speed of business,
that's what it takes.
You have to do that and
you have to be ready.
And he was on board.
He's here tonight.
I think he may have left
because he's trying to do
a 24-hour turnaround for
us, which is awesome.
So shout out to Wade.
Wader Likes media, check him out.
The next one I'm gonna
give a shout out to,
and I'm not gonna explain this business,
because you can do a
better job than I can.
Status Dress Rentals, a
month and a half in business,
Stephanie, do you want to
give a little description
about what awesome stuff you're doing?
- Hi everybody.
(audience applause)
I didn't know I would be talking tonight.
I started a company called
Status Dress Rentals
here in Chatham.
We are a website, and we did
open up a boutique in Chatham.
But, our website's goal
is to ship dress rentals
across Canada.
So, one problem that we
saw in smaller communities,
especially in Chatham,
is that we are running
out of places to shop,
especially for a formal gown of some sort.
So, whether you're
attending a gala, or a prom,
or a graduation, or a wedding,
or you have a maternity photo shoot,
we're spending three to $500 on a dress
for something like that.
And we, now, don't really have a spot
here in smaller communities
to shop for that.
So, we developed a website
where you can basically
shop for a dress, add it to your cart,
and have it shipped to your
door, anywhere in Canada.
So it's been really exciting.
We're definitely working
on having a positive impact
on environment sustainability.
We're just trying to solve that problem.
And, one woman basically
goes through so many sizes
in her life, that we can't
hold on to that many dresses,
or buy that many dresses,
so we're really hoping
to solve that problem.
And so many different
research is showing us,
even Maria Kondo was saying, "Buy less."
It decreases anxiety, it
decreases stress levels.
And really, whether it's you
don't have room in your home,
nor can you afford it,
nor do you really have the time to shop.
This just hopefully solves those problems.
So, check out Status Dress
Rentals on our website,
Facebook, Instagram, or at
the boutique in Chatham.
- [Andrew] Thank you.
(audience applause)
What a very cool thing.
So, Taylor and I, Taylor Hughes
from Small Business Center
stopped in to visit you one day,
and you had just received a $1,600 dress,
and it was just $1,600 dress.
And I think people could
rent this for under 100,
with shipping and everything
in there, give or take,
somewhere in there.
But, my point is, it's not $1,600
if you said it was worn one time.
So, just that fact that you're now able to
take these products and get
them into the hands of people,
because that's just really
exciting and positive.
So, okay, next one.
Nurse Next Door.
So, when did you launch?
You launched not even a year ago.
- [Dakota] June.
- Two years ago.
- [Dakota] June.
- June, June, I was gonna
say that's not two years ago.
So I'm going to get you to
come up here and brag a bit
about what you've got going on,
because you're using technology
to really help change healthcare.
- Hello, I'm Dakota Hodgson,
and I'm the director of Nurse Next Door
here in Chatham-Kent-Leamington.
We do private home healthcare.
So, you might not think of home healthcare
as a particularly tech savvy industry,
but Nurse Next Door really challenges that
by bringing in technologies
that facilitate
a real smoother, safer,
more flexible, experience
for both our clients and
our team of caregivers,
as well as our community.
(audience applause)
- And you use a schedule software,
using a highly different
use of technology,
that are really helping to
elevate what's happening
in terms of booking and
making things quick,
so that fast business component.
Next person I want to talk
about is Katie Vilaranda,
who unfortunately
couldn't be here tonight.
She started a company Position One SEO.
For those who are working and are looking
at the marketing aspect,
again, she's doing it in Chatham-Kent,
doing work in this community,
across other communities,
that involve social media,
marketing strategies.
She helped us with Google
Analytics, developing those.
She's doing a pile of
work in the tech sector,
and so Position One SEO.
I wish she could be here.
Unfortunately, she had
some other commitments,
but Katie, definitely look her up.
She's doing amazing
things in the community.
Next one is, you may have heard of him,
his name is Phil.
He's from a little
company called MPV WiFi,
sitting on the panel.
So, I don't know if you
want to say anything else?
Where are you?
You want to talk about the
fact you just partnered with--
- Sure, yeah.
So, we're always expanding,
continue expanding,
and just have an
interesting, hard workmanship
within Chatham-Kent, which is good.
There's a egg provider,
chemical fertilizer provider
that had a head office in Chatham,
and they went through
smooth restructure changes
and moved their head office
into the rural head office.
And their employees were
used to fiber speeds,
and with the infrastructure built over,
we were able to provide them the service
that they were acquainted to.
So they were very happy with
what we were able to provide.
So that's one of our very
interesting developments
in progress, extending and growing,
and taking care of that last mile
of the infrastructure for the big guys.
So, that's it.
- [Andrew] Awesome.
- Thank you.
(audience applause)
- And I've saved, perhaps,
the noisiest one , for last.
I didn't tell them that I
would get them up and talk.
I didn't tell many of the businesses
they were gonna get up and
talk, because I want them here.
So, Jay, you were at Flashpoint
Chatham-Kent, which...
This is how I call him.
Bringing high tech entertainment
systems to Chatham-Kent,
starting with state of the art, laser tag,
Russian equipment.
How am I supposed to say that?
Sorry, all Canadian equipment.
You opened up, was it two weeks ago?
Three weeks ago.
So, when we say tech companies to watch,
this is very, very new.
So can I get you to come
and say a few words.
You have all the cool
gear in the background.
Sorry, this is your partner?
- This is Matt Landon, my partner.
I'm Jay Denorer I've been a
police officer for 20 years.
So, I moved to Chatham in 2005.
When I came to Chatham,
there was a lot of thought,
but there's nothing to do for kids.
I went to up to do police things,
I went to the youth center,
because there was
nothing for people to do.
So, being in Chatham again,
I have three kids.
I'm driving to and from Windsor,
and my dollars are going
to another community.
So, I thought, why not
bring something to Chatham
for people to do.
Now this is where the
policing component comes in,
because it's tactful laser tag.
So, traditional laser
tag, you put a vest on,
and you get your taser gun,
and you run out into a maze,
and you run around shooting people.
With tactful laser tag, we
put a headband on your head,
you get a gun, and then you
all separate into two teams,
and you run around for 15 minutes,
and you try to eliminate the other team.
It's very physical oriented.
So physical fitness wise,
you're gonna be running around.
There's a lot of technology involved.
It's all Bluetooth connection.
Different games that we can play,
there's nine different games you can play,
and it ranges for anyone,
for people anywhere from six
years old up to 60 years old.
A lot of times I'll have
different groups in playing,
and it's the dads that actually
want to get on and play.
So, we'll put a handgun
or a gun into their hands,
and a headset on, and they're out there
for about a half hour, running
around with their kids.
If you guys want to try out
afterwards, we can set it up.
You guys can have a trial.
(audience laughs) And if you
want to come around and visit,
I have flag points.
(audience applause)
- [Andrew] It was so nice
that he actually offered us a shootout.
That was very kind of you.
That's it from the business,
but I'm gonna turn it back
over to these two gentleman
to wrap up the evening.
Darrin, do you want to go?
- I just want to say one thing.
I am super stoked for the
future of this community,
with what we've talked about.
But I wanted to say thank you to Stewart
and his entire group.
They are making this
happen in our community.
I have tasked them with getting out
and making business happen,
making it business friendly,
getting out there, John and his group,
making it friendly for business.
They're doing their job,
they're getting out.
So, I want to get a big
applause for everybody
that's making this happen.
And if you need anything, anything at all,
you reach out to them.
They're there to help you. So,
I just wanted to thank them.
(audience applause)
- Thank you Darrin.
I think we should just drop the mic,
take that compliment, and leave.
We wanted to say it's an
honor to be your team.
Thank you very much
for being here tonight,
and our partnership with
WEtech continue to grow,
and we're all gonna
benefit because of that.
Eric and David, I hope
David is still here.
Thank you very much for coming in.
We really appreciated you being here,
and look forward to working with you.
WEtech in Chatham-Kent, we've
gotta stop thinking small.
We need to start thinking big.
We need to know how can
we support each other
and create that ecosystem
that's going to make
this entire region flourish.
And that's what we're trying to do.
My apologies for not being here earlier.
We had a meeting at the
Civic Center tonight,
and it was packed and we
couldn't get a seat anywhere.
We were talking about growth,
we were talking about
Chatham-Kent, where it was,
Chatham-Kent, where it is,
and Chatham-Kent, where it's
gonna be 25 years from now,
through the lens of a
person who we retained
to give us that scope.
And that's very important for us,
because in fact, next year,
we're gonna start our
official plan review,
which is done every five years.
You need to decide where you're at
before you decide where
you're going to go.
I'll be honest with you,
everybody's moonshot, we need all of that,
in order to be successful.
We need a talented workforce,
we need an infrastructure
that is very solid,
we need companies that are expanding,
we need all of the things
that you talked about.
We're gonna have to have that,
because some of the things
that are in the report,
which is actually public
to me, it surprised us,
about what this company has suggested
our growth is going to be
over the next 25 years.
And, I love low expectations,
and I think working with this group,
working with many of the businesses here,
we're gonna turn in a curve
and show that consultant that
he doesn't know what the hell
he's talking about.
Excuse my French.
I just have so much
belief in this community,
I really do.
And we've been great for years.
I think we've been great at manufacturing.
I think the commercial space
in the area, it's commercial,
but one place that have we
really kind of fallen behind
and I think we're doing
our best to double down,
and try to catch up.
And that's on the tech sector,
because as the report, if
we're gonna get to where
we want to go in the future,
and be the Chatham-Kent I know we can be,
you all play a very important role.
So thank you very much
for coming this evening.
We really appreciate it,
and look forward to seeing you very soon.
(audience applause)
