Digital : Innovation + Job News

Toronto has a new coding academy. The name of the school is ThoughtKite, and it hopes to differentiate itself by giving students a clear goal to work towards.

"We don't accept students unless they have a focused product idea they want to take to market," says Ian Gerald King, the school's founder. "We cater to those with entrepreneurial [inclinations] who have not made the leap yet." 

King is reluctant to classify ThoughtKite as a coding school; instead, he says the focus of the school is on providing what he calls a startup education.  

"I wouldn't consider ThoughtKite a coding academy per se: learning how to use technology is not the primary focus of our programs," says King. "Out initial course offerings are iOS product development, product design and lean product growth—a triple interest interest in technology, design and business, but crafted with a product launch as the end goal. ThoughtKite was foundered after seeing the startup education gaps existing between coding academies and accelerators."

King notes that one other differentiator between ThoughtKite and its coding academy competitors is that its courses are almost exclusively held during the weekend. King believes this is the best compromise between offering a learning experience that immerses students in what they're learning and respecting their time. 

ThoughtKite's first set of classes start on April 25. The cost of the iOS development course, the longest and most immersive the three the school is offering, is $5000. The other two, product design and lean product growth, are $2000. 
 

Local entrepreneurs had reason to celebrate last week as the Ryerson Digital Media Zone, Toronto's OneEleven and Waterloo's Communitech announced a historic partnership.

Going forward, entrepreneurs taking part in one of the three startup accelerator programs will have have access to the facilities of the other two incubators.

According to Valerie Fox, the Digital Media Zone's executive director, the partnership came about because the three organizations quickly came to understand the importance of collaborating with one another.

“We all understand the importance of collaborating amongst ourselves,” she says. “Startups are going to where they'll get the best help. Each incubator has its own strengths, and there are some startups that could, in a sense, use help from all three of us.”

She adds, “In the best interest of our entrepreneurs, I think this type of collaboration enables us to really help them, as well as strengthen our community at the same time.”

Fox says that Tuesday's announcement simply formalizes a relationship that has existed between the three incubators for a while now. “I think what’s interesting is that we’ve been doing this for a while now, but now what we’re doing is saying that it's been formalized,” says Fox. “In a way we're saying to our entrepreneurs, 'Seriously, this is going on, so take advantage of it.”

Besides gaining access to additional facilities, the entrepreneurs and students that benefit from this partnership will also gain better access to mentorship, capital and, perhaps most importantly, potential customers.

And while this partnership is the first of its kind in Canada, Fox says she both expects and hopes other organizations announce similar partnerships in the future.

“Ontario depends on this type of collaboration; it's only strengthening us.”

Source: Ryerson Digital Media Zone

The economics of printers is such that it's often cheaper to buy an entirely new printer than it is to replace the ink inside of the one a person already owns. Those same economics have migrated to world of 3D printers. The printers themselves are relatively affordable, but the cost of plastic filament can become prohibitively expensive in a short amount of time.

Enter Dennon Oosterman and his co-founders at ReDeTec.

The Toronto-based startup has created a device called the ProtoCycler. It's a machine that allows makers of all skill levels to recycle some household plastics and 3D printing rejects into new spools of filament.

According to the company's Indiegogo page, the ProtoCycler, which ReDeTec plans to sell for $799 at launch, will pay for itself within 10 to 20 uses. Indiegogo's community has quickly taken to the idea: as of the writing of this post, the crowdfunding campaign has raised $82,782 USD, surpassing its $70,000 USD goal with six days left.

Oosterman and company started to work on the ProtoCycler while they were studying at the University of British Columbia. The program they were enrolled in purchased several 3D printers that the group got to play with. Oosterman, a life long maker who has created his own guitar amps, became enamoured with the creative possibilities the printers enabled, but he says he also realized that there was was a significant cost to using the printers.

“At first, we thought they were fantastic because we could make anything. They also had none of the hazards of a machine shop, and you didn't have to sit there and watch it do its job,” he says. “A few months later, we realized we had filled garbage bins full of bad parts and rejects, and that we had spent a lot of money on new filament.”

He and his friends set about creating a solution that would make, a task, it must said, that's much easier said than done. Some three years later, they're almost ready to share their work with the world.

It's fitting that the founders of ReDeTec started working on the ProtoCycler while they were still in school; Oosterman believes classrooms will be among the main beneficiaries of the technology he's helped create.

“More and more schools are adapting 3D printing into their curriculum. That said, having kids print ten plus projects year after year quickly becomes unsustainable,” he says. “We let all those same schools save costs and reduce on waste. They also teach kids the inherent value of recycling.”

Source: ReDeTec

As digital literacy becomes as important as reading and writing to securing a job in the modern workplace, one Toronto coding school has taken a significant step towards becoming Canada's de facto place to learn how to code.

On December 18, the Konrad Group, a local digital consulting firm that counts the CBC, Nestle and Salesforce as some of its clients, announced that it had acquired Toronto-based coding academy BrainStation for an undisclosed sum.

According to Jason Field, one of BrainStation's co-founders, the company plans to use its newfound resources to expand into five other Canadian cities by the end of 2015. First on the list are other cities in Ontario like Waterloo, London and Ottawa.

But that's not all. With it's new owner boasting a presence in the United States and Costa Rica, BrainStation also has the opportunity to become a global brand down the line should its owners decide that's the path they'd like to follow.

Additionally, Field says the school plans refocus its efforts on becoming a go-to centre for digital literacy, not just a place where someone can learn to code.

“Now that we have the financial capability, we’re going to build our programs to be not just about coding, but about digital literacy in general,” he says.

“Each community needs different things, and as we continue to develop we envision that we’ll have eight to ten curricula built out. Depending on the city, maybe web development is the only one that's feasible, but it’s still something that community should have access to. It shouldn’t be the most populated cities getting all the love.”

BrainStation is hosting an open house on January 13 at its new space to talk about some of its plans for the new year. 

Source: BrainStation

Hackathons have become all the rage across North America and the world as governments, companies and organizations scramble to find ways to solve some of the world's most pressing problems. The Government of Canada, not one to be left out, has created its own hackathon.

Last week, the federal government announced the 2015 iteration of its Canadian Open Data Experience (CODE) Hackathon. Now approaching its second year, CODE asks the country's most talented and creative coders to make use of the wealth of data that the federal government posts on its open data portal.

This year's iteration starts on February 20th—that's the same weekend that International Open Data Day happens—and will last for 48 hours. Coders across the country will be able to participate, though cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal will have special events to mark the occasion. Those that take part will be asked to create applications in three different categories—youth, commerce and quality of life. Participants have a chance to win the $15,000 grand prize, or one of the $5,000 category prizes.

The federal government decided to create the hackathon after Treasury Board president Tony Clement was asked to judge a hackathon that was hosted by XMG Studio, a local mobile game development studio. “The inspiration to do a hackathon arose out of the fact that we were putting these tens of thousands of data sets online, and what we wanted to do was to unlock the creativity of coders and entrepreneurs outside of government in order to kickstart the application of all these data sets,” says Clement.

Last year, one of the winning entries was an application that used the government's data on pollution to tell users if a neighbourhood they were planning to move into suffered from significant air pollution. Minister Clement expects that participants will come up with even better applications this time around, and that some of them might even be inspired to pursue a new career path.

“I'm hoping we get some applications that excite people and let them be creative. I'm also quite convinced that it will give some budding entrepreneurs the ability and motivation to create a career for themselves.”

Source: Government of Canada

California has long been seen the centre of the tech world. With companies like Apple, Facebook and Google all calling the relatively small confines of Silicon Valley home, many aspiring to helm their own tech juggernauts move to the Golden State to launch a startup.  

For decades, this has meant that a wealth of talent and capital has flowed to the state at expense of other North American territories. 

Now, that flow is set to become a bit more reciprocal. 

On November 6, the Province of Ontario and State of California announced a new co-investing and collaboration partnership.
The agreement will see the two jurisdictions work together to foster job creation, increase access to capital and attempt to create positive social and environmental change. It will also see Ontario’s Social Venture Connexion, a platform that connects investors with high impact social ventures, expand into California, marking the first time a Canadian platform of this like has scaled to a place outside of the country. 

Toronto will see wealth of benefits from the partnership, says Adam Spence, the associate director at MaRS’s Centre for Impact Investing.  

“If we’re looking at the impact, one is an better access to markets outside of Canada for Toronto-based entrepreneurs,” says Spence,
"An additional impact is a strong demonstration of leadership. We’re showing that we can build and share a platform that’s made in Ontario. We’ve successfully deployed the SVX platform south of the border, and that’s an indication that we have a strong, vibrant and leading impact investing space.” 

Source: MaRS
 

You've likely heard of the gender gap in tech. It's something that, if allowed to continue, will have a significant effect on the North American economy.

But what about the talent gap that exists when it comes to advanced analytics and big data?

According to recent studies, companies and organizations in both the United States and Canada are finding it extremely difficult to fill positions that require a deep analytical skill set. Should those positions go unfilled in the long term, Canada may find it difficult to compete with rising superpowers like India and China.

On October 31, Ryerson University, in partnership with several other universities across Canada, launched a new study to find out the extent of the analytics talent gap in Canada and to see what the country could do to alleviate it.

The study involves two distinct parts.

During the first part of the project, the university is surveying Canadian organizations on whether they believe an analytics talent gap exists in Canada. In an effort to be as comprehensive as possible, Ryerson is asking that all organizations take part in the study.

Once the information from that survey is collected and examined, the university is planning to hold a summit that will gather some of the best minds on the subject. Their stated goal is to create a set of recommendations that organizations across the country can implement, which will be published in a white paper after the event.

Big data and its effect on Toronto is something that Yonge Street has written about extensively in the past.


Source: Ryerson University

For many of us, the Science Centre is a nostalgic place, evoking memories of grade school field trips and old-fashioned dioramas. Now the Science Centre is partnering with Cisco to create an entirely new kind of experience—one that is digital,interactive, and much more modern. Billed as a "connected museum," the two organizations announced the partnership last week.

Citing the need for Canada to improve its economic competitiveness, in a joint statement Cisco and the Science Centre spoke of the importance of fostering a culture of scientific literacy and engagement. If you can spark interest in science and technology in young people early on, the theory goes, you're more likely to eventually cultivate a workforce that has the skill sets certain economic sectors require.

"Cisco’s vision to enable innovation, particularly in education, is closely aligned with our own, and is one of the reasons this is an excellent relationship,” Dr. Maurice Bitran, CEO of the Science Centre, explained. "We hope to offer our visitors unparalleled learning experiences that will inspire the next generation of innovators.”

As part of the collaboration, Cisco is also sponsoring its first museum-based fellowship. The goal of the Cisco Science Fellow for Innovative Learning Technologies is "to improve science engagement and literacy through the use of integrated technologies."

The Science Centre's Sabrina Greupner, manager of their Weston Family Innovation Centre, is the first person to receive the fellowship. "My goal is to bring together external collaborators with our researchers, programmers, teachers and science experts to create innovative learning experiences and encourage the sharing of best practices,” she explained.

Hopefully visitors to the Science Centre—both in person and using new digital platforms—will be able to make the most of those experiences soon: one key goal of the partnership is to have the Science Centre linked up with Cisco's new new Internet of Everything Innovation Centre, set to open in downtown Toronto in 2015.

Source: Ontario Science Centre
Writer: Hamutal Dotan

Though there's a growing appreciation that Toronto and the surrounding regions are fast becoming a major hub for tech and digital innovation, just how sizable we've become in those sectors isn't always apparent. A new study highlights the significance of southern Ontario in particular, as "one of the most concentrated centres of technology leadership and growth in the world."

Conducted by tech sector analysts The Branham Group, the report identifies what it calls "Ontario’s own Digital Corridor: a concentrated cluster of innovative technology firms across the York Region, GTA, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Hamilton areas." In that corridor, the report finds, are "176,000 skilled professionals working in the technology sector, generating an average of $387,000 in revenue per employee."

The report is in part an attempt to not just identify the strength of the Toronto-Hamilton corridor in the tech sector, but to highlight one major shortcoming: our lack of effective marketing to celebrate this concentration of talent when compared to, for instance, Silicon Valley.

Our corridor "has everything offered by its U.S. counterpart: talented entrepreneurs, innovative companies, supportive governments, major post-secondary institutions (at least 12) and a track record of success." The report coins the term "Digital Corridor" as an attempt to begin to rectify that situation, developing a local analogue to the Silicon Valley branding that made that part of northern California so famous.

Comparing the two regions, the report notes some interesting differences: per capita income and overall population is higher here, but revenue per employee and total revenue generated are higher there. One potential explanation for this raised in the report: Canada tends to spend less on research and development than our neighbours to the south.

In an interview with John Ruffolo, CEO of OMERS Ventures that is included as part of the report, Ruffalo says: "Your data is concerning and supports other research indicating that Canada’s track record in R&D spend trails other nations around the world. We have to reverse this and make sure R&D spend is a key priority. It is a central strategy for viability of our industry and in individual companies."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: The Branham Report (Issue 2)

Let's say you've just arrived in Toronto, moved here from abroad. You'll immediately be faced with a host of challenges—everything from navigating the city's streets to finding an apartment and a job.

Among those challenges: managing your health in an entirely new environment. This includes everything from learning how the health care system works to understanding how to cook nutritious food when you can't necessarily find some of the ingredients that you're used to, or see different fruits and vegetables at the market than the ones you are familiar with.

Enter Self Care Catalysts, a health care company, and local charity Community Matters. They have teamed up to launch a new project in St. James Town, a Toronto neighbourhood with one of the highest concentration of newcomers in Canada. The project, called "Healthy Living in St. James Town" will enable residents to participate in their own health care management by allowing them to create customized platforms that can tackle anything from diabetes monitoring to dietary goals. Users will be able to access their personalized platforms either via mobile devices, or through desktop computers at Community Matters.

Because the majority of the population at St. James Town are newcomers, says Grace Soyao, CEO of Self Care Catalysts,  “many of them do not have an understanding of the health care system in Toronto."

What local community workers realized is that these residents "needed a tool to help educate them about things like differences in the types of food you can buy and consume here versus their home countries. Many residents also have different beliefs about health and how to manage their health—culture essentially defines the way that they manage their health," and our health care system works differently than what residents may have been used to in their countries of origin.

Right now the service is provided in English, but given that many newcomers are also new to English, the goal is to add in other languages over time.

As for Self Care Catalyst, their business model doesn't rely on user fees: the service is free for all residents. What they do is gather information from their user base, stripping out all identifiable information about individuals, and create data sets that they can then sell to governments or health care companies, to help them improve health services based on the real behaviours of specific populations.

"We collect [various] kinds of data and correlate it with patient groups and profiles so that way we are almost collecting voices by patients…that can be used to develop better health care solutions," explains Soyao. So, for instance, with enough information about dietary habits, a data set could be used to generate a more culturally diverse food guide (or to create a series of culturally specific food guides, based on the kinds of ingredients different cultures tend to rely on).

It's a way of allowing patients to participate in their own care, the new partners hope, and also a way of allowing health care providers to learn from those very patients about how to serve them better.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Grace Soyao, CEO, Self Care Catalysts

Toronto-based start-up Flybits—with the help of several private sector partners, the MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, and Ryerson Futures—hopes to revolutionize the way that mobile technology integrates into our daily lives and into the texture of our cities.

They’ve created a platform that helps bring a huge variety of data and apps together into a seamless experience, and they’ve just closed a major round of Series A financing that will enable them to double their 16-staff complement within a year.

When people talk about the kind of apps they wish they had, says Flybits CEO and founder Hossein Rahnama, they often describe tools that are context-sensitive and responsive: in an ideal world, for instance, your alarm clock would not only know your schedule but also know if your boss was running late, and know when to wake you up to accommodate both of those facts. Flybits has created a platform that aims, eventually, to do just that: it’s a context-aware platform that integrates information from a wide variety of sources and apps, and customizes the information it provides to an individual user based on his or her needs.

We’ve heard about apps like these before: the fridge that emails you a grocery list based on what’s left inside, for instance. “If you want to develop these applications,” says Rahnama, “you typically need to go to an app developer…who builds a very monolithic, non-scalable application.”

What distinguishes Flybits is that it aims to build a platform that is flexible and user-driver, rather than developer-driven: one where, he goes on, “rather than enabling engineers to build apps we enable people to build apps for their own experiences; you own that experience, you built it for yourself.”

To make this all more concrete, says Rahnama, imagine a Toronto app for Pan-Am visitors. It would start as your airport assistant (understanding your itinerary), and as you took the Union-Pearson Express it would become your transit assistant; then once you arrived at Union it would serve as your navigator—one continuous experience that eliminates the need to switch from app to app, and which could deliver all the information in whatever language you (as a traveller to Toronto) find most useful.

So far Flybits’ focus has been focusing on serving corporate clients, to allow the start-up to monetize and grow. (Among those clients are the City of Ottawa, GO Transit, and the provincial ministry of transportation.) They plan to open a free, public-facing consumer platform sometime in 2015.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Hossein Rahnama, CEO and founder, Flybits

Imagine you’re a company that’s involved in making products that require high-tech components—or that you have an idea for such a product, and would like to build a prototype. As technology continues to improve, especially in the realm of miniaturization, keeping pace by purchasing your own manufacturing equipment can be prohibitive—inefficient for larger companies, and impossible for smaller ones and startups.

Enter Celestica, a technology firm that manufacturers components for other tech-reliant companies, such as IBM, for instance. Last month, they opened a microelectronics lab at their Toronto headquarters to help with precisely these manufacturing challenges.

Clients who sign up to partner with Celestica—which will include both small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as startups and original equipment manufacturers—will gain the benefits of a 1,100 square foot lab in which elements like temperature and airborne particles are controlled in order to enable the manufacturing processes involved in miniaturization.

“There are very few place in Canada where companies can go to access this type of technology,” a spokesperson for Celestica told us, and the goal is to enable those companies to commercialize their products more effectively. It will especially help, the spokesperson went on, those who need to do “low-volume, high-reliability manufacturing”—which can range from companies testing out new products, to niche markets (like the aerospace industry) where there just isn’t a need for a large number of items to be produced.

The lab can facilitate the manufacture of fully-designed products, as well as offer engineering expertise to help with design for products that don’t have all their specs nailed down yet. Among the industries that most rely on the optics and photonics technology available at the lab are aerospace, renewable energy, and health care.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Celestica

Recently Ryerson University announced that its Digital Media Zone (DMZ) had signed a "friendship agreement" with one of Europe's largest technology accelerators, Level39. Based in London, England's Canary Wharf, Level39 has a particular focus on the financial, retail, and future cities sectors. The agreement will allow members of each institution access the other's facilities, spaces, and networks.

Ryerson has been in talks with Level39 for "five or six months," says Hossein Rahnama, director of research and innovation for the DMZ, "and it was a natural decision to form a partnership with them." Level39 has been around for two years now, says Rahnama by way of introduction, and is owned by the Canary Wharf Group. They "are hoping to transform part of the city into a global technology hub," he goes on. "Our goal is to enhance our collaboration with the UK, enhance mobility."

London has done a "great job" in developing the sectors in question, and the partnership is key for expanding the opportunities the DMZ can offer its members. It's one of several partnerships Ryerson hopes to develop in Europe over the coming years.

"International expansion has been part of our agenda since the beginning," Rahnama says—crucial for helping DMZ members find new opportunities for growth by giving them access to new markets, as well as exposure to best practices.

"A lot of our startups in Toronto are looking at addressing the financial vertical," Rahnama explains, so this allows Ryerson to offer that community to allow for scaling in Europe, without a lot of startup costs.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Hossein Rahnama, director of research and innovation, Ryerson University DMZ

This past weekend, Cisco Canada and the City of Toronto unveiled the Pan Am Games Countdown Clock, an innovative way to try and build momentum for the games as we head into the final round of preparations.

Located at Nathan Phillips Square, the clock—5.5 metres tall, 7.3 tonnes, and using five kilometres' worth of fibre optic cable—includes a range of internet-enabled functions that will be enhanced in the coming months.

In addition to counting down to the Games, the clock contains an interactive kiosk (it's wheelchair accessible—the screen adjusts height with the touch of a button) that will let you learn about the 51 sports included in the Pan Am Games, and about participating countries. If you're interested in volunteering you can learn more about options for that, too.

Over time new features will be added in, such as two-way video that will allow visitors to the clock to communicate with Pan Am athletes in their home towns, enabling communication between those of us hosting here and those who will be coming into Toronto for the Games.

Jeff Seifert, Cisco's chief technology officer, explains in a video about the clock that what makes it different are these added features, which are meant to create as engaging an experience as possible for users. The clock took six months to develop, and a team of 40 people was involved in its creation.

The 2015 Pan Am Games will take place from July 10–26, and the Parapan American Games will run from August 7–15.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Cisco Canada

We last wrote about ScribbleLive—the digital publishing company that helps media outlets, sports teams, and brands provide real-time event coverage—a year ago, when they closed a new round of funding and had their eye on expansion. Those ambitions are only getting bigger: ScribbleLive has just announced that it has acquired its best-known competitor, CoverItLive.

The Toronto-based ScribbleLive approached the California-based Demand Media, which owned CoverItLive, because "We noticed that it wasn't a core business of their owners," explains CEO Vincent Mifsud. "It just happened that they were in the process of divesting of many of their assets," he goes on, and the deal went through smoothly, with the help of ScribbleLive's existing financial backers.

It didn't hurt that CoverItLive's engineering team happened to be located in Toronto already, which aided the transition: though the deal was announced just last night, CoverItLive's engineers have already moved into the ScribbleLive offices. The Toronto office is now at about 50 staff, with another 30 working internationally.

"Organically we're growing at around 70-80 per cent," Mifsud says, and ScribbleLive will continue to push that with new acquisitions to "round out our growth."

They are aiming to enhance the platform and services they offer, and given their newly-expanded engineering team, hope to start layering in new functionality shortly. Specifically, Mifsud told us that they are going to be focusing on content strategy planning tools, and at optimization tools that help the clients who use ScribbleLive get the most from the publishing platform.

ScribbleLive and CoverItLive will, in the interim, continue as separate services; they will eventually become a single, fully-integrated platform.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Vincent Mifsud, CEO, ScribbleLive