ICT Social Network

‘Unconference to Bring Techies and Hobbyists Together’

lrousseau — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:39:21 -0400

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PodCamp Halifax

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http://podcamphalifax.ca/2008/12/11/press-release-unconference-to-bring-techies-and-hobbyists-together/

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December 11, 2008

HALIFAX, NS - When online video entrepreneur Craig Moore volunteered to help organize something called a ‘Podcamp’ in Halifax, he never could have anticipated the excitement that would be sparked.

“When we started, we thought we would gather 30 or 40 of our friends together to chat about podcasting and blogs,” said Moore. “When we finally announced that we were doing it, we immediately had replies from people who had booked their flight that day from Toronto.”

Already popular throughout North America and Europe, a Podcamp uses an ‘unconference’ format to facilitate discussions about blogs, wikis, YouTube, Facebook and other collaborative online tools. Craig’s idea transformed from a simple fireside chat to a community town hall filling up a public library with discussion about everything from how to un-friend people on Facebook to legal issues caused by Social Media.

“We’re already attracting people from all walks of life,” said Ryan Deschamps, a librarian, blogger and champion for social media in Halifax. After joining the podcamp discussion, he connected the event with the Halifax Public Libraries, securing the Alderney Gate Library as a venue. “The online world has a much larger reach than just techies. So many different types of people are online, all contributing to its community.”

“Libraries have always been about sharing ideas. Books are one way to do that, community events like podcamps are another,” said Deschamps who alongside Jon McGinley and Ben Boudreau from Revolve forms the planning committee. “We’re very excited to help host the very first one in the Atlantic Provinces.”

The free-of-charge event will take place at 9:00 a.m., January 25 at the Alderney Gate Library. In typical social media style, the presentations will be available through podcast, online video and Twitter updates. Speaking opportunities and registration details can be found on the Podcamp Halifax website http://podcamphalifax.ca).

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Media Contacts

Ryan Deschamps, E-Learning Manager

Halifax Public Libraries

(t) 490-5823 (e) deschary@halifax.ca

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We would like to encourage New Brunswickers to attend PodCamp Halifax coming Jan. 25th. There will be presentations that are geared towards New Brunswickers. A few of these talks include:

Grassroots Community Building Through Social Media
by Lisa Rousseau, Organizer of Third Tuesday NB and Jeff Roach, Executive Director, Propel ICT

Bypassing distance and agendas: building community from the bottom up in New Brunswick. How we brought NB cities together as a combined community through social media. We started with Third Tuesday NB, now through twitter and other venues, we're bringing people and ideas together which could help NB become more sustainable.

The State of Social Media in Atlantic Canada
by Giles Crouch at MediaBadger

An overview of the Social Media "market" in Atlantic Canada; an in depth look at who's using Social Media, growth of blogs, key bloggers/Twitterers, growing use by citizens, demographics and psychographics and a discussion of how we all think Social Media might impact our region.

Twitter secret cracked by Radian6

lrousseau — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:16:03 -0400

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Kyle Mullin

Source

Daily Gleaner, Published Thursday December 18th, 2008

Reference

http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/rss/article/515402

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SHHHHH: chris ramsey, vice-president of business development with radian6, shows the dashboard of a website explaining the Twitter secret.

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Radian6 has discovered something that may be more powerful than a $50-million marketing budget.

Chris Ramsey, the local IT firm's vice-president of business development, said it has found a way for corporations to use social-networking sites to spread messages and get instant feedback online.

"On social networks, any one customer can have a voice that's louder and more powerful than a $50-million marketing budget," he said.

Corporations should use social networks such as Twitter - an online community linked by short, informal blogging - to get noticed and to better understand and address those customers' needs, he said.

Radian6. analyzes the traffic on social networking sites to help public-relations and advertising professionals better communicate with their customers.

David Alston, the company's vice-president of marketing, crafted the idea during a recent side project.

The experiment was designed to address what he thought was one of Twitter's biggest flaws - users can supposedly only type 140 characters in the social network's messaging services.

"That's quite limiting when you think about it," said Ramsey. "If you actually want to say something, you can maybe get a sentence out in such a limited space, and that's it."

However, after toying with the service, Alston realized that a standard twitter message could contain up to 920 characters.

Rather than posting or broadcasting the discovery, he tried using less conventional means to get the word out.

Alston began sending other users a cryptic message, which read "I know the twitter secret, message me if you want to find out."

He said within seconds people began replying franticly, looking to find out what the secret was.

"In response to that, we would tell them the story of how we discovered it, but we'd say don't spoil this by posting it somewhere, just pass the message along," he said.

It soon became a viral chain letter, and within three hours of kicking off the experiment, Alston found that the phrase 'Twitter secret,' was the most mentioned word on the site that day, with more than 700 messages that had sprouted from the first one he sent.

Alston said it acted like a near-instant poll, showing what improvements users wanted on the site.

He said if companies are creative, they can do exactly the same thing to connect with their customers quickly and easily.

"People are chatting about everything under the sun on these networks," Alston said.

"It's an easy way for you to be listening and engage in the conversation with customers. Then you can know how to serve them better, rather than just pitching them something."

He said the idea could rewrite the book for online marketing.

"Now you can completely track how word of mouth spreads and evolves as it's happening. Through a network like Twitter, that word of mouth can spread like a virus.

"It's important for any brand to figure that out, so when they try to broadcast marketing messages in the future, they can understand the psychology of what customers connect with."

propel On Twitter

Jeff Roach — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:47:52 -0400

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propel

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propel set up a Twitter account this week.

You can find us at: twitter.com/propelict

News and event updates from http://propelict.com will be automatically fed to our Twitter account as well as other ideas, thoughts, and miscellaneous tweets that our members feel are relevant to growing our ICT sector.

Twitter provides propel with the ability to have an ongoing conversation with ICT builders, entrepreneurs, investors, and other stakeholders and like-minded people interested in growing a strong and vibrant ICT sector in our region.

'Ideas epidemic' championed at St. Andrews conference

Jeff Roach — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:31:45 -0400

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Adam Huras

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Telegraph-Journal, Published Friday November 7th, 2008

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/473582

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Author Richard Ogle says a way has to be found to make the exchange of ideas at the Ideas Festival a continuous event.

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ST. ANDREWS - New Brunswick needs an "ideas epidemic" and a bold, fearless approach to stay on top of a changing world, the Ideas Festival was told Thursday.

New Brunswick's Lieutenant-Governor, a former Supreme Court of Canada judge, leading economic authors and the former president of the Canadian Auto Workers all urged New Brunswick to avoid sitting still while ideas propel others ahead.

"Our province has to define itself; our region has to define itself among a wide area of ideas that cover all grounds," Lt.-Gov. Herménégilde Chiasson said in the morning's opening address. "Ideas are free and talk is cheap. The true challenge is in the how, in the action.

Richard Ogle, author of Smart World and a scientist at KnowledgePassion Inc., a San Francisco-based executive education and leadership development firm, said it's about defining the role of a leader and then driving the province toward that role.

"One of the things that a leader needs to do is survey, keep looking, scanning the horizon at all times, looking for the Holy Grail and the next big thing," he said. "What is emerging now? You have to be very sensitive to emerging factors and ask if this is something we are studying, following, investing in that will make us a large jump instead of a small one."

Ogle says that means being bold. He said causing a "thought epidemic" is the way to go about it.

"It is ideas spreading virally through the community," he said. "This Ideas Festival is one way to bring together very different people from different idea spaces and have them talking to see what emerges.

"But what you need is to institutionalize this in some way. You have to find the continuous way to do this."

Retired Supreme Court of Canada justice Michel Bastarache said Atlantic Canada needs to ensure that the spread of knowledge-based business is not just an urban centre success, but one that triumphs in rural Atlantic Canada as well.

"We are still underdeveloped outside of urban centres in Atlantic Canada," he said. "We need a policy for urban centres with made-to-measure policies, but outside of these urban centres I believe we have never come up with a proper policy to develop rural Atlantic Canada.

"We need to invest in their expertise and we cannot just say forget it and look towards the urban centres where people will continue to move."

Buzz Hargrove, former president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, applauded Atlantic Canada for having some of the hardest-working citizens in the country.

"Government must now move the economy ahead for all its people, not just some of its people," Hargrove said. "Atlantic Canada has the ideas and has the technologies and ability to forward innovation."

Fredericton-based, non-profit group 21 inc., along with the New Brunswick Business Council and a dozen private-sector backers have organized the Idea Festival, which is hosting more than 150 speakers and participants.

The Ideas Festival wraps up today with discussion on establishing the Atlantic Canadian brand and an analysis on how the region can move forward in knowledge-based industry.

Networking key at ThinkNB ICT Showcase

Jeff Roach — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 10:04:54 -0400

Author

John Pollack

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Telegraph-Journal, Published Friday October 31st, 2008

Reference

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/466127

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MEETING OF THE MINDS: Jeff Landry, manager of business development for Irving Oil Ltd., left, Business New Brunswick Minister Greg Byrne, centre, and Gerry Pond of propelICT spoke at the ThinkNB ICT Showcase in Saint John on Thursday.

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Hundreds of information and communication technology industry professionals, along with students and government officials flocked to the Saint John Convention centre on Thursday for the second annual ThinkNB ICT Showcase.

The trade show is designed to connect the province's software and hardware providers with potential buyers in the private sector as well as the provincial and federal governments and their respective departments.

"We've meet people from other companies that have products that we can apply and use in our office," said Jeff Taylor, systems manager for InteliSys, a company responsible for the back-end of flight booking websites.

Even though Taylor wasn't likely to find any potential customers at the trade show it was an important networking opportunity for his business.

"(It's a chance) to recruit university students, look for developers (and) database administrators," Taylor said. "Hopefully we can make some inroads with them and get potential recruits because they're really hard to find."

"We made a lot of connections with some of the government people that are here as well as the colleges."

For Taylor an important goal for the day was to try to ensure colleges continue to teach students the skills he wants them to have as potential future employees.

Business New Brunswick Minister Greg Byrne referred to the industry's work as "incredible."

"There are tremendous synergies here for growth of this industry, and there are no limits to where we are going," he said.

With a growing ICT industry Byrne emphasized the importance of supplying finding employees for the industry.

"It's a focus, not just for government, but of the industry as a whole to work hand in hand to make people aware of the opportunities that exist and to make sure that we're training people to take advantage of those opportunities," Byrne said.

Ex-Whitehill Executives join T4G's Moncton office

Jeff Roach — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:54:12 -0300

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T4G

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"With this team we will push hard into the growing business services market"

MONCTON, October 27, 2008 T4G Limited, a leading national provider of project-based technology services, is pleased to announce that former Whitehill Technologies Inc. veterans Fred Yeomans and Kevin Berry have joined the companys newest office in Moncton.

With proven track records for growing new businesses, Kevin Berry will aim to make T4G a leader in providing solutions to the business services sector of lawyers, accountants and other professionals, while Fred Yeomans with his extensive technology experience will focus on portal solutions to clients in all of T4G's focus markets that increase information worker productivity.

"Business services is a growing market as today's professionals embrace the latest technology to make their firms more competitive and cost efficient," says T4G president Geoff Flood. "We are strong in sectors such as retail, tourism & hospitality, financial services, telecommunications and healthcare; and the business services market is the natural next area to enter. In the next two years, IT spending in business services will outpace the overall market by 50 per cent, according to analysts at IDC Canada."

Whitehill was a Moncton company that grew from its local founders into Canada's fifth-largest private software company before being acquired in 2007. It is now owned by U.S. multinational Oracle Corp. At Whitehill, Fred Yeomans was vice-president technology and Kevin Berry was vice-president of sales, legal. Both are Moncton natives who were instrumental in making Whitehill a leader in the business services market with almost 80 per cent of the top 250 law firms in North America as clients.

"It is exciting joining T4G, a company clearly committed to New Brunswick, Atlantic Canada and the country as a whole. With this team we will push into the growing portal market," says Fred.

Adds Kevin; "It is a thrill to join T4G and help take the company to the next level, not only here in Moncton, but across North America within the business services market."

Yeomans and Berry are the most senior of several former Whitehill employees who have joined T4G's Moncton operation.

T4G has long been a presence in New Brunswick, opening its first Saint John office in 2001. Mr. Flood, who hails from Saint John, said the company has worked with many of the province's institutions and companies in various sectors such as tourism, telecommunications and energy. T4G will create at least one dozen new jobs in the Moncton office by the end of 2008.

"And we really see opportunity in the business services market," adds Mr. Flood. "First, Microsofts robust technology, which we specialize in customizing for our clients, is a perfect fit for the needs of professionals. Second, it is a market like Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Not too big and not too small; and just right for T4G. We believe Fred and Kevin and our Moncton team will excel, not only in Atlantic Canada but for clients across North America."

These hires fit into T4G"s strategy of not sending IT work "offshore", but "near shore" in Atlantic Canada instead. "T4G's ability to recruit whole teams by offering a superior employment proposition is a strategic advantage. T4G is getting top talent by finding it in places where people want to live such as Atlantic Canada," says Dennis Brink, T4G's Vice-President of Acquisitions and Recruitment.

This commitment to recruiting and retaining talent wherever people live in Canada is one reason T4G was recently named to the 2008 Best Workplaces in Canada list in the Globe and Mail newspaper by the Great Workplace Institute Canada. T4G now has offices in Toronto, Saint John, Halifax, Vancouver and Moncton.

About T4G
T4G is a project-based, full-service professional services company founded in 1996 that delivers IT consulting services through a federation of eight operating business units. These business units service such areas as User Interface Design, Software and Application Development, Infrastructure, Networking and Security, Business Analytics and Reporting, and Content and Data Transformation. We believe in The Intelligent Application of Technology where less can be more, where innovation leads to opportunity, and where a culture of commitment always strives to exceed customers' expectations.www.t4g.com

Media Contacts

Paul Barter
Vice-President Strategy
T4G Limited
Paul.Barter@t4g.com
416-462-4211

Bob Brehl
abc2 communications
bob@abc2.ca
416-994-1470

N.B. forum looks to match minds, firms

Jeff Roach — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:58:16 -0300

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David Shipley

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Telegraph-Journal, Published Monday October 27th, 2008

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/460945

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New Brunswick Innovation Forum 2008: Your Fast Track to IT Opportunities

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SAINT JOHN - New Brunswick's brightest minds and smartest firms are looking for the right match.

Whether it's collaboration, technology transfer, partnering or even just a chance to let potential customers know about their unique products and services, researchers, scientists, academics and IT companies are hoping to connect with others during the first-ever New Brunswick Innovation Forum this week.

The forum is being organized by the National Research Council and is being supported by the University of New Brunswick, ThinkNB, the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation and the New Brunswick Business Council, among others.

"It's not a trade show, it's a business event," says Sharon Wahl, organizer of the event. "It's a two-day, really match-making style event."

Wahl estimates that roughly 39 firms, academics, scientists and researchers will participate in the innovation forum, which is scheduled for Oct. 28 to the 29 at the Saint John Trade and Convention Centre.

"Some of them are looking for funding, some of them are looking for collaboration partners, some have technologies that they're looking to either license or sell," she said. "There are opportunities for almost everyone."

About 150 people are expected to attend the event. Information on the forum can be found at innovation2008.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca.

The NRC's Information Technology Centre in Fredericton is working closely with the provincial government on clusters such as life sciences and advanced learning technologies.

Wahl said the innovation forum was inspired in part by a similar event in Heidelberg, Germany.

Representatives from the First Angel Network, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, GrowthWorks Atlantic and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation will also be participating in the forum. There will also be experts from California's Silicon Valley, Boston, Virginia and Germany.

"They're going to talk about international opportunities and networks that could be open to New Brunswick companies."

Wahl said she hopes the forum will enable New Brunswick researchers and firms to make the connections they need to grow their businesses or bring their technologies to market. The forum may be the first of many - depending on feedback from participants, she said.

The forum was scheduled in advance of ThinkNB, a trade show for technology firms in New Brunswick.

"We felt this event would compliment the ThinkNB ICT showcase," she said. "The ideal situation would be to have a presenter speak at the forum and then have a booth at ThinkNB where people coudl then follow-up with them."

For Immediate Release: propel Rebrand Reflects Obsession with Growing NB's ICT Industry

Jeff Roach — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:26:23 -0300

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propel

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Saint John, NB - New Brunswick's private sector ICT (Information and Communication Technology) association that established itself in 2005 to tackle a challenged and shrinking industry has rebranded itself to respond to a new optimism and new opportunities in 2008.

"propel has always believed that we need to involve the whole province and beyond in what we are doing" said Richard Jones, President of propel and Chair of its Energy initiative, propel Energy. "It doesn't make sense to pool together ICT companies who can serve the booming energy sector, for example, and not involve a full complement of the talent and expertise that we have here in New Brunswick and in the Atlantic region."

The new brand drops a geographical reference for an industry-focused "ICT" that the group hopes will remove a perceived but non-existent barrier for those who wish to join in growing the sector in the province.

"When the propel project was conceived in 2004 we were a shrinking industry and most of us were unemployed and starting new businesses and careers for ourselves" said Past-President Curtis Howe, who led the group at the time of its inception. "It made sense for us to share our experience and growing pains with other early stage companies and to engage the rest of the business community to help us realign our economy for the big changes that were to come. I think it has been very successful and it makes sense that today's propel would take advantage of new opportunities and a new spirit of cooperation in our province."

The propel Accelerator program will also undergo a rebrand by sharing the propel identity along with the other initiatives led by the group. "propel is more recognizable to most of our partners and potential stakeholders so we decided to get back to what we know works and speaks well for what we are trying to accomplish. propel is known for promoting entrepreneurship and actively supporting early stage technology companies with a professional team of support" said Gerry Pond, founder and Chair of the propel Accelerator initiative.

There are two other initiatives that propel will champion. propel Talent will address the global competition for talent that we need to involve ourselves in to maintain and grow the talent pool for our ambitious growth agenda here. propel Health is currently in the formative stage of bringing together New Brunswick's eHealth companies within a Centre of Excellence model.

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Media Inquires:
Jeff Roach, Executive Director, propel
506-642-9029, jeff.roach@propelict.com, http://propelict.com

Province plans major presence at ThinkNB

Jeff Roach — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:32:32 -0300

Author

David Shipley

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Telegraph-Journal, Published Tuesday October 21st, 2008

Reference

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/454719

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Danny Keizer, chief information officer for the province of New Brunswick, says the government does a significant amount of business with IT firms headquarterd in New Brunswick.

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The province's chief information officer is hoping to use an upcoming technology trade show to build connections between the government's IT arm and New Brunswick firms.

"We're letting people know the types of things we're thinking about for the future, some of them in more detail than others," says Danny Keizer.

"We're (also) definitely there to learn about the capabilities of the companies, what they have to bring to the table and we know from the past that there's lots of good things there. There is a plethora of New Brunswick IT success stories," said Keizer, including firms such as Accreon, Remsoft Inc., Bulletproof Solutions Inc. as well as Business Bridge Inc.

The provincial government is a major supporter of the upcoming second annual ThinkNB trade show in Saint John.

In addition to supporting the trade show, the provincial government will also be a major participant.

There will be booths set up for the Department of Energy, Business New Brunswick and Supply and Services. At the Supply and Services booth there will be representatives from Service New Brunswick as well as Public Safety.

The trade show will be an opportunity to build connections, said Keizer.

"To be clear, I'm not taking an order book there, we have to follow our procurement legislation and our trade agreements, we can't hand out contracts or anything," he said.

The New Brunswick government spends about $100 million on information technology products and services each year and employs roughly 400 to 500 people.

Those figures don't include IT spending or staffing by provincial Crown corporations.

The government is one of the top IT employers in New Brunswick.

"We're seeing a good amount of business being done with New Brunswick companies," said Keizer. The province does a significant amount of business both with firms headquartered in the province and those with a large presence in New Brunswick, he added.

Firms in New Brunswick account for the bulk of the province's professional services spending, which in turn is roughly one-third of the overall IT expenses.

The province uses a wide variety of such IT-related professional services, said Keizer.

"In some cases it's expert advice and the point services we need, the internal skills we don't have, we go to the market," he said. "In other cases we have development teams. For example in the e-health area at this point in time we're developing a whole set of applications around the electronic health record "¦ and there are large number of private sector resources there (as well)."

There are opportunities for IT firms and consultants to help government with research on how other jurisdictions and organizations are using technology. There are also development opportunities such as e-health, he said.

"We are very reliant on the private sector when we get into things we haven't done before and they have the skills to do it." The pace of IT-driven change is increasing in New Brunswick, he said.

"At this time we're seeing quite an appetite for change," he said, adding the provincial government's self-sufficiency agenda is a driving force behind the increased appetite for change.

"When you look at efficiency - one of the things that government is trying to do - information technology is there at the base," he said.

The use of technology by the province's population growth secretariat is just one example of how the New Brunswick government is leveraging IT, Keizer said.

"They're networking with people using modern technology, that's how they communicate with most of the people they're trying to attract." Like the private sector, government may also turn to IT to increase efficiency and reduce costs, moves which can help in the event of an economic slowdown.

Keizer said while there is no particular strategy in place around that idea, it is something that is possible for the government to pursue. There is an effort underway in government to review how it delivers services, he noted.

"If we look at the past, what we're able to do today as government is dramatically enhanced. We can do so many more things than would be possible if we weren't using technology."

Province can get creative: theorist

Jeff Roach — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:52:28 -0300

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Erin Dwyer

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Telegraph-Journal, Published Wednesday October 1st, 2008

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http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/434431

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Richard Florida, the social theorist and professor at the University of Toronto’s Joseph L. Rotman School of Management who has written a number of best-selling books exploring the notion of cities, speaks tonight at the Saint John Trade and Convention Centre in a celebration honouring four New Brunswick researchers funded by the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.

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New Brunswick may be lightly populated and relatively rural, but the province is well positioned both economically and geographically to do well in a continually shifting fiscal and social climate, says prominent social theorist Richard Florida.

For one, its three southern cities rank well for the percentage of workers they have in the "creative class," a group of workers he defines as those whose function is to "create meaningful new forms." They are employed in industries ranging from technology to entertainment, journalism to finance, and high-end manufacturing to the arts.

Fredericton leads among New Brunswick's cities with 34 per cent of its workers falling into this fast-growing segment of the workforce that Florida, professor at the University of Toronto's Joseph L. Rotman School of Management and author of Who's Your City?, believes is a key driving force for economic development of post industrial cities.

Comparatively, Saint John has 29 per cent and Moncton has 28 per cent.

That's not far off the 35 per-cent mark that is typically found in growing and prosperous centres, such as Boston (38 per cent), Washington (38.4 per cent) and Austin, Texas (36.4 per cent).

Florida said all three New Brunswick cities also have 15 to 20 per cent of their workers in the creative core, a part of the creative class that includes scientists and engineers, professors and writers, artists and architects, and think-tank researchers and opinion makers - people who produce new forms or designs that can be broadly used.

Thirdly, the province is in a nice part of the country, situated along the eastern seaboard, and more importantly, in close proximity to what Florida has deemed the second-largest mega region on Earth.

"It's small in terms of population and it's mainly a rural province, but it's in a pretty darn nice part of the world," he said in anticipation of today's visit to Saint John that will see him the featured speaker at the R3 gala, a celebration honouring four New Brunswick researchers funded by the New Brunswick Innovation Fund, at the Saint John Trade and Convention Centre. "And it's in a part of the world - and I'm thinking east - that is really one of the major constellations of the creative economy in the world."

Of course, Florida is talking about the 800-kilometre Boston-Washington, D.C. corridor that he has found generates $2.2-trillion in economy activity.

New Hampshire and Maine, from Portland south, are considered the northern edge of this mega region which he defines as a geographic area that hosts business and economic activity on a large scale, and generates a lion's share of the world's economic activity, innovation and technological discoveries.

Florida - whose previous two books, The Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class, became bestsellers - said this puts New Brunswick in a desirable location, only a day's drive away from Boston.

"I think that New Brunswick, the more it links to that the better," he said.

"I know New Brunswick is a little farther north, but if you think of the kind of development that occurred in Maine and particularly southern Maine - as it became an extension of the greater Boston economy - I think there are real opportunities for that creative economy to migrate north."

Florida, who is now compiling data for the Canadian version of Who's Your City?, said the province has these assets on which it needs to capitalize.

"I think the key thing is figuring out how to do that. That's what is so important for much of Canada: shifting from a natural resources and raw materials kind of economy, and using that wealth to become more of a creative economy, and linking there to what I think of as the broad eastern seaboard, is really the key."

Florida did provide some advice on how New Brunswick could accomplish that.

Firstly, it needs to attract immigrants, and capitalize on Canada's role in a mosaic society.

"Begin to become a place where all of this influx of global talent can find and make a home, that would be something that I would really stress."

Secondly, it needs to make its cities more attractive to its college and university students, who hail from across Canada, the United States, and around the world.

"Put them more on the radar screen beyond their educational experience," he said. "And also, make sure those colleges and universities up their share of foreign students. Those are students that are very keen to give it a go in a new country. They are looking to migrate, they are looking for a better life than where they come from for them and their families.

"I think really trying to attract and retain foreign students is a huge potential area of opportunity for New Brunswick."

The province also needs to harness their energy and use their connections to their native countries to expand the province's markets.

"The Diaspora provide a fantastic way of opening those markets and gaining access and developing partnerships," Florida said. "I would say that is one area that I would think there is enormous opportunity for New Brunswick because it's now becoming global on the inside, with its foreign students, to be more connected to the world economy by proactively utilizing that as a resource."

Florida hopes to provide his New Brunswick audience tonight an outline of the way he sees the world and how he sees the economy evolving from a natural resource-based, raw materials-based, blue-collar economy "to one really where the source of value and economic growth comes from the human mind and its creativity.

"You would think that would make place less relevant," he said, "but it in fact it makes place more relevant because people are clustering for economic reasons, social reasons, lifestyle reasons into geographic areas - cities."

Instead of dictating a pathway for New Brunswick, however, Florida wants to give his New Brunswick audience a framework to think about.

"Then, if people are interested, we can do follow-up work in trying to understand better trends and weaknesses. I think that requires a much more applied approach, and really building a team of people in New Brunswick and its constituent metros who really want to dig in."