As someone who spends a lot of time in the tech b’sphere reading about this startup or that startup and VC money flowing like wine at a party being held by Caligula; the one apparent thing is that the large majority of all this action is US based. That is well and fine but as a Canadian it can get to be a bit disheartening especially when you look at history and all that Canada has contributed in science and medicine among many things.
Yet for some reason we don’t hear much about the cutting edge startups or new Web 2.0 darlings bursting forth from above the 49th parallel. In the US you are always hearing of VC incubators and all kinds of ideas to bring forth the next great thing. In Canada .. well .. uhm … hmm .. well you get the idea.
However there maybe a glimmer of hope that we can foster our own tech culture beginning to show if a post on StartupNorth is any indication. According to Jevon the University of Waterloo will be hosting a Mobile + Media incubator type student residence to be called VeloCity. As Jevon said this is pretty cool for Canada:
The common areas of the residence will be renovated over the summer to create a large common/presentation space, a boardroom/meeting room and a project room/mobile device lab. The residence will receive technological upgrades to support the work of the students and to enhance the living environment (ie wifi, increased bandwidth, large project screen, audioconferencing, plasma/LCD screens, workstations, high-end programmable lighting…foosball!)
While I am pretty sure that Plasma TVs and programmable lighting (prime prank-hacking territory!) aren’t exactly critical to getting startups off the ground, this is all starting to sound pretty cool. It is definitely new and cutting edge for Canada.
Like Jevon this is something that I will be keeping an eye on if only to cheer from the sidelines as we finally realize that cool technology can be given birth in the Great White North just as easily as Silicon Valley.
Conversation Tags: Canada, technology, University of Waterloo, VeloCity
