This morning I read a post from David Crow on “Community Platforms“. It got me thinking about our local community, that being Victoria and Vancouver. I have always been a supporter of community platforms and open source, but I’d like to see that go further into the real world. Vancouver has quite a buzz w.r.t. technology and so does Victoria, however here in Victoria you have to go searching for it to find it.
There are lots of user groups here in Vic, but there are little silos here and there and there’s no cohesion or merging of the groups happening. This is where I think DemoCampVictoria can help change. Lets see what happens when we try to bring some of those people together to create new relationships, learn about what others are doing and maybe help contribute to the direction of technology development in Victoria.
Now you’re probably wondering at this point why I mentioned Vancouver as a “local” town. It’s only a 30km trip North of Victoria (that can come with a wide selection of hot and cold entrees), and there are so many human-links between the two cities. Why not try to feed these connections? If you think of it as a platform, it only makes sense if you’re living in Victoria to add the “Vancouver plugin” your ecosystem.
I’d go so far as to add Seattle to the “regional” mix, which is also just a jump across the puddle — and with technology, those crossings don’t have to happen that often.
Consider Salem, Massachusetts. In the late 18th and early 19th century, Salem became rich and pre-eminent because of the China tea trade. Using fast Clippers, Salem put itself into the middle of that trading hub. Ever since moving back to Victoria (from Greater Boston, of which Salem is a part), I’ve thought, “huh, the new ‘TEA’ is information, and our ‘Clippers’ today are fibre optic cables.”
In addition (to technology), you need talent, and that means drawing on people *regionally* and breaking down the silos wherever possible. That’s the “flat” (‘the world is flat’ = Tom Friedman) part, but get enough synergy going, get the talent, the technology, the tolerance (making it a good place for immigrants and different-thinking folks), and have the territorial asset (“nice place”), and you can perhaps manage to marry “flat” with “spiky” (Richard Florida). That happens in big cities (T.O., for example), but it happens *regionally* too, which is why I think it behooves Victoria to reach its feelers (however they’re constructed) to Vancouver and Seattle.
And thanks for the pointer to David Crow’s post, Mark. I keep getting derailed, but I am writing up a sort of “plan” for a local news / community aggregator idea, and I want to run that by you when it’s done. Over a cup of TEA perhaps!
Seattle would be an appropriate add I agree. So we can hope for Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, and San Francisco looking to be the main pipes for the Western region. San Francisco is obviously not “local” but with direct flights coming soon, YYJ-SFO, this will make it local with only a 3hr house-to-office timeframe.
Tea behind the tweed curtain? Now you’re talking! I promise not to dump it into the Pacific (as opposed to the Atlantic).
Kelowna, which has several networking/ISP startups and of course the big Club penguin success under its belt.
San Fran is a little far, but yeah, we do quite easily get back and forth. Flights to San Fran are cheaper than ones to Toronto or Ottawa…
@Yule — I’ve got ideas around this as well — and some tech! — so lets talk tomorrow night at DemoCampVictoria.
@Boris @Yule – excellent!
I’m scribbling away at my “concept overview” right now!
Regions are hard. But the talent piece is key, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Fairchildren model. What is the thing that attracts companies, people, and money to an area be it city or region?
I often argue with Peter Childs about a Toronto/Ottawa collaboration, i.e., I don’t find that much value in the co-efforts. But there are a lot of shared resources for us between Waterloo and Toronto (45 minute drive).
I need to come back out to Vancouver and over to Victoria in the near future. I’d love to hear more about the efforts.
I agree with what Dave says about regions — there has to be an element of customization, and a “regional strategy” can never be a template you can determine by measuring kilometers or miles. My personal feeling is that such an approach (regional angle) *could* make sense for Victoria insofar as we’re embedded in a tourism economy, for which Vancouver and Seattle are feeders. (I mean they feed travelers to us.) (And vice versa — some of us, lucky bastards, do get off “The Rock” occasionally…!) And since we’re on an island (yet also the province’s capital city), transportation options become vital to whatever regional thinking goes on. Those options include ferries to the BC Mainland as well as to the Olympic Peninsula and to downtown Seattle; plus of course airplane travel, including not just the regional airport here, but also the many flights that go into and out of the Inner Harbour in downtown Victoria. The floatplane Inner Harbour airport even has its own airport code. People in the arts and in technology in turn form the other 2 legs of this tripod (with tourism/travel) to sustain a regional approach.
Well, that’s my big dream anyway. Alternately, of course, there’s always entropy, where you just kind of settle into a lump and let it all wash over you!
But that’s not “sustainable” for an urban economy over the long term.