There is such as thing as "creative destruction" – the economic theory of innovation and progress popularized by the Austrian School economist Joseph Schumpeter – and Ottawa's wireless sector is proof positive.

This evening Mike Darch, OCRI's Executive Director of Global Marketing, spelled it out in his "live from Barcelona" interview with CFRA's Business@Night host Greg Hebert from the site of Mobile World Congress. Mike's job is to traverse the globe and engage in conversations with trade commissioners, entrepreneurs and investors who often have no idea tech Ottawa exists, and turn them on to our possibility.

DragonWave 12-month stock chartTalking with Greg, Mike said Ottawa is fighting back against "the Nortel situation, the downturn in the economy, et cetera, that has created a lot of people who wonder if Ottawa's time has come to an end."

Mike went on to emphatically state that Ottawa's successfully reinvented itself in the past, and is doing so again. He pointed to Ottawa-base wireless infrastructure firms like DragonWave and Bridgewater, applications companies like March Networks, and a slew of innovative mobile applications studios like Magmic and Fuel Industries that today employ some 18,000 people across almost 200 companies.

To contrast, let's go back in time to tech Ottawa's huge (talk about an unbalanced portfolio!) telecom sector concentration in the 90s. Then, a mere four companies (JDS, Mitel, Nortel and Newbridge) employed almost 40,000, or half the tech workers in Ottawa. You can see that a mere decade later, we've got a sturdy new crop of innovators. Wireless is one great sector. Cleantech is another among a total of some 13 unique ones.

Yes, we could have more VC money for them. Yes, we could have more government support and more effective/enlightened science policy. And OCRI among other national and regional tech organizations is tirelessly working those agendas. And yet ... the reinvention HAS occured. The Ottawa telecom supernova exploded into a series of new wireless stars. 

What's the bottom line? Try this one from DragonWave's most recent quarterly results. DragonWave, the Wi-Fi infrastructure star with founders from Newbridge and a Nortel-trained CEO who earned his stripes at another start-up, reported CDN$107.3 million of revenue for the first nine months of fiscal year 2010, an increase of 235 per cent compared with $32.0 million for the same period the previous year. DragonWave also expects revenue of approximately $170 million in fiscal year 2010. The company started precisely one decade ago. There are more like it in Ottawa, and there are more coming.

Just ask Mike.

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's technology – and cleantech – public relations and product marketing agency.)

When international cleantech companies consider business expansion to North America, the usual suspects are New York, Boston, Washington and San Jose. Now they can (and should) think Ottawa.

Richard Florida, Martin Prosperity Institute Director and author of the international best seller Who’s Your City? rates Ottawa as the “Best Overall” city in Canada on a “Creative Class Index” based on the 3Ts of economic development – Technology, Talent and Tolerance – and 22 places higher than New York, 2 places higher than Boston, 4 places higher than Washington and 1 place higher than tech-rich San Jose.

So Ottawa's a great home for any technology company, period. For cleantech companies, there's even more incentive.

A Knowledge-based Industry Survey released last week by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) shows Ottawa’s fledgling cleantech sector is the strongest of any of the city’s 13 unique technology clusters. The number of cleantech companies is up from 103 companies to 114 as of December 31, 2009, an increase of 10.7 per cent over the previous year, and the number of Ottawa’s cleantech employees is up from 2,050 to 2,567, an increase of 25.2 per cent.

The kicker for cleantech companies (rightly) considering Ottawa as a new home is that, compared to any U.S. city, Canadian business taxes are lower, and set to go far lower still, while the Obama administration has all but promised higher taxes in America for corporations. Take a look at the chart above.

Had a good look? Excellent. Now book a flight to Ottawa and become part of our fantastic cleantech growth story in 2010!

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's technology – and cleantech – public relations and product marketing agency.)

Ever since Alexander Graham Bell pronounced that his "photophone" was his most important invention after he proved in 1880 that he could transmit sound on a beam of light, photonics has been instrinsically linked to the telecommunications industry. Thanks to Bell, photonics companies had a great run in the 20th century with fiber optic applications. Yet 21st century photonics entrepreneurs may well owe their success to the advances they can produce in cleantech.

This week we've been all about that opportunity. Working with three Global Advantage cities (Ottawa, Berlin, Tucson) that represent over 500 photonics companies, market2world has been alerting the international photonics and cleantech media to the fact that the trillion-dollar cleantech opportunity offers fantastic promise for photonics technology.

Some facts:

• According to the Cleantech Group LLC, cleantech is now the largest category for venture capital investment in the world, accounting for 27 per cent of all venture capital based on Q2, 2009 numbers, and global demand for clean technology solutions is estimated at $1 trillion
• A November, 2009 Ernst and Young survey confirms that cleantech spending is largely immune from the global economic slowdown, with 85 percent of 308 executives working across all industry sectors planning to accelerate their company’s response to climate change issues compared with two years ago.
• Two cleantech applications for photonics technology include photovoltaics, a $15 billion market with an annual growth rate of 25%, and light-emitting diode (HB-LED) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lamps, a $5 billion market being spurred on by the U.S. Department of Energy’s goal of a 50% reduction in energy use for lighting by 2025.

It's fair to say the Ottawa photonics cluster is "on trend". This week the Province of Ontario announced its investing $3.6 million to support Ottawa's Group IV Semiconductor Inc. in its quest to use photonics to transform lighting in homes and businesses. The company's technology could lead to low-cost light bulbs that will use up to 90 per cent less electricity than regular bulbs and last much longer, significantly cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reducing the waste burden on landfills. And another star Ottawa's photonics star, Cyrium Technologies Inc., was recently named a Next 10 Emerging Cleantech Leader by Corporate Knights Magazine. Cyrium manufactures a line of high-efficiency concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) cells for land-based, commercial solar applications that are expected to outperform all commercially available CPV cells.

You can learn more from our press releases here and here, and of course, in upcoming news articles as we build cleantech photonics momentum with Global Advantage cities.

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech public relations and product marketing agency.)

In ramping up for a presentation at the Conference Board of Canada next week, I'm finding it almost too easy to make the case that ignoring social networking in government or corporate communications strategy is like deciding to nip downstairs for a drink at the beach-front bar just as the shadow of a tsunami's wave blocks out the sun over the palm trees.

Let's look at a government example as presented by University of Ottawa and digital advocacy guru, Professor Michael Geist. This week my Pittsburgh-based brother asked me "Do you guys have a government anymore?" He was referring to the Dec. 30th decision by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to progrogue i.e. suspend Parliament, for the second time in a year, this time until March 30th.

Presumably, the Prime Minister's advisors chose Dec. 30th as a time when mainstream media couldn't or wouldn't pick up on the story to the same extent they would, say, if Canadian weren't as a nation focused on things other than politics. The story would just ... fade away. And presumably, they didn't take social networking into account. Yet, as Geist points out, Christopher White, an Alberta University student, "proved the experts wrong, building the largest Facebook group in the country, one that's the focal point for national discussion and voter discontent."

Christopher's digital advocacy group has, as of this writing, 206,676 members. Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton, and Gilles Duceppe, Canada's four national party leaders, have less than 100,000 members combined on their respective Facebook pages, says Geist. D'oh.

Let's switch gears to some fresh (as of yesterday) stats from Forrester Research (see chart below). As reported by The GigaOM Network's Liz Gannes, Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff has recently observed a “new behavior” in the company's two and a half years of tracking and classifying social technology usage.

There's a new category of social networkers called “conversationalists", or  “people who update their social network status to converse” on at least a weekly basis. According to Forrester, the category is 56 percent female, more so than any other group, with 70 percent aged 30 and older.

These aren't a bunch of "no-nothing kids" with no clout in the world (and if you think that, order another drink at the beach-front bar. Don't pay any attention to that wave thingee). They're voters. They're consumers.

They ... require ... your ... attention. 

And it'll be very interesting to see the numbers on Christopher White's Facebook group on March 30th, and what the Canadian government's fate will be this Spring. Stay tuned.

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency.)

The most recent Neilsen Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries concludes that 9 in every 10 Internet consumers worldwide (90 percent) trust recommendations from people they know, while seven in every ten (70 percent) trust consumer opinions posted online.

And how do consumers share recommendations with “people they know”? Using one-to-one direct connections like email and text messaging of course, but increasingly via one-to-many social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter... and they are using their smartphones.

Nielsen reports "the market is primed for accelerated growth well into 2010. The Gartner Group predicts that smartphone sales will account for 46% of all mobile phone sales worldwide by 2013." Also,

SMS (short message services), or text messages, reached 4.2 billion standard rate transactions in the U.S. on AT&T and Verizon in Q2 2009. The clear leader was Twitter with 1.3 billion messages, followed by FOX (due in large part to MySpace) with 740 million texts, Facebook at 465 million, and 4INFO at 257 million transactions. Total traffic was generated by 50 million unique users.

Yet, the Twitterati, or (social) networked consumer phenomenon, doesn’t negate solid online branding efforts. The Nielsen survey says brand websites – the most trusted form of advertiser-led promotion – are depended upon by as many people (70 percent) as consumer opinions posted online.

And check out the stats (in the chart above) on the importance of good old fashioned editorial content and other forms of mainstream media – still holding up/ahead of sexy search engine results ads.

What it all means is that today’s marketers have to master what they knew, and learn (fast) what they don’t know, while keeping in mind our CEO’s observation that “the only two media that haven’t had to co-exist with the others are stone tablets and lamb-skin scrolls. Everything else has required marketers to adapt and integrate new media into their existing media mix.”

Need help? We’re here for you.

(Jill McCubbin is a conversation architect with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency.)

It was fantastic, i.e., "incredibly great", to once more fill up all three rows of our minivan this weekend as our daughter Stephanie returned home mid-way through her first term at Queen's University. It was also fantastic, i.e., "odd and remarkable" to learn about last Tuesday's flash mob at her rez, where 700-plus students, linked via Facebook, spontaneously stood up in Leonard Hall cafeteria at 6:30PM to sing "I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys.

The flash mob was concieved by "Q-Sauce", or Queen's Students Assembling United Collective Enthusiasm. All timing and communication regarding the flash mob was coordinated via Facebook less than 24 hours prior to the event. Students were asked not to pass it on other than by Facebook. Just prior to the flash mob's activation, 300-plus responded via Facebook that they were "attending" while nearly 400 said "maybe attending". In fact, just about everyone who heard about it participated. Stephanie said there were so many people in the caf there weren't enough seats. And as you can see in the YouTube vid many students ended up standing on their chairs as they sang. Herewith, the Q-Sauce guidelines as published on Facebook:

TONIGHT at exactly 6:30 PM at Leonard Cafeteria....
WE WILL SING.
We will get up on our chairs, and we will sing, with all of our hearts, the ENTIRETY of The Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way".
If you don't know the lyrics, you have UNTIL TONIGHT to learn the song.
Nobody will start the sing-a-long, everyone will begin..as one.
RULES:
You cannot discuss project Sing-A-Long to anyone outside of this group. You can only invite people in via Facebook.
No public conversation about project sing-a-long may take place.
It will simply begin.
After the song is over, continue eating.
See you TONIGHT, warm up your voices.

"So what!", you say. "Wacky students ..." Er, nope. Think about what happened there. Think about your brand.

Armed with social networking sites like Facebook, that are in turn linked directly to smartphone apps students carry with them 24/7 on their iPhones, Blackerrys and Droid phones, social-network savvy consumers, the ones coming out of colleges and universities in four years or less, can, and will:

a) spontaneously sing your praises (hopefully with something better than Back Street Boys :)

b) or, trash your stock/association's reputation/political party standing by disrupting your carefully scripted Annual General Meeting

c) or, protest a product pricing/policy decision they don't like by showing up on your head office steps by the hundreds or even thousands with the (hyper-network-enabled) media in tow

This isn't one of those oh-so-yesterday online phenomena limited to the nether regions of the blogosphere that then finds its way into mainstream media over a number of days/weeks/months. This is hundreds or thousands of people acting in near-real-time, with life-sized massed physical presence, on what they believe is right or wrong about what your organization's doing for or "to" them, as they see it. 

What can you do about it? Nothing at all if you're not on top of the social networking scene. And even if you are, you're going to have to morph corporate communications and/or product messaging strategy and/or senior executive response at the speed of text messaging. Stilted, stunned or insincere posturing in the face(book) of the networked consumer era is going to lead to certain grief.

Assuming your communications team does devote resources to understanding social networking, what can they do to promote vs. defend the brand? Inspired by a flash mob kick-off to Oprah's 24th season kick-off party that drew 21,000 people plus more than 2 million views on YouTube, last Saturday mall marketers organized some 2,000 people in Davidson, North Carolina to form a flash mob in celebration of the mall's annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Have a look. That's one happy mob, and I bet after they celebrated lots walked inside to buy a bunch of stuff. Smart.

If you've got all this sorted out, excellent. If the hair on the nape of your neck is tingling because you think you need to prepare for this certain networked consumer/stakeholder future, our team would be happy to help yours.

p.s. If you watch till the end of the Queen's YouTube vid you'll wonder what occurs at the end of the Back Street boys song ... it's a "fighting anthem", called Oil Thigh, that Queen's students seem to sing whenever they're happy. Hey, I went to the University of Waterloo, so I guess I have to believe that explanation :)

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency.)

Ottawa’s innovation sector has long been constrained by limited venture capital (VC) investment, a situation now further eroded by a recession that has stifled fund raising efforts through the past two years.

According to today’s Ottawa Business Journal, data from a report released Tuesday by Canada's Venture Capital and Private Equity Association shows Ottawa-area investments totalled $10.94 million in the third quarter, down from the $51.5-million peak recorded during the same period a year earlier, and also from the $18.39 million invested in the second quarter of 2009.

So if you’re a growing company in Ottawa with an innovative product or service that’s market ready, but are cash constrained and have limited prospects for raising traditional venture capital in the near future, what are you going to do to survive, much less grow?

One solution – look to a public venture funding program that has been fueling the growth of resource, technology and innovation companies across Canada since 1987, and is available to Ottawa companies.

“Canada has long had limited access to traditional venture capital, in spite of vibrant resource, technology and life sciences sectors that badly needed to find a sustainable way of sourcing seed and early stage growth capital for emerging companies showing strong market promise,” said Glenn Williamson, a Phoenix-based investment banker who moved from Canada to Arizona more than 20 years ago, and is also founder and CEO of the Canada Arizona Business Council. “That’s what led to the development of the Capital Pool Company (CPC) program offered through the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V).”

The program allows 3 to 5 founder/directors to collectively invest between $100,000 and $1.8 million into a capital pool company that issues a prospectus offering, and upon completion of that offering, receives a public listing on the TSX-V. That company, essentially a public venture vehicle, then has 24 months to complete a qualifying transaction – identifying, disclosing and acquiring a target growth company.  At the time of the qualifying transaction, another private placement is usually completed, typically raising an additional $2 million to $4 million, or more, depending on the operating needs of the acquired growth company and its market appeal.

Since the inception of the CPC Program, 2,021 companies have been listed, 80% have successfully completed their qualifying transaction, and each has an average market capitalization of $13.6 million. Some have gone on to even greater success, with 247 former capital pool companies currently trading on the TSX, which requires that a minimum company market capitalization of $30 million be maintained.

Lowell Thomas, a Tucson-based partner with Snell & Wilmer LLP, who specializes in business and finance with an emphasis in cross-border U.S. and Canada transactions, including several deals involving TSX and TSX-V companies, said, “There are a number of things you have to have in order to make a deal successful. You need Canadian board members with capital market experience that can work with your management team, a strong broker champion who believes you have something unique to the market and can execute your growth plan, good advisors who can help you plan ahead for tax and legal considerations, and a focused and sustainable investor relations program. With those things in place you have a clear route to a listing that is internationally recognized.”

One reason for that recognition, Thomas points out, is that both the TSX and TSX-V conduct a due diligence process that’s at least equal, and probably more rigorous, than what traditional venture capitalists would put a company through.  Extensive background checks – more than 7,000 annually – are run on prospective company directors and officers.

“The bottom line though,” said Thomas, “for the right companies, executed the right way, this is a program that can work and provide a sound platform for sustainable financing.”

(Peter Vanderlee is an Arizona-based Senior Communications Strategist with market2world communications inc.)

On Oct. 31st, 2005, we wrote the first post in this blog that said: 

Historians speculate the ‘trojan horse’ is simply a myth: in reality it was a battering ram whose shape merely resembled that of a horse. And historians also tell us – with little or no certainty – that the siege took place probably near the Strait of the Dardanelles likely in the 12th or 13th century BC and that it may have been ended with the help of a gigantic ram.

2300 years later, corporate and institutional North America is besieged by a myth born in this century but no less threatening than the Trojans found the Greeks to be.

The modern mythology is that Web 2.0 and its social media of blogs, podcasts, instant messaging and myriad of applications (many of them mobile) is the harmless playground of teenagers, twenty-somethings, music junkies and disgruntled blog writers.

To understand what's happened in the last four years, have a look at this YouTube video, entitled "Social Media Revolution", brought to my attention by my friend, social media commentator and Globe and Mail Communities Editor Mathew Ingram:

Nuff said!

Well, not quite, here's a little more cue and review from our four-year-old post – still quite relevant today:

1. To what extent do we understand the social media of Web 2.0 and its context, relevance and pace of change?

2. To what extent are subjects that concern us being discussed in the social media among blogs, vodcasts, and podcasts and do they relate to the issues, policies or products which affect our organization [2009 update: don't forget about Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter]?

3. Can we qualitatively or quantitatively assess the impact of social media discussions as they relate our organization, public or customers?

4. Is there a need for a Web 2.0 SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) assessment for our organization?

5. To what extent can your discussion and dialogue with customers or the public migrate to social media from our traditional media and methods?

6. Does our organization have guidelines for creating or responding to social media?

7. Do our employees, suppliers, partners, customers or competitors use social media as part of their communications and marketing mix?

8. Does our organization embrace the necessary candor and openness inherent in social media and its participants?

9. Does the opportunity exist to apply social media internally to supplement our organization’s intranet or knowledge base?

10. Could an internal application of social media be repurposed externally once our processes, policies and protocols have been tested and proven?

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency.)

America's an economic mess, and some Canadians are gloating because our banking system is (so far) uncomprised, our stimulus programs haven't been hijacked by cronyism, and our wealth of natural resources and universal healthcare system provide a cushion for both governments and taxpayers to ride out hard times.

BUT, if the U.S. ship sinks, Canadians can blow their horns as hard as they can and we're still nothing more than the orchestra playing bravely on the deck of the Titanic. That's why I keenly observe changes in the American economic psyche. At the grassroots, Americans are starting to save again at the fastest rate in 15 years.

And at the boardroom level, there's a recognition that financial engineering doesn't substitute for real engineering for real innovation that drives the real world forward. The best evidence yet comes from Jeff Immelt, GE's CEO. From his op-ed piece in yesterday's Financial Times:

Today, my country needs an industrial strategy built around helping companies to succeed with investment that will drive innovation and support high-technology manufacturing and exports. And it needs a robust trade policy that seeks to open ­markets abroad for US companies while being fair to international ­competition.

I consider myself to be the chief executive of a global company that is headquartered in the US. We are firmly committed to globalisation. Our employees – in India, in China, in the US and the UK – deserve to be able to compete and win around the world. At the same time, American business leaders have a responsibility to drive competitiveness in their own country.

On a personal note, I would hate to think that the lasting impression of this generation of American business is the one that exists today. We can do better. We have made our companies globally competitive; now we must do the same for our country. We can help solve difficult problems and create an optimistic future.

The reset economy has clarified the scope of the American challenge and offered us a chance for renewal. The best companies will concentrate on real value and real needs and invest for the long term, creating a firm, new foundation on which a stable, strong economy can grow.

The US has faced difficult odds many times. We have beaten them throughout history. With a commitment to technology and manufacturing-driven exports leading the way, America can do so once again.

I sure as hell hope so Jeff. Thanks for the inspiring words. Let's all, on both sides of the world's largest undefended border, get to work.

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency.)

• National Research Council Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) – This program provides non-repayable contributions to Canadian SMEs interested in growing by using technology to commercialize services, products and processes in Canadian and international markets. As of July 2009, the Government of Canada's Economic Action Plan has provided new resources of $200 million over the next two years to bolster NRC-IRAP support for innovative Canadian firms.
• The $205 million Ontario Venture Capital Fund is a joint initiative between the Government of Ontario and leading institutional investors. A June 2009 announcement celebrates a $1.8 million investment in the Series B financing of I Love Rewards, an Ontario web-based provider of employee rewards and recognition, sales incentive and service award programs.
• Ontario Centres of Excellence Investment Accelerator Fund (OCE IAF) The Investment Accelerator Fund (IAF) is a $27.5 million seed fund that finances eligible knowledge-based companies in the early stages of technology development and commercialization. OCE IAF supported the launch of 38 technology companies in 2007-08, a 100 per cent increase over the previous year. OCE also announced $450 million in follow-on investments to its portfolio to date.

On top of this, the Canadian Federal Government has funneled money into both the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) and Export Development Canada (EDC) to both finance business expansion and international trade. An example is the Business Credit Availability Program (BCAP), which improves access to financing for Canadian businesses during this period of economic uncertainty. Through this program, EDC and BDC will provide at least $5 billion in additional loans and other forms of credit support and enhancement at market rates to businesses with viable business models.

Several of market2world’s clients are taking advantage of these programs now, and we can attest that they are encountering few of the “traditional” roadblocks to accessing government funds. The Canadian government, thankfully, is both more serious and effective at making stimulus spending work than its U.S. counterpart.

(Jill McCubbin is a conversation architect with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency.)

“In a hostile learning environment, entrepreneurs gain relatively little benefit by watching others. For example, if the relevant knowledge is protected intellectual property, studying the market before entering wouldn't yield much advantage. In these situations, the trade-off favors entering early. But in less hostile learning environments, where entrepreneurs gain valuable information likely to increase their success just by watching other companies, companies benefit from waiting and learning lessons from earlier players.”

Apple’s App Store was launched after massive pre-launch hype, at a huge press event and was a “first mover advantage” success. Stock charts for Apple after the launch tell the ongoing story of Apple’s successes as my colleague Nathan Rudyk points out in his blog post here.

RIM launched the second “global” App store, called BlackBerry App World. The BlackBerry App World launch profited by lessons learned from Apple’s App Store’s profile building. Walt Mossberg, author and creator of the weekly Personal Technology column in The Wall Street Journal, described his BlackBerry App World experience and summarized his article with this point:

“BlackBerry fans unfamiliar with the iPhone won’t care about some of these comparisons, of course. They will, and should, just be happy that their phones are now much richer and more versatile devices. And, in the end, that’s what counts. RIM is now truly in the platform game, which will make its products more attractive and could make its shareholders richer.”

David Pett’s recent National Post article, Research in Motion ready to ride the rapids, describes RIM successes. Jim Suva, Citigroup Global Markets analyst, maintains his "buy" rating on RIM stock and left his US$100 price target (from today’s price of $92.33/share) unchanged. Second-mover advantage anyone?

(Jill McCubbin is a conversation architect with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency.)

Bruce Cockburn is one of my favourite singer-songwriters, and if I'm having a really tough day with no end in sight his left-wing lyrical rant against right wing ideologies invades my brain: "The trouble with normal is it always gets worse." Fortunately, the clouds always clear and I'm soon humming something more happy like "I get by with a little help from my friends."

Right now, there's no end in sight for Canada's IT skills shortage. Not enough high school students are considering a career in high tech. The siren call of life sciences and (until recently) hedge fund jobs, compounded by the lingering effects of the "dot-bomb" era, has taken its toll. As worrying, the students who do decide to pursue IT programs at the post-secondary level are having a hard time surviving once they're in. Streamlined high school programs just don't give them the core skills they need, and too many drop out.

What does this mean for our economy? According to the Conference Board of Canada, a "perfect storm" of socio-demographic factors, negative perceptions of the tech sector following the bubble burst of 2002, and a significant drop in university enrolment in IT programs across Canada have combined to create a situation where more than 90,000 jobs in the information technology sector will need to be filled in the next two to four years and could potentially impact the Canadian economy to the tune of $10.8 billion, or $120,000 per job, if they can't be filled.

With Canada's highest concentation of creative class jobs, the City of Ottawa's economic development organization, OCRI, simply can't afford to let this brand of normal get worse. So last fall OCRI brought industry partners/mentors from IBM Canada, Macadamian Technologies, Nortel and Ontario Centres of Excellence to create a pilot Ottawa High School Technology Program to turn kids on to IT careers. Our company created a social-media-enabled Web site last fall, and we were tapped to do public relations to call attention to the fact that this program can and should be supported provincially, and even nationally.

So far, the PR campaign has attracted coverage from CTV, CBC, the Ottawa Business Journal, ITWorldCanada, and several other interviews are in the works with both regional and national media. Intranets from program partner companies are also going to carrry our message to thousands of employees.

So, want to help capture a $10.8 billion IT opportunity for Canada? Spread the word by emailing this blog post (see below) about the Ottawa High School Technology Program, especially to your local school board, MPP or MP. Thanks!

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency. He encourages his three teenagers to pursue IT careers to the point of distraction.)

I just listened to a CFRA AM radio podcast interview with respected automotive analyst Dennis DesRoisiers who said the $15 Billion Canada is giving to prop up General Motors and Chrysler could otherwise underwrite the salaries of 20,000 engineers for THREE YEARS to totally reinvent the automobile as we know it.

He goes on to say that the same money (which he posits could easily balloon to $20 billion or $30 billion) could build six or seven assembly plants, or up to 1,000 state-of-the-art parts plants to supply healthy versus utterly broken not to mention bankrupt car companies.

All of this with no serious debate among politicians on any inkling of an alternative industrial innovation policy. Why not give a couple of billion to my former digIT Interactive partner Ian Clifford to advance his made-in-Canada ZENN Motor Company and interest in EEStor battery technology and see what he can do to create a Canadian electric car industry? Seriously.

(June 2nd update: Or what about Frank Stronach, who has announced that he'd like to build an electric car in Canada within the next three years! He only wants a loan, but based on the current rate of car company largess and his track record, he deserves at least $4 billion cash.)

Hopefully wiser minds prevail before the price-tag on these ill-considered bail-outs doubles due to "unforseen market forces", such as, oh, steadily shrinkiing market share, zero small car strategy (even as BMW brilliantly executed the Mini and Mercedes the Smart YEARS AGO), over-reliance on gas-guzzling Jeeps and Hummers in the face of peak oil, or consumer apathy on shallow badge engineering concepts that made Pontiacs look like plasticized Chevs and Oldsmobiles look like nothing you'd want in your own or your grandfather's driveway.

Give the DesRoisiers interview a listen. Keep the bucket and sawdust close by. These car company bail-outs are nothing short of an abomination to innovation.

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency. He drives a Subaru and his wife drives a Ford.)

Betty Beard's article in today's Arizona Republic business section makes a solid case for why postcard marketing with digital campaign management is a great green alternative to the old fashioned approach to direct mail. AmazingMail's CEO Chris Lynde, one of market2world's newest clients, is also quoted extensively. Before we get to Chris, consider the following points summarized from Betty's story:

1. "Spray-and-pray" direct-mail has seen its influence as a high-volume mass-oriented response driver all but vanish with dramatically rising postal costs and consumer fatigue.
2. Consumers are demanding green alternatives from the companies they do business with, and increasingly resent random "junk mail" from organizations they have never done/don't intend to do business with.
3. The recession's provoked companies and nonprofit businesses alike (nonprofits should check out AmazingCauses!) to cut marketing costs and get smarter about targeting.
4. While digital (email/Web) channels are great marketing vehicles, "high touch", targeted postcard marketing to relevent customers and prospects is an essential tool to efficiently lead them to the digital channels of their choice.
5. With the growth of do-not-call registries and email spam filters, targeted postcard marketing that doesn't resort to "cheque in the letter" or heavily plasticized scratch and save tricks, is a straight-forward, environmentally friendly way to reach people.

Chris Lynde sums it up well in the Arizona Republic:

Electronic communication is likely to change the industry for good, said Chris Lynde, president and chief executive officer of AmazingMail.com Inc. He said that when the economy recovers, the volume of paper direct mail may not return to its former level because more services will switch to digital.

AmazingMail has a system that Lynde believes gives marketers what they need today.

It starts direct-mail campaigns by sending prospective customers a large, glossy postcard printed in a Phoenix plant. The postcard gives consumers a variety of ways to respond, including e-mailing, text-messaging or by phone.

Lynde believes that making initial contact with a postcard is still the most effective because so many people are on do-not-call registries or block unwanted e-mails with filters.

"What we recommend to our clients is they always lead with a postcard and give their customers the opportunity to voice how they would like to be communicated with," Lynde said.

Want to try it? AmazingMail's got a limited time offer that will give you 10 free personallzed postcards. Click here and go for it!

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency.)

“Back in August 2008 we reported on 18 chief executives who use the microblogging application Twitter to clue customers in on new services, help them with questions about their products, and generally get a little bit personal with customers, business associates, and the public.

Not even a year later, we bring you nearly 50 CEOs who find tweeting a personal and professional delight. Twitter's growth has been astounding...”

Twitter is a free micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Looking for more reasons to try Twitter?

“Eat like a bird, and poop like an elephant.” (Japanese quote)

Yes. This is a sound business benefit and is exactly what you want to be doing as the CEO of a thriving business, SMB or multinational. You want to “give out or give back more than you take in” – something that former Apple employee and current design evangelist, Garr Reynolds’ advocates in his Presentation Zen blog, and author, Silicon Valley venture capitalist and 88th most popular blogger in the world, Guy Kawasaki also reinforces in his How to Change the World blog. (Guy is one of the CEOs featured in Tweets from the Chiefs. Among his many ventures, he's co-founder of Nononina, the company that created the Truemors and Alltop websites.)

According to Guy, in his "How to evangelize a blog" post, giving out more than you take in is a form of marketing your blog and your good ideas, and has a boomerang effect that returns business benefits to you. It works like this:

There's a very interesting honor system in blogging. Suppose Blogger A finds an obscure article and posts it to his blog. Blogger B reads about it on Blogger A's blog and links to it. However Blogger B doesn't link only to the article; she also links to Blogger A to give him credit for finding the article.

Bottom line: if you want lots of people to link to your blog, read voraciously and find cool stuff first.

Acknowledge and respond to commenters. Only good things can happen when you read all the comments in your blog and respond to them. It makes commenters return to your blog. This, in turn, makes commenters feel like they are part of your blog's community which makes them tell more people to read your blog.

Bottom line: you should enable your readers to get to your blog in multiple ways. It's no different than distributing physical products through multiple channels.

CEOs: By using Twitter for micro-blogging and blogging consistently at your company blog, you increase opportunities to broaden your customer community.

(Jill McCubbin is a conversation architect with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency.)