Cooperathon arrives in KW for aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs

Posted on By John Gregory
Cooperathon, Desjardins, hacking, opencityinc,

Cooperathon is the latest in the growing hacking trend to arrive in Kitchener-Waterloo. The recent interest in Hack the North, Hack 4 Health and Cooperathon prove the mounting interest in this agile, design thinking approach and collaborative problem-solving.

Here we explore the nuances of Cooperathon imagined and produced by Desjardins that runs September 28 until November 1.

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New Digital Marketing Apprenticeship Program emerges from DISC

Posted on By John Gregory
Digital Marketing Appreticeship program, Digital Trades School , Opencity Inc, experiential learning

The new Digital Marketing Apprenticeship program has emerged from the successful Digital Innovation Skills Certificate (DISC). The new program run by the Digital Trades School in Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton and Windsor, builds upon the DISC program foundation.

DISC provided a foundational blueprint for future career-ready training in Ontario. 98% of the young people enrolled in the program secured jobs as a consequence of the experiential training. Here we explore the new 7-month apprenticeship certificate.

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Tech for Good – Welcome to True North

Posted on By John Gregory
Tech for good, True North, Communitech, Lot 42, Opencity Inc,

The True North conference headline of Tech for Good tackles the difficult question of ethics in innovation. #TrueNorth18 is a ground-breaking international conference that will provide a forum for critical conversations about issues at the intersection of society and technology.

It will focus on how to re-imagine and reaffirm tech as a force for good in the world. Here we took a speak-peak to help orientate you to this stunning showcase. The conference has attracted 2,000 attendees from 15 countries and 45 high-calibre speakers on three-stages. The result is anticipated a Tech for Good Declaration.

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Patients Included | Toronto Health Innovation

Posted on By John Gregory
Patients Included Hacking-Health-THIW-OpencityInc-gregiej

Toronto Health Innovation Week provided a spirit of optimism for the newest innovations. Patients Included should be the default way of working in health innovation and improvement.

We selected four 1-minute video interviews to include here to capture the essence and optimism of Toronto Health Innovation Week. Read our reflections on the MEDEC MedTech conference.

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Lightning in a bottle | What True North means for Waterloo Region

Posted on By John Gregory
True-North-Communitech-ONE-report-Waterloo-@gregiej

ONE may not be a familiar acronym to many, explaining why the expert review panel suggests renaming it as Innovation Ontario. Here we explore the intersection of the strands of tech debate and activities in the Toronto-Kitchener-Waterloo corridor. There is a spirit of optimism with Toronto Health Innovation Week, True North and Velocity 10-year anniversary, yet both the Building Global Winners report and the poignant book How We Can Win point squarely to the paramount need to gain global reach.

Steven Woods, Senior Director Engineering at Google Canada described “What we have, up here in the North, is lightning in a bottle.” He said that Google “recognized there was something special happening up here – the entrepreneurialism, the quality of higher education and the loyalty of the talented engineers who just want to do good work.” In the 2015 Global Startup Ecosystem ranking the newly combined Toronto-Waterloo corridor entity ranked 16th. The Region of Waterloo tech sector employes 30,000 people.

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