Vancouver Island Technology Park

Did you hear? We launched a 60-day Facebook campaign at Discover Tectoria last Thursday! As the official sponsor of Startup Alley, we wanted to reinforce to the technology community that the Vancouver Island Technology Park continues to support companies big and small from start-up to Fortune 500.

By simply ‘liking” our Facebook Page and entering our contest you could be the lucky winner of an 8gig iPod Touch! The contest closes February 8th, 2012.

VITP is not only the place where Great Ideas Happen but also the place where they can grow.  Providing an ideal business friendly environment for companies big and small, VITP is the mecca of innovation and technology commercialization in the region.  35 acres, 190,000 square feet, 33 technology companies employing 1100 of the regions brightest individuals all combined make VITP the Place to Hit the Ground Running.

VITP boasts a power of place….a physical and cultural environment that have proven to be true magic.  “Architecture facilitates relationships”, “collaboration through co-location” are just a couple of the real benefits of being located at the park.

The scope of services and expertise VITP offers is unlimited.

•       VITP creates an environment that allows companies to attract and retain high-value jobs for the community.

•       VITP assists in the identification and introduction of angels, venture capitalists and institutional bankers.

•       VITP promotes the reputation of its companies and academic institutional partners.

•       VITP partners with technology associations to attract and retain high-technology companies.

•       VITP develops lasting partnerships among regional, national and international industries, governments and academia institutions.

Thinking of locating at VITP or wanting to find out more information? We have commercial office space for lease to accommodate start-up to medium sized companies.  Contact us today!

Visit www.facebook.com/myvitp to enter!

Nikki de Goey is the Manager of Culture and Corporate Relations at Vancouver Island Technology Park.

The Vancouver Island Technology Park (VITP) is proud to support The Charity Guys and their 2011 Coats for a Cause Campaign benefiting the Victoria Cool Aid Society! Notoriously females have been the designated “clothes horses” of a family but we all have those sweaters, coats and toques that we no longer wear and have allowed them to creep into back corners of our closets.  We are asking that you dig out your retired winter articles of all colours, sizes and fashion eras and drop them in the VITP front lobby so that we can help the Charity Guys and hopefully 1000’s of kids, teens and adults in Greater Victoria stay warm this winter! Not only are we offering you the opportunity to give back during the holiday season but also the incentive to clean out your closet!

We will be accepting donations all week until end of day Friday, December 2nd, 2011.  Please drop your donations in the large bin near Security.

About the Charity Guys:

The Charity Guys are nothing more than a group of middle-aged guys looking to make a difference in the community – that’s it. Though this may sound simple or generic, it is the basic premise for our being. We seek to help others and improve the well-being of our community. We feel that, as a group, we’ve been very blessed and privileged thus far, and we’d like to give back by raising the standard of living for those around us.

About  the Victoria Cool Aid Society:

The Victoria Cool Aid Society has been building hope, lives and community in the Capital Region for over 40 years, since 1968, through a wide range of programs including supported housing, community health and dental services, emergency shelter, mental health and employment services, and the Downtown Community Centre. Cool Aid focuses its services for adults who are homeless or in need of help and provides assistance to over 10,000 individuals every year.

The Victoria Cool Aid Society traces its origins to the Cool Aid Hostel, which was established over 40 years ago, on June 10, 1968, to provide short-term, emergency shelter to transient youth travelling the country. Today, Cool Aid operates a diverse range of social and health services for those in our community who are most vulnerable.

Nikki de Goey is the Manager of Culture and Corporate Relations at Vancouver Island Technology Park.

Need one more reason besides doing good for your community? How about so your family doesn’t nominate you for Hoarders based on your closet looking like this:

Have you heard the news? VIATeC and the Greater Victoria tech community will be putting on Discover Tectoria (pdf) (the cool kids call it DiscoTec) on December 8th, and Vancouver Island Technology Park is proud to be part of it. Dozens and dozens of Victoria’s advanced technology companies will be attending DiscoTec in early December to show off all the cool things they are working on to make Victoria the fastest growing tech hub in the province.

More importantly, DiscoTec is all about fostering up-and-coming talent to continue to build a strong tech sector – and provide interesting, high-paying jobs for Victoria graduates.

That’s why Vancouver Island Technology Park will be sponsoring “Startup Alley”. Startup Alley is where Victoria’s newest companies will have the opportunity to show the Victoria community what they’re up to, to help generate interest (and perhaps even investment dollars!). It’ll be a lot like  VIATeC’s recent Launch Party, where the coolest kids in the room wowed seasoned tech folks with their latest gadgets, gizmos and products that will undoubtedly revolutionize the way we live.

We want to encourage you to attend Discover Tectoria at the Victoria Conference Centre (actually, the cool, cool Crystal Gardens across the street) on December 8th. For one thing, we hear VIATeC has arranged for more than 1200 local students to be bused in for the day. As well, it’s a great chance to learn more about what’s up in the tech sector and to show your pride in our community.

And be sure to look for us in the Startup Alley.

New DiscoTec site is live check it out to find out more event details!

Nikki de Goey is the Manager of Culture and Corporate Relations at Vancouver Island Technology Park.

Victoria Launch Party II from Dan Gunn on Vimeo.

BC Ambulance Service plans to relocate its Vancouver Island dispatch centre and Colwood ambulance station to an earthquake ready building on Leigh Road, near the Spencer interchange.

The two-storey building will house four ambulance bays and the dispatch service on City-owned land across from Spencer’s Pond. The project has a June 2013 deadline and the facility would employ about 60 people.

“The ambulance service will have great access to the highway and the core area,” said Langford fire Chief Bob Beckett, who was involved in discussions for establishing a new station in Langford. “From my perspective in emergency services, Langford will benefit greatly from having this resource in our community. We are going to have a modern, state of the art ambulance station.”

The ambulance service plans to move its Island communications centre from the Vancouver Island Technology Park in Saanich to Langford by July 2013, one of three such centres in the province. At the same time, the three-bay ambulance station on Jacklin Road would become redundant and shut down.

The ambulance service is leasing the building from Langford for 20 years, and will pay about $500,000 per year in operating costs and rent, according to lease documents.

Although the City owns the land, Keycorp Consulting in Langford is financing and constructing the building. Mayor Stew Young said Langford is acting as a “flow through” between the development company and BC Ambulance.

“It is a three-way partnership, but there is no money in it for the City,” Young said. “Langford is a flow-through. The contract is with us, and we have a contract with the person who will own the building.”

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Government of Canada News Release

Victoria, British Columbia – Proteomics research continues to flourish on Vancouver Island, thanks to $663,000 in Western Diversification Program (WDP) funding. The investment was announced today by the Honourable John Duncan, Member of Parliament for Vancouver Island North and Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, on behalf of the Honourable Lynne Yelich, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification.

Funding will enable the University of Victoria (UVic) to purchase and operate two pieces of specialized equipment for the UVic-Genome BC Proteomics Centre, the only facility of its kind in Western Canada.

Proteomics is the study of the structure and function of proteins – the enzymes, antibodies and other molecules that make up our cells and tissues. There are an estimated one million different proteins in the human body, and the role of many of them is unknown.

“By investing in the University of Victoria’s Genome BC Proteomics Centre, we are investing in science, technology and innovation, while at the same time creating knowledge-based jobs,” said the Honourable John Duncan, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development and Member of Parliament for Vancouver Island North, on behalf of the Honourable Lynne Yelich, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification. “This equipment will help develop preventative and diagnostic medicine, benefiting Canadians living with illnesses, now and into the future.”

The two new instruments, known as mass spectrometers, will be used to provide fast and highly sensitive analysis of biological samples, such as blood, to detect protein biomarkers – which are molecules that indicate the presence of disease, conditions and degenerative changes in the body. Scientists hope that by validating proteins as biomarkers, doctors will eventually be able to identify patients prone to a particular disease before symptoms appear and tailor treatment to the individual.

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Students at the University of Victoria’s Gustavson School of Business will be the beneficiaries of a $5-million donation from Victoria businessman Sardul S. Gill. The gift will establish a permanent endowment that will disburse funds for scholarships and financial awards, international projects, teaching and research. The university will recognise the gift by naming its graduate business program the Sardul S. Gill Graduate School.

“Mr. Gill’s generous donation will do a great deal to strengthen graduate level business education and allow us to reward outstanding academic achievement and foster excellence in teaching,” says UVic President David Turpin.

“This magnificent gift will benefit generations of business students and advance our teaching and research programs,” says Dr. Ali Dastmalchian, dean of the Gustavson School of Business. “We are delighted to honour Mr. Gill in this way; he is a person who exemplifies the values of hard work and integrity.”

Gill attended UVic’s predecessor Victoria College (Class of ’53) and is the president and secretary of Gill-AM Investments Ltd, a Victoria-based real-estate holding company. He was born in Victoria in 1931, the son of Sikh immigrants from Punjab, India. Gill graduated from Victoria High School and attended Victoria College before completing his commerce degree at UBC.

“I made this gift to honour my parents. My father immigrated to Canada from the Punjab in 1906,” says Gill. “He laboured all his life and encouraged me to pursue my education at a time when there were significant barriers to people of Indian descent in this country.”

Gill’s father, Bhan Singh Gill, came to Canada with a fifth grade education and had to settle for labouring jobs in Vancouver Island sawmills. His wife, Hardial Kaur Gill, came to Canada in 1926.

“My father could not get a job for nine, 10 cents an hour,” Gill recalls. Bhan Singh Gill toiled in saw mills up and down Vancouver Island; the younger Gill worked in those same mills as a young man supporting himself through college and university.

“As a result, I never had much of a social life,” Gill relates, “but I knew the value of hard work from a very young age.”

In 1953 he was admitted to the commerce program at UBC and after graduation, completed his CGA. Over the years, Gill worked diligently to build up a considerable portfolio of real-estate holdings.

“I owe the fact that I got this far to my parents,” he says. “My parents were staunch believers in education, and now I want to honour them, and the value they placed on higher education by giving something back to the institution that gave me a start in life.”

The naming of the Sardul S. Gill Graduate School at UVic represents the first time in Canada that such an institution has been named after a philanthropist of Sikh Indian descent.

This gift has other historic benchmarks: it is the largest gift ever from an alumnus to the university and may be the largest gift to a Canadian university by a person of south Asian heritage. It is the largest gift ever to a graduate program at the University of Victoria.

“My greatest hope,” says Gill, “is that this gift inspires others to give back to their own communities – perhaps just as my father and mother inspired me.”

Media contacts:

Dianne George (Gustavson School of Business) at (cell) 250-882-6411 or (office) 250-721-6411 or dgeorge@uvic.ca
Chris Thackray (Development) at 250-721-6247 (after 2 p.m. on Oct. 7) or thackray@uvic.ca

Media advisory: Mr. Gill and his family respectfully wish to decline media interviews. On Oct. 7 UVic President David Turpin is available for interviews between 3 and 3:15 p.m. and Gustavson School of Business Dean Ali Dastmalchian is available for interviews between 3 and 3:30 p.m.

Starting in 2009, VITP engaged in an energy audit  in effort to take building operations beyond LEED and to showcase VITP in the area of sustainability in Canada.  Firstly, VITP utilizes real-time energy monitoring to increase its energy efficiency thanks to BC Hydro’s new Continuous Optimization program and Pulse Energy Software.  Through the program, which aims to improve the operating efficiency of VITP, the Tech Park received a comprehensive energy audit. All suggested changes in the audit are now live resulting in lower operating costs to VITP’s tenants.

During the first summer alone VITP saved over $8,000 in natural gas bills, reduced yearly gas consumption by 6%, and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 35 tonnes.  Pulse Energy recently wrote a case study detailing how VITP is considered one of Canada’s most efficient office environments! Please read below.

The recent unveiling of this year’s World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) reveals that Canada continues to fall on the worldwide stage. In 2009 we were holding our own in ninth position of all worldwide nations considered competitors with us. Since then we have dropped steadily to a current ranking of twelfth in the 2011-2012 GCI. Although the current global economy is dismal at best, we cannot cite it as a reason for our decline, since all other nations are experiencing the same stagnant economies. For some reason, three of those nations have passed Canada in the past three years, in spite of suffering from the same economic maladies that we Canadians face. What can we as a nation do to overcome this downward trend in our global competitiveness?

In a recent speech at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty challenged Canada’s private sector to become more involved in research and development throughout our nation. “Every person in this room… knows that the global economy we now compete in is increasingly driven by new ideas and knowledge-based industries. Despite this global reality, Canada still lags other nations in overall business expenditures on R&D.” He went on to say that R&D spending by businesses in Canada had actually been decreasing in real terms since 2006. His final statements were eye opening, as he said, “Failure to invest in innovation will leave the country a laggard in the digital economy. At great expense, both economically and socially, we will be reactive rather than proactive. And our businesses will continue to lag in productivity compared to their competitors in other countries.”

We here at Vancouver Island Technology Park see the future as one of great promise. We do not believe that our best days are visible only in the rear view mirror. Nor do we hold to the conviction that the great institutions and engineering programs and research platforms that we Canadians have founded in the recent past are doomed to take a back seat to the competition the world is offering us at this juncture.  Here’s a few reasons why:

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