5 Year Plan Aims to Boost Toronto’s ICT Sector

A conference was held at the maRS centre to announce ICT Toronto’s plan to undergo a 5 year “cluster development strategy” centered around strengthening Toronto’s competitive position and standing in the ICT sector.  In attendance were management personnel from different Information Technology firms, representatives from investment companies, six members from “BarCamp” Toronto; Mayor David Miller and the ICT Toronto Working Group acted as guest speakers for this important event.   

The strategy created and proposed by ICT Toronto covers:

1. Increase collaboration between education, industry and government in the field of information and communications technologies.
2. Increase the profile of the information and communications technology sector.
3. Increase the competetiveness of Toronto’s information and communications technology businesses.
4. Retain and attract information and communications technology businesses.

Here’s what the guest speakers had to say;

Mayor David Miller

The MaRS Centre is a symbol of of what Toronto can do with technology and by extension information technology.

MaRS is the only research centre of its type located in a downtown location and a prime one at that.

Toronto is a world leader in mining finance — our competitors are cities like London! We need to think of ourselves in the ICT cluster in the same way. Our goal is to make Toronto the 5th leading ICT sector in the world.

Ron Friedman

ICT Toronto is concetrating on these sectors:

• Computer and telecommunications manufacturing
• Software development
• IT and telecom services
• New media

The ultimate vision is for Toronto be be recongized as one of top 5 ICT centres in the world by 2011!

In case you’re wondering, here’s the plan;

• Establish ICT Toronto as a central point of contact for the world
• Bring people together to do business…..collaboration and convergence……
• Link ICT and key economic centres
• Build professional development centres and business mentoring services for the entrepreneurial community
• Ensure that Toronto’s wireless infrastructure is leading-edge internationally — assess future bandwidth and wireless needs and make sure that we have world-leading WiFi users to match
• Implement an international marketing communications action plan

Points raised during the Q&A session

The big ICT challenge: finding good, affordable management

Toronto’s strength: initial innovation – pre-commoditization

http://www.joeydevilla.com/2006/04/20/notes-from-last-nights-ict-toronto-event/