The Vancouver Island Advanced Technology Center (VIATeC) hosted Island Tech 2007 last Friday at the Victoria Conference Centre. With the IT recognized as the primary revenue producing industry in Victoria’s economy, Friday’s event had a confident, celebratory feel to it. Once the domain of small businesses, IT has made big contributions to Victoria’s re-emergence as one of Canada’s leadership cities. Collectively the technology sector injected over $1.7billion to the local economy in 2006.

Victoria’s tech sector is no longer led by small businesses either. Many of the names present at Island Tech such as AbeBooks, Neverblue Media, Carmanah Technologies, Falcon Software, Smart Dolphins IT Solutions, Vigil Health Solutions, EDS Advanced Solutions, Hydroxyl Systems and Metamend Search Engine Markting have achieved extraordinary success in their industries.

One new firm that stood out is Flock.com. Flock makes an easy-to-use open source web browser that pulls from various social media networks such as Flickr, Facebook and MySpace and displays posts at those networks in one browser window. Flock designed their social web browser based on, “… the vision that the web browser cand and should enable the richest user experience possible across information-gathering, communication, self-expression and interaction.” Founded in 2005 in Mountain View California, Flock’s development offices are in Victoria BC.

I love Victoria. There is an interesting synergy of innovation and investment happening in the local tech scene that is making this town’s IT sector move faster and in more directions than many comparable cities in Canada or the United States.

“There’s no place like home… There’s no place like home…”
Dorthy Gale, Wizard of Oz, 1939

I spend a lot of time at search industry conferences and trade shows across the US and Canada. The common thread in the international tech scene is the mind-boggling size and scope of whatever. It’s a rarefied environment that is mentally exciting, physically challenging and continuously changing. Being a series of conferences, trade-shows, product demos and presentations, everything feels like a show. Traveling the tech-world often feels a falling into a new and improved Land of Oz.

Though the physical pace can be bone-shattering, the scenery surpasses simple Technicolor. For the fortunate, the streets really are paved with gold. Wizards, witches and munchkins abound, as do evil green monkeys. The environment, though defined by a small number of extremely powerful entities, is such that virtually anything can happen at any given time and there is often another song-and-dance routine around the next corner.

That’s why this year’s Island Tech event was so interesting for me. It felt like more like a large scale, internationally focused trade show than a local Victoria tech Conference. Not only has the south-island IT sector grown enormously over the past few years, it has matured into a virtual mirror of the larger tech communities it serves.

For most IT firms, doing business in Victoria traditionally tends towards looking off-island for customers and revenues sources. For most of the past 15 years the local market was simply too small to make a living serving, even for independent web designers. Because local firms looked off-island for clients, many have cultivated an international economic footprint with customers spread around the world. This is one of the key factors in the overall success of Victoria IT firms. Now that the IT market in Victoria has grown significantly, it will be interesting to see locally focused services grow from the grassroots.

It was a pleasure trolling the Island Tech trade-floor. I was able to speak with dozens of local business leaders and innovators and boost my own admiration of their efforts. Congratulations to Dan Gunn and the rest of the VIATec team for putting on a great event. Congratulations also to the entire Vancouver Island tech community. While every year has felt a little stronger, the past two years have firmly established the reputation of Victoria British Columbia as a center of IT excellence internationally.