AB Chamber of Technology

By reading the notes prepared in his e-mail of today (2020Network/AB Chamber of Technology/Knowledge Management), describing the meeting today by Perry I am unsure it was the meeting I was at. If I had known the people from CTI were going to attend I would not have, as I could have written their entire presentation.

Someone has to explain to me if CTI, and all of the other little niche SIG's are talking to the government and the provincial government is not hearing, and the changes that were mentioned today are changes that need government policy implementation or change, how a new group that is not going to Lobby, is going to be anymore than what is now out here as a group.

It seems the need for the new AB Chamber of Technology was answered not by the expressed answers but by the implied idea that you have a group of 300 some odd people who have found the AB Chamber of Technology and no other group, and most if not all don't know CTI or other niche technology SIG groups exist. Nor does the Minister hear the message being spoken to him by the CTI.

So it behoves me as to why we want to work to set the group up if it is going to be just a mirror image and operate as an umbrella, of the groups already in existent. It gives no visible benefit to attract members, provides no new impetus to change the way things are done at the government level, and does not want to work to change things.

If we don't get policies changed, or the current policies properly funded and implemented, then we can sit around the table bitching and whining, but that is what people can do in their other SIG groups.

All I can see is you got the completely expected response from CTI. They don't like the idea because you will be taking from their turf. A turf they do not work at very well. They like the status quo, because they get to continue down their chosen road.

So I guess I am feeling this is just another good idea, being watered down to be just like many of the other groups that have started.

Next time you are travelling around meeting with your technology colleagues, ask them to tell you what the EDI does, and to name two other technology groups that actually make a difference in the lives of small or medium sized technological companies outside of the major centres of Edmonton and Calgary, and in fact outside of the CEDI and EDI?

CEDI serves its purpose well. The purpose is narrowly focused and does not serve many who are just starting up.

No one asked John Majors out of the last angel financing event they held, how many projects moved to the level of talking turkey.

The fact is the industry SIG's have been divided up into small pieces all getting just enough money from the provincial or federal government to barely get by, and to be afraid to make public hard hitting comment about the lack of substance behind the rhetoric of their policies.

We need a group that will work to get policy changes to the way small technology companies are treated in the tax regime, and how little is done to help them stay in rural Alberta to hire the students that graduate out of the over crowded post-secondary IT education market the province keeps pumping money into with no idea as to who will hire them.

We need to form a group that forces the Alberta government to source locally for all of their IT needs.

We need to form a group that makes sure the core purpose of our MLA's and Ministers who travel on trade missions is to know the technology sector inside and out, and more than just what is in the CTI and ETUI buildings.

I must say I was disappointed in the meeting.

I can sit around the table listening to people in the technology industry in Alberta bitch and moan about the provincial or federal governments' inertia for free, I don't think we need another group formed to just increase the number of people sitting around the table.