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What's Inside
Letter from ED
Imagine you are the owner of our beloved Canucks and you had the opportunity to sign Wayne Gretzky or Guy Lafleur or Mario Lemieux and a few other super talented players for the season. Now imagine the odds of all of them being available and wanting to play for your team. The odds are exorbitantly high. It's like winning the BC lottery, which someone calculated as usually being about 18 million to 1.
I feel lucky and tremendously honored because that's exactly what happened at our Annual General Meeting on Monday, June 22 hosted by NOKIA Vancouver at their beautiful location in Burnaby, BC. We beat the odds (maybe not 18 million to 1). We "signed" some of the best "players" in Canadian wireless. Six new directors have joined our board: Jules Meunier, former Chief Technical Officer, NORTEL; Parminder Singh, former Managing Director, Microsoft Canada Development Centre; Derek Spratt, CEO of Mobidia and former CEO of Intrinsyc; Olivier Vincent, President & CEO of Canpages; John Tedesco, President & CEO of Contigo; and Rob McGarry, Director of Product R&D Media and Games, NOKIA.
You, our members, have voted for a board of sixteen top executives of which 75% represent wireless technology and media companies and 25% represent services. Together our new board has more than 300 years of combined leadership and entrepreneurship, international experience, and successful industry expertise.
According to Jim Collins in his bestselling book "Good to Great" "Who then What" is the most important ingredient to building a successful company. Now that we have a great team we need to figure out a big and interesting project, a "Stanley Cup" that will be good for you, our members, for the BC wireless industry and for our community. We will be developing an action plan over the summer.
Here are some other select activities that I was involved this month:
- Attended the Launch Party Vancouver 7 (LPV7) on June 2nd. Again Danny Robinson and his team at Bootup Labs, put together an excellent event. Of the presenting startups I liked Foodista (a wiki food encyclopedia for food enthusiasts that caught Amazon.com's attention), Muutu (local classified search), Wantsa (online personal search + positive change), and Tynt (with its interesting "Tracer" product).
- Met with our good partners at Vancouver Economic Development Commission and 2010 Commerce Centre to discuss some B2B programs during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
- Presented the BC wireless industry to our BC government investment representatives in countries like South Korea, China, Japan and others on June 5th.
- Made "house calls" to more than ten wireless and new media companies that were shortlisted for the IRAP accelerated support program and continued our search for a Project Director & CTO and Creative Director for the 2010 Showcase & Services.
- Attended the BCTIA Technology Impact Awards courtesy of Wavefront on June 17. BCTIA put together a good show at the new Vancouver Convention Centre. I was happy to hear Pascal Spothelffer, President of BCTIA mentioning WINBC as a sponsor and to see Jason Cohenour, CEO of Sierra Wireless accepting the "Company of the Year" Award.
- Discussed the proposed ban on cell phone use while driving in BC with Rick Cluff on The Early Edition on CBC Radio on July 2. Read more about this topic that will affect us all here.
Like always, please feel free to contact me with any ideas or suggestions you may have on any of the above topics or on any new topics that you feel are important to you.
Thank you for reading,
Michael Bidu
Executive Director, WINBC
WINBC / Wavefront AGM
WINBC AGM at Nokia, Burnaby |
Michael Bidu and Robert Forget |
Thank you to Valerie Swannell |
What happens when you put flash cards and a lawyer in a room and give a microphone to the sales guy? Well, surprisingly you get a couple of motions, 16 directors and potentially the fastest AGM in WINBC history.
In 3 short minutes on a sunny evening at Nokia WINBC outgoing Chair, Robert Forget from Vecima Networks, oversaw the formal proceedings for WINBC's 2009 Annual General Meeting. Michael Bidu presented the Annual Report (click here to download) and honored the commitment of WINBC's volunteer board. We owe all of the 2008-2009 directors a huge debt of gratitude for their generous service throughout this past year. A special thank you must go to outgoing board members Val Swannell of Creekstone Consulting and Tom Nyberg from Nokia. Robert Forget will also be stepping down as Chair, but we get to keep him on as a director.
The WINBC Board 2009-10 is as follows; the Chair and Executive Committee will be appointed at the first board meeting of the year in September.
- Bruce Bernard, Product Development Manager, Carmanah
- Bruce Tattrie, Partner, Fasken Martineau
- Chris Langdon, VP Network Services, Telus
- Colin Quon, President & CEO, ANTS Distributed Media
- Derek Spratt, President & CEO, Mobidia
- Don Furney, Corporate Tax Services Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
- Doug Blakeway, President & CEO, Wireless2 Technologies Inc.
- Jim Mutter, Former President, Premier's Technology Council
- John Tedesco, President & CEO, Contigo
- Jules Meunier, Former CTO, Nortel
- Kathleen Landry, Director, Corporate Marketing & Public Relations, Sierra Wireless
- Olivier Vincent, President & CEO, Canpages
- Parminder Singh, Former Director, Microsoft Canada Development Centre
- Rob McGarry, Director, Product R&D - Media and Games, Nokia
- Robert Forget, Director of Wireless Product Management, Vecima Networks Inc.
- Steve Hnatiuk, Partner, Yaletown Venture Partners
MoMoVan Awards
Christina Chowaniec, WINBC and Aaron Hilton, CellMap |
Olivier Vincent, CEO, Canpages |
Adrian Stimpson and Peter Mueller (RxNetworks) |
We wanted to honor members of the MoMoVan community for making good presentations and sharing good content and ideas throughout the past year, so we created awards in 7 categories, and introduced an 8th for next year: the "MoMoVan Tuesday Award'" the only award that you don't want to win. Let it be a warning, it will be given to the most boring presenter next year! A special award was also given to Wavefront for their continued support of both MoMoVan and WINBC.
Congratulations to the following winners:
- Thomas Ligocki (Clevest) – Winner "Best Presentation" for his "Mobile Field Force Optimization" presentation at April's Mobile Enterprise focused session.
- Gregg Sauter (Nokia Vancouver) – Winner "Best Moderator" of the "Mobile Gaming and Entertainment" panel at February's event held in conjunction with New Media BC.
- Anwar Sukkarie (WebTech Wireless) – Winner "Best Panelist" on the Wireless Green Technologies panel during April's "Mobile Enterprise" focused event.
- Aaron Hilton (CellMap) – Winner "Best demonstration of MoMoVan/Community Spirit"
- Phil Heard and the Vancouver Economic Development Commission – Winner "Best Supporting Organization."
- Canpages and their iPhone voice search application – Winner "Most Innovative Product/Service."
- Adrian Stimpson and Peter Mueller (RxNetworks) - Winner "MoMoVan Friday Award/Funniest presentation." For their presentation "Understanding the 'A' in 'AGPS'" in November. We still don't know which one was the cute one and which one was the funny one, but it hardly matters.
- Jim Maynard, Brian Roberts, Patty Lee, Geoff Ledingham accepted an award on behalf of the entire Wavefront team for their continuous support of WINBC and MoMoVan.
A huge thank you must also go to all the volunteers who helped us throughout the year. We literally cannot run events without you
Accu Huang, Anna Moorhouse, Carmen Bidu, Jeff Crampton, Karlin Leshchyshyn, Lucas Lau, Mario Gutierrez, Mark Lume, Sofia Jimenez, Tory Copithorne, Travis Finley, Victor Garcia.
MoMo Global at CommunicAsia 2009
Our May 2010 partner Mobile Monday Global has just returned from holding an oversold MoMo Founder workshop at CommunicAsia 2009 in Singapore and are energized and ready to focus their attention on the Mobile Monday Global Summit taking place right here in Vancouver May 2010.
Paul Lee shortlisted for 2nd Cellcom Media Conference
The 2nd Cellcom Media Conference taking place in Tel Aviv November 15-16, 2009 put out an international call for speakers: they were looking for industry leaders who could hold the attention of 1,400 CEOs and other C-level officers. We nominated Paul Lee (former President of EA Studios and current Managing Director, VanEdge Capital) and he has been shortlisted along with potential speakers from Bangalore, Estonia, Washington DC, Boston, Singapore & Tokyo. If he is selected, he will be a fantastic ambassador for Vancouver and the centre of excellence that exists here in wireless and new media.
Wireless Health Forum
 WINBC took the lead to introduce a Wireless Health strategic initiative in partnership with LifeSciences BC and as a first step we have created the Wireless Health Forum.
We have lined-up wireless health leaders from Qualcomm, Microsoft and Telus/Emergis to address how the convergence of health and wireless technology and the inclusion of wireless in the healthcare ecosystem can revolutionize healthcare delivery and enable more cost-efficient systems. July 16. Click here to register today. Speakers include:
- Clint McClellan, Senior Director Business Development, Health and Life Sciences, Qualcomm - Topic: Wireless Technology is Revolutionizing Healthcare
- Barbara Berg, National Healthcare Director, Western Provincial Government Director, Microsoft Canada - Topic: The Future of Healthcare (Public health records, Trends and Microsoft HealthVault)
- Corrine Campney, Director, Health Strategy, Telus Health Solutions - Topic: Wireless Healthcare in Canada: Knowledge-clinicians on-the-move
- Telus/Emergis, Speaker TBA - Topic: Development of EHR in Canada/Emergis story
Following the presentations there will be an invitation-only strategic session hosted by Fasken Martineau. CEOs from both life science and wireless companies as well as representatives from academia, government and the health authorities will look at the opportunities that are available in the current BC/Canada and U.S. health care industry; the challenges that impede growth in the sector and whether or not this is a strategic direction that we should pursue.
July 16 is just the beginning:
- We are planning a trade mission to San Diego October 5 & 6 to connect you to our San Diego partners and to wireless health opportunities. Want to join us? Contact WINBC today and let us know.
- CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment (San Diego, October 7 - 9, 2009) will focus on wireless health and will feature a "wireless health pavilion" showcasing the latest and greatest from companies being innovative in that space; keynotes and focused sessions. BC Wireless Health companies wanted!
- Wireless health will be a focus of our May 2010 Wireless Summit and we will be bringing the best and the brightest to Vancouver to inspire new ideas and to validate the incredible opportunity.
2010 Showcase and Service Update
 220 days until the Opening Ceremonies! June has been a busy month for your 2010 team. We have submitted all the funding documentation to our supporting organization partners and are hopeful that we will get all of the funds we requested. We have been working with NRC-IRAP to get funding arranged for Service participant companies. 15 companies made pitches and 4 have been recommended to enter the accelerated review process with IRAP. As a result some innovative applications will be created to ensure a rich user experience that reflects the depth of the community as a whole.
We are pleased to announce that Jeff Laporte will be joining us as the Technical Director; he will oversee the implementation of the Service component. Jeff is a technology entrepreneur and software architect. He was Co-Founder and Chief Architect at EQO Communications, named by Red Herring as one of the top 100 private technology companies in North America in 2007. In 2007, MIT Technology Review named him one of the top innovators under the age of 35 for his development of the first internet phone service for mobile phones.
We also have the pleasure of welcoming Sara Bailey on board as Creative Director; she will guide the Showcase development. Sara is an award-winning creative consultant and multimedia designer. She has led creative projects for clients including Nike, General Motors, the National Film Board and Electronic Arts. She was named Designer of the year at the Canadian New Media Awards.
All in all a very productive month lining up important components so that we can advance in leaps and bounds in the weeks ahead.
Should BC ban cell phone use while driving?
On July 2, Michael Bidu took take part in a discussion on CBC's "The Early Edition" hosted, by Rick Cluff, about BC's potential decision to ban cell phone use while driving. Download the interview here and read more about the topic here.
BC Wireless Industry News
Clevest Solutions’ Mobile Field Force Application Awarded AT&T Enterprise Solution Certification
Vancouver, BC, June 16, 2009 — Clevest Solutions announced today that its Mobile Field Force application has achieved AT&T enterprise software certification for use with in-vehicle modems. » More
Tranzeo Receives US$1.4 Million In Purchase Orders From U.S. Distributors
Vancouver, BC, June 11, 2009 — Tranzeo Wireless Technologies has received purchase orders from distributors Double Radius and Streakwave worth more than US$1.4 million. » More
WebTech Wireless and Overview Mapping's Telematics Solution Selected by Protectagroup
Vancouver, BC, June 10, 2009 — WebTech Wireless announced that they, along with UK OEM partner Overview Mapping Ltd., have been selected by Protectagroup Ltd. to provide telematics services for an insurance program targeted at young drivers. » More
Upcoming Events
July 13, 2009 - City of Vancouver and Vancouver City Savings Credit Union – Creative Places + Spaces Bursary Application Deadline
The City of Vancouver and Vancouver City Savings Credit Union are pleased to announce a bursary opportunity for up to ten individuals to attend the Creative Places + Spaces: The Collaborative City conference, October 28 to 30, 2009 in Toronto, ON. These bursaries are designed to enable participation in the Creative Places + Spaces conference by Vancouver-based, professional artist / creators, representatives from Vancouver arts / culture organizations and others involved in creative space development. For details and to apply: www.creativeplaacesandspaces.ca
September 9-10, 2009 - Wireless World Australia 2009, Sydney, Australia
Wireless World is Australasia’s 6th annual B2B wireless and mobility exhibition and conference. It brings together mobile workers, business, enterprise and government around the convergence of IT, telecommunication and the delivery of the internet and end-to-end IT solutions. The theme for 2009 is "improving efficiency and driving down costs in today's challenging business environment." More information at: www.wirelessworld2009.com.
September 9-11, 2009 - IEEE International Conference on Ultra-Wideband, Vancouver, BC
This conference provides a forum for the latest UWB systems, technologies and applications in both microwave and millimeter wave bands. The ICUWB program of 2009 will feature invited plenary sessions and symposia by international experts and new product displays by market leaders in the field. Prospective authors are invited to submit technical papers until 23 February 2009. For more information visit the 2009 ICUWB website www.icuwb2009.org.
October 7-9, 2009 - CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment, San Diego, CA
The international conference that brings a community of users, carriers, developers and manufacturers together to generate dialogue, share ideas and debate the economics of mobile business; all with a focus on applications, network architecture and technologies such as LBS, machine-to-machine and WiMAX. For more information and registration at: www.wirelessit.com.
November 15-16, 2009 - 2nd Cellcom Media Conference, Tel Aviv, Israel
Join 1,400 participants, international press and bloggers and hear speakers from AT&T, MTV, FOX, Nokia,EMI, ME, Coca Cola Israel, Supersale, McCann Ericsson, Israel, Yellow Pages, and Discount Bank of Israel. The theme this year will cover the new media thinking and the digital concepts, the new distribution channels and development.
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Wireless Health Forum
July 16, 2009 |
Presented by: 
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Sutton Place Hotel, Vancouver
7:30 - 10:00am |
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INDUSTRY EVENTS
Wireless Health Forum
Explore mobile health opportunities
Vancouver, BC - July 16, 2009
Wireless World 2009
6th annual B2B wireless and mobility exhibition and conference
Sydney, Australia - Sept 9-10, 2009
IEEE International Conference
Conference on Ultra-Wideband
Vancouver, BC - Sept 9-11, 2009
CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment
Share ideas and debate the economics of Mobile Business
San Diego, CA - Oct 7-9, 2009
Cellcom Media Conference
2nd annual conference
Tel Aviv, Israel - Nov 15-16, 2009
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© 2009 WINBC. All Rights Reserved.