By Dan Marshall

Conference featuring Bill Gates could lead to Nanaimo tech opportunities down the road

Sep 21, 2016 | 12:15 PM

VANCOUVER — Any time a conference features an appearance from Bill Gates, it’s going to be significant.

Gates along with politicians from B.C. and Washington State took part in the Emerging Cascadia Innovation Corridor Conference in Vancouver on Tuesday.

The event was an opportunity to look at ways the two regions can work closer together in areas like technology, health, education, health care, transportation, and natural resources.

Paris Gaudet, executive director with Innovation Island, is interested to find out what may come out of the conference that could affect the central island in terms of tech opportunities.

Gaudet admits she doesn’t see any short term spinoffs for Nanaimo’s tech sector if B.C. were to have a closer working relationship with Seattle, as an example.

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She says Nanaimo is still in the early days of being considered a tech hub and there’s much work to be done before tech companies in Washington would look at the central island the same way as Vancouver or Victoria.

“When we look at Vancouver they have three key components that build an innovation hub – talent, capital, and a critical mass,” said Gaudet. “Victoria would see a little bit more flow from Seattle because they are 25 years into building their tech ecosystems. We have a little bit more work to do here.”

Gaudet witnessed first hand the initial tech growth strategies used in Kelowna.

She feels many of those same concepts will take Nanaimo to the next level in terms of being considered an innovation hub.

“Making sure everybody’s at the table. Whether that’s our municipal government, economic development, tourism, Innovation Island as the lead tech organization, post secondary,” said Gaudet.

“That’s the one thing we can do to make sure to position ourselves for opportunities that may be available following this Cascadia Conference.”

Bill Gates talked on Tuesday about the clear link between the high number of quality tech jobs in B.C. and Washington and the number of outstanding universities in the area.

Gates also stressed the need to narrow the gender gap in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.