Jane Jacobsdied today at the age of 89. Among other things, she was a champion of liveable cities, a citizen of Accordion City and the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Robert Fulfold said of her: “Jacobs came down firmly on the side of spontaneous inventiveness of individuals, as against abstract plans imposed by governments and corporations. She was an unlikely intellectual warrior, a theorist who opposed most theories, a teacher with no teaching job and no university degree, a writer who wrote well but infrequently.” We all owe her a debt of gratitude.
A wide-angle shot of the MaRS Centre, where the event was held.
I caught last night’s ICT Toronto gathering at the MaRS Centre, where ICT Toronto announced the release of their “cluster development strategy” paper — a plan to boost the competitiveness and standing of Accordion City’s information and communications technology sector over the next five years.
A close-up shot of the MaRS Centre entrance.
It was easy to spot the DemoCamp gang — me, David, Jay, Sutha, Bryce, Mark — among the attendees, who numbered around 100. We were the only people there not in suits. It certainly looked as though we were there only people there who wrote code for a living. We made sure to mingle and found that most of the attendees seemed to be from the management side of various information and communications tech firms or from organizations that invested in them.
The riff-raff! From left to right: David Crow, Sutha Kamal, Jay Goldman.
While waiting for the presentations to begin, we talked about how we could get some of the “suits” in the room to attend some of the upcoming events like Mesh, DemoCamp or BarCamp. Would these events hold any interest for them? I suggested that we “sell” the idea of such events to them as some kind of “walk on the wild side” tour. “What Burning Man is to us, DemoCamp and BarCamp could be to them!”
David enjoys a drink; Jay prays that nobody mistakes him for a bike courier.
In addition to my notes below, Mark Kuznicki and Rob Hyndman have posted blog entries about the event as well. The Globe and Mail has an article on ICT canada titled Toronto Aims to be High-Tech Hub and we have yet to see if the National Post is going to take a break from their “Oil! Oil! Yeah, baby, we got the Prime Minister and the oil! Suck it, Eastern Canada!” binge long enough to notice.
The strategy proposed by ICT Toronto boils down to these four points:
Increase collaboration between education, industry and government in the field of information and communications technologies.
Increase the profile of the information and communcations technology sector.
Increase the competetitiveness of our information and communications technology businesses.
Retain and attract information and communications technology businesses.
Here are my notes from the presentation. The first speaker was Accordion City mayor David Miller, followed by three speakers from the ICT Toronto working group, followed by a question-and-answer session.
Structural problem in canadian ICT industry — large and medium sized players are foreign-owned, which makes it hard for the presdient of a Canadian branch office to promote Canada
Toronto’s current ranking in world — “Embarrassingly, we don’t know”. We know that we’re number 3 in North America, but don’t know the world ranking. Currently looking into that.
Areas for early attention:
Fusion between financial industry / IT
Digital media world — partnered with San Francisco — creating centres of excellence
ICT accounts for 42% of R&D spending in the private sector but only 2% of R&D spending at Canada’s universities.
It turns out that Toronto has the third-largest information and computer technology (ICT) workforce in North America, after San Francisco and New York and accounts for CDN$35 billion (US$31 billion) in sales each year.
(For those of you not from around here, GTA means “Greater Toronto Area”. “Toronto” is a popular nickname for Accordion City.)
Here’s an excerpt:
If it hopes to keep up with New York and San Francisco, the Toronto area’s hodgepodge information and communications technology sector needs to band together and hype its brand around the globe or risk watching smaller markets surge ahead.
That’s the thrust of a new report, spearheaded by the City of Toronto and due out today, that diagnoses an industry employing 148,000 at 3,300 area firms but that is geographically spread out, too loosely affiliated and lacking the kind of unified voice that could get politicians’ attention.
“Toronto’s ICT sector does not enjoy the recognition of such internationally recognized locales as Silicon Valley, Austin, Boston or Bangalore,” the report says. “This inevitably puts Toronto at a disadvantage with respect to attracting foreign and domestic investment. …The whole is currently less than the sum of its parts.”
The 110-page report on what is the third-largest such cluster in North America makes many suggestions, calls for the formation of an umbrella organization of stakeholders to better promote the industry, and urges them to preach the cause to policy makers who ignore the industry.
The report urges that by 2011, we should:
Move from third place in North America in terms of company growth and investment and take one of the two top spots
Increase investment in ICT research in the region by 25%
Increase ICT sales and employment by 20%
Attract 5 new multinational firms to the region
Problems to be overcome include:
Government and investor preoccupation with “darlings” such as biotech and nanotech, whose economic impact is “negligible”
The governmental perception that Toronto is an economic “fat cat” (not true; Toronto carries the province and helps to carry the country)
Competing with “China Inc.” (or perhaps the “BRIC” countries — Brazil/Russia/India/China)
The scattered nature of Toronto ICT firms — maybe there needs to be an organization representing us that provides a central point of contact
I like to think that those of us who’ve been pushing to get the tech community together for gatherings to meet each other and share ideas are doing our part to help meet the objectives in this report. I also think it’s something that we should discuss at our gatherings — I’m going to have to get my paws on a copy of the report.
For most of us here in North America, Israel’s one of those places that we often talk about but haven’t visited. Even among Wendy’s and my immediate families — remember, her family’s Jewish — I believe only my Dad has been there. He went there as a young man in the early 1960s and probably saw a different country than it is today, both newly-formed and ancient at the same time. It was well before the Six-Day War, Golda Meir, Munich, Entebbe, Begin and Sadat, Lebanon, the Intifadahs, Gulf Wars and suicide bombings.
[To the left is a snapshot of channel 2 in Tel Aviv; Lisa’s the second person from the left.] I am probably quite unqualified to talk about the socio-politico-complexo-migraino issues surrounding Israel, but my friend Lisa Goldman is. She’s my friend Deenster’s older sister and is a journalist living in Tel Aviv. When I want a view of what’s going on in Israel and the West Bank that I’m not going to find in the news or the foaming-at-the-mouth pundits on either side of the Israel/Palestine debate, I go to her blog, On the Face.
I’m not the only rock-and-roller with a taste for weird instruments in the family. My brother-in-law, Andy Koslow, plays balalaika (even playing once at Carnegie Hall) but is porbably better known for his bass playing with Boston’s Ramones tribute band, The Ramoniacs.
(Really, that’s him in the suit.) Let’s go for a more representative photo:
The Ramoniacs first came to life at a May 2005 Worcester appearance by Marky Ramone, the longstanding on-again, off-again Ramones drummer. DeLay, who had recently moved east with his wife and son from his native Southern California, handed out fliers in search of fellow Ramones fans interested in starting a tribute band. Woundy, a software programmer and veteran of several Ramones-influenced groups, took one.
DeLay had also placed an ad on Craigslist. Martel, who had recently placed his own ads proposing a Ramones tribute band, quickly responded. They became a foursome with the addition of Andy Koslow, a doctor at Caritas St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton, who also saw the ad. Koslow has moonlighted in an array of bands, including one that played 25-minute jams and another that specializes in traditional Russian music.
”Mine was not a punk upbringing,” says Koslow. ”I was into all kinds of out-there stuff. I started seeing the Ramones in 1989. [Their debut] was one of the only real punk albums I owned.”
Yet he has thrown himself into the Ramoniacs with as much zeal as his bandmates. They wouldn’t be a Ramones tribute without donning the classic uniform — black Perfecto-style biker jackets, ripped jeans and T-shirts, canvas sneakers.
“Mine was not a punk upbringing”…I love it! I’m trying to imagine if it was, with my father-in-law, who works in financial planning, wearing Doc Marten boots and saying “Segmented funds: now those are hardcore!”
According to the Ramoniacs website, there’ll be a piece on them in tomorrow’s edition of the Boston Herald and those of you in the Boston area can go check them out at the Abbey Lounge in Somerville tomorrow. Well done, Andy!
Not being one to miss such a trend or its implications, The Economist has an article titled The Cutting Edge that suggests that there’s an analogue to Moore’s Law for razors, meaning that we should have 14-blade systems by 2100. If only I could live long enough to see those glorious times.
Jane Jacobs died today at the age of 89. Among other things, she was a champion of liveable cities, a citizen of Accordion City and the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Robert Fulfold said of her: “Jacobs came down firmly on the side of spontaneous inventiveness of individuals, as against abstract plans imposed by governments and corporations. She was an unlikely intellectual warrior, a theorist who opposed most theories, a teacher with no teaching job and no university degree, a writer who wrote well but infrequently.” We all owe her a debt of gratitude.
